“You’ve grown weaker, Lydos.”

Father’s words contained neither derision nor disappointment. He spoke in pure truths, never once a change in his intonation or expression. That was one of the many things that made him seem more like a Worldrender than a human.

They were in the large empty cavern in the eastern tunnels that they used for training. Dim torchlight lit the room, and Father stood across from him, a Nulerian scimitar in his right hand.

He was a tall, slender man. His deep brown hair had given way to silver over the years, and his skin was a dark tan despite his time in the icy mountains. His face was further aged by crinkles that ran under and around his eyelids.

Father had no eyes. At some point, he did, but it’d been so long that Lydos had forgotten what colors his irises were. Instead, two small curved horns protruded from his eye sockets. Father had never explained anything about them and Lydos knew better than to ask.

“Your footwork has gotten better,” he continued, “but your swings are slower. Your arms lag behind your feet."

“I understand, Father,” Lydos said, stifling his objections. He had been stuck in the Veant plantation for three months. At first, the Veants made for interesting sparring partners because of their four swords, but he soon found that they lacked both technique and a willingness to develop it. However, Father didn’t accept excuses.

“I made first contact,” Lydos said excitedly. “With the humans.”

To his disappointment, his father didn’t react much to the news. “Faster than expected.” He raised the scimitar in his right hand. “Come at me again. If your arms falter as they did before, I might kill you.”

It was neither a threat nor intimidation. Again, it was nothing but the truth. And that’s what terrified him.

Twice a year, his father ordered him to leave Agreolfor to study the other plantations and perform a single act of service to the Overseers, the Worldrenders in charge of the plantation, in order to build favor. And upon his return home, his father would test his skills. Father had always asserted the importance of physical prowess.

This was the first time, though, that Lydos had been told that he’d grown weaker, and the words filled him with self-loathing. He tried to clear his mind; he needed to be calm like his father. He gritted his teeth, tightened his grip on his halberd, and ran forward.

The cavern rang with the clashing of their blades. He’d long learned that overhead swings would be severely punished – his father’s swings were too fast and too powerful – so he utilized low swings that streamed into a quick thrust.

It was never enough. His father sidestepped his swings, but he did it with such minimal effort that it was almost the same as outright ignoring them. Using the flat side of his blade, he deflected his thrust, and Lydos had to shuffle back to narrowly avoid his father’s slashes.

As a child, he’d watched his father’s swordsmanship, the flowing movements and elegant swings, with an almost religious fervor. His scimitar was like a wave, the blade nearly four feet long and cresting near the tip. It was as if Father had died long ago and all his residual emotions had been strained from his corpse and wrung into that short sword.

He bent his knees, preparing for a thrust, but his father spoke suddenly.

“You killed them, the humans.” A statement rather than a question.

“Nine of twelve,” he said. “As you ordered, I left some alive to–”

Father ran at him, swinging at his left side. With a start, Lydos raised his halberd, his hands sliding away from each other, and blocked the attack with the middle of the shaft. Sweat ran down his back. If he had been any slower, he would’ve been bisected.

“Continue your report,” Father said. The curved horns in his eyes were so close to Lydos’ face that they could’ve pierced him.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his voice straining. He feared the shaft would break but held his ground nonetheless. “As you ordered, I left some alive to give them a message.”

He omitted the fact that he hadn’t been able to find two of the humans. Worldrenders didn’t outright lie, and it was considered poor manners to press each other on details.

And it was true that he did deliver the message. Of the ten he fought, only one of them had not tried to flee. Humans seemed to be a cowardly bunch, and his relation to them pained him.

“They were weaker than I expected,” he said, and he took a large step forward, pushing his father’s blade back. With that momentum, he thrusted the butt of the halberd, further forcing his father away from him.

He had a surge of inspiration. That human woman had almost tricked him. She had feinted with an overhead swing and then thrown a dagger instead. The only problem was that she had moved too slowly and that he had been wary of her daggers from the start.

Scanning the cavern floor, he spotted a sharp stone – perhaps a fragment of a stalagmite – to his left. The only rule his father had imposed for these sparring sessions was no Worldrending. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.

He crouched low and circled his father. As he did so, he quickly shifted his halberd to his right hand and grabbed the stone with his left. He wasn’t quite sure what kind of vision the horns gave his father, but he was confident that he hadn’t seen the stone.

He continued circling his father, waiting for an opening, but there was none. He’d just have to go for it. Running forward, he raised his halberd overhead, almost tipping backward from the sudden weight imposed on his hand, and prepared to swing downward.

The last time he had gone for an overhead swing, Father had aimed for his arms and nearly cut his right one off at the elbow. This was at least five years ago, and the only reason he’d kept his arm was because Father had shown much more restraint back then. But now Lydos was much stronger and much faster.

As expected, Father stepped forward to interrupt his swing. Lydos aimed the stone at his horns; that would probably disorient him long enough for the halberd to connect. He had to time it just right, a beat before –

Danger. His very being shuddered, his instincts screamed at him.

He let the halberd slip from his fingers and threw his body back in panic. He stumbled, falling to the floor hard. Two clattering sounds followed, one loud and one quiet. The first was his halberd and the second was the stone tumbling from his hand.

He had sorely miscalculated. Father hadn’t aimed for his arms this time. He had taken two steps forward with alarming speed and aimed straight at his chest.

Chills ran down his body, and though he knew he should stand, he couldn’t. He had never doubted his father’s words, but this was the closest he had come to dying.

“A trick.”

He looked up and saw his father standing over him, the stone in his palm. For once, there was a change in his expression, but the torchlight was too dim to make it out. Was that a frown? Did he disapprove of his methods?

“Humans are weak creatures.” Father’s voice was low and quiet. “Impotent by design, unable to use or even perceive Divinity. They are pretenders of knowledge, thieves of nature. That makes them devious. Tricksters.”

There was some strange emotion that ran through his words, but whatever it was seemed to pass. “Get up. Transcribe a report of your journey. Tomorrow, you’ll meet with the Frostridden.”

Lydos pulled himself to his feet. “The Frostridden?” His stomach lurched at the thought.

“They must know that you made contact with the humans.” His father turned to the cavern entrance. “I’m retiring to my chambers.”

“Wait, Father!”

“Yes?”

Lydos had planned to present the flail to him. Although he knew better than to expect a display of emotions, he thought that his father would at least be intrigued by how it could ignite itself with a twist of the handle. For some reason though, he now hesitated.

“Am I a human or a Worldrender?” he asked instead. “Or am I both?”

It was a question that had never occurred to him before. At least not until the human woman had asked him. He was too unfamiliar with his own kind and couldn’t tell her age, but she seemed a little bit older than him. Then there was the great fury behind her dark eyes.

Human eyes were nothing like the Worldrenders’ large crystalline ones and he realized that the only human eyes he was really familiar with were his own. It was strange to feel such hostility directed at him through such familiar eyes, and he knew that if he had faltered for even a moment, she would’ve gone in for the kill.

“You’re losing focus,” was his father’s simple reply. His back was still turned to him. “Conquer the humans, but do not be sullied by them.”

With those words, Father took his leave. As his figure shrank from view, Lydos was filled with a strange urge.

He held up his left hand toward his father’s back. The fabric of the world began to tear at the seams, and the torchlight around him rippled as he began to pull back a strip. If he grabbed it with both hands, he could…

He could what?

He let go of the world and it straightened itself out as if it had never been torn. He rubbed his face, and to his surprise, there were tears running down his cheeks.