We talked more about the various poor experiences we had with the teacher, and she told me all about what he was like a decade ago.


    "He probably hasn''t changed at all since back then. Maybe it''s hard for me to tell, we all didn''t really like him so don''t take my word for it."


    "I don''t like him either."


    "Then I suppose there''s no objectivity involved."


    "Does anybody like him at all?"


    "Somehow. You would vomit the same way I did if you witnessed how those noble women act like bitches in heat around him. I can''t tell if any of them really like him, but they''re always swooning over his every move. He''d pour a glass of water and one of them would faint."


    "Are they trying to get close to him or something?"


    "That''s without a doubt. It''s not like he was without his benefits. Everyone in that party had ''benefits.'' I received my fair share of suitors who loved to attempt to bedazzle me with their extended grammar. They phrased sentences like they were poets, half the time I expected that they''d burst into a serenade. Out of all of the party members though, people thought that he was the best-looking."


    "That''s stupid."


    "Well, anyone who knows him thinks that he''s unquestionably unattractive, but of course, a strong adventurer dressed up in noble clothes must appear an exotic good to the dames and damsels of every empire we visited. It was as though his presence was some aphrodisiac that operated only on the idiotic and perplexed. I heard one of them describe in great detail how his opening of a door was enough for her to envision intercourse with him. One of the few conversations I absolutely regret eavesdropping on."


    "That''s disgusting."


    "You were the one who nearly threw a fit when I wouldn''t include every single detail, I knew you were immature but I didn''t know you were a hypocrite."


    She paused for a second and looked at me, not in any sort of threatening way but more like she was upset by whatever I was doing. She spoke again but not in a different tone of voice.


    "I can already hear you breathing heavily. If you''re ever going to grow up, or even begin to, you''ll really have to learn how to handle being insulted. I can not count the amount of times that my adolescence spent in the slums of Chreinelov has been the butt of a joke told at the very table I happened to be sitting at. They even glanced over at me after telling the joke, as if they were hoping for my approval while they painted me some beast to be pointed and laughed at me."


    "Why wouldn''t you just kill them all right there? No empire could dream of defeating <i>Tilapia</i>, and I''m sure even the teacher would understand getting mad over someone insulting your childhood."


    "You''re right, they would''ve. At any moment, any of us could''ve responded in kind to the constant passive aggression and playful insults that were repeated wherever we went, and we would''ve been able to topple whichever empire elected to stand against us."


    "Then why wouldn''t you?"


    She paused again, and she gave me a gentle smile. She squinted her eyes a bit and I thought I saw a tear or two, but the solid color of everything but her skin might''ve been driving me insane.


    "One thing that would leave me with nothing but rage would be whenever someone older than me would refuse to answer a question. Maybe I''d think of it in a moment, or maybe it was some deep inquisition that had been accumulating for a year, and the person who this question was aimed at would neglect to provide any sort of response. This was agitating beyond any belief for me, and even to this day, I cannot say that I''ve left the anger I felt at them behind. They would always preface their non-answer with some justification, some irrelevant rationale for why they wouldn''t give me what I was asking for."


    She looked at the window, and I could''ve sworn that I saw tears rolling down her cheek, but when I blinked they''d disappear; fade into the dark red enclosure.


    "Looking at you, however, maybe I can begin to grasp how they felt when they gave me a line that would be engraved as the object of pure hatred. It must''ve been easier from their end to deliver such a line if I looked like you do now."If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "What is that line?"


    "You''ll understand when you''re older."


    I stared at her with a glare of disappointment while she chuckled to herself for a while, sometimes going into full laughter. Every time she would look back at my face she would continue laughing, and I did not break my expression.


    After she stopped, we exchanged more stories of the teacher, and she told me all about how he almost ran away from the party because of this one princess. Apparently they had to sneak into his room the night before he was supposed to meet her at the alter. When he met the princess again, she had married another man and pretended not to recognize him.


    After what must''ve been days inside that damn carriage we had finally arrived at whatever place she was supposed to bring me to. She opened the door and got out first, and I followed her into an unknown area far from the house.


    We had arrived at a large open field of yellow flowers, and a square of short grass that seemed oddly separated from it. It was as though the area was specifically made this way, like someone just chose a part of this field to chop all the flowers from and leave without a single spot of yellow. There wasn''t any overgrowth of the flowers into this perfectly square portion of it.


    She didn''t say a word as I followed her into the middle of this little thing, and when we got to the middle she stopped and swiftly turned around to face me.


    "When he asked me to take you out here, what he believed is that I would abuse our shared experiences to teach you some sort of lesson that you''d take with you, and that this manipulation would lead to an improvement in your behavior for the remainder of the time you will stay at that house."


    She took out her blade from some unknown area, I hadn''t seen it for the entire ride her but I now saw it, in its entirety.


    It was just as the teacher had described, its appearance was strange to the point that it almost was <i>asking</i> you to laugh at it. It didn''t really look like a lance like he had said though. The base of the sword doubled as its hilt, and it left me unable to see the handle. I had heard of swords like that in Articulago, but usually it was just the hilt and not the sword itself that covered the handle. The sword curved in immediately into what must''ve been three feet of a tiny little circle that turned into a sharp point, and there was a little <i>error</i> in the middle? It didn''t seem like an error, I don''t think she would keep the sword if it had an error like that. I understood the oddness of the blade now, even more than the way he described it.


    She took out a random piece of meat that she must''ve stolen from the house when we were there, I don''t know, a week ago? She threw it up in the air and stabbed it with her sword. It pierced right through it, but instead of the piece of meat just sliding down her sword, it broke into pieces. The meat just fell to the ground, one piece split into about eight and she was just staring at me, waiting for me to say something.


    "How did you-"


    "Shhh."


    So she wasn''t waiting for me to say something?


    "The meat isn''t for you, nor am I wasting it just to prove that I can stab something with minimal effort and split it into several pieces, though your praise is pre-emptively accepted with grace. Hold your words momentarily."


    We just stood there in complete silence, I was staring at her and she was staring at whatever was behind me. Not even a short while passed before I heard the cry of a fully grown eikmar scrambling through the land behind me to get to its food. I turned around and held my blade tightly waiting for it to appear so I could avoid getting trampled by it.


    She didn''t move at all. She stood there gripping her sword and stared down the eikmar as it ran at full speed toward her. The ground shook and I watched in disbelief as she refused to even flinch. I was shaking with every step, I struggled just to keep my balance.


    She stuck her sword into the ground as the beast was nearing her, and she got into a fighting stance. The beast was lowering its head, it was preparing to headbutt her into the mountains that laid on the horizon. I saw her take a deep breath, and bring her fist back behind her. Right as she was about to get thrown farther away than I could see, she threw a punch at the beast.


    A sound that could probably be heard back at the house came from her hit, and along with it came the cry of the eikmar, who was now bleeding from every part of its head. The amount of blood was so large that it immediately formed its own little pool as it got thrown away.


    In the brief moment I could see it, there was a large crack in the beast''s head, and a fair amount of its teeth had fallen out with the punch. The beast itself got thrown back from where it came, and I watched it fly what must''ve been a thousand feet away.


    I turned back to her and she was actually looking at me this time.


    "Instead of attacking you myself, which probably would''ve worked but wouldn''t be as fun to experience, I''m going to have you fight a wounded eikmar."


    "That thing is like ten times my size!"


    "Yeah."


    "What are you going to do if I die?"


    "Fake some tears at your funeral."


    "Are you making fun of me or something? Are you going to step in at the last second and save me? Is this supposed to be the lesson? That you''re stronger than me? I''ll stop! I won''t get mad at you anymore!"


    "Over the course of the ride here, you nearly made the idiotic decision to attempt an attack eight times. You need to land exactly eight hits on the eikmar now running back our way. On the eighth hit, if the eikmar is not dead, or if it has died before the eighth hit, I will leave you here to find your own way back the house, or to find whatever future you fantasize about when you''re mad at him."


    I stared at her without saying a word as I heard the stomps of the eikmar get louder.


    She wasn''t joking at all.