Kaelum woke up in a cell full of young men who looked like they had been through hell and back. There wasn’t a single one there that didn’t look like a human punching bag that had seen its fair share of use.

What a bunch of clowns thought Kaelum as he chuckled to himself. A voice next to his ear replied to his thoughts ‘Don’t even start, you look way worse’

Rather than respond to the unwelcome guest in his thoughts, Kaelum inspected his body. He was aching all over and his face was swollen, how he hadn’t noticed until now was a mystery. But now that he was aware of it, it hurt like hell!

Looking around him, Kaelum noted they were in a particularly small cell, it had a handful of barred windows and a large metal door. There were around twenty young men in the room and he saw plenty of faces he recognized as the ‘elite’ of Arum among them, these were the young geniuses who had bright futures as the next generation of powerful Kassiviran knights. Sprinkled in this group of geniuses were a few hoodlums like Kaelum, he even knew one of them.

Kaelum scooted over to the hoodlum he recognized as Peake, he was like an older brother to Kaelum and he had taught him all he knew. From how to pickpocket and steal food, to how to act confidently and like he belonged to sneak into places. He even taught Kaelum his numbers and how to read some letters and words.

They were sitting under one of the few windows in the musty cell, the cell reeked of some kind of manure. It likely held livestock when it wasn’t full of genius young knights-in-training and hoodlums. Peake noticed Kaelum when he scooted up next to him, Peake’s face turned up into a smile and he looked happy to see him.

“Little Kale? I thought you said you didn’t want to visit the princess with us.” Said Peake with a smug voice, apparently he had been caught trying to sneak in as well.

Kaelum asked with a sour look on his face “How do you know I saw the princess?” He hated the nickname “Little Kale” that all the street rats called him, but he didn’t bring it up. He learned early on that refusing a nickname only made it stick all the more.

Chuckling, Peake responded, “Everybody in this room tried to see the princess, they all want to become the personal knight of the princess.”

“Even you?” Asked Kaelum incredulously. He couldn’t believe Peake would ever want to be a knight. He wasn’t much older than Kaelum, maybe two or three years.

“No, I just wanted to get a closer look, she’s really pretty. But then I got lumped in with these schmucks.” Peake said, gesturing at the young knights. Having nothing more to say, they settled into a comfortable silence.

Kaelum was glad he was near a window, the air was stiff and with all of the mana rich knights packed into a small room, the air almost crackled with all the energy. It was suffocating, but it seemed Peake either didn’t feel the same, or he was better at hiding it.

In an attempt to take his mind off the heavy atmosphere, Kaelum started thinking of how he got into the cell. He assumed the woman in the princess’s room must have taken him here after punching him in the face. He really needed to stop blacking out after meeting beautiful women.

Tiela chimed in at that moment to confirm his thoughts. ‘Looks like you haven’t gone brain dead yet, I was worried that might be the case after Aquila hit your face that hard.’

Ignoring the snide remark, Kaelum asked in his thoughts, Aquila? The woman in the princess’s room?

‘Yes, she’s the daughter of Duke Andek.’ Tiela confirmed. ‘I’ve known her since I was a little girl, she was also my personal knight.’

Kaelum noticed she sounded strangely calm after their failure so he asked her about it with his thoughts. Aren’t you worried? We might not be able to see the princess again.

Tiela sighed before saying ‘Truth be told, I was worried. After you blacked out in the princess’s room I tried any way that I could to talk to them, but they couldn’t hear me.’

She took a moment before continuing ‘After Aquila dropped you off with the guards, I was worried that we had lost our chance. But I’ve had all night to calm down and think it over. We still have a few days left to make contact, so all is not lost.’

Before she could continue, Peake whispered to Kaelum “Someone’s coming.”

Sure enough, the large metal door slid open a moment later and a rough-looking man walked in. He looked like every stereotype of a tough guy Kaelum had ever heard. He sported short cut hair and stubble, with an eyepatch over one eye and a score of scars across his face. He was shirtless and covered in muscles, not the type of person Kaelum would ever want to fight. Not that Kaelum wanted to fight anyone, he was better at sneaking around than fighting anyway.

“Morning ladies, hope you’ve had a good night's sleep. My name's Karrow” Said the rough man with an equally rough sounding voice. Kaelum recognized the man as the captain of Arum’s city guard. Apparently, he didn’t take kindly to a group of young men violating the law.

His next words spelled Kaelum’s doom.

“Apparently y’all have a lot of steam to burn off, every one of y’all was up late into the night trying to visit Princess Tiela.” Kaelum could feel Tiela’s interest when she heard Karrow mention her name. But she realized he wasn’t talking about her and stopped paying attention.

“Well, I got just the perfect thing to help you burn off some of that energy. Yer all gonna be helping me carry shit today!” He finished with a grin.

A particularly handsome young man dressed in very fine clothing stood up before he replied in protest “You can’t do that! My father is the-”

He was cut off by the rough-looking man “If yer not up for helping out, the alternative is execution.”

This seemed to kill all signs of protest.

“Trespassing onto royal property is a serious crime, yer all lucky this is a somewhat common occurrence and the king is a very forgiving man.” Continued the guard captain Karrow. By the tone of his voice, it seemed he admired the king a great deal.

“Alright, on your feet.” Said Karrow.

After confirming that everyone was standing, he opened the door and had them follow him outside. Once his eyes had adjusted to the bright sunlight, Kaelum saw a few of the princess’s knights, from the White Order if he recalled correctly. They were probably there to keep the young knights from shirking off the work, they were mostly just lazing around looking tough though.

The yard that Karrow led them out to was fairly large and full of colourful items Kaelum recognized from the parade. It seems they were the cleanup detail.

“Start by grabbing all of that crap, we’ll start here and make our way up to Main Street,” Karrow said while waving his hand in the direction of the decorations “And put it over into that pile.” He finished, gesturing at a large dugout circle with a small fire in the middle of the yard. Karrow seemed to be the type to lead by example, grabbing some of the heaviest decorations right after he finished giving them their orders for the day.

Kaelum noticed a blue light emanating off of one of the young knights before Karrow shouted back at the group. “If I notice any of you use mana to strengthen yourselves, you’re coming back tomorrow.”

The knight hurriedly cancelled his mana and started hauling trash. Most of the smaller decorations and trinkets had been cleaned up by the street cleaners beforehand, so all that remained were the bigger, heavy wooden decorations.

Kaelum moved with the other young men and started hauling the trash, not only was everything heavy, the damned sun was trying it’s hardest to fry them. After about ten minutes there wasn’t a single young man who wasn’t grumbling. It was hard work and they weren’t allowed to use any mana to ease the burden.

If you were to look at the streets, you would see that they were slowly being cleared by a crowd of complaining young men. All but one were complaining, Kaelum was strangely quiet in Karrow’s eyes. He’d been told this young man made it all the way to the princess’s room without even a shred of mana. Now that same young man was carrying the heavier decorations with all the trained young knights who had years of physical conditioning under their belts. All without letting out a single noise of complaint.

Karrow couldn’t help but cheer this young man on, he was a true example of a hardworking, honourable young man and he hasn’t said a single word of complaint yet! Karrow felt great respect for the young man and sincerely hoped he could become the princess’s knight and fulfill his dreams.

Though that respect would completely shatter if he could hear Kaelum’s thoughts. Tiela was currently covering her ears in Kaelum’s soul space in response to his screaming.

WHY IS IT SO HEAVY?! Kaelum screamed into his soul space like a dying animal.

‘Stop yelling, my ears are going to start bleeding’ replied Tiela while wincing.

Oh my Gods! I’m gonna die! It’s so heavy. Kaelum’s indignant voice echoed into his soul space And why does Karrow keep giving me that creepy old man look?! He said into his mind as he felt a shiver up his spine as Karrow continued to admire him.

As Kaelum kept complaining about how heavy everything was, Tiela finally snapped and said ‘Fine, I’ll help you out’ before a familiar chill of mana rippled through Kaelum’s body.

He noticed the decorated log he was carrying didn’t even feel that heavy anymore, Kaelum felt like he was on top of the world. He started grabbing the even larger logs, they were so heavy they made him struggle to carry them over his shoulder, even with his mana strengthened muscles. But he didn’t care at that point, carrying a huge log over his shoulder, he felt strength like those knights from the old fairy tales.

All the while, Karrow’s gaze bore into the back of his head and somehow intensified even further.

‘We should try to make contact again tonight’ Said Tiela, interrupting his thoughts.

I don’t think I can. Said Kaelum They took my hiding sheet, and I can’t sneak in without it.

Hiding sheet? Thought Tiela. Apparently, that’s what he called that raggedy brown cloth. Though she did have to admit that it was extremely useful when they were sneaking in.

‘I’ll try to think of another way we can sneak in’ Said Tiela ‘But I can’t keep strengthening you while I’m doing it.’ She cut off the mana supply right after she finished saying that.

Kaelum slumped down and almost fell from the sudden loss of strength. Luckily he was carrying a lighter piece of an awning and soon regained his balance. Karrow saw him struggle, but stand back up and a tear of admiration fell from his eye.

‘Before I go, I’ll teach you a breathing technique.’ Said Tiela.

This perked Kaelum right up, he couldn’t wait to learn an actual breathing technique that a real knight would use.

It turned out to be not exciting at all. It was basically just a weird way of breathing, he didn’t immediately get magical powers or anything, lame.

After teaching him the breathing technique, Tiela receded into his soul space to focus and told him not to bother her. Fine, I didn’t want to talk to you either. Thought Kaelum, bitter at being left alone.

Kaelum found that he could work while using his breathing technique, he could even talk with Karrow while doing it. Kaelum learned the older man wasn’t as creepy as he had previously thought, though he’d have to keep an eye on him.

While they worked, Karrow told Kaelum tons of interesting stories from his youth, he had apparently been a promising young knight before settling down to become the captain of Arum’s guard. Kaelum found him to be easy-going once you got past his rough demeanour. Kaelum had known of Karrow for his entire childhood and had seen him a few of the times he had gotten caught stealing. But this was the first actual conversation he had with the man.

Kaelum took a liking to the man almost immediately, the way Karrow carried himself and asked about Kaelum during their talks made Kaelum feel like he actually gave a damn about what Kaelum had to say. Karrow was a naturally charismatic person, only held back by his scary-looking demeanour. After talking with the man for a day, Kaelum felt like he had known him for years.

Although the work was still gruelling, the breathing technique took Kaelum’s focus off of it, and then talking with Karrow made him actually enjoy the day. He almost didn’t notice when the sun began to set and almost missed it when Karrow gathered the young men.

“Very nice progress today, I hope you all learned something from this.” Said Karrow, Kaelum had no idea what they were supposed to learn aside from the fact that parade floats are damn heavy.

“Alright, you can all head home now, and don’t try to visit the princess if you don’t want to see me again.” The last part of Karrow’s sentence seemed to kill any ideas of seeing the princess up close in the young men’s heads.

Kaelum hadn’t seen Peake all day, though that was typical of him. He likely snuck off just after they went outside, lucky bastard. He was even better at sneaking than Kaelum was.

“Hold on Kaelum.” Said Karrow.

Turning around, Kaelum came face to face with Karrow. A bit spooked, he stepped back. This caught a laugh out of Karrow as he continued “I noticed how hard you worked today.” He paused before continuing “I’m acquainted with Miller, who runs the logging camp outside the city. We buy lumber from them to reinforce the city walls.”

Kaelum raised his eyebrows, not knowing what Karrow was getting at.

“We could use another set of hands to help with hauling logs from the camp to the wagons. If you want it, the job is yours.” Karrow said, “The pay is ten copper a day, start at noon, end at sunrise.”

Kaelum was stunned, he had never had a job that actually paid money before. Most of the shopkeepers kept an eye on him because he had a habit of stealing and he didn’t know any where else that might need to hire him. He didn’t exactly have any marketable skills.

“Well?” Asked Karrow after letting Kaelum think for a moment.

“I… Yes please!” Shouted Kaelum excitedly.

Kaelum couldn’t believe it, he had actually gotten a job! Plus Tiela wasn’t nagging him, today couldn’t get any better. He was already daydreaming about the actual food he’d be able to buy with his newfound source of income.

The only time he’d ever gotten money was when he was pickpocketing with Peake and the other hoodlums, but the guards were way harsher to thieves who stole money than those who stole food, so he didn’t pickpocket again after getting caught and taking quite a beating.

“Alright, head on home then. I expect to see you here tomorrow at noon!” Karrow sent him off with his booming voice.

Kaelum couldn’t keep himself from humming as he headed back to the market square. He decided he’d treat himself to something nice and started rifling about in the trash of a particularly nice pastry shop.

He didn’t find any pastries, but he did find a rat that hadn’t been dead for too long, it looked like the shopkeeper had bludgeoned it to death. As he was climbing out of the garbage with his tasty plunder he heard Tiela’s voice in his head.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ She asked in disgust.

I’m getting dinner, he thought, obviously.

‘You’re… you’re not planning on eating that are you? How long has it been dead in the trash for?!’ She said in exasperation.

Of course, I’m eating it. I haven’t had meat in months. Meat is hard to find in the slums. He said as he found a pastry and some not too dirty vegetable scraps, adding them to his handful of ‘food’

Disgusted, Tiela said in protest ‘That’s literally trash! You can’t make us eat trash!’

It’s still pretty fresh, I think it was made either yesterday or today. Replied Kaelum, Didn’t Tiela know how hard it was to find pastries? He wondered.

Fearing that she was about to taste every bit of that “food” she yelled ‘That’s disgusting!’

Kaelum replied in annoyance Well, sorry I wasn’t born with a silver stick up my ass. I like pastries

Her eye twitching in anger, Tiela chose not to dignify him with a response, remaining quiet for most of the way back home until Kaelum remembered to ask Didn’t you say you were gonna figure out another way to contact the princess?

Glad to get her thoughts away from the rat and garbage food Kaelum was about to subject them both to, she started telling him of the plan she thought up.

‘I’m going to teach you a spell’ She said.

Oh okay, he responded without paying too much attention, until what she had just said clicked YOU’RE GONNA TEACH ME A SPELL? He thought Like a real-life knight spell?! Kaelum questioned her in his mind.

‘Yes-’ she started to respond before being interrupted by Kaelum’s rapid-fire questions.

When? How? Is it powerful? He asked like a machine gun.

‘Calm down, Once you get back, come into your soul space and I’ll show you.’ Tiela replied.

This put a spring in his step, he hurried back as fast as he could, speeding past all of the shopkeeper’s grumblings about hoodlums or whatnot in the waning sunlight.

After entering his home he asked Tiela How do I enter the soul space? I’ve never actually entered it on my own.

Facepalming, Tiela had completely forgotten that Kaelum had never actually had any experience as a knight. Although it was a pretty basic thing, only a first-tier knight could actually enter their soul space.

‘You have to use mana to project your soul into your soul space, to do that, you have to unblock your mana veins by becoming a first-tier knight.’ She said, glad that he had forgotten about the rat in his excitement.

So I can’t actually enter my soul space? He thought disappointedly.

She hurriedly responded ‘One good thing to come of me getting stuck in your soul space is your body adapting to my mana. Usually, a person can’t wield another’s mana. But since our souls are stuck together, your body can actually use my mana.’

She added ‘Though I can’t replenish my mana on my own anymore, I’ll have to use what little I have left sparingly, but I can supply the mana while you meditate to help you enter your soul space.’

Okay, he thought as he sat down and closed his eyes before being stopped by Tiela.

‘Either lay down or lean against a wall, you don’t want to be falling down and injuring yourself while in your soul space.’ She said with a hint of warning.

Kaelum nodded and scooted over to the wall, sitting while leaning on it. He closed his eyes to start focusing before a chilly sensation arose in his right chest.

‘Follow the mana in your chest with your attention.’ He heard Tiela’s voice guiding him.

He did just that, he could feel it moving around in a loopy circle, it’s weird movement was making him dizzy. The feeling was hard to explain, it felt like the mana was expanding larger than his body, and then contracting to the point of a needle. Once it had constricted to its smallest point, he could feel himself getting pulled into it like he was falling, and then he was in his soul space.