It had been 20 days since Art left the town of Grimmel. She had only been back in the city for a night and was already restless. Gwen was in constant meetings with The Council, requiring little of her protection in such large company. Her original plan was to make her way back to Morgan and Merylin once the decision on Lands Lord and the lizardkins were finalized, but given the current circumstances, she was not likely to return any time soon.

She had penned the letter detailing the situation the night prior and was now at the keep's aviary located on the roof of one of the inner walls. A relatively large mesh cage five meters wide and tall, it took up an entire corner of the parapet, with 3 large birds flying within. A small work shed was set next to it.

The falconer on duty came out of the shed to greet her. ‟Lae Artria. Welcome back.”

‟Thank you, sir falconer.” She was slightly embarrassed to admit that despite having used his service multiple time, she had not managed to remember the man's name. And by the tenth or so visit, it had become far too awkward to ask for it again. ‟I have a message to deliver to the town of Grimmel. I've addressed it to Lae Maerylin, though Lae Morganna is free to receive it as well.”

The man smiled as she handed him the parchment. ‟Very well, Lae Artria. I'll see to it that they receive it.”

The man got to work, opening the door to the aviary and whistled for one of the messenger falcons to come to him.

Art stepped back and realized in that moment she had nothing further on her plate, and a sense of lost came over her.

‟Falconer, can I ask why falcons? Wouldn't pigeons work just as well?” she asked out of both curiosity and boredom.

The man's face lit up in a grin, elated by the idea that someone would be interested about his work, let alone the knight commander. He closed the aviary door, with a grey beaked, lightning striped falcon perched on his left forearm, a bird as large as one's thigh.

‟Well, Lae Art, the messenger falcons are from the genus fulgur falconis. They are tameable, but mostly importantly, also apex predators, which allows them to survive and fly long distances that pigeons would never carry.” While explaining, he shifted to his sheltered worktable where a large leather bound folio laid. Opening it, it contained portraits of the keep's key staff. Turning to the page on Merylin, he pointed to the image of the knight and proceeded to feed the bird a handful of grub. He then looked for Morgan. ‟They also do not need a 'home' like a pigeon to hone back to, and will simply fly, hunt, and survive on their own until they've reached their destinations, making them perfect for cross continent messages.”

After making sure the bird remembered Morgan's face, the falconer fed it another grub. Then he turned to a map on the wall and quickly measured the distance between them and Grimmel in his head. He gave a series of whistled instructions to the bird, stepping out onto the parapet. Once the last tune left his lips, he pushed his arm out and the falcon jumped off the wall, disappearing down as it fell. Then, a second later, it soared back into the view with its wings outstretched and graced into the sky.

Art watched as the avian flew off to its destination until the falconer turned back to her. ‟You're kind of like a falcon, aren't you, Lae Artria? Strong enough to go anywhere, but always finding your way home.”

Before she could answer, a familiar sound caught her attention. Her ears quickly turned her down to the direction of the courtyard where the sound of steel of steel resonated from.

Below in the middle of the training grounds, guards were having their sparring sessions. However, there were two figures dressed in dark toned clothes she had not seen before, contrasting the uniformed white of her country.

‟Are they at it again?” the falconer voiced.

‟Who are they?” she asked.

‟Those representatives from Aleynonlia. Apparently, those two are newly minted Guardblades. They've been training with the castle guards since they came.”

‟Guardblades, you say?” Art's interest was piqued. She turned to the falconer and offered her thanks for his service.

‟Just doing my job,” he replied as she left the walls.

Guardblades were the elite magic-warriors of Aleynonlia, one step above a regular Spellblade. None of them are trained the same way, and all fight with different styles and weapons, making the act of countering them difficult, to say the least. The chance to have a match with not just one, but two of them were too enticing for even Art to pass up.

Though excited, she went down at a comfortable pace. By the time she reached the training courtyard, the guards were already tired out, resting under the shade of one of the 3 trees in the garden. The centre of the space was a dried dirt pit, rounded off by patches of grass at the edges and a small equipment shed next to another tree. A stone aqueduct ran above the north side on pillars, providing water for the trainees and hydromancers who wanted to practice their magic.

Upon noticing her arrival, the six guards jumped to attention to salute her, despite their sweat and fatigue. She gave them swift permission to be at ease.

‟Who's this?” an unceremonious voice asked.

The guards had shocked faces at the slight disrespect, but she saved them the trouble of having to explain by turning to the two Spellblades from Aleynonlia.

With a smile, Art introduced, ‟Artria Pendragon of the Knight of the Round. I believe we've not officially met.”

‟Woah,” the female of the two voiced. She then stood straight and crossed a fist over her chest, the standard Aleynonlian salute. ‟It's my honour to meet a living legend.”

Her clothing style was relaxed and visibly non-standard, which ironically, were the standard expected to be worn by Aleynonlia's elite fighters. A pair of black leather boots wrapped around brown tights that reached into a knee-length frilled maroon skirt. Her leather suspenders were strapped over a simple black shirt and small chest, holding onto two sheathed jade swords at her left waist. The pummels of the swords were moulded into rings where metal chains were wrapped loosely and hooked lazily onto a etched metal off the belt. Elven ears pierced her mid-length blonde hair, though her blue eyes were of human heritage.

‟I'm Lua Orniter,” she introduced before gesturing to the male beside her. ‟This is my partner, Joachim Kerr.”

The male called Joachim was dressed with even less formality than her. A white shirt stained brown from practice contrasted brightly against black shorts. On his belt was clasp a small pouch that had a quick release latch that Art recognised as common for holsters of pistol-bows, though the small bag could not possibly hold anything larger than maybe two decks of cards to be a firearm. He was barefooted, with a pair of brown sandals at the corner of the yard presumably his. While glancing over, he stopped wiping his sweat and tied up a dark green bandanna to quickly cover his ruffled red hair.

Lua slapped Joachim across the chest after he made no further signs of greeting. ‟Don't be rude!”

The young man sighed and met Art's eyes before giving a tired wave.

Lua then exclaimed. ‟He says it's a pleasure to meet you.”

Joachim's head darted to her in surprise, his hands waving feverish signs at her.

‟Calm down,” Lua brushed him off. ‟It's your own fault for not saying anything. Besides, I can't read you when you're signing so fast.”

Joachim made three distinct motions before ending with a rude gesture. Art did not need to know sign language to know what he had said.

‟Anyway,” Lua continued to ignore him in favour of Art. ‟What brings you about, Lae Pendragon?”

‟Please,” Art insisted. ‟Call me Art. And I'm just interested in watching you two practice. It's rare to see new Guardblades in action.”

Joachim signed something and Lua interpreted, ‟We weren't using magic, though.”

From the corner of her eyes, Art could see the guards they had been sparring with slink away with shame. It was obvious they had lost to the two young ones even though the pair were not fighting at full strength.

‟Well, what do you say I have a go at it with you two? I'm sure I can muster up enough of a challenge. We have a couple of hit point rings lying around somewhere.”

A look flashed across their eyes which she was familiar with, having seen Morgan wear it many times. Those were the eyes of warriors, eager to bite at monsters twice their size to test their mettle.

‟Well,” Lua began, her tone was still cordial though an aura of excitement had now settled in. ‟We can't possibly refuse now? Can we, Joachim?”

The latter gave a thumb up in response.

Soon the three fighters were standing in the arena. On their fingers, each wore a glowing ring that provided protection, enough to take at least a clean hit from their opponent without suffering from any severe injuries. The six guards had turned into eight, with a dozen more watching from the balcony above at the rare event of seeing the knight commander herself fight with magic.

Art wielded a standard issue heavy claymore she retrieved from the training shed, though 'standard issue' could be quite a stretch. No one else actually wielded a weapon of that length of 2 meters and weight of 5 kilograms in a single hand like her. On the opposite side of the field, Lua drew her pair of dual swords, the chains between them dragging across the ground. Joachim unclasped his pouch, taking out what looks to be a... yo-yo?

One of the guard acted as referee at the side of the ring. They raised their hands up, exchanging nods with both sides to gauge their readiness. Then, their hands fell.

Lua danced with her two chained swords and a stream of water from the aqueduct above snaked over and down onto Art with enough speed and force to be a ram.

Art swung the flat side of her sword to meet the magical attack. The blade met the stream and she felt the water impact her blade like a fast ball to a bat. The water burst apart and through the droplets, Joachim's yo-yo shot at her. Though it looked like a toy, sharp metal blades were protruding from the body of the gadget, spinning with magical slicing wind that she felt scrape the edge of the magical armour of her hit ring.

She brought her sword back down, letting the remaining stream of water hit her in the chest, knocking her backwards, but in time to dodge the deadly yo-yo. At least, she thought she did. The blades of the toy weapon sliced across her left shoulder with an abnormal trajectory, though not clean enough to break the hit ring's magical protection.

After shooting pass her, the yo-yo retracted, and she had no choice but to do a dramatic roll out of the way to avoid the returning blades entirely.

She sprung back on her feet and before she could regain her stance, she was forced to raise her sword to parry a strike from Lua, who had thrown one of her blades at Art before retracting the weapon with its chain. She then jumped in at the opening and struck with a melee blow.

Art let Lua's weight leaned in, falling back through the air to the surprised look of the younger girl. The knight then placed a raised boot on Lua's chest mid fall, and with a flip and a kick, sent the Spellblade flying behind her. Art spun around her centre of gravity by using the heavy weight of her sword as a leverage, eventually landing back on her feet.

It was then she noticed the arena was misted over, likely as a result of Lua's magic. The elf was probably controlling the mist, which would explain the yo-yo's oddly accurate trajectory.

Before she could fully decipher the pair's tricks however, she saw a glow of red from the peripheral of her eyes. She switched her stance just in time to see Lua throw a fireball. Art easily stepped aside from the spell, only to have the fireball meet Joachim's yo-yo. The magical gale emanating from the yo-yo's blade hit the ball of flames and exploded.

Art plunged her sword into the dirt against the explosion and hid behind the wide blade like a shield. It was not a powerful attack, given the short period Lua had to charge it, but it was still impressive coordination from the two.

But the knight commander was done admiring her opponents. Within the smoke of the blaze, she leveraged the claymore against her shoulder and, with both hands this time, spun her body around with a heavily enforced magical slash.

A sickle of light shot out of the smoke towards Lua, faster than anything one can expect coming out from such a short period of charging and a weapon as slow and heavy. The blade of light hit the Spellblade, crashing through even the guard she had put up with both swords. The blast punched Lua off her feet, breaking the magical protection of the hit ring in a shatter of light as the young woman landed on her back on the grass outside the dirt.

Art turned on her heels and as she expected, the yo-yo sliced through where she was positioned just a split second ago. She did not stop her momentum, and while the yo-yo retracted, she stepped forward with another charge into her sword and sliced upwards at Joachim's direction. A pillar of light blasted out from where her sword met the ground and columned to Joachim in a wave, knocking up a cloud and blinding bystanders with light.

When the dust settled, Joachim stood next to a cleave in the landscape, dirt slashed away from the ground he stood beside. She had missed on purposed, and it seems the male Spellblade knew that. With a chuckle and grin, he stored the yo-yo back into his pouch and raised both his hands in surrender.

For a moment, the shamed looks of the guards that had lost to the two crossed her face, and she could not help but let out a short huff of a laugh.

Walking over to Lua, Art held a hand out for the young Spellblade who was nursing a bruised elbow. The Aleynonlian accepted the hand and was pulled to her feet.

‟Wow!” Lua noted. ‟You're something else.”

‟You two aren't half bad either,” Art commented.

Lua looked over Art's shoulder and was seemingly translating for Joachim. ‟You weren't using your full strength, though.” Art turned to the mute who was walking over, signing, ‟You weren't using The Tower.”

She knew what he was referencing. Her personal sword was different from the normal weapons, unique even in comparison to the distinctive weapons the pair wielded.

But she did not answer, instead diverting the conversation deftly. ‟Weren't there three of you? The man in the coat. Is he a Spellblade too?”

Joachim gave a muted laugh and Lua said, ‟Spellblade? More like troublemaker. Though I guess that's not a statement the two of us can really make,” she ended self-derisively.

The knight commander further questioned, ‟What do you mean?” Who is he?”

Lua shrugged. ‟He's The Watcher, ain't he?”