The training area had smells from sweat, dirt, and fatigue. Kairen considered his arms to be two bricks after he used them as hard as he could, each muscle whining for him to stop. Both Kairen and Dain were covered in a light dusting of dirt, their uniforms soaked in sweat, and their hair stuck to their foreheads.
Dain's dramatics had him flinging himself sideways on some bench a little ways away, he flung that wooden practice sword onto the ground with a dull clattering sound. He let out an obnoxious, girlish sound of misery loud enough that half a dozen other students turned to look.
"I think I'm dying," he announced to the world. "My soul has officially sweated out through my pores. Is this what being a hero feels like? Because it mostly feels… sticky. And achy. Very, very achy."
Kairen, breathing hard, managed a weak laugh and sank onto the bench beside him. "I think my arms are going to fall off."
"Fall off? Mine have already divorced my body and are seeking a new life far, far away from here," Dain moaned, flopping an arm over his eyes. "Tell my grandma I loved her cooking."
"You seem to be in distress."
Ilya's calm, clean voice cut through Dain's performance. She stood before them and looked as if she just returned from a casual walk home through a garden rather than a demanding magic lesson. The specifics of her uniform were clean and neat and her hairstyle looked flawless.
"Distress? Ilya, distress is a mild word for this!" Dain declared, lifting his arm to peek at her. "This is a full-body betrayal! My muscles have filed for divorce from my bones! How are you not… you know… a sweaty, disgusting mess like us?"
"My training focused on mental concentration, not physical exertion," she replied with a tiny, almost invisible smile. "It seems more efficient."
Kairen laughed and wiped the sweat off of his forehead with the back of his palm. "I think he's melting. We ought to get a bucket."
"I'm not melting, I'm evaporating with dignity!" Dain shot back, before letting his head loll to the side. "Okay, maybe I'm melting. I need to go lie down in a cold bath for about a week."
Kairen said his goodbyes and began the long, slow walk home, every step a minor protest from his exhausted legs. He carried the simple wooden practice sword in his hand, a parting gift from Rayan for them to practice at home. The weight of it was solid, real. It was a good kind of tired. It was the type of ache that suggested work and progress, not inadequacy or emptiness.
The door creaked open before he could get close to it. His mother was facing him, wiping her hands on an apron, looked at him dusty and sweaty, looked at the wooden sword in his hand and slowly gave a beautiful smile.
It was the first time he had seen her look at him since he started attending the academy with uncomplicated happiness. She was looking at her son who was tired and sore from a long and difficult day at work, and not at a broken failure from magic.
"Well, now," she said, warm with the pride that made Kairen's chest swell. "Look at you...a warrior."
That evening, she made honey-glazed chicken for dinner, which he enjoyed, and he never seemed to ask about her emotional weather. They merely had a conversation. He displayed an ugly, new bruise on his forearm from blocking a strike and was obviously proud of it.
She nodded to indicate acknowledgment; it was like an expression of approval simply to look at him that way.
After dinner, he took the little wooden sword to the small yard. And as the first stars began to show, he moved through the basic forms Rayan had taught them both, awkwardly, and at a very reduced speed.
He felt her eyes on him at the kitchen door and for the first time, he felt that he was not a failure. He just felt like a son with a wooden sword, trying his best. He slept as well as he's slept - no nightmares - that night.
Over the following weeks, a difficult but gratifying routine took over. He would wake in the training yard each day with the sun, and sharp commands echoed in the chilled air alongside the thwack of wood against wood.
Each trial was, for him, a lesson in pain. He opened up blisters, and blisters bled, and soon he was left with hardened calluses. His muscles burned with an ache that never appeared to disappear. But slowly, awkwardly, he was learning.
He was getting faster. His blocks were getting stronger. And slowly the wooden sword became less of a heavy club and more of an extension of his arm.
Then came the final day of their initial training. Rayan gathered the dozen swordsmen students in the center of the yard. "Alright, you lot," he said, a sharp glint in his eye. "You've learned the stances, the blocks, the strikes.
Today, we find out if any of it has sunk in. You'll be sparring. One on one. The goal isn't to beat your opponent. The goal is to show me you're not a complete waste of my time. Understood?"
A nervous, excited murmur went through the group. This was it. Kairen's heart hammered against his ribs. This was his first real test. A test where magic didn't matter. It was the first time he'd stood on a level playing field, and the desperate need to prove that he'd made the right choice, that he wasn't worthless, was a tight knot in his stomach.
Dain's first match was a force of nature. Kairen was not an overly technical fighter, but his power was undeniable. He ended the fight in under a minute, earning the victory with a last great swing.
The opponent was a tall, lanky kid with surprising speed. Kairen knew he could not win on a power struggle. Use your father's courage, Kellan's words echoed in his mind. Be a shield.
He didn't attack. He dodged, he parried, he waited. He let his opponent wear himself out, watching his movements, searching for a pattern. The boy grew frustrated, his swings becoming wilder. Then Kairen saw it—a powerful swing that left the boy overextended for a split second. The world seemed to slow down.
Kairen didn't think; he just reacted. He ducked low under the swing - not forcefully, but quickly; the boy's momentum against him threw him off balance, and in one skillful and precise motion, he nudged him squarely in the chest with the tip of his wooden sword.
Silence. He had won.
He looked from the tip of his sword to his opponent's incredulous face. A sweeping, whose instinct was raging wave of pure, unsustainable accomplishment rushed throughout his being. It was a quiet victory, a victory of patience and observation, but it was his. It was the first real victory he had ever earned.
One by one, the matches played out, until only two fighters remained undefeated: Kairen and Dain.
Rayan grinned. "Well, look at this. The Sword-bros. Let's see what you've got. Center of the ring. Begin!"
It was the tried and true battle of speed and strength. Dain came charging at him like a bull, swinging his sword hard enough to splinter wood. Kairen had to dodge and weave, his heart pounding, the sound of Dain's sword whooshing past his ear. He couldn't take Dain's blows straight-on - he had to be smarter, faster.
For what felt like an eternity, they were a blur of movement. At last, they both saw an opening at the same moment. Dain lunged with a powerful thrust as Kairen sidestepped and brought his own sword around in a sweeping strike.
CLACK!
In very brief periods of time their swords went skidding from each of them at once. Feeling dumbfounded for a moment and breathless, they stared at one another with incredulous looks on their faces.
Rayan gave a short bark of laughing. "A tie, good job both of you. Time to call it a day."
That night, Kairen and Dain were on the edge of the training grounds sharing a skin of cool water while the sun sank, painting the sky ablaze.
"You were incredible, out there," Kairen said after taking a fairly long drink. "That last swing almost took my head off."
"You too," Dain said with a grin. "You're fast. Like a water-spider. I couldn't land a clean hit." Then for a moment, he fell silent, looking at his thoroughly bruised knuckles. "You know… why I really chose this path?"
Kairen looked at him. "Because of Rayan, right? To be a hero."
Dain smiled, a small, sad expression that looked out of place on his usually cheerful face. "Nah. That's the easy answer. The real reason is… you know how you can't do magic?"
"Yeah," Kairen said quietly. "It's kind of my defining feature."
"Well," Dain admitted, his voice dropping, his gaze fixed on the ground. "I can't really do it either. I mean, I have power. Way too much of it. But I can't… control it. It's just big, messy explosions. I can't light a lamp without making it shatter.
Every day, my family talks about the great mages in our bloodline, how I'm destined for greatness. But I know I'm not. I'd just be a joke in the Arcane classes, the big oaf who blows everything up."
He finally looked at Kairen, his eyes full of a vulnerability Kairen had never seen. "At least here… my strength is useful. At least here, I don't feel like… like a disappointment."
Kairen was speechless. All this time, he had envied Dain's power, his easy strength. He hadn't at all considered that Dain saw himself as "broken" or "out of place," much like he viewed himself. He came to understand that both of them were attempting to escape from a similar feeling, the burden of who they had to be.
Before he could utter a response, Rayan's voice cut into the air. "Gather 'round, all of you!"
He stood before his bruised and battered students, a look of genuine pride on his face. "Look at you. A few weeks ago, you were a bunch of kids who didn't know which end of a sword to hold. Now… you're still a bunch of kids who barely know which end to hold, but you're a little better at it." A few students laughed.
"This part of your training is over," Rayan said, his tone growing serious. "You have the basics. Tomorrow, the real work begins. Meet me at the Grand Playground at sunrise. Don't be late."
The students looked at each other, confused. The Grand Playground? What did that mean? But Rayan simply gave them an enigmatic smile, turned, and walked away, leaving them standing there in the dusk, filled with aches, till there were none left to bring; with unsaid questions, which would remain; and with something accomplished together.