by Will Wight
They were only crude outlines of men: rough shapes of a head and torso, with boards sticking out like arms. They had no legs, only a single pole driven through the floorboards beneath them.
But what drew Lindon's attention, and made him walk forward for a closer look, were the runes carved into those boards. The dummies had been arranged all around a script-circle the size of the barn, and it was one of the most intricate circles he'd ever seen. There were two lines of script circling the dummies, one on the inside and one on the outside, and the runes were packed small and tight; each symbol was only the size of his thumb. He picked out a rune he recognized here and there, but a circle like this was far beyond him.
A second circle, much smaller, overlapped at the far end of the barn. It was only big enough for a single person to stand inside, and a wooden podium rested in the center. Lindon guessed that those were the controls.
Eithan put his hands on his hips and looked over the eighteen dummies with the smile of a proud father. “Six Soulsmiths worked alongside the carpenters all night for this, and I have to say, I think they did a wonderful job.”
Lindon could tell that the runes had been carved quickly, but he was still having trouble accepting that this had been done in one night.
“This is a traditional training method from my homeland,” Eithan said, walking over to stand by one of the dummies. “I've seen similar setups elsewhere, but I’m partial to this design. Yerin, did your master ever take you through one of these?”
“Master wouldn’t let me draw my sword on a wooden man,” Yerin said with a shrug. “If it didn't bleed, it wasn't good enough training.”
“I suspect that, in a few years, you’ll have drawn enough blood to satisfy even your master. No need to start too early.”
Yerin looked pleased by the compliment, but Lindon was wondering what exactly the Underlord had planned for them over the next few years.
Eithan moved on. “These dummies are more than wood, you see. They are moved by small constructs inside, and are used to practice basic steps in combat.”
Yerin's face fell, her disappointment clear. Lindon perked up.
She might not need such simple instruction, but Lindon was looking forward to his turn in the circle of wooden men. He was lacking in many areas, and hand-to-hand combat was one of them. As an Unsouled, he had been encouraged to practice the simple exercises of the Wei clan, but never trained for a real fight.
Eithan strode over to the podium at the center of the control circle, pointing a finger at Yerin while moving his other hand over the podium. “I know how you feel, but be patient. I'm making a point.”
The air between Eithan's hand and the podium rippled. The smaller circle around Eithan lit up white, then the light flowed into the bigger circle. Soon, the entire barn was lit with pale runelight.
Suddenly, one of the wooden dummies spun on its axis. A previously invisible circle of runes lit up on its left arm—green—then in its lower torso—blue—then on its face—white. The lights faded away in seconds.
“Hit the circles as they light up. Simple, isn't it? If you do it correctly, and your strikes carry enough madra, the circles will stay lit instead of dying out. When all three circles on all the dummies remain active at the same time, you have won.”
Air rippled between his hand and the controls again, and a deafening chime sounded from all the dummies at once. They each spun in place, and the three circles on their bodies continued to shine instead of dying out.
Eithan stepped away from the controls, though the circles in the floorboards remained lit.
The dummies stayed bright for a handful of seconds, their three rings shining, before finally going dark.
“Yerin, if you wouldn't mind demonstrating for Lindon how the system works, I'd like to see you defeat the dummies. As quickly as possible, please.”
Yerin stepped between two of the mannequins, tucking her sword-arm closer to her shoulder so it didn't catch on a wooden head. “I just have to hit them when they light up?”
“In the correct timing. If you miss one, the target will go dark again, and you'll have to start over.”
She nodded, approaching a dummy. “How do I start?”
When she stepped closer, a green circle of runes lit on the wooden plank it used as an arm. Before Lindon had fully registered the light, Yerin had already struck it dead-center. The arm swiveled back from the force...
...and the other arm came to life, swinging at the back of her head.
She caught the blow with her left hand, striking at the dummy's torso with her right in the instant the blue circle appeared. The wooden man bowed in the middle to deliver a headbutt, but she sidestepped as though she could see it coming, her sword-arm whipping forward to strike the white circle.
Before the chime sounded, signaling that she'd beaten the first dummy, she was already stepping up to the second.
If Lindon hadn't attained the Iron body, he wouldn't be able to catch her movements. The three strikes would have looked like one motion. He'd seen his clansmen punch through walls and dodge arrows, but he'd never seen anyone move so quickly, so easily.
Not up close, anyway. He'd watched Yerin fight before, but when she was in an actual battle, her movement seemed...rougher. More natural, somehow. This was smooth and practiced, like she was executing a routine for the hundredth time.
“This is her first try?” Lindon asked, as Yerin stopped a separate strike with each hand while delivering a kick that lit up a green circle. She'd taken down three dummies already.
“This much is expected,” Eithan said, examining his fingernails. “Jai Long could clear this course with his eyes closed.”
Lindon slipped his hand into the pocket where Suriel's marble rested—a transparent orb about the size of his thumbnail with a single blue candleflame burning within. Its warmth comforted him, reassured him.
Eithan flashed him a smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The heavens are on your side.”
Lindon started. Did Eithan know about Suriel? Lindon wasn’t particularly afraid of the story getting out, since no one would believe it anyway, but how had Eithan found out? Had Yerin told him?
Could the Underlord read minds?
“…because the heavens sent you to me,” Eithan went on. “That’s nothing if not a miracle.”
Slowly, Lindon let out a breath.
The eighteenth chime sounded, and all the dummies glowed softly. Yerin slid backwards and came to a stop in the center, her breathing a little ragged.
“Fifteen seconds,” Eithan announced. “Not bad for your first time. The dummies are set to delay you more than injure you, but after a week or two, you'll go through this like wind through a forest.”
“What's the fastest I can get?” Yerin asked.
“Twelve seconds is the minimum the script can handle. When you reach that, I'll have a better one built.”
Yerin crossed her arms. “How fast is yours?”
“An excellent question. As I said, I grew up on a course very similar to this one, but recently I had the Arelius Soulsmiths build me a course set for two seconds.”
She waved a hand at the surrounding dummies. “You could clear this in two seconds, if the script let you?”
Lindon's eyes widened as he tried to picture that, but Yerin looked skeptical.
Eithan laughed. “Couldn't your master do as much?”
“You are not my master,” she said with confidence.
He'd already moved over to the controls, and the colored circles on the dummies died down as the circle reset. “I am not, and I'm sorry I never got the chance to meet him. There aren't many who know him in the Blackflame Empire, but he has quite the reputation in the outside world.”
The outside world. Lindon hadn’t even seen the Empire yet, and he was already impatient to reach beyond it. The world Suriel had shown him was impossibly vast, and Eithan had seen more of it than anyone else Lindon had met. That alone was enough to make him thankful he’d joined the Arelius family.
The Underlord gestured to the circle. “Lindon. Pretend that I have given you this task to prove yourself as a new member of my family. Act as though these are not training dummies, but enemies, and I have tasked you with our defense.”
Lindon looked past Eithan's smile. There was something hidden in those words, though he wasn't sure what. Nonetheless, he shifted the way he thought about the training circle.
If this were a real life-or-death scenario, he’d need more information.
He walked around the edge, glancing at the dummies. As he'd expected, the target circles weren't invisible; they were simply sketched lightly in the surface of the wood and difficult to make out at a distance. The dummy was ringed with other such scripts, carrying instructions and power from the circle on the floor. He'd have liked to look at the constructs within—even if he couldn’t understand how such advanced devices worked, he at least might learn something.
Finally, his steps carried him next to Eithan. “Let me clarify, if you don’t mind. As long as I light up the circles on a dummy, I have defeated the enemy?”
“Just so.”
Lindon nodded. Then he reached a hand out over the controls and sent madra flowing into a command circle.
There were nine circles engraved on the wooden podium, and it took him a moment to find the one he wanted. The first made some dummies spin around, the second darkened the circle, the third had no reaction he could see, but the fourth worked. Eighteen chimes sounded at once, and all the targets on all the dummies lit up.
“Victory,” Lindon said, “for the Arelius family.”
He bowed so that Eithan wouldn't hear any disrespect in his words, but Eithan only nodded. “Five seconds. He seems to have beaten you by ten, Yerin.”
Yerin's ears reddened noticeably, but her tone was dry. “Well, cheers and celebration for him. Let's have him try it the right way, see if he lasts more than a breath.”
Lindon kept the proud smile off his face—this was no time for gloating. “No, that’s not necessary, I know I could never keep up with you. And it seems like all the enemies are dead.”
A smile did touch his face then, as he glanced at Eithan for signs of approval. Eithan’s gaze had gone distant, and he stared into the wall of the barn for a moment before waking with a start.
“Ah, I’m sorry. It seems company is on its way, so we’ll have to work faster than I’d planned. Why don’t you do as Yerin suggests, Lindon?”
Lindon's smile withered as though it had never been.
Moving hesitantly, his mind working for an escape, Lindon slid his pack to the ground and stepped into the ring. He calmed himself with reason—there was nothing to be nervous about. Of course he wouldn't be able to match Yerin's time, but no one expected him to. She was Lowgold, and he was only Iron. They wanted to see him perform a training exercise, that was all.
A few moments ago he had been excited to give it a try; with a little effort, he called some of that feeling back.
The wide circle of runes on the ground glowed white, giving the dummies a somewhat ghostly cast. He stood in the center of the circle, taking a deep breath. He cycled his madra faster in preparation for battle, running his madra to his limbs, readying the Empty Palm technique.
“Begin,” Eithan called, and Lindon stepped forward.
A green circle lit up on the inside of its wooden arm, and he struck it immediately with a low-powered version of the Empty Palm. The full use of the technique would exhaust him quickly, but this was enough to inject madra into a script. The target brightened as he hit it.
Then a second wooden arm smacked him on the back of the head, sending him facedown into the fresh planks.
This is the second time I've been hit in the head today, he thought as he struggled back up to his feet.
Eithan was still grinning, and Yerin wore her own satisfied smile. “Good news!” Eithan said. “You’ve beaten my time.”
Lindon bowed to cover his flushed face. “Your pardon; I have forced you to watch an embarrassing sight.”
Eithan leaned his elbows on the control podium. “I said I had a point to make. Yerin, which was the best way to clear the course?”
She gave Lindon a sidelong glance. “I’d still contend that facing it head-on is the best way.”
“Why so?” Eithan asked. “Activating the controls accomplished the same result.”
“Real enemies don’t have control scripts, do they?” She glared at the wooden dummies as though she longed to behead them. “Can’t lean for too long on a cheat. The top way, the solid way, is to make yourself strong enough to cut through anything.”
She spoke with such ringing confidence that Lindon found himself swaying. That was the path that had led her to powers beyond anything his clansmen had ever dreamed of.
He couldn’t pick out anything she said that he disagreed with, but somehow he felt like she was leaving something out.
Lindon inclined his head to her. “You two are the experts, so please correct me if I speak out of turn. But in my humble experience, you cannot wait until you are stronger than your opponent to fight. Sometimes the game is rigged against you, and your only option is to flip the board.”
Yerin gave him a blank stare. “You’re my prime example. You saw you couldn’t make it six feet in this world without a Goldsign, but your clan wouldn’t let you train. What did you do? You walked right off. You’ve been fighting against stronger opponents since the day I met you, rigged game or no.”
Lindon searched for a response, but none came.
That was exactly what he’d done.
Suriel had shown him that he wouldn’t make it anywhere without a certain level of strength, so he’d struck off on his own. He should be the first one in line to agree with Yerin.
But he couldn’t. Something about her words gnawed at him.
Eithan hopped over, hooked one arm around Lindon’s neck, and dragged him over to Yerin. He threw his other arm over her as well. She looked as uncomfortable as Lindon felt, but Eithan beamed down at them both like a proud father.
“You both have a piece of it, don’t you? Yerin, you have to watch yourself so that you don’t fall into a rut in your thinking. But Lindon…so do you.” He ruffled Lindon’s hair, which was uncomfortable and strangely claustrophobic. “In our big, broad world, there’s a certain difference in strength that no number of tricks will circumvent. For instance…”
He grinned more broadly. “…at your current stage, the two of you couldn’t give me so much as a headache even if you stabbed me in my sleep. Though I know you adore and idolize me, so let’s give a more reasonable example: if you want to survive Jai Long in a year, you must learn sacred arts the right way. Even with the full support of the Arelius family, and Jai Long on the run from his clan, you’ll at least need to reach Lowgold in a solid and proper manner so you don’t collapse into a pile of jelly when he glances in your general direction.”
Lowgold. It was the sweet fruit that dangled out of Lindon’s reach.
But he hadn’t even reached Jade yet. Once he’d longed for Jade, and now he saw it as nothing more than a moat to be crossed. One of many. Even once he reached Lowgold, he’d still have a long journey to match Jai Long.
“Thank you for the instruction,” Lindon said. “I never intended to suggest that I wouldn’t work hard. I’ll train harder than Jai Long, harder than anybody.”
“I forget how young you are,” Eithan said fondly.
Abruptly he released them, taking a step back and turning to face the door. “We’ll resume this discussion soon, because our guest has finally arrived!”
Yerin frowned and put a hand on her sword.
“If you recall,” Eithan went on, “you have yet to meet my family.”
Lindon had wondered where the rest of the Arelius family was. Scouts from the Sandvipers and Fishers had spotted Arelius banners approaching weeks ago, and Lindon had expected to meet them by now.
Eithan extended hands to the doorway as thoug
h presenting a prize. “It is an honor and a pleasure to introduce…my brother.”
The barn door swung open.
The man standing in the doorway looked perhaps ten years younger than Eithan, putting him just past twenty. His hair was the gold of fresh wheat, which must have been an Arelius family trait, but his was tightly curled. He held himself with grace and poise, standing proudly with one hand on the hilt of the slender sword at his hip. A silver bracer covered his right forearm from his wrist almost to his elbow.
He did not wear the traditional layered robes of a sacred artist, but otherwise it looked like he had the same taste in clothes as Eithan: his shirt and pants were deep blue silk, stitched with intricate silver thread, and looked as though they’d been tailored for him only the night before.
He made eye contact with Yerin, then Lindon, nodding to them both.
Before he could speak, Eithan cried out, “Cassias! Brother! It’s been too long!”
Cassias smoothly sidestepped without glancing at the Underlord, and Lindon wondered how often anyone managed to dodge Eithan.
“I’m not his brother,” Cassias assured them, tilting his chin to say over his shoulder: “I am not your brother.”
“Cousin Cassias it is, then!”
“Nor are we cousins, except in the loosest sense. Distant, distant relatives, we are.”
Eithan didn’t seem put off. “Well, we’re like brothers, anyway. You should have come to see me more than two days ago. Did you have to spend so long playing with the Jai clan at the border?”
Cassias straightened, pivoted on his heel, and addressed his…‘brother.’
“You saw what happened at the border, I’m certain. And I have my own questions about what I saw from you. If I'm not mistaken, you provoked a Jai clan exile and killed the heir to one of their vassal sects.”
“Not me,” Eithan said proudly, turning to Lindon. “You'll note that young Lindon, here, was the one who brought down the Sandviper heir.”
Lindon felt the attention in the room turn to him, and he almost flinched back. This felt uncomfortably like the Underlord was trying to shift the blame onto him. His earlier misgivings about the Arelius family returned in force, but he showed Cassias a smile and a shallow bow.