Days rolled by, his efforts to get better grew more and more intense. Once he was able to dual with the other soldiers without taking injury with the 1 handed sword, he started to search for a heavier longer blade. He moved on to one of the largest long swords they had available, it was almost 4 feet long from tip to pommel, and in fact had to be used as a two handed blade by pretty much all of the men. Two handed guard stances were pretty similar to one handed guard stances and longsword guard stances. So the learning curve wasn’t as steep as he feared.

Of course that didn’t mean he didn’t pay for his progress with blood. One particular bloody day started off just like the others. He trained in the morning with physical exercises. He thought he’d have to wear a belt if he went back home, he clearly had lost a few inches from his waist, inches he didn’t think he had to lose.

As a kid in grade school he had a best friend whose older brother played high school football. His friend, being an impressionable 3rd grader started lifting with his big brother and actually developed some biceps. Being very impressed with his friends muscles he begged his parents for a weight set, only for his mother to turn him down. She was a nurse and knew that putting that much strain on a developing body would never result in anything positive. She drilled into his head he wasn’t to do any serious weight training until he stopped growing after his teenage growth spurt.

In exchange his mother got him into bicycling and swimming. Bicycling never really appealed to him as a child, but swimming was something he grew to love. He had learned to swim when he was young, and took to it like a fish to water, with his mother encouraging it, he took more and more advanced swimming classes even learning racing. He would win races after races as he grew up. He knew some people thought he would continue swimming straight on threw to the Olympics, but his heart was never in the racing, just the swimming. At some point in 8th grade he had simply stopped racing. Still the foundation for a lifetime of high energy cardio activity had been planted in him at a very young age.

So his physique was never one of a weightlifter, ignoring the obvious demerits of large muscles in ice hockey, he just never got into religious weightlifting. This had changed, and the increase in muscle mass which he had missed for months became more and more obvious. While the diet was thin on taste, apparently something they were feeding him in that tasteless stew of vegetables was positive for muscle growth.

He suspected it might have something to do with some of the animal meat they ate once every 10 or so days. Since magic and gods and curses existed in this world, it was possible some animal meat was very beneficial to human muscles growth. His questions were met with shrugs. No one else ate enough to get healthy in this place. He knew his portions were larger, pretty much bottomless. No one else got close to the portion size he was fed. Most of the people here were lucky to get a small serving of meat once every 30 days, let alone once every 10 days.

He felt guilty about his large servings whenever he saw the hungry gazes from those gaunt faces in the mess. Or he did before he finally had that conversation with the Sage. Now he could care less. If they were going to feed him well, he was going to eat well. Eat well for the times he wouldn’t be able to. Eat well for his growing strength. Eat well for his health.

As a result, on this particular day he was abusing the weighted equipment he used to build muscle mass, and had been for almost a solid hour before grabbing “his” practice sword, and starting to fight.

This was a rare day, as Sam had come to watch his training. She usually didn’t. Today she did. He felt a completely unnecessary urge to show off for her, as she had not seen him fight with this sword yet. There were 3 guardsmen who were easily the best swordsmen here. He could fight about on par with them one on one. However, he couldn’t win a fight with one quickly, the best he could manage was wearing their stamina down and winning when their arms grew weak and stance got shaky.

If there was one thing fighting without armor did for him, was force him to develop an air tight defense.

Sitting with Sam was someone who had to be a Fairy. While he had never seen a fairy before, she matched what his studies said about them. She had large purple eyes, sun dark skin, golden hair, an impossible golden color that appeared to have been liquid gold, only lighter than air, in fact her hair moved through the air similar to how you’d expect someone underwater to look, her hair simply floated. He couldn’t say if she was pretty or not; what she was, was very exotic. She wore slave chains and iron like the human slaves, only unlike the human slaves she wore clothing. Her clothing was just as ethereal as the rest of her, oddly shaped, brightly colored bright fall colors of reds, browns and gold which made her dress appear to be made of leaves not clothing forming sleeves and a long dress that both seemed to float in the air. She looked light enough to be blown away by a strong gust of air. Her wings were basically see through; he could catch a little rainbow of color akin to soap film on water where he supposed the butterfly shaped wings were.

He had heard about the fairy slave girl before. But he had never seen her. She did have a very haughty look on her face, and seemed to be holding a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. Being a slave to humans she sported the dark crescent moon tattoo on her forehead like all the other slaves. He heard from Sam that Sam never was able to get her story out of her.

With two clean women in the training hall the men all seemed to be preening a bit. Even if they didn’t realize it, they all seemed to be trying to show off a little bit. Jace noticed the strange air as well as there were already half a dozen serious injuries from whether sparing or simply training as the men pushed themselves a bit too hard.

‘Idiots, nothing to do with me. This is training. Always training for the way home.’ Jace thought to himself thinking the others around him were idiots.

‘Anyway I need to show Sam how good I’ve gotten with the sword and win in a pretty way today’ his mind was drifting in a dangerous direction, as he challenged two of the best swordsmen to a fight. He could barely hold his own against one of the top 3, let alone two. But there he was, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Sam and the elf like fairy girl, with motives pure as snow, challenging two of them at once.

It went about as he probably should have expected. He was only able to dodge and parry, striking back was basically impossible. He probably should have conceded, however he was stubborn and ‘convinced’; that he was wearing them down. It was just as he was spinning out of one entrapment, he lost track of the 2nd man, something screamed in the back of his mind a sword was coming, so he changed his guard and warded against the slash. It was a stab, as his eyes found the blade streaking toward his heart.

Time seemed to flow to a stop as he watched the blade get closer and closer. His own momentum pulling him into the blade. He started a desperation twist in hopes he could get thin enough for the blade to miss. Though these blades were blunted practice weapons, the point and shape of a sword was weapon enough. Unfortunately, it was the twist that ruined him. Had he spun to the right he could have avoided her blade entirely, he spun to the left, and took the blade right into the soft flesh of the arm, punched through and buried itself in his left chest.

He thought he’d die drowning in blood, as he felt the immense pain crashing into his chest. Breathing was almost impossible. He collapsed to the ground and yanked the blade from his chest/side. The pain was crushing. He could see the wizard making his way over in the corner of his eye, though somehow his eyes noted the look of complete panic on the face of Sam as well, the Fairy was actually holding her back from charging out toward him, and pointing at the wizard making his way over.

At that moment he was taken with the most terrible coughing fit of his life. As he spewed dark blood from his mouth, the pain of wave after wave of coughing wracked his body, as he collapsed forward, he could hear a sucking sound coming from his side as his body convulsed involuntarily with those coughs.

It seemed like the pain for the chest wracking coughs would go on forever when he felt the splash of cold and piercing heat of the healing magic wash over him. He kept coughing, though now without pain, spitting up blood. He finally was able to take a deep breath of air, which only lead into another bloody coughing fit.

Except for injuries like that one that occasionally occurred, his training actually progressed at a rapid pace. His study of languages reached a point where he could at least make his intentions known roughly in the Fairy, Kindred (both northern and southern clans) and Dragon tongues. He could even speak a little of the ancient human tongue which was once rather popular during the reign of the old Dragon king.

Eventually 60 days passed since his talk with the sage; it was now nearly 120 days since he had been summoned.