Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 48568 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 243(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48568 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 243(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
Soon enough all the young hopefuls were lined up in two lines facing one another. Sebastian found himself paired up with a ruddy redheaded young man who gave him a hostile kind of grin, as if he was anticipating the possibility of doing damage to him.
Sebastian smiled back, feeling incredibly smug. He was the Prince of Force. This little commoner would bow and scrape and regret that expression the moment his identity was revealed.
A soldier came down the line, handing wooden swords out to each of them. Sebastian was thrilled to heft the fake weapon in his hand. He’d hoped to hold steel, of course, but that would come.
“First form!”
The words appeared to be an order, and the order seemed to mean something to most of the trainees. To a man, they put their right feet forward straight ahead, then the left foot back and to the side, rotating their pelvises and torsos sideways, and extending the sword out in front of them, elbows bent. Sebastian did not grasp all the finer points of the position entirely, but he did his best to approximate it.
“STRIKE!”
Lucan boomed the order and the squires leaped forward, striking one another. There was a nearly uniform CRACK sound as a good dozen wood swords made contact with other wood swords.
“OW!” Sebastian cursed as his partner’s sword came past his nonexistent guard and made rough contact with his skull hard enough to raise a lump beneath the leather helm.
The simplicity of his opponent’s background was evident in the moon-roundness of his face and the robust, somewhat potato-like features of his visage. He grinned broadly and sneered at the ease with which he had passed Sebastian’s guard.
It hadn’t occurred to the prince that the other trainees would be much stronger and faster than him. He had assumed that because he was prince, son of Thadecus Force, he would naturally have the ability to dominate in any realm of combat.
“STRIKE!”
Sebastian’s head was still ringing when Lucan’s order came from what seemed like very far away.
His opponent’s stick came down again, this time cracking Sebastian on the side of the head hard enough to make him nauseous. His ears seemed to go hollow with the blow, and somewhere deep inside the very oldest parts of his mind — parts which seemed to have been alive long before he himself was born, if such a thing were possible, something moved.
Hissed.
Growled.
And struck.
Nobody else saw what happened next, for it happened all too fast, and perhaps even in a realm of being that did not quite appear in the common everyday visible realm. Sebastian saw it, though, seeing everything as if it were happening in incredibly slow motion.
For a split-second, flame licked at his assailant’s eyes. There was a sizzle and a hissing sound, like the sound one might hear if one were to toss water onto hot coals. A loud shriek followed, a cry of pure anguish as the hapless squire fell back, clutching at his face.
There was already a great deal of shouting and clashing and such from the drill, but as the young man fell out of the line, all attention was diverted to him. He threw himself upon the ground, writhing and shouting, clawing at his face.
Sebastian stood stock still, a faint smirk on his lips. He was not entirely sure what had just happened, but he felt deep in his bones that the right thing had happened. Someone unworthy had laid rough hands on him and had been punished as a result.
All around him, chaos was breaking out.
The fire had only touched the boy in front of him, but some form of the same energy seemed to have charged through the entire mob of would-be squires.
Though they were not harmed physically, they were all suddenly in an absolute rage. Sticks cracked against skulls and broke bones. The orderliness of the drill was broken and in its place was an ugly, brutal fray.
It did not touch Sebastian, though he found himself in the center of it. All around him, the faces of young men were twisted and contorted with feral rage, fists and sticks flying. He felt strangely disconnected from it all, and yet he also knew that somehow he had caused it. Never before had he ever been in such a situation. It had a somewhat dreamlike quality to it.
In the midst of chaos, a hand reached into the fray and dragged Sebastian bodily out by the back of his shirt. He came out of the tangle of limbs like a yapping, snarling pup, behaving just as wildly as any of the others until he was shaken out of it by the knight.
The second he was pulled free, the fight stopped. The young men who had been scrapping viciously enough to maim one another laid about the training ring in various states of damage. Soldiers and medics rushed from the sides to deliver aid, while Lucan bodily hauled Sebastian all the way out of the training grounds and off to one of the enclosed cloisters away from prying eyes.