Gifted

“Keep your front foot flat to the ground,” Keryth admonished as he walked around me. “People think being on your toes will let you react more quickly, and to a very small extent, they’re right. But that only works if you already know which direction you’re going to move. Your back foot should be raised though. Up on your toes, ready to push off. Your front foot picks the direction and your back foot determines how quickly you move.”

I did as I was told, lowering my heels back onto the ground as I held the small, wooden dagger I had been given. Not that I had any idea if I was holding it right. We hadn’t gotten that far just yet. Apparently there was a lot more to standing than I had ever known.

“Daggers are a terrible weapon for combat,” Keryth commented as he continued to walk around me, using a long thin stick that had been whittled down to push and prod at me as he adjusted my stance.

There was no follow up explanation from the elf so I gave him what he wanted.

“Why daggers bad?” I asked, keeping my words slightly dumbed down.

“I didn’t say bad. I said they’re terrible for combat. In a fight, whether it be a monster, a beast, or a fellow humanoid, you’re going to want range. A decent warrior with a spear will keep someone with a dagger at bay all day. Beasts can be even worse. You’re not Beastkin so you lack natural weapons, like claws and sharp teeth. Getting in close is just asking to get cut up.”

The other adventurers were still sitting around whittling wood for my training weapons, but I could see them all nodding their heads or grunting in agreement.

“Then why learn?” I asked.

“Why learn the dagger?” Keryth asked, confirming my question.

I nodded as he pushed my hip gently, forcing me to bend my leading leg so I was in the beginning of a squat.

“A few reasons. While an open battlefield is terrible for a dagger, they make good backup weapons in case everything goes wrong. They’re also good in enclosed spaces where a larger weapon becomes…difficult to use. Then there is the fact that they’re easy to conceal, meaning you can take them places where you normally wouldn’t be allowed a weapon. Lastly, and I don’t know if this is your grandfather’s intention, but learning the dagger can help unlock the Path of Weapon Mastery. Do you know what a Path is?”

I intentionally avoided glancing at the old man. Keryth had shown on more than one occasion how observant he was. In fact, I had begun to suspect it was an Advanced Attribute that he had that let him notice those small details. So the last thing I wanted to do was give him a hint to work off of, like glancing at grandpa or my mother before answering.

“Sort of. It’s like…numbers that tell you how good you are at something?”

Keryth gave a small smile. “Something like that. Well, I suspect your grandfather is preparing you for a couple of impressive ones. Alright, your stance is…okay. Now, let’s work on moving while keeping your footing.”

Keryth continued to talk for the next two hours as he made me slowly move around the yard. In the last hour, he finally started teaching me some basic attacks, because apparently daggers did not have defensive moves. Or at least, none they were willing to teach a three year old. The lesson had been either dodge or you get cut. Parrying with a blade so close to your hand was a good way to lose a finger if you were lucky. The whole hand if you weren’t.

By the end of it, I was slick with sweat which had me growing cold in the cool mountain air. My mother took me inside to warm up a little before dinner, and we spent some time going over my reading and writing of Helenian. Then it was time for dinner. While we ate separately, Mum made enough for the adventurers as well and they took theirs in the common room.

After dinner, gathered around the fire with everyone, I listened as the old codger asked for news of Ajinport. I didn’t understand half of what was said, but it sounded like some politics were shifting and taxes were up in preparation for raids along the eastern border of the country by the Orc tribes that lived in the plains.

I was dead tired as I walked upstairs, but that didn’t stop me from exercising some more before crawling into my bed.

The sound of Thomas and Vianola in the room below made me regret ever working on the Path of Eavesdropping, and I opened my notifications from the day as a distraction.

Path Unlocked! Path of Daggers (0/10)

Path Unlocked! Path of Footwork (0/10)

I looked at the two new Paths on offer. There was no room for them, yet. But once I completed my Path of Climbing, maybe I would pick one up. The problem I foresaw was that without a teacher, I would just be doing whatever I thought was best. That sounded like a good way to waste a lot of time for little reward. I’d need to think on it. Though, Keryth’s words had caught my attention. How did one go about unlocking the Path of Weapon Mastery? That sounded like an Advanced Path to me. Maybe even Elite. I would need to ask the old codger. Those were my last thoughts before sleep claimed me.

The next two days followed the same script. As usual, I spent the morning working on my aethersensing with grandpa. Then, I would spend some time in the backyard learning the basics of a weapon, before taking a break for lunch, followed by more weapon training, then reading and writing, then dinner. Thomas taught me how to move with a shield and the difference between blocking and parrying using it. I quickly grew to appreciate how tiring using a shield could be as I was forced to keep my tiny arm held up and the shield that was larger than my small chest tucked in tight. My left arm ached terribly after that, which was my excuse for fumbling the one-handed axe in the afternoon.

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The second day taught me that I was terrible with a bow, which wasn’t really surprising. They were actually really hard to draw and I just didn’t have the strength for it. Though, I didn’t mind the sword or the hatchet. Of course, it wasn’t all bad news. While my weapons training had gone alright, my other training had gone far better!

That evening, we all sat down to eat together in the common room, and I listened closely to Keryth’s assessment of me, asked for by the old codger.

“I’m honestly surprised he managed it all without complaint,” Keryth stated with a small amount of admiration.

“Agreed,” Leo mumbled around a mouthful of my mum’s cooking. “Tough lad you’re raising there, miss. Thought he’d keel over after the first day, but he soldiered on. Ain’t never seen anything like it from a little kid.”

The bald warrior was clearly trying to butter my mother up, but he was going entirely the wrong way about it. Her frown was a simmering pot waiting to boil over into a full-blown glare. She had tolerated my training at best, wincing at every little bruise or tumble I took. I was her little boy, and in her eyes, I was too young to be training with these brutes. Her words, not mine. I was sore from head to toe, and I loved it. The notifications told me that I unlocked the Paths for everything I had been taught except for the bow, which made sense, since I was freaking terrible at it!

“As I was saying,” Keryth continued with a pointed look at Leo who had the sense to look abashed. “The boy did reasonably well. He seemed to have a natural aptitude for the sword, hatchet, and long-knife.”

That surprised me. I knew I had done decently with the sword and hatchet, but the long-knife, a blade twice as long as a dagger albeit not quite a short sword, had been one of my shortest sessions. I assumed it was because I was bad at it.

“Shields and bows?”

Keryth shrugged. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell at his age. He seemed awkward with them, but that could just be due to his height and strength.”

“Thank you for the assessment,” Cornelius replied. “As promised.”

The old codger placed the two shiny, red coins on the table in front of Keryth who nodded and placed them in a small leather satchel. Grandpa began asking them about their plans in Helenica but I didn’t get to hear about them as I was scooped up and ferried off to bed. In the morning, when I woke with the sun, they had already left.

My morning exercises left me more sore than usual as my body was still healing from all the bumps and bruises from training. Breakfast passed uneventfully, and the moment I had been waiting for came quickly as I walked into the old codger’s office and pulled myself up into the chair across from him. I’d held off for two and a half days with all the questions that had been bottled up inside of me. I let them loose in a torrent at the old man!

“Why were coins you gave them red? What’s Path of Weapon Mast-ry? How come Keryth always spots me? Is it cause his eyes are funny coloured? I couldn’t sneak up on him! Why have them teach me? What’s a tutors?”

The old codger sighed at the litany of questions and put down his quill, taking his time to stopper his ink bottle as he intentionally kept me waiting.

You evil old man! I’ll get you for this! Something in this office is going to go missing when you least expect it, and you’ll have to wait to find it like you’re making me wait! I fumed.

“The coins first. They were aether coins, made by me. I can make one a day if I don’t use my aether for anything more than our little lessons.”

“Does that mean you’re not practising your Paths?” I demanded.

The old man leaned back in his chair and stared at me with his bright blue eyes, his head framed by wisps of grey hair. He was clearly surprised that I had connected the two.

“Yes,” he admitted. “But that’s fine. I run out of aether a lot more quickly up here advancing my Paths. It was one of the reasons I was sent here. That’s beside the point though. I can, perhaps, produce enough aether coins to pay for tutors for you from time to time. Tutors are just teachers, by the way. With the right tutor, you’ll find your Path advancement going a lot faster. So, I think it’s worth it. What about you?”

“What do with aether coins?” I asked, my answer dependent on just how much he was giving up for me.

“You use them to power enchantments mostly. The ones I create are made from fire aether so they’ll likely be traded with a blacksmith or something similar.”

I nodded slowly, something distracting me slightly that felt like an itch on the top of my head. “Can everyone make them?”

“No, your aether needs to be incredibly strong or you need a lot of it to forge a single coin. Your mother can’t, for example.”

“Path of Weapon Mast-ry?” I asked.

“It’s an Advanced Path that can be unlocked by progressing at least seven weapons to at least the eighth Tier of their Paths.”

“What’s tier? Is it good?” I pressed.

The old man sighed.

“The tier is just how far you have progressed. A number next to the Path. As for the Path of Weapon Mastery, its rewards would suit you, no matter what you decided to become. A knight, an adventurer, or something else entirely.”

I looked thoughtful for a moment. Seven weapon Paths to the eighth Tier wasn’t a small amount of work. Given that I could likely only work on a maximum of four of them at a time, I was probably looking at a couple of years of work with basic training. Without someone to teach me, it could be even longer. It annoyed me a little that it would take so long, but you achieved nothing without effort I was finding.

“Keryth,” I probed, continuing my line of questions.

“Ah. Yes, Keryth almost certainly has Awareness or perhaps even Perception as an Advanced Attribute.”

I looked down in thought. If Keryth’s Advanced Attribute allowed him to notice me that easily, had I made a mistake in denying the other Advanced Attributes I had been offered?

Before I could second guess myself, grandpa interrupted me.

“Well, I have answered most of your questions. Now you can answer mine. Where is the aether?”

I looked up at him and then pointed above my head, where the fuzzy itchiness I felt was. His eyes lit up.