It was not Alistair who showed any change in his expression. "Much better. But you are still attempting to kill the straw as if it were your enemy instead of letting the straw guide your blade. You are employing the muscles of your arm. The strike comes from here."
He lightly, as if by accident, tapped a finger against Leonel's lower stomach, just a little bit below his navel.
Leonel was blinking and wondering what was going on. "Is it my stomach that I should be using?"
"From your center," said Alistair, correcting him, his voice a low rumble. "Power is like money; it should be spent very quickly. Mastery is the bank that holds it. The sword is not a club. It is a scalpel. It has to be an extension of your will, not a tool you wrestle with. It has to be as natural as breathing."
The comparison stuck in Leonel's brain, a metaphor that made him realize a whole new concept, which was the idea he didn't know was there.
He was not only learning how to physically hit something but also understanding the language of the body through his father's teachings.
His father's teachings were never just about the sword. They were about philosophy and the nature of power itself.
Alistair moved away, giving him room to think, and the new thought which had been quietly waiting in the background of his mind for weeks, finally got the upper hand. He felt it was a hazardous thought, but his inquisitiveness was a daring, fearless thing.
"Father," he started, his voice being even smaller than he intended. "The sword is one way. But... what about the other? What about magic?"
The change in the atmosphere was very quick and subtle. It was not that Alistair frowned or shouted. It was that the patience and warmth in his steel-gray eyes cooled, getting hard and unyielding.
He looked away, toward the shadowy outline of the keep. "That is not our way, Leonel. Do not bother your mind with such distractions."
"But why?" Leonel challenged, his stubbornness, which was his inheritance, going up in flames. "Can't a person be great at both? One hand holding a sword, the other casting a spell?"
Alistair shook his head, and his stare was like a force of nature. "No. They cannot." His voice was very definitive and very final, a stamp dropped on the topic.
But Leonel, even at the age of five, was not a child to abandon a stone without turning it over.
"Why not?" he murmured.
Alistair let out a long, slow sigh. He appeared to be thinking something over, determining how much of the truth a child can take. He came down on one knee again, thus bringing himself to Leonel's level of sight.
"Hear me out," he said, his voice being of the lowest and most sincere tone. "The world is governed by two major rivers of power, and they flow in entirely different directions.
A mage..." He indicated a spot on Leonel's chest, right over his heart. "...gets his power from here. The Mana Heart. It is a source of power that ultimately goes from it. But it is like water—moldable, very adaptable, and controlled by intellect and will."
Leonel followed every word eagerly.
"A swordsman," Alistair went on, his finger moving from the chest to the belly and pressing there firmly, "takes his power from here.
The Dantae .This is the place where your Essence comes from. It is like the fire. It is the raw, explosive, and untamed element.
It is not with this that we change the world; instead, we transform our own bodies into a weapon that can resist it and then, we direct it; we compress it until it is flowing in our blade and strikes with the force of a mountain. It is the power of the will turning inward to strengthen the self."
The ideas were enormous, but Leonel got the gist of them. Water and fire. Outward and inward.
"But… what if you tried to keep both water and fire inside you?" Leonel questioned, his creative side coming up with a rather violent and smoky image.
"The body is a container, son," Alistair said with a serious tone in his voice. "A delicate one. Put both fire and water into the same clay pot and it will break.
The energies would fight within you. Your channels would burn and flood. It would not be a road leading to power.
It would be a cause for a fast and painful death. This is not a theory. It is a natural law, just like gravity. No one has ever succeeded. Many have tried. All have failed."
The words were like a cold splash of water in the face of reality. But, tucked away in that final answer, Leonel felt a strange, rebellious spark. Why? The question wouldn't go away.
It was as if his very soul, the singular configuration of his being, was rejecting the absoluteness of the law.
His thoughts, struggling to find a support point, landed on the only shadowy figure in his life that stood for the forbidden way. The family ghost.
"Father," he ventured, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "Is that... is that what happened to Uncle Rhys?"
The name was like a bomb between them, charged and potent. Alistair didn't flinch. He didn't start. But the silence that took over him was more revealing than any outburst.
The simple grace which he was carrying turned into something stiff, like a statue of himself. The night seemed to get darker around them, the evening birds going quiet.
After a moment that felt like an hour, Alistair spoke, his voice devoid of all the previous warmth, becoming flat and distant, "Your uncle Rhys decided to travel a path that was asking unaskable questions.
He was attracted to magic, yes, but not the disciplined arts of the Royal Collegium. He went for older, darker currents. He thought that the laws we consider sacred were just… suggestions."
"What was he looking for?" Leonel asked, his breath catching, and his eyes wide.
"Answers," Alistair said, the word being very sharp and final, "but some answers come with a price much higher than any man can afford. They cost him his place, his name… his family. He went beyond a certain point and there's no turning back from there. Don't talk about him, Leonel."
His life is one of darkness and remorse. Our lives are lives of light and metal. The Graythorne heritage is the blade. Your fate is here in this yard, with this sword. Definitely not in the dusty tombs of forgotten magic."
He went beyond his brief and stood towering over Leonel, engulfing him in his shadow. The chat was done. Noticing the disappearance of his silhouette in the dim light, he turned and headed back towards the keep leaving Leonel standing alone in the yard.
His father's words bore down on him like a heavy cloak, full of expectation and admonition that seemed too much for his little shoulders.
He didn't only look at the wooden dummy but beyond it and the mansion walls to where the first stars were already shining in the violet sky.
Uncle Rhys was no longer just a name or a story that was used to frighten. He was a question mark. A man who had asked 'why not?' in a world that only gave 'because' as an answer.
That night, while he was under his blankets, Leonel was not dreaming of brave sword fights or winning battles.
What if I wasn't required to pick only one? How about if I could actually be both? One day a mage and the next a knight. Could it be even feasible?
Such an idea was so risky and exciting at the same time
Maybe… maybe I should ask Mother?
She got the feeling for things that were not quite right. She had a way of hearing which didn't automatically result in a scolding.
But she must promise not to tell Father.
I only want to know. That is all. There is no problem with just knowing, isn't there?
Thinking that he finally slept.
For the last three months, Leonel's world was nothing but the Graythorn estate training yard. The wooden sword's newness was long gone; it had been worn down through numerous repetitions, and in its place came the raw, even abrasive, but very familiar feel of his palms and a deep, almost bone-weary familiarity of every chip and grain in the oak.
Skyfall Slash has become rhythm which his body had memorized, a prayer which his body invoked on the early morning, under the noon sun, and in the long, purple shadows of dusk.
He was a tiny, single figure in the large stone circle, a boy against a heritage. There was no other sound but that of his work the scuff of his boots on the hard-packed earth, the whuff of his exhaled breath, and the solid, percussive thwack of wood hitting the unyielding training post.
He was after something, a sensation that was only barely perceptible to him. It was in the way he shifted his weight from his back foot, the way his shoulder turned not with brute force, but with a coiled intention, the way the air seemed to part for the blade when everything was just right.