Chapter 1 #4
“A well-placed arrow through the vital organs, even if it’s not from a forged bow, could easily kill a wolf with a single shot. A dakya’s skin is far thicker, and even a shot that looks like it should kill doesn’t always do the trick.”
“But the forgings…” Nevedya added.
Sometime during a person’s nineteenth or twentieth year, they went on a pilgrimage to one of the temples around Istri to forge the raw, natural magic that everyone was born with in one of the wells.
Until then, the milky-white raw magic could only be pushed out of the body as a shield; the more opaque the shield, the more magic a person had.
While less useful than forged magic, the shields were still amazing protection for the children and youth of Istri.
Levek glanced at her then, and Iryana immediately knew the direction of his thoughts.
Iryana would turn twenty that year, Levek only a year behind her.
They would be next to be forged, and while once that would have meant choosing from one of the five types of gods’ magic to forge theirs with, things were far more difficult now.
Traditionally, most guardians were metal-forged, as were most soldiers. Metal-forgings were the strongest, the sharpest, and made the best melee weapons. And most importantly now, they were the only weapons that seemed to easily do much damage to the beasts.
If only the military hadn’t become so corrupt as to seize control over all the local metal wells. To cripple everyone else so that posts like the Kleesolds’ had no choice but to pay for their “protection.” No chance for their youth to become metal-forged.
Iryana couldn’t stop her fists from clenching.
Their settlement only had air wells, and their ability to make their way to other settlements to try and access another type of magic was extremely limited.
They had managed to get her sister to a water temple—though the cost had likely been enormous for the brigade to let them cross their territory to do so, but every other guardian after Dinhal had been air-forged.
As Iryana would be.
“Misha, Nevedya. Stay here. Oh, and Iryana, you too,” Uncle Dinhal ordered. “The rest of you, ten laps around the house walls.”
The cousins sighed, but they didn’t argue, just took swigs of water and started jogging toward the courtyard gate. They said goodbye to the younger cousins, but didn’t bother saying anything to Iryana. She wouldn’t have expected them to.
Iryana just wanted to get out of there, so she forced herself to speak up. “Gyen Dinhal, you had a watch schedule for me?”
“Another moment,” he said.
If it were anyone else, Iryana would have pushed it, feigned some sort of excuse to leave immediately.
But her uncle was the only Kleesold she spent any time around, and she hated the idea of letting him down.
He never tried to push her and kept the conversations mild and minimal whenever they trained together.
It was far from easy to be around him, but bearable. Unlike how it was with the others.
He turned to the younger guardians.
“While we let guardians fight and stand watch at sixteen, despite being unforged, there are a lot of limitations,” he explained, seeming to have given in to Nevedya’s request.
Iryana took a steadying breath, and Misha looked over, lips pressing together slightly. Was her little sister annoyed with Iryana’s impatience? Or just her?
A surge of dread shot through her, her breaths speeding up to shallow pants. Iryana swallowed, nearly choking from how tight her throat was.
In the years since she’d left, Misha had grown more confident, her gaze following Iryana more. Like there was a growing awareness there that simmered every day.
Her little sister had been a quiet child, a quiet baby even, thankfully.
For Misha had been born in the last months of their fleeing through the Lasharye highlands of Istri.
Iryana had only been six, too young to take turns carrying the infant, but she’d been responsible for cuddling and rocking the little girl while they stopped.
Anything to keep Misha quiet and not draw the attention of the dakii.
Iryana shook that memory away, focusing on keeping her feet under her despite her lightheadedness.
She wished her sister would go back to avoiding her. To pretending she didn’t exist.
“One day, when you are forged, you will practice constantly. Build up your endurance, strengthen your control. But you can still start that training now.” Nevedya perked up at Dinhal’s words.
“The more you practice with your shield, stretching out how long you can sustain it, how thick you can make it, the more control you will have once the magic is forged.”
She couldn’t see how the others were reacting, but Iryana felt like her fingers were growing numb. The edges of her vision darkening.
Nevedya nodded vigorously while Misha twisted her lips together.
Iryana just tried not to pass out.
“And learn to be aware of your surroundings, quicken your reaction time. You must be sure to form your weapon before danger gets too close,” he told them.
“If a beast, or any threat, makes it to you before you can form your magic, you won’t be able to summon through the resistance of its body.
Even forming in water is difficult, though some can manage it. ”
Uncle Dinhal held out his hand, his magic forming in the shape of a two-handed sword.
It was the gray-purple color of metal-forged magic; the color showing the average-level of well magic he had forged with his own.
Though it hardly mattered that his magic wasn’t particularly strong; her uncle was lethal.
And with his strong, burly body and warrior’s eyes, Dinhal looked the perfect guardian warrior, even more terrifying with a sword in his hand.
Dinhal trained harder than anyone else. Iryana still had the bruises from the last time she’d trained with him to prove it.
Uncle Dinhal worked through some of the first forms they learned, likely showing Nevedya that the ones she learned now would one day be used with a forged weapon in her hand. Reminding her how important her training was now.
Misha kept glancing Iryana’s way, and every time she felt worse: her breathing, her nausea, her lightheadedness. Until she couldn’t take it anymore.
When her uncle stood, looking ready to dive into something else, Iryana stepped forward, feet dragging. She hesitantly touched him on the shoulder.
He looked at her, one brow slightly raised.
“Please?” Her voice was hopefully quiet enough the others wouldn’t hear the strain.
He was still and silent for a moment, then glanced over to Misha, who was staring at Iryana.
“Come by later to get your schedule,” he said, a hint of apology in his voice.
Iryana nodded quickly and bolted toward the gate, not even able to offer her sister a smile in farewell.
She made it out of the courtyard, making sure the jogging guardians weren’t visible, and set off toward home. She pulled her oilcloth cloak tighter around her body, the hood over the woolen scarf wrapped around her head. Every step helped calm her breathing, her pounding heart.
The long wooden wall stretched out to her right and the village to the left, clustered around the mountain stream that flowed through their valley.
On the other side of the wall, where the hanging valley cut off, she knew the stream tumbled over the side in a soft roar that helped disguise the sounds of their post from the lower valley.
The stream grew more bloated every day from the snowmelt, and all around them, after months of endless white, brown was creeping out from under the snow.
The village had been there before they arrived, the original inhabitants and its name lost long before they turned it into the Dovaki Post.
She had to track across the wooden boards along the sides of the main road to avoid the ankle-deep mud where tracks from hooves and wheels dimpled the sludge. The progress was painfully slow.
But ahead, far up the valley slope, she could just make out the old, inoperable windmill.
Once, it would have been used to mill grain for the village.
Before the beasts came. The little cottage where the miller had likely lived was obscured by trees from her vantage point, but she knew it was there; it was her home.
Blessedly far from the rest of the village.
She just had to focus, one step in front of the other, and she’d reach it soon enough.
She crossed one of the small wooden bridges that stretched over the stream and headed through the pines, and up to her small cottage on the side of the valley.
Her breathing finally calmed.