Shara whirled around, her hair floating in the wind as it streamed out behind her. Her eyes fell upon the row of scarecrows in the practice field. She yelled at the scarecrow nearest to her, as if it had personally murdered her entire family, then began.
She grasped the air, tightening her connection to the source and focusing it on the wood and hay and fabric that made up the poor dummy. Centering the pressure of the air in its chest, she ripped it apart from ten paces away before unsheathing the daggers at her hips and launching herself toward the next scarecrow. She flew through the air, suspended inches above the golden, dried grass, gaining momentum rather than losing it as she held the form for a kick. Rather than kicking the dummy, she threw her first dagger. The dagger reached its mark as she grasped at the air with her empty hand and jerked upwards, pushing her body up while she moved to angle it down. She crashed down, dagger first, into the ‘brain’ of the last scarecrow, wrapping her legs around its torso and tumbling to the ground with it. She rolled and pushed herself back to her feet, whirling around again to view the devastated dummies behind her.
A clap rose from beside her. She turned to find Hafi and James Cross had ended their conversation and turned to watch her. She felt a blush of embarrassment creep up into her face, feeling silly that she had forgotten about them and gotten caught up in her imagined battle. They had witnessed her intensity toward the destruction of inanimate objects. She played it up, dropping her hands to her side and pulling up skirts she was not wearing in a faux curtsy. Holding that position, head down, she heard Hafi chuckle. She smirked up at him, then sauntered over to the fence.
“What are you slackers up to? Clearly, not practicing.” She glanced at Hafi, hoping he would be her social lubricant.
He smiled at her and clapped James on the back. “James here was just telling me about how good he is with a sword.”
Shara arched an eyebrow at the boy. “Bringing a sword to a source fight?”
He matched her smirk. “Are you going to teach me about how bad an idea that is?”
Shara stepped back several paces, unable to resist the urge to show off. She maintained eye contact with James as she flung her arms out to her sides and concentrated on the charge building up in the air and on her palms until they crackled and bristled with energy. She shot it up into the air beside her in short, repeated bursts of lightning.
He laughed at her, hopping lithely over the rickety fence and unsheathing his small sword. He held it comfortably in his gloved hand, letting it hang beside him as though it was a natural extension of his arm. The hilt had intricate designs carved into it that weaved over each other until the top of the hilt came to form the head of a snake. Runes were carved into the blade itself, starting just an inch or two below the hilt where a sharp spike was formed in the metal on each side. The runes would dampen the effectiveness of any Source casts used against it. It was an excellent sword to bring to a source fight.
Shara focused on her hands again, the tingling growing in her palm again. She placed her hands together, palms out toward James, but slightly off-center from his chest, so as not to kill him if he missed the catch. She let the power ripple forward, channeling it into a bolt that arced from her hands to James.
He brought the sword up in front of him with one hand, bracing against the power of her ability with his other arm. The electricity shot into the sword. The runes lit up, flashing sparks of blue and yellow before fading away. He winced and pulled his bracing arm away from the blade, shaking it down at his side. His leather glove had a deep burn mark that matched the width of the sword.
Shara smiled at him. “Another?”
He fell back into a defensive stance, but prepared this time to brace with both hands on the hilt. She let the charge build in her hands again, releasing it in a spherical formation this time.
Let’s see how the sword handles something that can’t be cast directly.
The sphere of lightning traveled through the air at a slower speed which allowed her to Ambercast against the dry grass at James’ feet, thrusting it up into the path of the lightning ball. The grass caught fire and Shara controlled the burn. She continued feeding it grass as it moved toward him. Her lightning ball became pure flame just as it hit the sword. She watched as the sword lit up in red and orange hues, absorbing the energy of the Source, but the burning grass immediately extinguished when it touched the runes, scattering the embers around the point of impact. Black cinder spots appeared on James’ clothing, along with small holes where embers had successfully landed. He jumped back, dropping his sword to pat at one spot that had penetrated deeply enough to hit his skin.
He shook his head. “Alright, you win. For now. We will have to do this again when I am properly armored up.”
He smiled at her and she found herself smiling back, “I look forward to that.”
Hafi nodded toward James, “We have very few rune swords in our ranks. Do you mind?” He gestured towards it and James balanced the sword on his forearm, offering the hilt to Hafi. Hafi turned to Shara, “I just want to see how my armor absorbs the shock. Aim carefully and don’t hold back.”
Shara charged up another bolt of lightning as Hafi sat down, pulling both knees up to his chest. He placed the sword parallel to the ground in front of his knees, halfway up his shins. Bracing it with his palm out behind the hilt with one hand and the other palm out holding the tip of the blade.
“You ready?” she asked.
Hafi dug his heels into the muddy grass, “Do it. Don’t miss.”
She let the shock fly forward; the sword lit up again, the bright flash completely obscuring Hafi from her vision. The light was so intense that she could barely make out drag marks in the grass where the force had pushed him back a few feet. She resisted putting her hand over her eyes and squinted to watch a pulse of blue and yellow flash from the hilt to the tip of the sword and a discharge of electricity arced out of the end and looped back on both sides of the blade until it found the spikes just below the hilt where the first rune in the series was carved. The sword continued to pulse for a second as the power dissipated.
James’ face was frozen with his mouth wide open and his eyes darting between the sword and Hafi. Hafi glanced over and saw the boy and started laughing so hard he fell back into a seated position in the grass. Shara giggled, “I take it you’ve never seen what your sword could actually do?”
James shook his head, “I had no idea—how did you...?” He turned to Hafi, “You could have died if it hadn’t worked!”
Hafi was still laughing. Shara shrugged and walked towards the General, offering him a hand to help him up as she looked at James, “He nearly dies all the time. At least this time, it was doing something useful.” She turned and smiled broadly at the General as he grabbed onto her hand and she helped him rise to his feet.
“Moderately useful.” Hafi turned to James, “If you decide to ignore your father’s little deal, I have an idea for a way we can use this without putting you in full armor.”
Shara looked at James and arched her eyebrow, “Father’s little deal?”
James shuffled uncomfortably, “One of the things my father negotiated when we came here was to remove the requirement for me to join the army. I want to enlist, I am just trying to find the right time to do it…”
Shara looked over at Hafi and could see the impatience on his face. So, he’s used all his tricks.
“Well, I can’t speak for the old General here, but I’m sure if my mother knew that I could have a personal protective detail with a rune sword when we deploy day after tomorrow, she could smooth things over. If that’s what you really want to do.”
“Personal detail?!” Hafi objected.
“Day after tomorrow?!” James cried.
Shara’s quiet morning at home was disrupted. She paced the floor of her room, listening to the quarreling in the room below between James and his father. They were blocking her way to the kitchen to get her morning tea. She had thought about how to slip by, but that wouldn’t work. Then, enough had gotten through that she knew what the fight was about: James had enlisted and his father had just found out. The fact that he had the deal to avoid conscription for James seemed to only fuel his anger, rather than being able to accept the fact that James was willing to do his duty.
Parents.
Poor Hafi had come to the house to fetch her for a quick training session before their afternoon deployment. He must have mentioned how grateful he was to have James to Kingston. Now, he was stuck down there with them and Shara was up here, dressed but not caffeinated and not training. She heard movement from her parents’ room then the creak of the stairs next to her bedroom.
Mother going to smooth things over.
She slipped out of her door and followed her mother down, keeping enough distance to not be drawn into the argument. She peered around the corner and looked at Hafi, sitting on the armchair while James and Kingston stood in front of him, blocking him into the comfortable chair. Shara had only seen Hafi more uncomfortable around crying women, and that was usually because he had just told them that someone they loved had died. He saw her spying and rolled his eyes at her as Ayna stepped in to calm the situation.
“Kingston, I understand your concerns, completely. I am sure Hafi can think of a post for James that will keep him out of harms away as much as possible.” She glared at Hafi and Shara smiled to herself, wondering if the rehearsal of this moment was only clear to her because she had seen her mother plan and act out so many moments like this. Ayna took Kingston’s arm with a gentle motion and pulled toward the kitchen, “Let’s go figure out the details. We can finalize it when Hafi brings the kids back from practice.”
Kingston glanced around at James and Hafi, as if expecting them to continue the argument, before he took a step behind Ayna. As soon as they cleared the area in front of the chair, Hafi pushed himself to his feet. He had his armor on, and seemed to dwarf Kingston and Ayna, even though Kingston was taller and looking down at him, “Yes, of course, there are plenty of administrative positions around the camp that will keep him away from skirmishes. Shara herself will need a protective detail during any confrontations and will be far from the front lines.”
Shara smirked, Mom and I will turn you into a politician eventually, Hafi. While what he had said was technically true, Shara knew as well as he did that being kept away from skirmishes was only a good promise until the armies went against each other in a full battle. Every one in the camps would have to fight then, from commanders to cooks. The promise of protective detail on her was only as good as their positioning in battle. If Hafi needed to put James elsewhere, he would. She looked over at Kingston to see if he would take the bait.
Kingston nodded with a reluctance that implied he understood perfectly well that the post was not nearly as safe as Hafi and Ayna were trying to make him feel that it was.
Ayna smiled at him and pulled softly on his arm, “Come, lets get some breakfast and let the kids go practice with Hafi.” She guided him towards the kitchen.
If Hafi could skip in his armor, Shara was sure he would have skipped out the front door once Kingston had turned his focus away from them. James placed a hand in his pocket and casually sauntered behind Hafi, but Shara would see the lightness in his steps as well as they made their way toward the hall where she hid.
She sprang out from the corner, “Nice work, my children!” She pat Hafi’s armor in a motherly fashion and then stepped next to James, looping her arm through his, “Are you excited?”
James gave her a sheepish smile, “Not as excited as you are, but I am glad it worked out.”
“Me too,” Hafi interjected, “Otherwise, I would have had my armorers up all fucking night making something that was worthless.” As he stepped out the front door, he stooped down and picked up a shield that was leaning against the outer wall of the house. He handed it to James, “I made some educated guesses on sizing, but it’ll do since we are in a time crunch. If we all make it back alive, we can improve on it.”
“Umm—thanks.” James grabbed the shield, the weight of it becoming apparent as it transitioned from Hafi to him.
“I’ll show you the design when we get to the field.”
Shara admired the shield as Hafi showed it to James. It was rounded around the top, curving back to deflect above and past the wearer, but pointed at the bottom, allowing James to kneel and slam it into the ground and then support it with his full weight. The sword slotted in to the front of the shield horizontally, and there were three ‘catch’ slots built to hold the sword and brace from a low, mid or high position. On each of the three slots for the sword, latches popped down between the sword’s hilt and spikes that started the rune series on the blade, securing the sword in to the shield, if the wearer so desired.
The armorers built the shield like Hafi’s own armor. Composite could defend against traditional melee weapons, and it was backed with replaceable diamene sheets that could handle projectiles, as long as you didn’t take a hit in the same section of sheeting twice. The diamene was highly reactive to Source, however the composite was not, so it provided protection from compromise for the sheets. Shara wanted to test how much, but also knew there was no time to build a second shield if she broke this one.
“You always want to catch from the middle catch point if you can, but once a caster realizes how the shield and sword work together, they’ll try to put you off balance by sending their casts off center. The shield can take a source hit on its own, if a catch misses completely, but even an indirect catch should be dampened by the sword and help the shield take less damage—a barrage of complete misses will break the shield’s integrity. Don’t be afraid to swivel it and tilt to get a partial or full catch.” Hafi knelt behind it, showing James how to brace from one side and use his free leg and hand on the other side as counter balance points to move the shield. He swiveled to show James the side and fingered one of three small metal latches, “This trigger will lock the sword in place to allow for you to move without holding the sword, but keep in mind, you’re sacrificing mobility with the sword for mobility with the shield. Releasing the sword from the shield takes a few seconds, which can be a lifetime if someone jumps you in a melee.” He stood and handed the shield back to James, “Practice moving with it. Lock and unlock the sword into the catch slots until you can do it without thinking.” He took a few paces back and stood next to Shara, calling out notes and tips as James worked through the new series of movements he had hours to learn.
“We can move closer to the fence, if you need something to attack!” Shara called out.
James swiveled the shield to the side and glared out at her, “Your puny fences can’t handle me!”