Vote Chalk! Author's Note

Web Fiction Guide is doing a reader voted list of top web fiction. Eclipse Court is in there... If you like my stuff... go vote! http://www.topwebfiction.com/

Karen is up there with Philospher In Arms as well.

157 - He's doing WHAT???

Next morning I was rousted out of bed as 2^nd Amitzas dragged the covers off us, half-rolling Gannara and I out onto the floor. “UP! Get up. Spark of the Sun’s Ray, we are leaving. Now. I expect you in armour, up and on your horse in the next two tenths. Slave, assist the Mahid squire.”

He spun on his heel, left the door open, the Mahid squire came running in, so rushed he rattled as he carried my armour. What was going on? What? Even as I tried to wake up, tried to think I was scrambling. Gannara jumped. Are we under attack? What’s going on? Discovered? I didn’t dare dawdle. Gannara pulled straight up to tighten the last strap under my armpit, I had half my hair caught inside the chest and back plates, yanked on my gauntlets as I trotted out to my horse, set my foot in the squire’s hand and managed to settle into the saddle without going all the way over and falling on the other side. I bashed the stupid thing in the nose with my foot when it tried to bite me as I gathered up the reins and looked around.

Gannara stood where he held a pack, with Imperial Book, looking confused. There was no one else gathered. Only 2^nd Amitzas standing to one side, a timer held in his hand, the cover flipped open as he looked down into the box through its glass top. “Terrible,” he said. “I was generous with the initial time granted and you have exceeded it. Get down and give me fifty push-ups. This exercise will be repeated randomly until the Spark can be on horse inside a tenth. Good morning, Chip of the Radiant Light. You may do your Ascension practice in armour today, then breakfast. Three tenths.” He flipped the lid shut on his timepiece, nodded and turned his back on us. The Mahid squire went to the the horse’s head and waited for me to dismount so he could lead it away.

Oh. Thrilling. And I got to do Ten Tens in armour. That was crazy. I gathered up the reins, knowing this four-legged shen machine would do its best to act up. It half bucked as I swung off, but I had hold of it and expected it. This time I didn’t end up on my rear on the needle-covered forest floor. I wasn’t awake enough to be angry… I hadn’t caught up with myself yet.

“Slave. Give me that.” I held out my hand for the pack and ran it inside myself. I would have to have the book in the pack at all times. Ten fikken Tens in fikken, shennen armour, with 2^nd Amitzas giving himself fikken permission to fikken beat me if I’m less than perfect. And – fik --in front of the girls, too. I was starting to understood why solas swore so much. Then I got down and did my fifty, and ran around under the shadow of the trees to where the Mahid had laid out the floor, to begin my Ten Tens.

**

“Ailadas, pardon me.” I put my head down on the desk and gently rapped my forehead against it once, twice. The third time, instead of hitting the wood my head thumped against leather. He’d shoved the closed copy of Lives under my head so I hit the softer surface.

“Ahem… Spark… ahem…” I raised my head and stared at him a little blearily. “The Spark has been working very… ahem… very diligently and has an unfortunately severe guardian. Ahem… this one ventures to comment that when toxins are being, ahem, sweated out of the exalted’s body, knowledge cannot be crammed into it as fast as may be, ahem, desired.”

My hands trembled and I couldn’t see straight. Everything kept blurring. I raised my head and argued. “Ailadas, I’ve wasted so much time. I.. I.. “ the yawn forced itself out. “I have to keep on. I have to cram enough knowledge into my head. I have to… I have to…” I put my head back down on the book. I wasn’t sure where my hands and feet were and I was so dizzy and tired. I was so tired. I yawned and tried to lift my head.

The book was a lot softer the second time. It was so nice just to leave my head down. I was dreaming of flying, though I hated the wind that carried me… it held me too hard and hurt. But then the dream got better, the wind softer and wrapped itself around me like the arms of a friend.

**

I woke up wrapped up in feathers and in Gannara’s arms. His soft breath heated, then cooled the skin of my neck. I was holding onto him as hard as he held onto me. Mother… what is this? He should hate me. My Father made him a slave, tortured him into a shape pleasing to Father… Kurkas. Gave him to me and then wrenched him away and abused him and hurt him and violated him. And I laid a lash across his back. Now he’s clinging to me. I don’t understand. Brother. I’m not a good person. My existence has made your life Hayel. Because of me you were made a slave and abused as no one should be, and here you are, loving me. How strong are Yeolis? How can you? How can you? The clenching in my gut tells me how culpable I am.

My FATHER. Proved to me that my body will betray me every time. I carefully made sure my arm didn’t clench too hard on Gannara. He didn’t deserve to be woken up by my nightmares. I let the tears go down my temples. In the dark, in the unreal portion of the night tears were allowed. I had exhausted myself. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. I mustn’t. Balance. I had to find balance somewhere.

**

The Pages were back pages. There were three issues that Joras had brought back. Obviously the Press hadn’t been smashed. I read every word in the stack, Ailadas letting me do this as part of my lessons. He said it was necessary. The headline of the second copy stared me in the face. "IMPERATOR to DO ASCENSION RITUAL"

156 - Whipped Cream

Gannara zipped in after 2nd Amitzas left me and shut the door. “M… Minis?” He stopped and pressed his ear to the door, holding up a hand to me to be quiet for a moment. Then he came over and sat down on the bed next to me. “Did he… um… are you all right?”

“It would be pretty stupid of him to torture me when I’ll be the power over him one day, wouldn’t it? I’m starting to think he’s really tempted to risk it, sometime. I’m all right. He just taught me more about my family traditions.” I swallowed hard, once, twice. The fried bread kept coming back on me. “We’re all so ugly, so evil.”

He snorted. “You’re not.”

I shut the Imperial Book and re-wrapped it in the silver bag, folding it over carefully when I wanted to run and pace and scream, pound walls, break things. I thought back to when I opened cages and let birds free. Hundreds and hundreds of birds. “Did you know I just found out another way to create Hayel on earth for someone before they die? And my Sire killed my older brother that way for treason?”

“I’ll bet Ice Eyes loved telling you that.”

I pushed the Imperial Book back under my pillow. It made for a horrible sleep but it was there or in 2nd Amitzas’s control and I wouldn’t do that, even if I should have let him lock it up in his strongbox with the rest of our Eclipse Court treasury.

“Yeah, he was excited by it. I’ll bet he thinks of that when he stimulates himself.” I was too tired and overwhelmed to be anything but crude. I looked over at Gannara and was suddenly really tired of seeing him running around naked. “Put my robe on. You must be getting bug bitten out here.”

“You aren’t like him, if you think so.” He slid off the bed and wrapped himself up with my robe.

“Of course I think I’m like him. He and his disgusting family are my family whether I like it or not… and they’re less evil than my progenitor.”

He settled back down on the end of the bed. “I’m glad you’re you.” I could look at him, now that he was covered, my big sleeves falling away from his skinny wrists as he propped his chin on his fisted hands. Big brown eyes, forelock falling across his forehead. I was pleased that I wasn’t stimulated by how beautiful he was. I could appreciate it the way I could appreciate a fine vase or a perfect flower and not want to own it, or defile it. “He’s going to try and make you into a monster,” Gannara said.

“Yeha. Since he was the reflection of a monster he wants me to be something he can comfortably reflect.”

Gannara nodded. “You need to remember that you aren’t already a monster and that he’s going to have to fight to do it. I don’t think he’ll win that fight with you. If your… um… “ he choked up again, thinking of Kurkas. "If he couldn't manage to make you a monster then the black dogs won't be able to."

“Thanks for that. It’s all right… you don’t need to think of Kurkas… um… why not call him the fat guy if you need to call him anything at all?”

He managed a smile and it was sweet, his teeth flashing gold. “I can do that,” he managed to whisper. “Hey… why don’t I get you a snack of something?”

“We’ve got food someone might want to put in their mouths?”

“Yeah. Binshala said that there’s mixed fruit for tomorrow morning and she might be able to whip some cream,” he said.

“She did?” I couldn’t imagine my proper nurse whipping cream. “I didn’t think she could cook.”

He laughed, quietly. “Better than that Mahid Ice Eyes assigned to do the cooking. They’ve got her doing stuff because all that guy can cook is rabbit on the fire and fried bread and mush. He’s tried to bake some kind of bread four times now and messed it up grandly four times. I know how to cook better than he does but they won’t ask me.” He shrugged. “I’m actually having a little fun watching them all scramble around trying to do normal things, like normal people.”

I had to laugh. “And here I thought boiled barley mush for breakfast for ten days in a row was some kind of Mahid training.”

He grinned. “You know, Binshala has four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren on the way… all of them out of the city so she’s pretty sure they’re fine, don’t worry. Between the two of us I bet we can whip up that cream instead of just putting the poisonous crud into it and pouring it on your mush.”

“Really.” I had no idea about Binshala’s family at all and felt badly that I hadn’t thought of asking, even if she was only a woman. “That sounds wonderful. Um… will that mess up this diet they’ve got me on?”

“We won’t tell anyone about the whipped cream. You’ll have the fruit tomorrow morning anyway.”

“Thank you, Gannara.” He winked at me, slipped out of my robe and went out to fetch me something I might actually want to put in my mouth. I lay back and thought of the meals at the Puckered Fig, suddenly longing for the red-rootcrisps with the yellow sauce… or the earth-spike apple crisps with the red wine brown sauce. I could imagine the whole platter with the dozen different kinds of root slices, curling around the cluster of dipping sauces in the centre.

What had happened to Feliras’s Glory? Surely they wouldn’t have harmed an eating-house? The pink-fish mousse on smokey crackers, lemon on trout stuffed with butter, the blue trout so fresh it curled. I found myself dozing, dreaming of food, mouthful by mouthful. “Psst… Minis? If you’re asleep?”

“Hmm. No, no… oh marvelous!” He and Binshala had whipped the cream enough for it to be softly mounded on the sliced mixed fruits. Redfruit slices, with druplets, the blue globes almost the size of my pinky nail, greenapple pieces and yellow bows sliced. There was even some wine splashed onto the fruit before they put the cream on it.

He put it into my hands, the wooden bowl smooth against my palms. The colours were so bright and my arms and legs hurt so much and 2nd Amitzas had bruised me body and soul, Gannara’s kindness undid me. I choked back the tears but one hit the bowl before I scrubbed my hand across my face. I think he was busy putting my robe back on and didn’t see.

“Binshala said I was too skinny too and should have some. That’s why it’s so big. Since they don’t cook all she needs to say is that some went bad. They won’t notice.” He settled opposite me and offered me my choice of spoon.

I managed to smile at him. “Great. She’s right. You’re too skinny by far.” And plucked one of the spoons out of his fist. “Go ahead.” I wasn’t going to tell him it tasted funny to me because it wasn’t poisoned. We shared alternating spoonfuls, Gannara painted his top lip with the cream so I dabbed my nose with it and we sprayed each other with spattering laughter.

The Mahid insisting he stay so close to me was working, though not the way they thought. They figured I was hurting him, hating him, fixated on him. He was on my side. He liked me for some reason. He was my companion rather than my slave. I’d held onto him, hovered over him, clung to him for part of a day, a night, and another day. “Look, Gannara, I’m sorry… when they gave me water… when… I tried not to swallow it all, I’m sorry –“ He cut me off.

“Stop that. I know. They gave you the least amount they could, just to make sure you couldn’t hold back for me. I know it. It’s not your fault. They’d have killed me. If you need me to forgive you, yeah, I forgive you. But you saved me, you didn’t do anything that needs forgiveness.” He was talking much much more fluently now, as he got passionate about it. “So, stop that. You’re forgiven… and thank you. Now we’re done with that. Can we finish this?”

And quit talking about it. Right. Of course. “Sure, Gannara. All settled. Have the last redfruit slice.”

Author's Note - New Chapter One Posted

The new chapter one is up! Please let me know if it works as a new opening. Less weird words for people who found it hard to get the first time.

I'm so close to the story that I'm not sure I covered all the information necessary for a first chapter so I would appreciate your help. Thank you in advance!

155 - Going to the Lock

--- GRAPHIC WARNING --- some images will be very disturbing

_________________________________________________

I was told to wash in the stream afterward and found out why Chevenga thought my baths were warm. My teeth chattered and Gannara rubbed me down hard to try and warm me up after. My stomach was still upset enough that it felt like a solid knot in my middle as I was bundled into a fresh set of padding and back into my armour. I was not going to be allowed rest from wearing it until the sun went down.

“You will be living in armour for now, Spark. It is a war and you are late to begin the training. You will wear this until you no longer notice. You will wear armour until it is like your second skin. You will be allowed out of it to dress for dinner, and to practice your courtly manners with your betrothed but that will only be for the last bead after dinner.”

Amitzas wore the Mahid armour, in onyxine just the same as the rest of their uniforms. I would not have thought he would be comfortable in it, having been a city Mahid rather than a field operative, or a battle-crow, but he seemed completely at ease in it.

I swallowed my simmering anger as best I could. The histories said that Ilesias the Great could wear full plate as easily as if it were spider-silk. Chevenga, I was sure, was the same. I wondered if our champions… the men who had won the Champion of the Rejin medallion and title wore armour like that.

“Yes, ser.”

Wearing armour constantly like this must be the way Amitzas learned to be comfortable in it and he was teaching me the way he was taught.

**

I sat, staring down at my plate, so exhausted that I did not want to eat the fried bread presented to me on the Imperial porcelainware. 2^nd Amitzas’s voice came from behind me. “You will eat, Radiance of the Sun.”

“Yes, my Mentor.” It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a lot of practice forcing food and I cut it into as many pieces as I could to make it easier to swallow.

“Your lesson this evening will be with me, Spark. I require that you apply yourself to the food with more alacrity.” I turned around to stare at him, then checked and turned back to the congealed grease on my plate. Probably some other inventive form of physical conditioning. He can torture me in the name of training.

“Of course, my Mentor. I am finished. Mirror…” I addressed Kyriala and inwardly flinched at my wavering tones. I really, really wanted my voice to settle down. “If Milady will excuse me.” She rose as I did, bent her knee to me.

“Of course, Spark of the Sun’s Ray.” Her voice was so lovely compared to 2^nd Amitzas’s dead one. I found myself wishing she’d at least look up when she spoke to me. I felt suspended between the two of them… He was all darkness and she was silver… or white… or gold… I wasn’t sure. My head was hurting again and I was being fanciful.

2^nd Amitzas very properly escorted me back to the cabin. He didn’t seem to notice Gannara, who had become my shadow. Thank the… I was thankful that most Arkans tended to not see the slaves in the background until something was required, and then they’d better be right there.

“Stay outside, slave.” 2^nd Amitzas commanded. So much for Gannara becoming invisible. There was a silver and black book on the chair and he picked it up and sat down. “You will require the Imperial book, Spark of the Sun’s Ray.”

I would? I fished the Imperial Book in its silvery wrapping out from under my pillow and sat down upon the bed with it in my lap. “This, Spark of the Sun’s Ray, is the Mahid Book that matches and elucidates the Divine Book. 1^st Meras entrusted it to me and I will be instructing you with it as a reference.”

He flipped it open to a marked page and looked up again. “This is regarding the first silver page in the Divine Text. Turn to it.” I crossed my legs to support the weight of the Book and paged past the first, now almost blank pages, past the golden ones, past several plain pages to a silver one.

There was an image on it that reminded me of a room in the Marble Palace that I had never seen used. It was a plain, dark gray marble with a metal and glass box in the middle of a pool of water. There was nothing else in the room but a double handled mechanism to one side, and a throne facing the glass and metal-bound door. This image, in the book, seemed to be of the box… or the door of it.

The words on the page were not in any kind of Arkan that I recognized, but 2^nd Amitzas spoke up. “This is The Lock. It is the means of execution for Imperial treason and Imperial treason alone.”

I looked up at him, sitting there totally upright, both feet perfectly parallel, perfectly flat, his hands exactly placed on that little silver book and my stomach knotted hard. “Imperial treason.”

“Yes. The last time it was used, I had the honour to serve your Divine Father, rest He in Selestialis.” He wanted to tell me. I felt the roaring of nausea in my throat. He’d enjoyed himself. I made my hands metal, iron, steel that they not shake. “That was thirteen years ago, Spark.”

I nodded as if I expected it. “That would have been for Seventeenth Kurkas, I assume.” I had my gaze locked on his face as if intensely interested while inside I had turned to water, to fire. He didn’t show a thing when I revealed I knew about my vanished older brother, probably assuming that Sixteenth Kurkas had told me.

“Yes, Divine Spark. The Lock works on a very simple principle. The condemned is escorted into the chamber and the door is sealed. The top valve is opened and the whole chamber is filled with water and the top air valve is sealed.”

“And the person in it drowns.”

“If the Imperator so commands, Spark. But more commonly the water is then forced out into the pool below where it drains.” I thought I understood that someone could be repeatedly drowned and revived, but 2^nd Amitzas tapped the silver book with one rigid finger. “When the chamber is sealed and the water forced out -- by this pump -- The air is forced out with it. It creates a clear place that appears to be full of air but is empty of it. The person drowns as their blood attempts to follow the water and the air out of the chamber; generally out of their lungs, eyes, ears and other orifices.” The man actually began to smile, describing this. Was I hearing this? Was I having a nightmare? Why was I hearing this? 


He smiled more widely. “The flesh boils, slowly. Eyes burst. The process can be repeated a number of times because it takes a certain time for the tissues to be so coagulated that the criminal’s lungs become incapable of expanding or contracting.” My brother had been my age. Just second threshold.

“I --- see.” I actually couldn’t see. I blinked to try and clear the hideous image out of my mind. My older brother actually hadn’t had his throat cut as in my dream. This was so much worse. I managed to swallow against my dry throat, imagining the flesh of my body boiling as I struggled to pull in air that was not there. “Like… creating Hayel inside the chamber. Of course.” Show nothing show nothing show nothing.

“An initial taste of the traitor’s coming eternity. As an instructor I am pleased the Spark understands so quickly.” The smile had vanished from his face again and I was happy it was gone. “The protocols for such a death are safely translated here.” He gestured slightly with the book. “And the written translation of that page I understand is later in the Divine Book.”

“Ah. I shall have to read it, then. I am grateful for my guardian’s careful instruction.”

“It is necessary that the Imperator know all in His power, Spark.” He rose and I resolutely turned my eyes to his face, for he made no effort to hide the arousal of his vile organs that teaching me this gave him. I was actually grateful that I had eaten before. I would have something to vomit once he left.  

“Good evening, Spark of the Sun’s Ray. Until tomorrow.”

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

154 - Your conditioning is abysmal

I could now run all the way around the clearing, do a set of push-ups and then run again without throwing up more than the once and as I did my warm-up circuits I could see a half dozen of the Mahid marking out the middle with cords and stakes.

Amitzas supervised both the work and my progress and after I had done ten circuits he called me over. “It is necessary that you resume your Ten Tens practice.” As though I had not mentioned it to him just this morning. I stared at him. Beyond the laboring Mahid I could see my betrothed sitting on a silk carpet, in the shade of the massive trees. To the side on the brown needles, Binshala sat on a low stool. In the shadows I could see Gannara running for some errand a Mahid had ordered.

The instruction book, that was normally in Tobeas’s hands, was now in 2^nd Amitzas’s. Father had not seen fit to send me my dekinas, presumably since he thought I had sufficient training in how to use religion to fake piety for the masses.

The book in Amitzas’s hands described every move of my Ascension ritual down to the position of fingers and toes and where one was to breathe in and where to breathe out and where it was essential that I hold my breath that the Gods not kill me. He obviously would have me do my sacred practice where everyone who cared to could see. Just like I would do the rite in front of all Arko.

Amitzas slapped me across the shoulder with his corrector, raising another welt so I must have let my emotion show too much on my face. “You will practice every day from now on, as if we were in the Marble Palace.”

“Of course, Mentor.”

The lines of chalk on the brown needles and the cords staked out to give me my spacing. In my mind I could see the practice corridor from the Marble Palace overlooked by the statue of Muunas. Here there was only a massive tree. I took a deep breath and called out the opening Word, the Word in the language of the Gods, that would open the Temple. The word stuck in my mouth.

“That cannot happen on the day you do the Ten Tens, Spark. Again.” 2^nd Amitzas’s dead voice at my shoulder. There was no ritual reading overtop my practice this day. 

I managed to force the word out clearly and bowed to the ground to begin. Even the new Imperator bows to the Gods. Amitzas walked beside me as I went through it and if I hadn’t hated him before my emotion deepened for him as he strolled beside me reading the instruction very carefully.

He was a machine presuming to train me on my connection to the Gods. It was something so mechanical, so hideously rigid, I realized how my father must have made it through, not believing in the Gods at all. Devotion by rote or the Temple would kill him. He must have done his own training, precisely this way.

My thoughts and my anger distracted me and I did not take the position to Mella perfect and Amitzas leapt to slap the offending hand into position.

I was suddenly terribly self conscious, even if I had been doing this for the past seven years. The women were watching me and it was very different from having my companions with me. It was the women. And Gannara had finished whatever errand he’d been sent on and knelt down beside where Ilesias lay on his belly, his chin on his fists, watching me too.

There was something else different at Aras’s station as well. Ten Mahid standing, waiting, all armed with straight swords. Ah, they would be taking the place of Aras’s blades in the Temple. The practice corridor in the Marble Palace didn’t have them. In the Temple itself there was an archway before Aras where I was told the blades would emerge. Kurkas had a slight scar on the side of one foot, from his Ascension, where he'd been cut. Or did while he was alive.

I wondered what the Gods would do, since no one would ever do the Ascension ritual again. I could not imagine anyone but an Arkan doing it. Though Chevenga had more sacredness in his little finger than Kurkas had in his whole body, than I had, than we had, in our whole Empire. It was why the Gods chose him to be the new Imperator.

I moved through the Ten Tens, dancing the motions, saying the prayers, singing the songs, smoothly enough until I got to the ten blades. The Mahid waited until I sank into the position then extended the ten blades around me, one at a time, under Amitzas’s direction from the book and I had to hold the awkward position much longer than normal.

Amitzas’s face appeared and disappeared out of my vision, as he measured my final position, felt the pressure of the blade across the back of my bent neck and eased my head forward a fraction. Ah. It was less practice for me, but to teach him how the ritual should look, disguised as him instructing me.

I kept my countenance and held my position. I couldn’t fight him every moment, or let him know that I was fighting him. He was actually so locked into his own attention, his own view of the world, he didn’t see any slip of mine that would betray my true attitude, my true intentions.

After my practice Gannara ran up with my armour and even though I was breathless I stood to have it strapped on. Then I was allowed to rest. I flung myself on the grass between Binshala on her stool, and Gannara kneeling on the ground. Ilesias ran over and started thumping on my armor, making it ring and bang. “Hey! Hey! I’m not a drum, Ilesias, I’m in here!” I was too tired to try and tickle him but he sat on my rigidly armored chest and drummed his heels on my protected sides. “I should have started wearing plate armor moons ago since it saves me from you!”

He looked down at me, grinning, and slid down to sit at my side, between my arm and my chest. 

“Minis! You’re a warrior!”

“No, Ilesias. I’m just learning.” I looked up at the heavy tree branches, hiding us from the sky beyond and just tried to catch my breath. The Mahid were taking the rope markers up, to not leave any sign of our presence.

Amitzas loomed over me, a black column shutting out the peaceful view. “Up! On your feet, Spark.” Binshala caught up Ilesias. My brother looked at 2^nd Amitzas with a thunderous look on his baby face as I heaved upright.

“Shh, Coronet. Shh.” She hustled him over to Kaita, just as he began roaring. “WANT MINIS! WANT MINIS NOW! BROZZER NOW NOW NOW!” Flailing his arms and legs, he fought to get out of her arms as he yelled.

2^nd Amitzas had focused on me, ignoring the women and the baby. He actually began to turn toward the screaming little boy as I jumped up. “Ready, my guardian!” I unsheathed my borrowed sword. He checked and drew his own.

“Good.” He raised his sword to an enguard position. “Woman! Women! Make the Coronet be silent. He will endanger our position!”

I stepped back. “My guardian. May I attempt something for my brother?”

“It is the women’s work. Defend!” He swung, overhead and I blocked, forced to use the same moves he’d made me practice earlier. The shock rang through my hands and he knocked the sword out of them. “This is not your dance-master’s class Nor ‘the so-called’ Bellicose Arts’.” He said calmly and stepped back. My Go—left foot, he and I agreed on something, that my sword-master was an idiot? In the background I could hear Ilesias hiccup as someone managed to distract him to silence. “Pick it up.”

I did and tried to block as he came after me again. He knocked the sword away a second time, this time staggering me. I tottered sideways, dragged by the weight of the armour. I managed to reel over and grab the sword up, and lurched back trying to get the heavy blade up in time but he was a machine and bludgeoned it out of my hands a third time.

Angry now, I dove for it and scooped it up in both hands, fingers full of needles, rolled onto my back just as he brought his blade down a fourth time and the blades cracked together just over my forehead. I held it, teeth set. “Better. You need to realize how much your will is part of your sword training.”

“Yes Ser!”

“Get up. Your conditioning is still abysmal. Run the perimeter again, then we will resume.”

Winner!

Chevenga is tied with Ilesias. Woo Hoo! Hey, Cheng don't play opposite kids or animals! WC Fields knew that... oh... you said that in your post about your poll. hmmm. Well, great minds think alike. He's still a baby so we'll see about writing more about him later...