A week later, Will rode into the green quiet of the woods.
Today marked his first genuine trial: combat under open skies.
According to Tris, the grizzled veteran overseeing his training, Will had plenty of brawn and zero field sense.
For all his grueling drills, the boy remained as delicate and untouched as a cloistered nun, having never crossed blades with so much as a stray timber wolf.
The complaint was fair enough.
Every time Old Cui scored a blow with a practice blade, Will’s surging vitality sealed the split flesh before a drop could ruin the dirt.
A woods wolf carried no Chaos magic, spat no burning acid, and breathed no flames, yet a split second of carelessness would still see a man stripped to the bone for dinner.
Curiously, the natural beasts of field and forest had once held dominion over this world until the Conjunction of the Spheres tore the heavens apart.
Legions of nightmarish horrors spilled across the planes, driving the indigenous beasts and the Elder Races into the margins of jagged peaks and shadowed canopies.
The Conjunction had bridged alien spheres, bleeding multiple realms into one; even humankind had set foot on the soil of this Continent through that ancient rift.
“How about it, lad? Knees knocking yet?”
“Honestly, Old Cui, blood is pumping. I’m ready for a real scrap.”
Will rubbed his calloused palms together.
After months of hammering sword drills and fortifying his frame, it was about time to see what all that sweat was worth.
Tris leaned casually against an ash trunk.
He was not an imposing giant of a man, but the lean, corded muscle across his shoulders carried the hard lessons of steel and bone.
By his own telling, the veteran had grown up in a temple orphanage, enlisted the day he came of age, and survived three brutal wars.
He had commanded a regiment, put down countless men and monsters, and finally grown sick of the blood, returning to the sanctuary of Melitele to stand watch at its gates.
Will accepted the steel blade with both hands, fastening the scabbard snugly against his belt.
Tris had picked it up from Moy’s forge just yesterday.
It was a well-crafted Skellige-style longsword, the straight blade running roughly ninety centimeters from crossguard to tip, with an eighteen-centimeter grip wrapped in dark leather.
It balanced cleanly in a single hand or two, more than enough iron to handle predatory beasts.
Tris pushed through the thickets on their right, leading the way without a glance at the sky.
He walked the tangled deer trails as though strolling through his own bedchamber, bringing them up to the crest of an earthen rise.
Through the leaves below, Will spotted a lone, gray-backed wolf sleeping near the edge of a shallow creek.
Its flanks were crisscrossed by ragged, faded scars.
In the wild, aging wolves were eventually driven from their packs, left to starve or die alone.
Without question, the brute lying by the brook was a hardened survivor of a hundred scraps.
“Since when did you go soft, Old Cui? I figured you’d pitch me straight into the middle of a pack.”
Nobody understood Will’s unnatural healing better than Tris.
During their sparring sessions, Will had taken to stripping down to plain breeches so his torn shirts wouldn’t go to waste under the veteran’s blade.
“Don’t get cocky over an old rogue, Will. Cut that one down first, then we can talk about what comes next.”
Tris jerked his chin toward the gully, leaving the path open.
Will drew his steel with a quiet rasp, stepping down the slope with measured tread.
The moment his awareness locked onto the target, he willed Life Drain into motion.
A faint green light flickered along the beast’s pelt, but the siphon slipped off like water from grease.
The old wolf’s Constitution sat comfortably above six points.
No easy shortcut here.
Down by the stream, the wolf’s black snout twitched against the moss.
It pushed up on all fours in an instant, fixing Will with a murderous glare.
The cloudy film across its eyes gave way to a savage, blood-veined red.
Muscular cords bunched along its haunches, a pale plume of steam venting from its nostrils as a low, rattling growl vibrated behind bared fangs.
Instinct drilled into Will’s muscle took over.
He dropped his stance, planting both hands on the leather wrap.
Right hand high by his chest, point leveled toward the snout, left foot forward and right back, ready to drive.
Shing!
He shoved off the dirt, the longsword thrusting straight for the beast’s left eye.
The old wolf lacked its youthful speed, yet raw cunning carried it sideways, its head snapping clear of the thrust.
The edge skimmed across its throat and down along the ribs, carving a shallow red furrow.
Twisting inside the guard, the wolf snapped its jaws wide and lunged for his throat.
At this distance, the sour reek of dried gore and rot blew straight into Will’s nostrils.
Careless!
It was his first real brush with feral violence.
Realizing his opening thrust had overcommitted his weight, Will drove his left boot into the beast’s flank, shoving it off to regain distance.
The wolf’s claws clipped his forearm on the rebound.
A split second of sharp stinging gave way to a surge of green vitality; three weeping gashes sealed shut before the red could run.
The pain vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
Will kept his tip circling, working cautious probing sweeps to bleed the beast’s endurance.
Behind him, he could already hear the colorful insults Old Cui was preparing to throw at his posture.
He had lunged without anchoring his base, leaving his flanks wide open.
If his foot had caught on a root, those jaws would have crushed his windpipe.
Seconds dragged into minutes as the old rogue’s breathing turned ragged.
Shallow cuts dotted its flanks, and its rear hocks began to quiver under its weight.
The wolf dropped low, preparing a desperate lunge.
Will did not give it the chance.
He read the shift in weight, stepped inside the leap, and drove thirty inches of Skellige steel clean into its exposed abdomen.
Thwack!
A strangled yelp broke from the beast’s throat as its head slumped forward.
Will ground his teeth, veins knotting along his forearms as he hoisted the dying wolf on the skewered blade.
He triggered the siphon.
A radiant sphere of green essence ripped from the animal, sinking through his hands into his chest.
With a clean snap of his wrists, he tossed the carcass into the tall grass.
The old wolf twitched once and went still.
[Experience +10]
Just as I thought!
A surge of excitement cleared Will’s fatigue.
As long as a target took critical trauma and its Constitution dipped beneath the threshold, the skill worked as a finishing blow.
It was practically an execution strike for wounded prey.
“Not terrible. Half expected you to trip over your own boots and break your nose,” Tris’s drawl came drifting down from the crest.
“You sell me short, Old Cui!” Will grinned broadly, wiping a spot of dark grease from the steel with his sleeve, quite pleased with his handiwork.
A dangerous smirk tugged at the veteran’s mouth.
Tris strode down to the carcass, reached into his tunic, and scattered a fistful of gray powder over the cooling blood.
A thick, copper stench bloomed into the clearing, sweet and sickeningly sharp.
“Don’t go puffing your chest out just yet. Remember what I told you about my first morning in the infantry?”
Will frowned, trying to place the story.
Was this part of the drill?
The old soldier had once mentioned freezing up on his first deployment, charging headlong into an enemy spearhead like a blind ox.
An iron point had punched clean through his bicep, but he had gouged the pikeman’s eyes out with his bare hands to take his first head.
Because it was Tris’s first taste of military merit, the tale had stuck in Will’s mind.
Rustle…
snap.
A dry branch splintered in the dense underbrush to their left, snapping Will out of his thoughts.
A sudden, cold prickle crawled up his neck.
He flared his life awareness.
Dozens of pale green embers ignited beneath the canopy, spreading in a wide, silent arc that closed around the clearing like a tightening noose.
Will whipped around, staring at the veteran in disbelief, his eyes darting to the powder staining the dead wolf’s fur.
“Tris, you miserable old bastard! Are you even human? You actually threw me into a whole pack!”
Tris didn’t spare him a reply.
With the fluid grace of an alley cat, the veteran scrambled up the trunk of a broad oak, settling onto a heavy bough ten feet off the dirt.
“Don’t forget your edge, little Will.”
Beneath his calm mask, Tris kept his knuckles white against the stock of his loaded hand crossbow.
He had watched that freakish regeneration knit skin in heartbeats; a pack of forest mongrels couldn’t tear the boy apart if they tried.
But Will needed the soft edges knocked off him if he was ever going to survive the road.
He had scouted this ridge three times this past week.
It was only a minor pack, six or seven hungry beasts at most.
The veteran’s finger rested light against the trigger nut.
If things turned ugly, a steel quarrel would find the pack leader’s skull in the blink of an eye.