The two men, one who looked to be in his late twenties, and one who looked to be in his early teens, stood across from each other in the ring, sweat pouring off both of their shirtless upper bodies. They were both holding their wooden staves out in a ready position, though it was easy to see that both of them were exhausted from their spar from the way their staves had started to droop.

Suddenly, both of them grinned and then suddenly, in a burst of motion, flew at each other, hoping to finish the fight. After a couple of quick exchanges, a forest green light burst out of the older man’s weapon and slammed into the young boy. He flew backwards out of the ring and hit the ground hard.

“Not fair man,” Kai muttered from his place on the ground.

“You’re the one who told me to start using Techniques in our spars so you could learn to defend from them,” Cohen’s voice projected from above Kai. “Plus, without them, I would never be able to keep up with your Forms.”

It had been almost a year since they’d come to Novan with the caravan. It had only taken a couple of months for Kai to start getting bored of the city. At first, he’d started to take some jobs guarding stalls in the market for some extra coin to spend. However, that had also seemed to bore him after a few weeks and so he’d finally started to try to find his entertainment in other ways.

Back in Brasbury, Kai had kept himself busy by training almost every day. And so, here, he’d finally asked the entire group of guards that were still there to spar with him. It had become obvious extremely quickly that not only could he keep up with all of them, Kai could beat them easily. He’d started to take on two, sometimes even three of them at a time before one day, the reclusive captain had finally come out to spar.

Kai had had his confidence destroyed by the captain when they started sparring and he found out that the captain was a master of the first five Forms. However, he was still able to hold on for almost three minutes before admitting defeat. After the duel, he’d asked the captain to teach him the fourth Form since there was no other way for him to learn it in Novan.

Cohen had also asked the captain many times before to teach him the Forms, but they had never had the time since they’d always been traveling with the caravan. However, since everyone was forced to stay in Novan for a year, the captain had agreed to teach both Cohen and Kai.

Kai had mastered the fourth Form in the last year and Cohen had mastered the first two. Both of them had started to spar against each other on the daily since no one else from the guard corps, except for the captain, could keep up with them. Kai had then asked Cohen to start using his Techniques to spar against him since he was still beating Cohen more times than not.

Cohen had also broken through from the First Rank of the Meridians Stage to the Second Rank in that time. Since Kai was unable to Cultivate for another year, he had asked Cohen if he could sit in on his sessions instead. Cohen had agreed as long as Kai kept quiet during the sessions.

He’d watched his friend break through and had been happy for him, but he’d also felt that sliver of yearning to do the same thing as his friend was doing. A year, he’d told himself. Only a year until I can start Cultivating.

Kai pushed himself to his feet, panting with exhaustion. He moved to the side of the training area and sat down on a bench right beside Cohen. Suddenly, someone tapped his shoulder and he turned his head to meet the green eyes of Corinne. She wordlessly handed him a skin of water and he nodded his thanks.

He gulped down some of the water, pouring the rest of it on his face, letting it trickle down onto his torso. He didn’t notice the slight blush on Corinne’s face, nor the strange glint in her eyes.

Kai took a few minutes to calm his breath and then grabbed his tunic, slipping it on. He stood up, nodded to Corinne and then went inside the house.

Once the warehouse had burned down, the merchants had had to order more stock from another city. Although Havar known that it could’ve taken over a year for their wares to arrive he’d been kind enough to keep paying the guards’ stipends. He’d also offered guest rooms at his mansion for some of the guards to stay and convinced the other merchants to take the rest of them in. Cohen, Kai and the captain had been living in Havar’s mansion of a home since then.

The mansion also had a training area in the back where they would spar every day. Corinne would watch most days as she had nothing better to do and would bring them water and towels when they needed it.

As Kai walked in through the back door of the house, he caught sight of Havar and the captain talking to each other at the dinner table. They both looked excited and Havar’s hard face had softened into a rare smile.

They both turned as Kai walked in and the captain suddenly stood up and with a smile, said, “Good news kid. The caravan leaves Novan in a week.”

***

The large man slammed his muscled arm onto the wooden table in anger. Although the flimsy table, in most circumstances, would have snapped, a bright red film could be seen surrounding it, and it only creaked a little.

The man had the urge to grab his greatsword and work out his frustrations with it, or at least smash something with his dual hammers, but instead he only leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He looked up and saw the glaring face of his beautiful wife and his anger melted away as his face softened.

“You know as well as I do,” he said, trying to justify his outburst, “that even though we chose to ally with him centuries ago, we have heard almost nothing about his plans to this day.”

“And you know,” his wife’s musical voice answered. “That centuries ago, when he saved us from the Oblivion of breaking the Laws, he told us that the most important part of this was patience.”

“And,” she continued quickly, catching sight of the rising storm on her husband’s face, “all he has asked from us until now is a drop of my blood. Isn’t it supposed to be a good thing that he hasn’t told us to do anything significant yet?”

“Normally, I would agree, my love, but the Cleansing your father has called for is set to start in less than a decade. If he is to do something, he must start to act now. Also, he decided put your blood in a random mortal child. And if that isn’t the worst thing, the serpent trapped in your prison in the Mortal World called for her head at birth. Unless he plans to let that serpent ravage the lower colonies…”

The woman placed an arm on her husband’s arm, cutting off his words with her own.

“He wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense for him to prevent the Cleansing by destroying everything.”

“The serpent was, many millennia ago, once part of the Beast King’s 100 Companions,” the man said. “Everyone knows his disciple…”

“And yet even he knows,” the woman said, cutting her husband off again, “that the once proud Lord of the Skies went insane a very long time ago. No, I do not believe that his plans lie with that mad serpent. They are something much more subtle, something my father will not truly see until right before he falls. I trust the Primal, and you should too, my love.”

The dark skinned man grunted in reluctant acceptance, not yet willing to throw away his alliance, but still disgruntled at the way he had been forced to not act for centuries.

“I need to go hit something,” he muttered before grabbing his twin hammers and leaving the palace through the balcony.

As a loud booming sound signaled his departure from their home, the golden haired beauty of a woman rested her chin on her hands.

“You better know what you’re doing,” she whispered to the air.

As she said those words, she could almost swear that she heard a slight creaking in the world below, as if the Mortal World was tensing for the arrival of something, something that would soon shake both worlds down to their very foundations, something that would one day make the Heavens above and the Demons below, for the first time, understand what it means to be afraid.