“Young lady Serinell! Do at least try to keep in step with the rhythm!” The servant lady continued to clap her hands. The rhythm created reverberated throughout the large but empty ballroom of the Gilvang fortress.

“No! I hate this! It is boring and outright pointless!” A young girl in a blue dress was practicing. Her steps were heavy and loud, and not at all in sync with the slow clap of the servant.

“Please, if you are not able to learn how to dance properly, how shall your mother find a good suitor for you? I must remind you that the good Lady Weisslilien is most eager to see you happily married.”

The young girl named Serinell stopped, peeled off her heeled dance shoes and threw them, trying to hit the wall at the opposite end. “I do not even want to be married! My brothers are all out doing great things! I want to be a knight too! Or even a squire, just to get me out of here!”

“Now now, they are all men, and have a sacred duty to defend these lands… Just as your duty is to remain here and consolidate family power.”

“My big brother, is out there hunting poachers and killing dangerous predators… The only thing killing me are my damn shoes! And it is working!”

The servant shook her head and ended her clapping. She sighed deeply and hurriedly left through a door leading into the hallway.

“Daughter…” Serinell’s father stepped in. A regal-looking man with a resplendent court attire and with a huge sword hanging down by his side.

“Father! Tell her I do not want to do this! I want to swing a sword! To fight dangerous and evil opponents!”

Her father sighed and waved the servant lady away before entering. He pulled out a defensive knife while throwing his sword over to his surprised daughter.

“Defend yourself!” Before she had a chance to react, her father had closed the distance and by dodging just in time, got away with a few strands of her hair cut clean away. She drew the sword from its scabbard just in time to parry a wide swipe. Falling back, she could barely keep up some semblance of a guard against the incessant strikes from her father.

Going back on the offensive after a brief pause in his attack, she made a series of strikes against his torso, all of which he expertly dodged or parried. After the last parry, she spotted a flaw in her father’s stance and exploited it. With an upwards strike she sent his knife flying upwards, where it lodged in the roof.

“Hah! See father? I beat you!” She grinned, holding the tip of the sword against her father.

“Go on then. Kill me.” Her father said dryly.

She hesitated, and before she knew it, her father had spun in behind her, the dagger was unstuck and fell down right into his grip. With one fluid motion he got in behind her and held the dagger down along the side of her throat. She could feel the cold metal on her skin.

“Let me be absolutely clear… Serinell.” Her father whispered, his voice full of murderous intent. “You are but a pawn to me… My sons have secured my bloodline… You are just an expensive travesty I have to get rid of.” To her shock, her father began to draw the knife backwards. The razor-sharp edge slid along her vulnerable skin and blood began to flow. “I would lose nothing to simply kill you here… And as long as you cannot kill… All you can do, is become a tool for me to marry off as soon as possible.”

Serinell wanted to struggle, the sharp pain and the very near, very real prospect of a slow death by bleeding, had her completely terrified. She felt the cold edge dig deeper and deeper into her neck.

Suddenly the doors burst open, and a young servant came rushing in. “Master! Please release the young mistress! I beg of you!” The servant girl rushed up and fell on her knees before them.

Serinell’s father grunted, and landed a sharp kick in the abdomen of the servant, whom slid along the floor and came to a stop in a crumpled heap, struggling to breathe. He let go of Serinell and pulled the sword and scabbard from her before leaving with a loud bang as he slammed the doors shut behind him.

“Young mistress!” The servant gasped while trying to make her way over to Serinell whom lay clutching her neck.

“Thank Vysanneh you are alive… Hold still.” She examined the wound. “It’s not too bad, I can heal you right up.”

The servant girl held her hand close over the wound, and a bright violet light sprang forth, enveloping the cut. At the same time, a faint glow emanated from the girl’s ankle. Slowly, it closed up and the bleeding stopped.

“Tiumri… Thank you, but you should not have done that… Father could have killed you…” Serinell sat up and tightly hugged the smiling demon girl.

“Sorry young mistress, but your life is far more important than that of a lowly enslaved demon.”

“Will you please stop that? I have told you to use my name when we are alone. It makes my heart ache every time you say that. You are my only friend… I do not want you to die, or think you are beneath me!”

Serinell squeezed Tiumri tighter.

“Young mistress… Please let me breathe…”

“Sorry!” She let go in a hurry and the two got to their feet.

“Now then young mis… Ah, Serinell… You are expected to attend your kilden lesson… Please do not be late for it. I will stay and clean up.”

With hesitation, Serinell nodded solemnly and headed for the door and her next lesson.

Just outside the Weisslilien’s estate lies a grand park, erected as a gift of thanks for several generations of faithful service to the many emperors and empresses that had gone before. A large marble fountain was built over a spring which kept the gardens plants supplied with water through a great many small canals dug into the ground. Flanked on both sides, open grassland stretched far afield, as a testament to the Weisslilien’s incredible influence.

Her Kilden teacher was an old man well into his seventies. A decorated war hero of many campaigns and sieges. His uniform served as proof of his rank within the Imperial hunters: A grand master seeker.

“You are late, Lady Serinell.” He grunted without turning around to face her. “But you are finally here, so without further ado…” He bade her sit on the nearby bench where a set of books had been prepared, leaving just a small spot in the centre.

“Now then… For the sixth time, and Acrypha will surely take me before you remember… I will relate to you how we humans can draw upon Kilden to aid our endeavours.” He sighed and began his lesson.

Kilden surrounds every entity in the world, from the soil to the very air itself. It is an inexhaustible energy which can be drawn upon to for a variety of different purposes and utilities. In order to draw upon its power, you must first create its sigil in the air in front of you to absorb kilden. Once complete, the sigil must be broken by your own hand, and only then will the spell manifest as the desired type. The more embellished the sigil, the stronger the spell.

Once the process of creating the sigil is second-nature, it can it be substituted by a simple image in your mind. This is why the most learned and experienced, can fight without moving a hand, but cast with precision, high rate and terrifying magnitude.

There is a down-side however. Drawing kilden from your surroundings, require you to pay up a piece of your spirit. Your spirit energy can be likened to ink, and your mind, the paper. Drawing a sigil requires ink, and if you run out, you cannot make any more. Your spirit is always being replenished, but can be hurried by eating, drinking, sleep and even the essence of some herbs in the form of elixirs.

Then there are the differences between us and the demonkin. If we run out of spirit, we are exhausted. If a demonkin runs out of spirit, he or she dies. Somewhere on the body of every demonkin is embedded a special crystal. It serves as a storage for their spirit. It usually glows brightly, but diminishes as the demonkin cast their magic. Even their youngest children can do things like lighting a candle or create an orb of water, an act that takes an average human the better part of their childhood to grasp. They are very powerful, but if you can touch their crystal and thus siphon off their spirit, the crystal will shatter, and they will effectively seize to exist. Their bodies do not die when this happens and they can still obey and react to words, but the individual is still effectively dead… At least that’s how the theory goes.

However, destroying the crystal is a last resort. If you can instead carve out a crystal from a living demon, the previously mentioned still applies, but the crystal can be ground down to a fine dust. If added to an elixir it can increase its potency thousand-fold. But know that research is being done to explore the possibilities of the crystals… We may yet find an even more powerful application for it.

The old man rambled on about the many wars fought between the humans and demons. Serinell’s mind was however concentrated on a passing twin-tailed bluethroat bird, having been reminded once more why she had forgotten the whole lesson.