Young Swordmaster's Journey

"Alright, are the both of you watching?" Xyn questioned both of his students, standing across from them in a training room that was not only padded to high hell, but covered floor to ceiling in enough magical protection to make both Alec's and Olivia's heads spin.

"Of course we're watching." Olivia huffed, leant back against the wall as she re-applied the red hair clip keeping a great majority of her hair from covering her face.

"What else would we be doing?" Alec questioned calmly, his arms crossed, and his head cocked slightly to the side.

The headmaster of the academy, in a surprising show of maturity that suddenly had both teens a lot more worried about whatever it was he was about to do, didn't react to their comments beyond a short and quiet sigh with his head hung forward. His grip on his blade adjusting itself with a small wave of his fingers and his eyes seeming to glow slightly in the brief moment that his fringe shadowed his upper face, before he tilted his head back up once more to face his young students.

"I'm merely making sure. What I'm about to show you now is one of the two crowning jewels of the Dragon-Scale sword style." Xyn explained, the attention of both teens sharpening to a razor's edge as they realized exactly the magnitude of what they were about to be shown.

The two crowning jewels, as Xyn called them, were commonly referred to by the student-body of the academy as the two forbidden techniques. Techniques so highly refined, so difficult to pull off and so powerful that only the headmaster of the academy and perhaps a handful of the best professors ever knew them or were taught how to use them.

Naturally, neither the headmaster nor the professors ever showed off such techniques, especially not in front of large swathes of people, and thus all the students had to go off were ouroboric rumours that escalated without end, nor any semblance of self-control.

It was widely considered completely false whenever a new rumour of a city-levelling Power Stance made its way through the academy grapevine, but of the more viable, and realistic, options there were a few that had even managed to capture the attention of Alec and Olivia, even as separated as they were from the general culture and 'society' formed within the academy.

Olivia's favourites consisted of a rumoured Power Stance to take in the flared and excess mana from spells or attacks and use it to boost oneself without need for dipping into their own reserves, and a Power Stance that was capable of catching any attack, regardless of angle or speed, so long as you had the speed to keep up with it.

Alec's favourites, on the other hand, consisted of a Power Stance that was an evolution of Dragon's Might, some kind of supreme offense to cap out the extreme defensiveness of the style, and a Power Stance that involved not only redirecting an opponent's blade but in such a way that their entire body followed the momentum of the redirection and went flying.

There were plenty of others, of course, some that both of the teens recognized were probably more likely to be accurate than their favourites, but none that caught their attention and captured their hearts more than those choices.

And now they were about to see one of them for real. One of the actual forbidden techniques of the Dragon-Scale sword style, and one that could actually be, or at least closely resemble, their favourite rumours.

"Good. Those are the looks I wanted to see!" Xyn grinned widely and proudly, before he shook his head a little and took a deep breath in and out to try and recapture that unwavering sharpness from earlier.

As much as he would love to mess around with the both of them a little bit more, he did actually have something to show them, and a reason for doing so as well. And unlike the usual lessons he gave them, where he could do them even with an arm behind his back and taunts flying off his tongue like it was a slingshot with endless ammunition, this particular one required his full attention if he actually wanted to give it an impact that would stick.

"As one of the crown jewels of our style, naturally this technique is difficult to use." He began, breathing in and out in slow, rhythmic cycles, "It's a technique that, given the time and focus needed to bring it to fruition, pretty much require that you use it as a Power Stance."

With one slightly louder breath in than the rest his blade rose high above his head, his fingers tightening around the wrapped hilt of his blade until his knuckles went white, and veins and muscles in his forearms and hands began to bulge.

"If one is going to put this much effort into an attack, spend so much time bringing it to life, you would want the absolute best out of what you get. The choice to turn it into a Power Stance is a simple one, the only one that really makes sense."

As he explained, his every pore began to leak mana. The usually loosely spread energy collecting and coalescing above and around Xyn. Its presence growing heavier with each second that passed, and doubling in pressure when the mana around them seemed to suck into Xyn's form like a rubber-band snapping back into place, he had finally started the Power Stance.

Even off the to sidelines of the training room, neither the target of the rapidly growing Power Stance nor even remotely in the path of his clearly telegraphed swing, both teen's fell to the ground as their legs gave out from underneath them. Try as they might, their muscles would not respond, their mana would not rise to the surface, and their minds were full of cotton and static.

As if it had finally reached some kind of nebulous apex, the mana coalescing around Xyn began to take form as the very blade in his hands glowed from the raw power packed inside every single part of its sharpened form. Enigmatic, cloud-like energy roiled and rolled around him, swirling chaotically even as features began to push themselves into reality from the ground up.

Thick, rock-like scales formed from the aether itself, seemingly attached to the floor around Xyn's feet and only growing upwards from there. With each scale that formed, a more complete picture began to appear around the academy's headmaster, and the danger that screamed in both of the teen's minds only seemed to grow louder and more high-pitched.

From what proved to be a neck curled out the working beginnings of a skull and wide-open jaw, an intangible facsimile of sinew and muscle forming around that and the rest of the rocky scales forming out of even that a moment later. A somehow simultaneously beautiful and gruesome showcase of dragon anatomy that left, in all its terrifying splendour, the head of a dragon with its eyes fixed ahead of it at an invisible enemy that seemingly only it and Headmaster Xyn could see and its jaw wide-open in a motion that was all too easy to figure out.

"This, boys and girls, is Devouring Maw."

The glowing blade of Xyn's blade cut through the air so fast that neither of the teens were even able to follow the swing. The regular bright silver-colour of his blade replaced with a thick, earthen brown that seemed to almost infect the air around it, darkening its shade and slowing its movement. The movement completed so instantaneously that to both of their perceptions, he seemed to just snap from having his blade pointed at the sky, to the tip of his blade pressed against the ground beneath them.

Then, as the singular fraction of a second image of his completed swing flickered into their coherent minds, the dragon's maw closed.

What was previously still became chaotic and frantic, what was previously inert spun to life with a thick, bass-y thrum that seemed to vibrate the very room itself, and what was once pristine became twisted and blemished. The padding beneath Xyn's feet rippled thirty centimeters in each direction and the magical protections lit to life like the beating heart of a dragon. The air turned from stale stillness to angry, snarling gusts that swirled around the headmaster. The peace that had once filled the teen's, the confidence that they had been slowly growing in their proficiency in this sword style and its techniques, died a gruesome, agonizing death.

One step forward, and a swing of his blade, and Xyn, Headmaster of the Dragon-Scale Sword Academy, completely shattered every thought and misconception that they had had about what it meant to be 'strong'.

What little inner security that Olivia had gained in her skills withered and faded with a pained gasp, the motto of the Kio family repeating in her ears, a death knell from which she refused to fall to.

What little lethargy had begun to creep into Alec's mind once more, that little voice that whispered traitorous ideas of having done enough and grasped a bar high enough, was sent hurtling into the abyss with a banshee-like scream of terror.

As the winds died down and the seemingly omnipresent weight of Xyn's mana withdrew back into the man suddenly, he rose from his pose and turned to look at the both of them. A sharp, toothy grin spread across his lips and the irises of his eyes glowed dimly in the shadows of his fringe, staring at nothing but the expressions on both of the teens faces.

'Good. That did light a fire beneath the both of them. Now, with that determination roaring inside the both of you, what will you show me during Kronethia's test, I wonder.'

XXXxxxXXX

That Night

Alec stumbled into his room with a blank look on his face, his hair still slightly damp from the shower he had just gotten out of, and his arms dimly throbbing from the practice that he had put them through that day.

The swing of the blade, the effect it had around them. That wasn't a regular swing, not in the slightest.

Two, unblinking draconic eyes stared at him from his own bed. An alertness in them that Alec had never seen before, and still didn't see now. His focus entirely on the training blade held in his hands as he stopped a step from his bed.

This blade, this blunt, wooden training instrument, something that he honestly thought could never do more than bruise or, perhaps, break a bone. Yet if he had that kind of strike in his arsenal, if he used that technique with this blade, what would happen?

Unbidden, his mana began to flow into the blade as he thought over his insane, meaningless hypothetical. Filling it slowly. Scratching against itself as it entered. Filing itself down, sharpening its edges, refining itself clumsily, subconsciously.

"I want to master that technique." The whisper left his lips without him even realizing it, his hands gripping his blade tighter.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

And throughout the entire thing, even as Alec slowly climbed into his bed to fall asleep, the dragon never stopped staring at Alec. Silently, inquisitively, expectantly. A gaze that knew more than the boy could ever guess, and a gaze that seemed, above all else, excited.

XXXxxxXXX

A day later, Xyrtahnian wilderness

Leaves fluttered and branches creaked and groaned in objection as two objects sped through the thick forest south of Zenik. Flashes of blue and white peaking through the greens and browns of their surroundings as the two figures ran through the gnarled, twisted terrain.

"You can't get it out of your mind either, can you?" Olivia asked, hopping a fallen log and kicking off a buried stone to launch herself over a small creek bed.

"Devouring Maw? Of course not." Alec's hand twitched for his blade even as he kicked off a tree and hit the ground beside her, perfectly transitioning back into the comfortably fast pace that the two of them had been running at for the past half an hour.

"I never realized we were so far behind." Olivia scowled and leapt over a wide root, her hair floating almost angelically around her face as gravity failed to keep up for a moment.

"I thought that the forbidden techniques would just be difficult to learn, perhaps just difficult to pull off. But that….the power behind it…the technique…" Alec leapt up to clear the same root, his eyes sliding to his right as he went airborne alongside her.

From the thick greenery of the flora around them, a dozen creatures burst forth. Furred, bipedal creatures akin to apes and just shorter than the height of the average man with metallic protrusions sticking out of their knuckles and elbows.

Alec wasn't quite sure what these creatures were –they weren't native to Kairahl, at least not central Kairahl– but he found that he couldn't really find it in himself to care.

Neither it seems, could Olivia. Whose gaze only flattened in annoyance as her blade found its way into her hand and a thin sheen of silver mana coated the sharpened edge of her weapon.

In twin flashes of silver, the twelve creatures fell to the ground in gouts of blood and sparks of metal, the two teens continuing their sprint forward as if neither of them had ever even drawn their blades, despite keeping them out.

Yet now, Alec couldn't help but look over at his friend, his gaze flickering between her and her exposed weapon whenever he found the scant second to focus on anything except the environment around them.

'That wasn't just reinforcing her blade, she did something else to it. It cut through those creatures so easily. Was it her Attribute? Does she…have the same as me?'

"Alec lets pick up the pace a little. I want to get back and practice Devouring Maw as soon as possible." Olivia announced, her expression determined in a way that Alec was sure his own probably mirrored.

The thought of that Power Stance, the strength behind it, the movement of Xyn's blade and the mechanisms behind it. The dragon's head, its fearsome gaze, the bite power to tear through anything caught between those terrible, dreadful teeth of its.

"Deal."

The two of them nodded at each other as they both pulsed their mana, and a second later, shot off through the forest after the item required for their Quest. An item which was, ironically, currently one of the furthest things from their minds.

XXXxxxXXX

The next morning

"Oiiii! Aleeecccc!" Callum grinned enthusiastically, banging on the other teen's door obnoxiously.

Was it a bit rude for him to make his way all the way to this old dorm building on the outskirts of the walled-off academy at the crack of dawn to try and drag his friend out for some sparring? Probably, yes. However, he had been feeling the familiar itchy-tingling annoyance of too much pent-up energy in his system when he had woken up this morning and couldn't help himself.

While Alec, like everyone else Callum had ever met, couldn't hold a candle to Callum's own stamina reserves, the teen more than made up for it with the way that he fought.

There was something about the way that his blade just seemed to predict Callum's movements and flowed so naturally from one movement to the next that the hazel-eyed teen couldn't help but awe over. What should have been matches that barely put a dent in his reserves always, and without fail, chipped further and further into them as time went on. That was just the kind of bladework that Alec seemed so naturally predisposed to using, one that met raw talent and power not with more of the same, but with pure, unadulterated skill.

And something about facing that bladework of his just seemed to light a fire inside Callum unlike anything else he had ever faced or been through. It was like the patterns of Alec's blade were just taunting him, daring him to try and find a way through them, and every time he swung harder or thrusted faster and failed to do, it seemed to mock him.

'Did you think that strength was all you needed?' Alec's blade would sing, slipping beneath his and sliding both of them harmlessly off to the side.

'All that speed and no aim to temper it properly.' It would hum, the flat surface of its side meeting the blunted edge of his own and stopping it dead.

'All this potential, and just some decent stamina to show for it.' It would snap and snarl, clacking and snapping so quickly and precisely against his own that he could never let his guard down for even a moment.

The fact that he still won majority of their spars didn't even matter to Callum, only that, for once, he met those jeers and insults head on and rose to challenge each one of them. To take this bubbling, frothing energy inside him and put it to use in some way other than just running laps around the academy and wailing on a poor, defenceless dummy that couldn't even try and block his attacks.

Which is what brought him here at such an ungodly hour specifically to try and get Alec up and get his blood pumping so that he could try and meet those challenges once more. He should probably feel bad about it, but he couldn't really find it in himself to do so.

His friend had a pretty nasty habit of coasting on his laurels when he was able to, and he didn't want that for anyone, let alone one of his two friends, if he dared to call Olivia such a thing. So, the solution was pretty simple, albeit required him to do this.

There was a tired groan from inside the room and a small thump, the quiet rustling of clothe and fabric only just able to be caught by the teen if he really, really strained his hearing to its limit, and then the door opened with a quiet creak.

"Callum. Really?" Alec mumbled with a small yawn, rubbing some sleep out of his eye and brushing some of his grown-out hair out of his face.

"Yup! You and I are going to go do some morning training! Get the blood pumping!" He grinned brightly, his hands on his hips and his chest puffed up ever so slightly.

"The sun hasn't even properly come up yet." Alec responded bluntly, not that the green-haired teen could really blame him.

"Exactly. Plenty of time to get up and train! Don't worry, I'll get Olivia up too!" He beamed, which only seemed to brighten at the singularly raised eyebrow he got shot in return.

"You're an idiot."

"Wha- That's mean!"

"You want to wake up Olivia of all people, it's the truth."

"Oh, she can't be that bad." Callum snorted, waving a dismissive hand in his friends' direction.

"You really want to bet? Here, while I go get dressed, go ahead and try." Alec responded dryly, closing the door perhaps a tad more harshly than he really had to.

Though not even that could put a dent in his exuberance this morning. He wasn't quite sure why he felt so especially energetic and enthusiastic, even compared to normal, today but he most certainly wasn't complaining.

So, with a hop, step and a leap, Callum made his way to the door over and cleared his throat as he raised his eyebrow, prepared to try and make himself as obnoxious as possible to try and wake her up. Then, with all the warning and preamble of an assassin leapt from the shadows, the young woman's door swung open, and the tip of a wooden blade was pressed against his adam's apple.

"Do not." Olivia hissed, clothes clearly thrown on in haste and long hair just as messy and frazzled as Alec's own. "Start shouting."

Slowly, his eyes went between her blade and her own blazing orbs, his hands raising in a weak surrender.

"…Got it."

"Good. Now I heard Dius' comments so I'm going to go teach him the folly of his ways as well."

"Ah! Wait he's chang-" Callum tried to warn the girl, only to blink in surprise as his exclamation didn't even seem to slow her pace down a single second, her hand grabbing his door and slinging it open with enough force to wake the dead.

And with a startled shout from inside, the young woman marched in, the door swinging closed naturally behind them and leaving a stupefied young man stood in the hallway, holding a loose hand out to nothing.

XXXxxxXXX

It was an hour later, as Callum did his best to fend off the simultaneous attacks of both Alec and Olivia, when the spiky, green-haired young man finally found a part of himself regretting his decision to annoy the both of them so much this morning.

When it came to one-on-one spars, Callum was still the undisputed champion between the three of them, since his ridiculous stamina let him either outlast or keep the pressure on his opponents for far longer than they could ever match. Yet, only now, after egging the both of them on into doing a two-versus-one spar, did he realize that he may have bitten off just a little more than he could chew.

Where Alec's blade seemed to almost predict his every move and moved in ways and patterns that Callum had a difficult time predicting, Olivia's blade had an accuracy that he just couldn't describe. The point of her blade and blunted edge fast and light to block and parry, at least to the naïve and inexperienced. Olivia's blade wasn't truly that easy to defend, she only liked to make her opponent think so, so that she could find their weakest points and apply pressure at those points until their entire form crumbled and their defence shattered.

Admittedly, it was a fighting style that was still in its infancy, but she had already made, in Callum's own opinion, scary progress in developing and refining the ethos of her own personal combat doctrine.

When combined, the two of them formed a team from hell, unlike anything that Callum had ever seen before. The both of them seemed to almost predict the other's move like they were both priests of Kronethia and covered each other's weaknesses like it was the most natural thing in the world to them.

Whenever he stepped left, one of them instantly split off to block his movements; whenever he pushed forward, one defended and one riposted. It was like a demented seesaw that, no matter what he tried, always tried to lever right back up and hit him in the gut. At least now he could see exactly what they had learned from their private lessons with the Headmaster.

Yet despite the fact that he was being pushed back with a speed and proficiency that honestly surprised him, he found himself surprisingly having fun defending against the both of them. Every time the blunted edges of their blades made contact with him, he physically and mentally tweaked his response to try to defend against the same tactic next time. Every time he successfully blocked one of their strikes, he tried his absolute best to memorize what he had done and the way that it had felt.

He was having fun because he could, really and truly, feel himself growing better with each and every exchange.

Of course, knowing the kind of luck that he had, he should have known better than to believe that today would stay as good as it had been. Since he was here as well.

"Oiiii! Royal Boy!" The sparring came to an instant halt, all three of their blades freezing in place as Callum went stock-still, and Alec and Olivia stopped in response.

Looking over, as if with a neck like that of a rusted, weathered golem left out to rot, Callum felt his stomach sink into his shoes as there, all the way over on the entrance to the training grounds, stood Glenn and his two friends. The absolute last people that he ever wanted to see.