The best way to teach a boy to fight is direct experience. This is ancient wisdom, passed on from father to son across the north, home of the fiercest warriors. A rugged realm where you’re hardly considered a man until you’ve slain a troll. I brought this wisdom down, by merit of gold and connections, in the form of Leomund Tolzi to beat some strength into young Lucius.

“Attack me,” had started the affair. Boy and man in a grassy swath between hills, exchanging swings of wooden sticks with one another, punctuated by Leomund barking out criticism. “Why are you pulling your hand back? Am I behind you? Cut!” “Do you think I’m made of butter? You need to swing hard!” “Don’t stand up. Never straighten your knees. Even when you’re laughing in his face you don’t lock your legs. That’s a death sentence.”

It made Lucius more and more irritated, his brain getting stuffed full of information faster than he could process. I could nearly watch it boil out his ears as Leomund began deflecting his wild swings. Whenever he lunged in with a cry, the northerner bashed him away and sent him sprawling. In no time at all, he had to take his tunic off and toss it aside. Healing his skin was easier than cleaning the dirt and gravel out of his shirt.

The noise was like sticking a drummer monkey into a library, pounding away on Ezra’s ears as she tried to memorize the heraldry of the east. I found it quite entertaining myself, but most of my attention was on prodding the cook fire to bring the embers down to a proper temperature.

Then Leomund said, “Alright, sun’s getting low. Now you learn to defend.”

“A break first?” Lucius asked, wiping glistening grime from his chin that could have been either drool, blood, or sweat.

The northerner laughed and lifted up his weapon like a butcher’s cleaver. He smashed it down, powering through Lucius’ guard and clubbing him off his feet. The boy didn’t even scream, he gagged and coughed, choked by the pain. “Are you pretending that you’re as strong as I am? You need to avoid. Get up. Again.”

Leomond’s next blow cracked the earth where Lucius had been crawling. The boy rolled away, heart hammering as hard as the day the dragon had nearly eaten him. And, as fate would have it, Leomund was hungry, and not in the mood to let him get away.

An hour later, he tossed a bruised and battered Lucius on the ground next to me. “He’s broken.”

“What’s broken?” I asked, stirring a pot of rice and beans. Getting just the right blend of spices wasa traveling hobby of mine.

“Forearm,” Leomund said, squatting down and pointing at Lucius’ rapidly swelling arm.

I poked it. “Is it at least set properly?”

Lucius grilled, gritting his teeth and clamping his eyes. “Yes,” he gasped out.

“Well then, now for the beauty of our plan,” I said, and couldn’t help but grin.

Leomund frowned. “You told me to not go easy on him just because he’s a child. I’ll give you that he has the spirit of a troll hunter in him, but is he even old enough for his prick to get hard?”

“With his stigmata, what does it matter? Ezra, heal him.”

The girl jumped to her feet, hands balled. “What? Why me?”

“Because you need to learn what it feels like to kill someone, and this boy doesn’t die when he gets killed.”

Lucius groaned, wiping his face off with his good hand as he sat up. “Why doe sit have to be her? Why do I even have to die? It’s just a broken bone!”

“Because we can’t wait two months for it to heal, that’s why. Now, girl, do it,” I ordered, and both of them huffed.

Leomund crossed his arms and frowned, watching as Ezra walked behind Lucius. It looked like she was about to embrace him, but her arms went around his throat instead of his chest. She stuck her tongue out between her lips, got a grip on her own wrist, and squeezed. Lucius tried to not react. He remained calm and annoyed until his body realized he couldn’t breathe. Then he jerked. He grabbed at her arm, digging his dirty fingers into her skin. “Stop that!” Ezra shouted at him as he jerked. She squeezed harder, like she was trying to crack a nut in the crook of her arm.

Forcing his chin up, she nearly lifted him off his feet to get enough force until he blacked out. As quick as a snuff cap to a candle, he dangled in her grasp. “Don’t let go,” I ordered. His stigmata wouldn’t do anything until brain damage began.

“I know, I know,” she said, struggling to keep his limp body upright.

And then the dreams began. Flashes of memory racing through his dying mind. Surges of dopamine, even before his stigmata activated. His mind drifted through his past, through the veil of ideas that surrounds the subconscious of all living things in Lumisgard. For a moment, he had the kind of surreal exaltation that few shamans ever achieve with all the psychedelics they can muster.

Then he awoke with his arm healed.

Leomund laughed at the boy’s dazed grin and we passed over food. Lucius gorged himself on the meal and we were nearly able to watch the muscles on him heal and grow, a wonderful boon of regeneration. The northerner scratched his chin, smirking at his student of the sword. “We should hunt some bounties. With a body like that, he can learn the bloody way.”

“If they’re on the way,” I said, puffing on my pipe.

“How long?” Lucius asked, licking rice from his face.

“Until what?” I asked.

“Until I’m as strong as a knight?”

Leomund shrugged. “A knight? I’d say a month and you’ll be better than those shmucks they have keeping guard for your cities.”

“Those aren’t knights,” Lucius said. “I mean like Patrocles, and Claire.”

I had to fill the barbarian in. “How long until he could win a martial tournament?”

Leomund turned his gaze to the twilight sky. “As far as skill is concerned, a year. But, you’re too little. Until you’re the size of an adult, you won’t have much chance at the peak. Nothing I can do to speed that up. You’ll need at least ten years to be the best.”

“Ten years,” Lucius mumbled, stabbing his spoon into his bowl. “Ten years and I’ll have the power.”

It was my turn to grin. “Oh, it might be quicker than that. Kings and queens don’t have their power because they can fight. They have power because they know how to control people, how to influence crowds. That’s something I can teach you much quicker than ten years.”

“Kill that arrogant bastard!” someone screamed from the crowd, his face red and veins bulging.

Prince Gabriel again threw himself forward. His footwork full of lunges and skips and bulestras as he flicked his dueling blade at Lucius. The steel never met Lucius. He walked back, legs always slightly bent and poised. Whenever a swipe from the prince was too big, too much windup, Lucius reached out and swatted the tip like he was cutting a moth from the air. Their weapons clanged against one another and he grinned, because Gabriel’s face was nearly as red as the man in the crowd.

“You know,” Lucius said, circling backwards through the plaza as he watched Gabriel puff for breath. “You could have taken my weapon. Maybe the extra length would have–”

“Shut up!” the prince screamed, wiping a sweaty lock of hair from his face.

“You know, one of the people I fought in the south was a pirate hunter, allegedly, and he had this absurd stigmata which turned steel to cloth. He could have been an expert blacksmith, but instead he turned perfectly good swords into whips,” Lucius said.

Gabriel shouted and jumped forward, thirsting for blood.

He slammed face first into the end of Lucius’ club, cracking his nose. He forgot his grip on his own blade, and when it struck against Lucius’ chest it barely scraped his chest hair off. Gabriel stumbled, blowing blood out of his nose. One line of red appeared on Lucius, blood seeping from it.

He backpedaled, putting a finger to the cut. “So, if this was for honor, we boht just drew blood…”

“Like that would satisfy me now!” the prince shouted back at him. “You hit me one time and have been running around like a coward.”

“That one time would have killed you if I had a sword. Look, your father is shaking his–”

Gabriel looked away for a moment and Lucius smashed the scabbard into the back of the prince’s hand. A bone cracked. The sword flew from his grasp, skidding over the cobblestone as Gabriel hissed. He clutched his hand, stumbling back from Lucius as King Arandall stood up. “That’s enough,” the king announced, and a hundred people roared in protest. He scowled at the people of Hearth Bay. “I think we’ve all seen what a taste of war can do for a young man… you should be excited son, think how much you’ll improve when you get the war you crave.”

“This isn’t over!” Gabriel shouted, turning his back on Lucius.

He could have clubbed him over the head and truly been done with it, then and there. “If the prince would like to pick up his sword again, I would be happy to continue.”

“No,” Acheliah said, her eyes half closed. “I’m bored with this game now. I thought I might get to see something fun, but clearly not. Just boys with sticks.” The crowd murmured at that, many not interested in contradicting the angel’s decree. It seemed to leave open the question of whose honor had actually been returned, who still held the insult and the wound. The bookies didn’t even agree on what the outcome was.

Lucius bowed and turned his back on the prince. He returned to his corner, to a speechless Felicia. He even made a show of returning the ancestral weapon to her, and she didn’t even know what to do with it, eyes fixed to the blood staining the end of it. Aisha handed him the waterskin and dabbed at his cut while he drank.

“Get back here,” Gabriel ordered, holding his sword in his offhand. “This isn’t over. The real fight starts now, Solhart,” he said, and activated his own stigmata. He stepped to the side, but also the other side. Where once there was one, two Gabriel’s emerged. “And now, because of what you’ve done, perhaps I’ll have a turn with that whore you brought from the south.”

Lucius frowned. He tilted his head and looked back at the prince.

Aisha groaned. “Don’t rise to that provocation.”

“No, no, I won’t… I’m stooping to it,” he said, and marched back over. This brought everyone’s interest back to the duel, even Acheliah’s. Lucius frowned and stepped back over, hands empty. “You know, on the battlefield, losing a fight because you held back is still losing.” He needed the prince to talk, to see which of the twins was real. I had taught him about several ways stigmata could clone the user, and each had peculiar drawbacks.

The two Gabriels spoke as one, their voices overlapping. “You should have brought your weapon.”

“If we’re using stigmata… I don’t need it,” he said, jabbing his thumb into his divine crest. “I do think I’ve done my part to defend the honor of the Raymi–”

The twins lunged forward. Lucius threw up his hands, but without a weapon, he could only backpedal, and he couldn’t backpedal as fast as they could charge him. One slashed at his face, cutting from cheek to brow and slicing through the eyepatch bandage. The cut stung, gushing blood into Lucius’ vision as he snarled. A shallow cut wasn’t lethal though.

The other twin ran him through, stabbing his sword through Lucius’ ribs. The tip punctured his lungs and ripped out the other side. Men gasped, women fainted. It happened in less time than it took for the bloody bandage to hit the ground.

Lucius opened both of his eyes and grinned. He grabbed that Gabriel by the hair and said, “Got you now, don’t I?”