Chapter 19 - A blood-earned right to evolve (Training arc)

　　The captain came slowly at the prince, who moved as a mirror to his foe, both strafing aside the edges of a steadily narrowing circle.

　　Blades held high, twirling them in feigned strikes as they sank deeper into the rhythm of their dance—neither party seeming willing to brazenly commit.

　　The prince tried to bait an early flaw, shifting laterally and slashing at the feet of his foe... but the captain stepped clear, his iron gaze still trained on the darting prince.

　　Was it all in fighting instinct? Or were there layers to the faculties these brutes could bring to bear, shifting like a soldier`s step, different from one moment to the next?

　　"You... move like man," said the captain to a startled prince—he had foreseen the flow of the man`s blade but not his word.

　　Just as Cedric sought to speak in retort, the foe lashed out, his sword carving a crescent-shaped course towards the prince, who caught it but barely, blade on blade, wood cracking with a riposte and then a parry—the prince now on the offensive.

　　"Nearly... had you," said the captain, brushing the assault aside. A hard grin formed on his rough-scarred visage—more a parting of lips than a smile, with teeth bared in malignance. "You think... me animal... for no jewel," he spat, stretching the syllables for emphasis: juh-wuhl`. He flicked his blade at the prince`s chest, at the locket glowing magestone-green—a delicate hue standing stark in contrast. Though the putrid tone of goblin moss pervaded; it lit the world beneath the world, the lightless core of the underground.

　　The prince thought better now of trying to answer, for again the foe pressed him hard when words seemed near to form.

　　It was a tactic. This bastard of a goblin was tempting the prince, trying to elicit talk only to capitalize—a lowering of the guard, that moment of wavering when the body yielded to the word.

　　An outrage to the honour of the Blackrose, to have so low a foe seeking to betwixt him. Worse yet, it almost worked.

　　But the prince kept his calm, or something close in approximation. This foe was more skilled than he had let on, spinning deftly from slash back to safety, a strong attack to secure his retreat. No margin that Cedric could see, no clean chance for a counterstrike.

　　"I ha..." the foe began, but the prince was swift this time—blazing forth at the captain`s utterance, swiping fast and in succession, spreading his strength in a hazy fashion, fierce at points but then a feint. A master`s work, both the rally and the ruse, painting in strokes though so diffuse it was chaos more than pattern.

　　And not a single blow close to landing.

　　Against each stab and cleave, the captain levied one of his own, giving no ground and only gaining—his strikes had not the weight of Vol`krin`s, but they came with aim and purpose, directed at the pride or the prince`s posture. Both now close to breaking.

　　A fierce thrust straight to the heart—the captain`s blade, the prince deflecting, stumbling sideways in a roll, clear from danger. Only barely.

　　The prince stepped back, sought the vantage of his surroundings. He would fight on the backfoot, whirling away and pivoting, the focus on defence alone. Drawing the foe in and moving out. Superior endurance was to be his saving grace.

　　So the dance went on, the captain in a swift cut forward; the prince fleet-footed, gliding lithely and elusive, always in backstep. Never retreat.

　　Several rounds and the captain`s speed dwindled, his step turning heavy and so too his breath. His face was bruised now from the beating; it bore the mark of the watchman`s fist. Sweat streaked off with dried blood breaking... the foe less fervent to follow his royal footwork. And the dawn seemed ripe for a new-born prince.

　　Weaving in now with a hard-earned parry, the prince rose dreadful and in deception—a false cut high, then dipping low... shifting all-in strong with both hands on the hilt and his stance like a cobra`s. He sliced up, hewing with the full force of a storm. Unterhau: the technical term from a time more merry. The pet move of a squired princeling, safe in the shadow at his king-father`s side. A rising thrust from a low guard.

　　It caught the foe flat-footed, or at least almost. The captain staggered from his block, a hard grunt now and not a word, reeling back with blade flailing high—a worn green body coming fully exposed.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

　　As the prince surged on to collect his winnings, a sudden jerk lured him wide astray—a third blade to enter the duel, cracking in stark and uninvited, some weak-kneed whelp flocking out from the congregation. Number sixteen.

　　Cedric threw up his blade, a haphazard block in the nick of time, deflecting the newcomer`s blade and swivelling out. Breathing hard and muttering a half-curse.

　　Sixteen stood strong, seeming keen to reengage... but that was not what the captain wanted; he grabbed the intruder flat on the throat—or the scruff of the neck more exact, for he yanked sixteen aside, then reeled him in, bashing him skull against skull, again and again, the captain pausing briefly to check the man`s number—sixteen—then beating on, blind and beside himself in blood-battered rage. Sixteen times.

　　The man`s skull caved in a great wide dent, forehead collapsed and eyes dangling.

　　Tossing the limp mess aside, the captain fixed his gaze on the prince once more, heaving deep and ragged and gasping for air, doused in a dead man`s blood seeping like sweat off him, down the grooves and gashes of his face, on his lips and in his mouth.

　　"Your blade..." the captain panted with sword raised, angled high toward the prince, "is... as dull as my mind." He stood swaying, looked around at the silent pack pressed tight around the two, like a band of moonlit wolves.

　　Silence.

　　And then he laughed, the captain—a great, gut-rippling roar as the blood pooled on the ground.

　　How swift were they now, the heaping masses, to blare in with their rasping groans and chortles. The greedy goblin laughs that raked like the horns of hell in the prince`s ear.

　　In a heart-dead beat he was vaulted back to the town of Landsbury—that broken and unholy town where the soil had swallowed him whole. Him and his beloved. The raucous hell-rats who had stood over her and laughed at her defacement—he saw them here now, horded round him in the halls of his living death.

　　The prince felt his blood boil a royal blue, and his hand and his feet... they wanted to leap and maim and gut the fiendish wretches, stomp their skulls flat dead into the ground.

　　But he thought then of his vow—both vows now, for he had sworn once and then again. To avenge Gael, crownless maiden of his heart; and to enact justice for Artisan and Linaria, joint souls in this chained gang of sorrow.

　　He let them laugh though it hurt him so, this thorned pride of his.

　　"Come..." signed the captain to the prince, beckoning him to join in the feast of slop—for when the prince had been absent in mind, the noonday bell had rung, and a guard had come swaying in with a trough full of slop, planting it primly on the blood-soaked ground.

　　The animals had dug in, all thirty... save for sixteen, who would do no more eating ever; they slathered their whole arms with the grey muck, shovelling it down their gullets with no regard for anything but gluttony—chewing and swallowing and no savouring, letting slaver and residue drip back in the feeding trough as they groped for more filthy handfuls.

　　Cedric could not look at them; he would vomit and he would murder... and he would rather just be alone, curse himself and eat alone.

　　But the prince swallowed his pride and obliged the captain in his summons.

　　"Here," said the captain, handing the prince a bowl and ladling in the goods—vile grey goo that sat heavily in its container, but once splashed into his bowl, it had a breadth of texture and grit the prince could have done without... the core of it was solid, but dressed with a slick rancid liquid that oozed off—too thin to be sauce; too thick to be broth... but just right to be an ungodly travesty in terms of cuisine and sustenance.

　　"Njeaghe, njegh," the captain making unpalatable eating noises as he motioned to Cedric: dig in!

　　The prince took a handful of the colour of despair, the lifeless grey mottled with darker flecks, simultaneously under- and overcooked... and he took a bite, thinking of experience points and the statistician—he needed nourishment to grow and to grow stronger. Strong enough so he could break them all. And Gendrin. That one would suffer like none hath suffered before.

　　And in a sense, this was an opportunity also—he was here with the captain... and the watchman a ways further off—only they three had gotten private bowls. The prince could pry his mind; see what there is to learn from the calculated brute he had seen fit to call captain.

　　Time, then, to exercise his skill in diplomacy—this revolting man had a warrior`s hard ego, and so a brief act of propitiation seemed like it might assuage him.

　　"A fierce warrior like you," Cedric began, digging his hands deep into the wood of the bowl to ventilate his thickly roiling fury and disgust and disdain, "why do you not have jewels`?"

　　"Ah... come sit," the captain said, gobbling down a large portion of chunky gruel in one go; the viscous remnants he drank straight after.

　　The prince sat with the captain, the latter seeming pleased now—he had relished the duel and respected the newcomer`s skill.

　　"You... go far," said the captain between slop-feeding, "advanced class...", and he pointed at Cedric whilst nodding. "Eat, Eat!"

　　"How," asked the prince, "does one obtain an advanced class`?" He took a tentative dip in the bowl, licked up some slop.

　　"Gyaa, good... ey??" The slop, he meant.

　　Cedric nodded. "Very good slop. Best slop I`ve had in a long time."

　　"Graaha yaaya... good. Ok... I tell you all... on advanced class..." He licked the bowl clean—or dirty, Cedric supposed, looking at the blood-dripping fiend flailing his tongue for a final fill.

　　"Grye... is a... to do with egg."

　　"Advanced class?" Cedric tried. "That has something to do with... egg?"

　　"Nyees... go max levels... then break egg... kill thing in egg... and sit self in egg... is evo... lution."

　　To attain class advancement was synonymous with evolving, Cedric gathered, and for that he would have to... go back in an egg; get hatched anew but better.

　　The prince relished some more gruel—it was almost appetizing now. By contrast.