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    Chapter 36


    A Different Game


    Femira, Aden and Jaz made their way to the barracks, passing through the busy streets of Epilas. When she’d first arrived, the wide thoroughfares of Epilas had seemed ridiculous to her compared to the narrow streets of Altarea. In Altarea, it had been easy to hide as everything was clustered tightly together. She understood now after a few months why Epilas needed these. The sheer volume of people that thronged through each day from all walks of life demanded wider streets. This close to the barracks, the people were predominantly uniformed soldiers in red and other colors of varying houses, occasionally a black uniforms of the bloodshedders could be spotted. They were part of a stream of other pedestrians, people on horseback, mule-drawn carts and more lavishly elegant carriages pulled by horses of equal elegance.


    The thoroughfare had tall thin cypress trees lining the street, between them were old vendors with leathery faces that looked on with impassive faces behind mounds of fruits or bags of aromatic spices. Some of the vendors sold cooked foods, the smells of which lured in Femira. A sharp, distinct smell of caramel drew her attention to a vendor peddling an array of candied nuts, their shells coated in some kind of sticky sweet syrup. Her mouth watered, the scents pulling her back in a nostalgic reverie to the shadows of memories she had from before she’d arrived in Altarea. Images of sitting on a sunbaked clay wall while her brothers helped their mother in the market stall. Is that even a real memory? She didn’t know what her mother had done for a living before bringing them to Altarea. She wondered idly whose market stall that had been, which seemed so tangible now as the image cemented its place in her memory.


    It didn’t take them long to reach the barracks, the portcullis was open and there were a half dozen guards at the threshold verifying identities.


    “You’re a bloodshedder now, I hear, Jaz” said Dwan, a clean shaven guard in a standard soldier’s red uniform, “congratulations on the promotion.”


    “Along with Vreth,” Jaz nodded to her, “Aden hopefully won’t be long behind us.”


    “Lady Annali, my congratulations also,” he bowed his head formally, an action that Femira was still wholly unaccustomed to.


    Once they had passed into the grounds of the barracks, they made for the bloodshedder’s reserved building. The central courtyard was already teeming with hopeful recruits looking to hone their abilities in runewielding under the tutelage of senior bloodshedders. Would we be expected to train recruits someday? She didn’t particularly like the idea of having to stand about watching other people spar all day. She spotted Endrin who was instructing a group of ten recruits on stonebreaking. He had them lined up in pairs; one forming a projectile of stone and the other attempting to break it before it could be launched. It was an exercise she herself had been doing only three months before. He spotted her watching and frowned. Ah shit. He walked towards her, intercepting the path that the three were making.


    “You’ve been promoted,” Endrin said.


    “Yes,” she replied coolly. She wanted to prod him into an argument but her conversation earlier with Misandrei held her back. When she didn’t offer anything further, he continued, “You’re on my squad for the mission. Both of you,” he looked to Jaz who didn’t seem like he’d been listening at all.


    “I thought Captain Misandrei was leading?” Femira said, trying not to let it come across as antagonising.


    “She’ll be leading the full party. But I’ll be your squad leader. As your commanding officer, I will expect your full obedience, is that understood?” Inside she seethed, under his command. Was that some kind of joke? She’d made her displeasure of the man known to Misandrei. Why would she place her in Endrin’s squad?


    “Yes, sir,” Jaz replied with a salute, and then gave Femira a pointed look to do the same. What are you doing? She tried to convey her thoughts to him in a confused look. You think he’s an idiot too. He just gave her a curt nod of the head to indicate that she should follow his lead.


    “Of course, sir,” she said reluctantly, and performed a halfhearted salute.


    “Mission briefing will be at dawn, I suggest you both are rested,” and with that he turned heel and returned back to instructing the recruits.


    “What the fuck was that?!” She rounded on Jaz, “the man’s incompetent, and we’re supposed to follow orders from him?”


    “He’s a senior bloodshedder, Vreth,” Jaz replied, “I might not like the man, but he is our senior.”


    “He also fought at Altarea,” Aden put in, “and in numerous skirmishes with the Reinish. He’s a seasoned soldier. You shouldn’t dismiss him so quickly,” Aden said to her. What was wrong with them? Couldn’t they see what Endrin was? He was a coward. He’d been annoyed by Femira’s accelerated progression through their ranks. He was probably jealous of her. He’d likely taken years to get to the level that Garld finally approved him for soulforging. He overlooked her talent because he believed her to be some delusional highborn that wanted to play at being a bloodshedder.


    As they approached the training rooms. she shoved the thoughts of Endrin aside.


    “Are we using full abilities?” Jaz asked her, an edge of worry in his voice.


    “Of course,” she replied, “why else would I be here? I''ve been itching to test out my new senses in a fight.”


    “Should I fetch a healer to have on stand-by?” Aden asked with uncertainty.


    “Yeah,” Femira replied, while Jaz at the same time answered, “No.”


    “Might not be a bad idea,” Femira offered, “I might accidentally break some bones.”


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    “You’re worried about me?” Jaz scoffed, “I was scared I was going to burn your pretty face.”


    She scowled at him and shifted into her fighting stance, drawing her daggers. Jaz mirrored her stance, unsheathing his sword. To her annoyance, it wasn’t the shiny silver sword he usually kept on him. Instead it was a lacquered wooden imitation. Clever. She thought with annoyance, she’d wanted to test out dusting a metal blade in a fight like Endrin had.


    “First touch?” He said with an arrogant flourish of the wooden sword.


    “Only weapons count, a kick or punch won’t win,” she replied and then smugly added, “it’ll still be over quickly.”


    “You’re confident.”


    “Ehm—Have you not seen my floating glassblades?” As she said, she reached internally with her edir to the ever present thrum in her chest. Streams of golden light ran down her exposed arms as she guided the power out of her and formed four of the glass blades that she kept hovering at her side. She could conjure and hold another pair but she still found it hard to focus on all six at one time.


    Jaz grinned, “was hoping you’d try those.” He whipped forward with surprising agility. Faster than any of the other times she’d fought him. She shot a pair of her glass blades forward, she intentionally made their edges blunted. They’d still cut him, but not fatally. Jaz’ sword blurred, slashing at one of the glassblades as it shot toward him, then ducked below the other. She kept the last two hovering overhead.


    Jaz had closed the distance between them so she had to focus on parrying his rapid attacks with her daggers. She backstepped from his onslaught. Fuck! He’s gotten fast! But the hold ability for a topaz was temperature control, it didn’t make sense for him to suddenly gain such agility from his soulforging. Unless he’s been infused with stormstone? As she parried another of his attacks she felt a sharp burning sensation on the palms of her hands.


    “Ah” she gasped, dropping her daggers, the cloth wrappings on the hilts were singed black, small wisps of smoke twirling of them. Dirty trick. He flicked his blade to the flat end as he went in for a strike against her shoulder. She whipped a glass blade down deflecting the attack. It shattered on impact but knocked Jaz’s sword off target. She jumped back and brought the last blades about her in a protective shield, reaching out her edir to conjure another. The pair of glassblades orbited about her like tiny murderous moons. She smiled to herself at that. Murder moons was a good name for this skill.


    The glass blades were still fragile and would shatter into fragments when Jaz struck them but they were extremely effective in keeping him out of her range. She’d never had a strong sense of other people’s edir. Misandrei and Aden claimed that if she focused she would be able to sense them. She’d been able to sense Vestyr’s only when he’d taken control of her projectiles the night that Honorsword Karas had attacked her. She’d hoped that now she was soulforged would make it easier to detect, and she thought maybe she could sense Jaz’s.


    She could certainly feel his attempts at manipulating the temperature in her body. He wouldn’t try to incinerate her, but he was definitely trying to increase her temperature so that it made her distracted and uncomfortable. She would feel intense flushes as her body temperature suddenly spiked. Her own edir would instinctively work to protect her from outside manipulation, Misandrei had told her. Even without a topaz, a person’s own edir—even untrained—would be an effective shield to temperature manipulation. It was one of the irrefutable rules of runewielding she’d learned. It was almost impossible to affect the internal workings of another person’s body without physical touch. Physical touch formed a connection through which a person’s edir could channel through. He must have soulforged with a topaz otherwise there’s no way he could do manipulate her body temperature like that. It was a testament to how much stronger the soulforging had made Jaz’s edir, that he could change her body temperature even moderately without even touching her. But that still didn’t explain where his impressive speed had come from.


    He dashed another of her glassblades but she quickly reformed it from the shards. Her edir would strain eventually from the exertion of maintaining the murder moons but she suspected that Jaz’s aggressive offense would exhaust him quicker. She noticed that Jaz was pressing her towards the wall and she evaded his next attack by diving into a roll to the side. As she came up to her feet, she felt Jaz’s boot strike at her back, knocking her forward. How?! He couldn’t have cleared that distance so quickly. She fell forward on her stomach, side-rolled and pressing all her strength into her legs, thrusted her hips up in an arch and flipped back onto her feet.


    A floor-to-feet backflip was the kind of flashy combat manoeuvre that would get you killed if you performed it wrong so Misandrei had drilled the move into her through constant repetition. Her edir had released the glass blades when she’d been struck, and she didn’t have the time to pull them back to her before Jaz was on her again. She evaded his strikes as he pressed forward. His sword was sharp and every attack was positioned so that he would hit her with the flat side. Holding back like that should have slowed him, but he still moved quicker than her.


    She realised with mounting concern that he was pushing her back to the wall again. He would be expecting her to side dodge again. There would be fifty-fifty chance he’d land a hit on her if he guessed correctly which direction she’d go. An idea struck her and with a firm push of her front foot, she leapt backwards toward the wall. Her edir exulted, finally unleashed to suck in the stone wall. Dust engulfed her as the wall disappeared in an instance in a cloud of debris, most of the stone poured into her, alighting her skin in golden light. She was like a yellow sun, dimly visible through a thick cloud as she was launched backwards through the dust cloud.


    She landed clean on her feet on the other side of the wall in the adjacent training room. She could vaguely make out Jaz’s dark shape as the debris cleared, either settling on the ground or being drunk up by her edir. He was tentatively moving forward, the tip of his wooden sword in front of him. He would surely be able to see the golden glow emitting from her.


    She smirked as he crept forward, he was the mouse and she was the vreth about to strike from the shadows. The stone thrummed in her, it was a wall. It had been a wall for decades and wanted to be a wall again. She poured the rock out from her reforming the wall and within seconds, it was. The debris coalesced, the blocks reforming in their original positions and locking back into place. All save for a tiny sliver where the tip of Jaz’s wooden sword was wedged firmly in the stone. She could picture Jaz’s bemuddled expression on the other side, and his instinctive reaction to try to pull it out but the sword would hold firm.


    She could see in the corners of her vision; other soldiers in bloodshedder uniforms in the room likely in their own training bout but she paid them no heed. She ran a few feet down, readied herself and sprinted full pelt at the wall. Here goes! She pushed out her edir, pulling in the stone again and forming a hole that she jumped through. She erupted through the wall in a cloud of debris on the other side.


    Jaz was where she expected him to be, his foot pressed against the wall, desperately trying to pull his weapon out. His head twisted at the comotion of her re-emergence, but she didn’t give him time to react, moving forward for a punch. A crude cudgel of stone formed behind him as he moved to block her attack, she pulled it forward smashing it against his shoulder. He grunted as it struck him, falling to his knee.


    “I win,” she breathed triumphantly through ragged breaths, the exertion on her edir effecting her physical stamina.


    Aden was agape by the door. A bloodshedder soldier appeared at the hole she’d made in the wall, “keep your fights in your own training room, will you?” the man called in angrily. Femira couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her. Exhausted, she collapsed to the ground, trying to suck in air through her laughter. Jaz also coughing out a laugh as he too fell to the ground to rest, he arm clutching at his shoulder.


    “Fuck me,” Jaz wheezed, “Soulforging really does make it a different game doesn’t it?”


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