“Concentrate, damn it!” A solid fist cracked into the face of a young boy. The force knocked him off his feet and landed on the cold, hard stone floor. The child pushed off the ground as if he had done it a hundred, no, a thousand times before. The stone was drinking it down as if the blood were a single tear falling into a vast ocean. The fist came again for the boy, this time from the other side. He knew it was coming, and he did not care.

He arched forward, dagger in hand, trying to land a blow against the adult laying waste to his young body. The blade missed, and the elbow from the other arm cracked down on the back of his head. Spit. Blood. Tears. It did not matter. It was all mixed. An animal scream came roaring out of the boy’s mouth. He rolled onto his back, blood pooling from the back of his head, tears raging down his face. His right hand flicked, and a dagger flew upwards, missing his foe by centimetres and embedding itself into the ceiling above.

The boy did not care, it was a distraction, and his left hand reached out and tried to trip the woman above him. However, she saw the move coming and slammed her foot into the bridge of the boy’s nose.

She roared in the unfortunate apprentice’s ear. “You’re not paying attention.” Her foot came down again, but the boy could raise a weak hand to try and stop it, causing her to slam down the fingers into the stone floor—another crack. The boy bites his lip, and his middle finger must have broken; a flash runs across his mind.

He took in a breath, spitting up blood and boldly looked his teacher in one of her many eyes, “Go back to whatever hell hole my mother summoned you out of.”

“If only I could young master Drovic. If only I could.” The tone would have almost been despondent if her mandibles had allowed her.

His teacher was roughly 121 centimetres, the measurement stylings of the ancient races, or four feet if you use human measurement. She did not wear clothing in the traditional style. Her body was covered in hardened armour plating; if Drovic described her, “She looks like an ant had sex with a gnome and got all the worst parts.” At one point with the other students, he had expressed that thought and was rewarded with 12 lashes.

Drovic had almost jumped for joy when the old warrior had asked him to be her apprentice. Drovic wanted to be the best and needed to be trained by the best, but unfortunately, magic and combat training was unyielding. For him, it was rather frustrating doing the same thing daily and making what he felt was almost no progress. So far, by his count, he had never landed a single blow against his teacher. He reminded himself for what felt like the umpteenth time, as his blood seemed to drain out of everywhere; this is what he wanted and dreamed of for so long. Drovic had a teacher of his choice, not his mother’s but his. An actual teacher knew what they were doing and could forge him from this raw ore into unbreakable iron.

Sarah, well, that was not her proper name; no one without insect features could say her name correctly, so Drovic called her Sarah, and she was in the mage guild plus a champion of the fighting area! While she still had not told Drovic precisely how strong she was, the old champion was strong enough to be put in charge of a dungeon town, if she wanted, without nobles getting angry. The only person he saw Sarah afraid of was his mother.

Drovic carefully extended his mana into his wounds while taking another excruciating but calming breath. Sarah had been slowly teaching him magic. Some called it energy; others, from Drovic’s point of view, who try to sound all important, called it the “metal” of the universe. Horse shit from his point of view. Drovic slowly formed a small glob of mana within him, forcing the magic to compact into tiny threads and slowly sending it to the back of his head. He hoped that it would stop the headache, oh, and the pool of blood. Painfully slow, he began to weave the threads together, creating a picture in his mind of the spell he wanted to cast and forming a small pool of beautifully woven threads of his mana.

Carefully, as Sarah watched, looking down on him, this was the part he kept messing up in the past, but thankfully Sarah was all too happy to punch him enough that he needed healing; he tied off the strings of mana. Thanking another breath, yup, Drovic thought, my ribs are broken. He is holding his spell together with no leakage of mana.

Staring in shock and disbelief, Sarah realized that the boy had finally done it. She was shocked, she had trained many young want-a-be warriors, but no one mastered a healing spell in less than two months, sure a fireball or something, but the control needed to heal was a fine art. Sarah knew that forcing the boy under constant effort and haranguing him, pushing him harder than any other student before, because Sarah knew if she failed Mother, her fate would be worse than death. Drovic had finally managed to master the essential Life Thread skill. She could not wait to see him cast a basic mana bolt.

Sarah removed her foot from Drovic’s hand and walked to the weapons wall, waiting for the boy to finish healing the rest of his body. She was not worried; if he could heal the head wound, he should have a problem with the fingers, ribs, shattered left eye socket, the bruised kidneys, oh, she thought and the broken toe.

Picking up another dagger from the weapons rack, “Well done, Drovic. Now we can finally move on to the fun stuff.” Drovic could hear the mandibles clicking together in pure joy. Sarah was rubbing her hands together, at least one pair of the set of four, as Drovic looked around the training room in his family’s ocean keep that they were in. He had wondered why they were practicing outside any of the major cities, he wished he could tell Mother about his success with the spell, but Mother was busy now. She was the last one left to run the family. Father never came back from his dealings with the Iron Legion.

“What’s the fun part, Sarah?” He was almost afraid to ask her, last time he asked her a question without permission, she had scooped out his right eye with a thing she called a spork. Then left him there for an hour before she cast Greater Restore upon him. It took him three days to finally “feel” right, even though he knew it was just in his head.

“Come on, boy,” she snapped, “Did you just call me Sarah?” She tossed a dagger at his right eye, and he caught it with a quick reflect, not even thinking; she loved to throw daggers at his eyes. “I might not be a noble, which weak, little humans keep the bowing and scraping too, but I deserve respect.”

“Respect this, human lover,” he tosses the dagger with just a little hint of mana behind it, hoping the extra power would let him finally land a hit on his teacher. He did not even see her move, but he felt the fist slam into his freshly healed kidneys. If he did not heal them again, he would be peeing blood for a week from that hit. She flashed a dagger with one of her lower arms, but this time it was an ear she went for and not his eye. The flesh landed hard against the stone with a squish, but to his honour, he did not fall, “good one, teach.” He paused, reading for the next attack.

Not for the first time today, the ant laughed, “as much fun as taking you apart piece by piece and then rebuilding you for Mother; just like one of the Iron’s clock-worked golems, we are going to do the fun stuff today." Drovic felt like this was not going to be easy for him. "Yes, the fun stuff will be your training for today: using magic on others."

He should have known better, looking down at the floor for a brief second because he loved that ear. It took him two weeks of practice using his mana threads to create a new one. Drovic knew that nobles, or humans nobles, appeared to be a sore subject with his new teacher. Drovic tried his best never to bring up the issue, but if he could not get to her physically or magically, he would mess with her mentally.

“Anyway, child,” he could feel something terrible was going to happen, “now you get to use your wits on something other than that tongue of yours. That spell, life thread on yourself, but let us see if you can use your skills on something more on your level.” Sarah walked towards the door. She left for a minute. Drovic began to heal his wounds again, and to his surprise, he did it in a fraction of the time. Sarah shook her head and looked him up and down with her two large bug eyes. “I suppose a demonstration is in order because you are not convinced and seem to want to waste my time.”

It dawned on him for a second; she was gone longer than he thought.

“Crap,” he ran towards the weapons shelf, grabbed a short sword, and prepared. Drovic felt a snap of mana manipulation; a second later, a wall shifted, and another student stepped out.

The boy looked at Drovic and smirked. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”

"For one of us, I hope you aren't fond of your ears. I need a new one!"

From the shadows of a viewing portal, Sarah grinned a terrifying, mischievous smile, “time to let the boy have some fun.”

“Hey, Drovic, do you mind passing me a log to put on the fire? The older man is busy reading that book. Would you mind?” Jeremy asked, giving him a youthful grin. Drovic brought his mind back to the present. His party just packed away their light meal. Jeremy managed to snap a few mountain rabbits for dinner.

He was lightly touching the outline of his face. “Not a problem. I need to get up and clear my head anyways.”