Chapter 12

  The Rodrigo dining hall was filled with the warm scent of food, and the cool light that spilled from the chandeliers. Every meal in the hall was a dedicated lesson in etiquette and poise. If breakfast was a meal meant for the Rodrigos to spend time together as a family, the evening meal was for them to spend time together as nobility.

  Gabriel and Sela sat side by side at the head of the table, Eli sat in his usual place to the right of the head. Servants moved like shadows, bringing and clearing dishes in practiced silence. Aria had been escorted back to town after insisting she couldn’t stay for lunch, and Eli was adamantly ignoring the empty feeling her absence had left in her place. He had to remind himself more than once that she hadn’t disappeared forever, and that she was just a quick flight spell away. He could go without his best friend for a few hours. Besides, he had plans to carry out.

  Eli waited until the last course was set down before he spoke, as was in line with proper decorum. He kept his tone even and courteous. He would only bring up conversation subjects outside of polite commentary on the weather, food, or uncontroversial current events once most dishes on the table had been eaten, but before the plates were cleared away.

  “Mother,” he began. “May I have permission to use your private training chamber tomorrow?”

  The request hung in the air. Gabriel looked up from the final bites he was meticulously clearing off his plate. He looked to his wife before looking back at his son.

  “You want to use the private practice chamber?” She clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever could you need it for?” She placed her utensils down and gave her son her full attention.

  “I had some ideas during lessons this morning that I wanted to test.” He answered truthfully – if a little misleadingly.

  “Ideas you need a mana dense, reinforced, concealed chamber to practice in?” She continued. Well, Eli thought. Technically no, but also…

  “Yes,” he responded. She looked at him. He looked back at her.

  “What kind of ideas?” She asked. He was quiet for a moment before he answered.

  “I wanted to work on my major affinities.” Another partial truth.

  Space and time magic had been his inherited affinities, but they weren’t his only ones. However, they were incredibly volatile to work with, and by this point in his last childhood, he’d only just begun lessons on the historically temperamental magics.

  He could see his mother’s denial coming before he even had a chance to plead his case.

  “Not yet,” she said. Her voice calm but final. “You have a few years of learning to do before you should be experimenting with your magic unsupervised. Give it a few years. Skipping steps is a good way to crack your foundation or pick up bad habits that will hinder you later on.”

  Eli wanted to argue that at present moment, he was probably better at their shared affinities than she was, and that if he was at his full power he could have shown her just how unshakable his foundations were, but caution, and the deep respect he had for his mother reigned in his frustration. Well, that and the strange feeling he got when he approached his time mana.

  Something about what he’d done had changed it and he simply wasn’t ready to dive into whatever was going on with it quite yet. He already had enough mysteries to solve and problems to address without him adding that to his list quite yet. Besides, wasn’t he planning to rebuild his foundations anyway? He inclined his head in acquiescence.

  “I understand. I’ll focus on my foundations.”

  However, rebuilding his foundations didn’t give him an excuse to neglect his advantages. He didn’t have all the time in the world to build strength. If he wanted to begin working on some of his plans, he required strength now. Also, preparation meant privacy. He had ways to hide objects and activities inside the manor, but blasting holes in reality and melting the keep walls to slag would be fairly noticeable after the fact regardless of any obscuration attempts during the activities themselves. The training chamber was the only real place inside the keep that could withstand with his current power output, and even that was only because he had yet to return to his peak.

  Well, it wasn’t like he wasn’t planning to make a base in the borderlands anyway.

  Before his thoughts could slip to his face, Eli pivoted the conversation to his first non-punishment evening training.

  ~

  The training yard was cooler than the dining hall in the late evening air. Unlike the previous day, the yard had not been emptied. Instead, Gabriel, Sela, Eli, the Rodrigo family head recruiter and the young trainee Eli had invited were present. Kara entered quietly, helm under her arm, visibly nervous, but doing her best not to show it.

  She bowed first to Gabriel, then to Sela deeper. To Eli, she gave an incline of the head, just as she’d been repeatedly coached by the house instructors.

  “Kara, correct?” Gabriel clarified.

  “Yes, milord.” She responded.

  “We’ll start with a warmup, then to sparring,” Gabriel said. Eli quietly rejoiced that he wouldn’t be subjected to the Gauntlet.

  “Yes, milord,” Kara bowed once more before breaking into a light jog around the edge of the training grounds with Eli falling in beside her.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  They ran the yard together, the fog of their breath creating patterns in the lantern light. Kara’s form was fluid. Her shoulders were steady, and her feet were almost soundless against the packed dirt. Whether her movement was habit, intentional practice, or innate gift, Eli didn’t know. What he did know was that the ability to move with such precision would serve her especially well if Eli’s hunch turned out to be correct.

  Watching her, Kara reminded Eli of a treecat. It was the much too innocuous name for a breed of feline predator roughly the size of a wolf. They were sleek, agile, nocturnal precision hunters. They weren’t all evolved beasts, with most being born manaless, however those that evolved were some of the most terrifying fights Eli had experienced on his first excursions past colonized lands.

  When they returned to Gabriel’s side after cooling down and stretching, the head recruiter handed them both wooden staves. At his silent prompting, Kara and the recruiter went first while Eli stepped back to speak to his parents.

  He held the smooth body of his own training staff between his hands as he watched the first movements of the spar. Then he leaned closer to his mother. “Do you think she has a shadow affinity?” He asked.

  Sela’s eyebrows shot up, and Gabriel’s gaze sharpened. “You can sense affinities?”

  “Nothing like that,” Eli said. That would have been utterly unbelievable for someone of his level of strength. It was only peak practitioners at the level of archmage and above that could sense affinities from active use. To do so from someone obviously unawakened someone needed to be in the realm of Primus. It was something Eli hadn’t achieved in his last life. There were only six known Primus’ in the world, all of them belonging to the Families. At least all of them that he had met personally.

  He realized now just how little of a coincidence that was, and just how much help the aliens had provided. He wondered absently if he would’ve crossed that invisible barrier had he survived his last gamble. Then he threw the useless thought out of his head and answered the silent question his parents were giving him.

  “I had a hunch,” he said. Then, because they obviously weren’t satisfied with that, he continued. “She just reminded me of Master Moss.” Which was true in a sense, the real answer however had much less to do with mage progression, and more to do with experience.

  Eli had met wine sommeliers who were able to tell which region a vintage had come from, or how much water was in the soil that grew the fruit just by taste and smell alone. Mana affinities were kind of like that, at least when they were as strong as Eli suspected Kara’s to be. They changed the impression of a person; the way they moved, reacted, presented themselves. Their personal ‘flavour’. The truth was, Eli believed she had a shadow affinity because he’d faced so many assassination attempts that not recognising a potential shadow mage could have resulted in his even more untimely demise.

  When you experience something enough, familiarity was the inevitable result. If nothing else, endless war had made Eli very familiar with mages, affinities and how they presented in both developed and undeveloped awakened. Of course, he couldn’t have told his parents the unvarnished truth, so he was glad when the Moss answer seemed to appease their curiosity. All three of them went back to watching Kara spar.

  It was obvious the staff wasn’t her most practiced weapon, but her movements were fluid, her steps light, her presence seemed to almost fade from perception. It was subtle, so subtle that it was easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention, but the entire Rodrigo family was paying attention. Very close attention.

  It took under a minute for Kara’s back to hit the ground, the end of her opponent’s staff mere millimetres away from her neck. “Very good show. Thank you, instructor Holt,” Sela said, dismissing the recruiter from the yard. “Alright, Eli. We will test her affinities in the morning,” she continued.

  “We can test her mettle now,” his father said, gently pushing Eli forwards. “Spar.”

  The first moments of the spar were cautious. Kara stayed mostly on the defensive. On the first few exchanges it became clear that despite her being physically stronger than him, Eli had the better technique. Eli pressed forward with precise strikes, probing for gaps, taking advantage of his speed and familiarity with the weapon to land glancing blows, but he could never manage anything decisive. His size gave her the advantage in both strength and reach. It was a gap he knew he’d close with time, but he was fighting now, and time would also allow her to begin closing the skill gap. He didn’t want to flood his body with magic. Sure, he’d win, but it would feel false. Unearned. Size didn’t matter; relative strength didn’t matter. He’d made a promise to himself, and he was going to keep it.

  After nearly two minutes of back and forth, Eli found his opening. He wasted no time in taking advantage of the slight delay she had between parrying and high guard. He used the momentum of her redirection to pivot the other end of his staff, bringing the weapon around and just managing to reach the side of her head.

  Thwack. The sound of wood against hardened leather resounded in the yard and the bout was over.

  Their chests rose and fell, both of them sweating and panting, but neither of them complaining. It had felt good. Really good.

  They rest of practice was spent in half-speed drills: parries, blocks, ripostes. Technique, technique, technique. Of course, Eli was far from upset. He had a lot to learn. So, Eli slowed his strikes deliberately, worked on precision. Repeated the same combo’s over and over again until the actions were more instinct than active thought.

  Training ended with a final spar. Fatigue had set in for both of them, but that made it all the more important. Eli won once more, but not nearly as cleanly.

  “Thank you, young lord,” Kara said, bowing towards him once their equipment had been stowed away.

  “Thank you,” Eli replied, sincere. “I think we will be training together a lot more. My parents are sorting out squad placements for new recruits and starting with this intake I am allowed to begin choosing personal retainers.

  “I am going to need a dedicated guard, and it would be nice to have a sparring partner who is less likely to toss me across the field with an accidental blow.” Eli side-eyed his very big, very strong father.

  Kara’s lips parted slightly, then closed, then twitched as she visibly worked not to laugh. She gave a small nod of understanding. “As you wish, young lord. I will look forward to it.”

  At the edge of the field, Gabriel and Sela watched in quiet conversation.

  “She could be a fit for the Shadow Guard,” Sela murmured. “It’s always a nightmare trying to find new recruits for them.”

  “Master Moss will be happy,” Gabriel said.

  “That he will. He’s been looking to expand for a while now. I’m just glad our boy spotted her. Even if she isn’t higher affinity, she could still bolster their numbers. As an amazing bonus, she is from outside the empire – the contested lands, was it? She has no allegiance, no recorded awakening. Her affinities and capabilities can be entirely obscured, if not outright erased. She’d be a perfect fit.”

  “Young enough to be his shadow.” Gabriel’s mouth twitched, the closest thing to pride his expression generally showed. “He grows quickly.”

  Sela’s eyes lingered on Eli, smiling as he passed the young woman a waterskin. “I thought it was commoner children who had to grow up too fast. But he’s carrying so much already.”

  “He has strong shoulders,” Gabriel said. His voice carried a rare warmth, even as his expression stayed neutral.

  “He gets then from his father.” Sela smiled and rubbed her husbands back.

  For a moment, something warm and intimate softened the lines of their faces. Then Gabriel cupped his hands and barked across the yard.

  “Obstacle course. Now!”

  Eli and Kara both straightened, and Eli could actually feel his face rapidly cooling as the blood drained from it. There were no complaints though as the two jogged toward the starting line together. This would not be their only shared gauntlet. It was just the first of many.