We were sitting at the table. My mother and father were sitting across from me, looking at me with disappointment. This was the first time I had disappointed them so, well, at least Zena. I’m sure Damon was disappointed in my sword skills. I shouldn’t care and yet I did. When Damen told Zena what happened, she’d gone pale and told me to take a seat. So here I was, waiting to hear the lecture.

  “Do you understand why we’re angry with you?” Damon asked. His voice was cold in a way I’d never heard before.

  “You think my life was in danger,” I finally said. There wasn’t much else I could say, though I instantly regretted my response.

  “I don’t think you were in danger; I know you were,” Damon said, his fist pounding the table. “You went into that forest alone, without a weapon!”

  The smart thing to do would be to agree with him. My pride wouldn’t let me. “Magic is a weapon.”

  “Surely you know your weakness as a magic user?” Damon asked, not waiting for me to respond. “Mages are vulnerable in close quarter combat. Those shadow wolves almost killed you.”

  “No, they didn’t,” I responded. Did he not see the fight at all? “I created a sphere around myself to keep them away. I was about to kill them when you arrived!”

  “Sweetie, I get that you want to get stronger,” Zena cut in, stopping Damon before he could respond. It was a good thing; I could see the red in my father’s face. “Risking your life isn’t worth the potential gain. You may not think your life was in danger, but what if there was a third shadow wolf you didn’t know of, and it hit you from behind when you thought you were safe? Trust me, I have seen many mages think they can handle themselves and die because of their arrogance.”

  What could I say to that? Disagreeing would only make me sound egotistical. They were wrong, I had those shadow wolves right where I wanted them and there wasn’t another one, I wasn’t being stupid. The thing is, I could understand their fear. They thought I was a child with no life experience. If only I could tell them.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Someone saw you heading into the forest and rushed to tell me,” Damon shook his head and glared at me once more. “That isn’t the point! I can tell you think we’re overreacting. Do you not understand how easily you could have been killed?”

  “Look, I may be young, but I know what I’m doing,” Once again, I regretted saying those words the moment I said them. Oh well, I wasn’t going to stop there and let them respond to that alone. “I’m strong with magic. I can defend myself against the weak monsters in that forest. I was able to kill a group of goblins without breaking a sweat and those shadow wolves were about to die. I’m not going in there blindly; I was alert and expecting an ambush the whole time.”

  “Going without a sword is stupid, no matter how skilled you think you are with magic,” Damon said. His voice was oddly calm, much different than it had been a moment ago. “Tell me, do you think you can do everything with magic?”

  “I can do a lot more with magic than I can a sword. For me, a sword will only slow me down.”

  Damon stood so fast his chair toppled over. Zena looked over at him with a worried expression, before glancing back at me. She began shaking her head. She knew what was going to happen. So did I.

  “Do you think magic has no weaknesses?” Damon asked.

  Look, I’m not going to lie and say magic doesn’t have its weaknesses. Close quarter combat is obviously a spot a mage doesn’t want to be in. That said, I saw unlimited potential with magic. I would bet there are some mages out there that aren’t weak in close range and that was what I would aim to accomplish.

  Damon stood there, waiting patiently for my response. He wasn’t going to like my response. “If I train enough, I believe I can overcome anything with magic.”

  “You’re being a fool,” Damon unsheathed his sword. His real sword, not the wooden one we used when practicing. I won’t lie, I found myself gulping and feeling a bit of regret for not being more diplomatic. “Follow me.”

  As we walked out of the house, Damon grabbed a wooden sword. That made me feel a bit better and regret my words less, for these sparring sessions always ended with me having to heal myself anyway.

  I walked past my wooden sword. Damon didn’t so much as glance at me, he expected me to come unarmed. He wanted to prove to me that a sword was useful. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what he would be able to do against magic. Could he avoid my stone bullet? I don’t see how that would require moving insanely fast, superhuman levels. Damon was fast and strong, but there was no way he could move faster than a bullet.

  Yet he wanted to fight me all the same. That made me curious. I won’t lie, I was a tad afraid of what was going to happen in this fight of ours. Damon stopped and pointed his real sword right at me. “Step back twenty-five feet.”

  “Okay,” I did exactly as he said and stopped once I counted to twenty-five.

  “A mage has their greatest advantage at range,” Damon began. He had his real sword in his right hand and the wooden one in his left. “You are going to come at me with everything you have. Let me be clear, I want you to try and kill me.”

  “Honey, isn’t this a bit too far?” Zena asked.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Damon ignored her and continued staring at me. My father was crazy, not that I was surprised. He was confident he would win this duel. Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to see that. “I don’t want to kill you,” I said.

  “You don’t have to worry about succeeding,” Damon shifted his stance. He raised his real sword in front of him, with the wooden sword a bit behind. “You have no chance of harming me in this match.”

  What trap was Damon setting for me? This was an absurd advantage he was giving me. Truth be told, I knew little about fighting a sword user with magic or how a sword user was meant to counter magic. Logically, it shouldn’t be possible. The aura of a sword user did increase their speed and strength, yet I didn’t know how much that could go.

  The logical part of me wanted to think that magic should beat any melee user. To me, magic should be like a gun in my world. However, that was naivete on my part, something I recognized. If that were true, then no one would use a sword. At least, that would be my assumption.

  The other thing I wasn’t sure of was the ranking difference between magic and swords. An intermediate magic user was technically the same rank as an intermediate sword user, but how well did that translate to combat? They were completely different things in the grand scheme of things. Whatever, I’d find out soon enough.

  “I’m not going to make a move until you attack me,” Damon said when he realized I was standing there, not doing anything.

  “Fine,” I said. I’ll try my best to defeat Damon. That didn’t mean I was going to try to kill him, regardless of his bravado. Since he wasn’t going to move until I attacked, I figured it would be best to start with my strongest spell.

  A stone bullet formed in front of me. My target was Damon’s thigh. That would render him useless if he wasn’t able to dodge this attack. I wasn’t sure how Damon would dodge this spell. One thing I did know was that, while Damon may be an ass, he wasn’t an idiot. He also had many years of combat under him; I was positive he had a plan.

  The stone bullet fired. I poured a bit more mana into it than I did in the forest. In a blink, I watched Damon swing his blade and obliterate my spell. How did his sword not get damaged? Did the aura extend to his weapon? I didn’t have much time to think as Damon came at me full speed.

  The ground in front of me shifted as earth spikes shot up in Damon’s path. Damon didn’t try to dodge; he simply swung his sword and cut through each spike as if they were paper. He was close, almost on top of me.

  A stone bullet formed behind my back, out of Damon’s line of sight. At the same time, I let loose a few fireballs from my right hand. Damon simply swung through each of the fireballs as if swatting away flies. Once Damon blocked my last fireball, I ducked and let loose the stone bullet. Damon was only five feet away. There was no way he could block it.

  I was wrong. Damon moved so fast I didn’t even see what happened. All I knew was that my stone bullet had been destroyed, dust blasting in front of him. I raised my hand to try and blast wind to create distance between us, but I was too late. Damon swung his wooden sword and broke my right hand.

  “Ah,” I barely let out before a knee smashed into my gut, knocking the air out of me. Damon raised his wooden sword to end the fight. He’d forgotten about my left hand. I released a powerful gust of wind that somehow did little to budge Damon, but sent me flying ten feet back, giving me the chance to do another attack. Or so I thought.

  Damon was already closing in on me, so I went with another approach. I used the ground to launch myself into the air. A small portion of the ground rose up and I was in the air, watching as Damon’s strike shattered the elevated slab. He looked up at me and jumped right as I summoned six icicles, which shot toward him.

  None of the icicles even came close to hitting him. He knocked each one aside. There was no time for me to do anything else, he was right next to me.

  Oh, shi—

  The world went dark.

  Damon

  I remember the day Thorian was born. It was the happiest day of my life. To have my first child be a boy was something I’d always wanted. He was so cute. Just by looking at him, I knew he was going to be strong. However, there was always something that bothered me. Thorian never cried. Not as a baby nor when we first sparred. There wasn’t a single instance of him crying. Now, I was no baby expert, but that was unusual. During our first sparring match, I’d thought for sure he would cry when I broke his rib. Instead, all Thorian did was look at me with disdain, a look of pure disgust at what I’d done to him.

  There was something different about Thorian, almost as if he’d been through something rough in his life, yet that didn’t make sense. He was my son. I watched him being born. He had barely been out of my sight. I didn’t understand him and sometimes it made me push him too hard during our sparring sessions. I wanted to see how far I could push him. He always surprised me with how much punishment he could endure.

  Despite the harshness of our training, I didn’t enjoy hurting him. Each time I struck my boy with a wooden sword, I couldn’t help feeling guilty. I shouldn’t be hitting him like this. My father had trained me the same way, and I remember thinking he didn’t care about me or else he wouldn’t hurt me the way he did. He gave me the same response I told Thorian, that I would thank him later.

  And I did. It was many years later, but I did end up thanking my old man. His training had pushed me to become an excellent swordsman and it saved my life. My pain tolerance allowed me to save my party from being wiped out from a monster in a dungeon. I also achieved the rank of intermediate at eighteen years old. I pushed my son because I hoped to see him become a powerful warrior.

  It may seem strange. Zena wasn’t a fan of how I trained Thorian. Eventually, she gave in, so long as he was healed after each match. My father hadn’t given me that curtesy. He made me wait at least an entire day, sometimes longer, before having my injuries healed.

  I was beginning to doubt Thorian would ever appreciate the way we fought, which has caused me to start having doubts about my method. Thorian was strong, smart and capable. He taught himself to read. He taught and mastered a book for beginning magic by himself, without me or Zena knowing about it.

  Still, no matter how strong Thorian was with magic, he needed to learn the sword. It would make him an unstoppable force. I may hate hurting him and I won’t lie, I lose sleep over the things I’ve done. If it allowed my son to live a full life, it would all be worth it. I saw great things for Thorian. His potential would put him in dangerous situations, and I had a feeling his life would involve more danger than mine ever did.

  In the end, I made up my mind. I would keep training my son the way my father did for me. If Thorian could improve his sword skills to my level, he would be a force to be reckoned with.

  I struck him in the back of the head and watched as his body went limp. Thorian fell the last five or so feet and slammed into the ground, with me landing next to him. Zena ran over to Thorian and began healing him.

  I’m sorry, Thorian, but this is for your own good. I hope this defeat shows you that you still have a lot to learn. Magic isn’t an invincible force. You needed this or you would have gotten yourself killed.

  I turned and walked back to the house. This match was done. I could only hope this lesson sank in or else I might need to do something more drastic to show Thorian just how far he still has to go.