Private Tales Fear Is Not Strength

[Saderzaine Vult]

Skrr...krr...krrrr. The sound of the training dummy dragging behind Saderzaine had a strangely calming effect on him as he paced towards an open area in the forests just near the institute. In reality, though, he was far from feeling normal. As his journey continued along, Sader couldn't help but allow his mind to drift back to earlier in the day. It had started like any other and he had made it to combat training, but the real problems began there.

Like normal he had paired with Initiate Bell, one of his acquaintances through the class, and so they began. The assignment was to spar without the use of magic and, ever the diligent pair, the two had begun their matches. Across their total five fights, Sader had beaten Bell every time, but each time felt slower. Sader prided himself on his reflexes that he had honed through adapting to the speed boosting he could use to fight, but by the last bout he narrowly edged out a victory. All throughout the rest of class the narrow win had bothered him, and he decided that some extra training was in order.

It’s weird. Bell is a perfectly fine partner and it can only be good if he is becoming stronger. I have nothing against him, surely, so…what IS this? This feeling is unlike those I’ve had before, thought Sader, stopping at a clearing and setting up the dummy. By all standards the day was actually rather nice, the wind blowing through the trees and keeping the temperature brisk. A thought, almost as though blown in by the wind, crept into the back of his mind:

What would my father say?

Gritting his teeth, Sader would shake his head a bit and pull a spear from his back, the masterwork of metal shining in the daylight. Now, unlike ever before, Sader noticed his hands shake a bit under the cold of the steel and his expression darkened. Taking a battle stance with the poise of one who had committed such a pose to muscle memory, he would grip the weapon and launch it towards the head of the dummy.

Feeling his magic flow through his hands and into the spear to send it rocketing towards his target was always nice, but the sight that followed was not. He missed the dummy’s head by a few inches and watched as the projectile harmlessly hit the ground. Before he could stop it, a flash of anger set him alight:

“GOD DAMN IT!” After that outburst, he once again turned inward, sitting down to panic. W-what’s going on with me? Why is this happening so fast? What the FUCK am I doing?

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Northward along a familiar road did she ride.

Kristen Pirian carried with her both errands that were large in scale—those that concerned her station as Lady of Vel Numera, or her House as a whole—and errands that were personal. Duty demanded most often that she attend first to that which was greater than herself, that she put aside those small personal items which held a keen interest to her or perhaps she longed fiercely to do. Discerning judgment, along with planning and a hint of serendipitous opportunity, were the ways in which Kristen could fit these personal errands into a schedule that could bear no more of the quill's ink.

Here now was such an opportunity.

Kristen had finished some business further south, and as it so happened, her northward journey back to Vel Numera would take her past the Academy and, more to her aim, through Vel Stratholm. There she endeavored to meet a girl; a girl who had been orphaned, so she was told. Zael Castomir, a Rogue Dreadlord of whom Kristen's regard was dubious at best, had unexpectedly snuck into her chambers in Vel Numera one night to talk. Talk, yes, and this earnest plea from him was perhaps the deciding factor in Kristen not then and there binding him in Chains and turning him in to the Anirian Guard. They spoke for a while, Zael making a request and asserting that he was "done" with Vel Anir, with the Rogues, with everything after it. Kristen granted him that trust, though she could not help but to bring up Ganfarred Keep and Vel Farris. With regard to the latter, Zael had said to her: "You wanna know what really happened in Vel Farris? Go to Vel Stratholm, find an orphan girl named Heather Hane, and ask her. She's there. I brought her there myself."

And so this was what Kristen intended to do. She wanted to see if Zael was telling the truth. She wanted to see if her trust in him was not misplaced.

It would be many miles yet before this would be unveiled. At present, Kristen was on one of the many roads which spidered along the country in the proximity of Vel Anir's Academy. She'd not pass by so close as to see it, but these roads she knew from the missions she had been sent forth to complete when she was an Initiate. Gods, it felt a lifetime in and of itself, even her short and unorthodox regimen of four years there! Never did she fail to marvel—and shudder—at the experience Initiates who all came before her endured, taken as children, knowing nothing but those walls and eventually these roads all their life to the cusp of adulthood.

There came then as she rode a shout, carried by the wind from its place of origin off the road and deeper into the forest on her left. The shout to her ears was indistinct, made vague by its distance, yet it was undeniably charged with emotion. Kristen halted her horse. Was there...trouble? She didn't know.

But she bid her horse from her northward path along the road and into the forest to find out. A small detour, mayhap, this occurrence one of those personal items of hers now.

Through the shade of the canopy of trees there would come soon enough the brightness of a clearing, the noontime sun given its full prominence ahead. In the clearing, a curious sight: a spear sitting out of the ground, a training dummy, and a lone figure sitting amidst the grass.

Kristen emerged from the treeline, sitting atop her horse, and called to the figure, a young man, saying: "Is everything well?"

Saderzaine Vult