“Less muscle and more control when you swing Erich.”

  Elias stood a half dozen feet away, scarred arms crossed in front of his chest as he focused on the young swordsman.

  Erich nodded tightly, bringing his sword back up to the vertical side guard that served as the starting point for the Swaying Willow Blade. He closed his eyes for a moment, preparing himself. Just as he was about to strike again, the tip of Elias’ baton tapped his right hip and knee in rapid succession.

  “Your legs are too close together and your knees aren’t bent enough,” the instructor said, his voice neither harsh nor forgiving. “Remember, the focus of the Swaying Willow isn’t its strength or resilience. It has those to a certain extent, but they aren’t what the style showcases. The Swaying Willow is quick on its feet, moving with the breeze so that a sudden gust does not cause its trunk to crumble or break. Your goal is to parry and feint, not clash directly with an enemy. A deeper and wider stance strengthens you, but it also slows you down.”

  “Now,” Elias continued. “Try again, but hold the image of a willow in your mind. Thin and bending to the wind around it. Then, strike.”

  Erich exhaled, doing his best to clear the worries from his mind. Slowly the image of a tree, swishing in the wind as it grew from a riverbank, filled his mind.

  He jabbed once with his sword before following up with a waist high slice.

  “Good,” Elias said approvingly. “Again, but make the feint faster and lighter. You want your opponent to commit to their defense, but you need to control your strike enough to retract it and counter attack before they realize their mistake.

  Erich didn’t say anything. His sword darted out, swiping gently around shoulder level a second time before he twisted his wrist and brought it around into a slash.

  He reset his feet, ignoring the rivulet of sweat that was beginning to run down his back. The loose white linens he wore were designed to breathe easily and keep him cool, but there was only so much they could do against Erich’s constant exertion.

  Once again, he feinted with his sword, a quick jab followed by a heavier slash. On his right, Erich’s four fellow trainees were working hard, their swords flowing from a guard to a feint to a slash with a smoothness that he envied. Elias’ assistant, Ben, supervised them, occasionally stepping in to guide one of the novices when their stance slipped.

  “Now try using mana,” Elias said thoughtfully. “You’re almost there.”

  “-But,” Erich began, only for his instructor to cut him off.

  “You’re ready Erich. I don’t know why your progress in the Winding Stream Sword stalled out so early, but the Swaying Willow Blade suits you well. Now you just need to tap into your image and transfer its mana into your weapon as you repeat its forms. Etch the technique’s shape into your internal world and take your first step into being a proper swordsman.”

  “-but you’ve never let me use mana before,” Erich mumbled. “I can feel it accumulating in my image, but I’ve never had to channel it.”

  Elias’ face twitched. He closed his eyes for a second.

  “Ben,” He said slowly. “Can you supervise the third years for a bit? The fourth years should be able to handle themselves, and it looks like I’m going to be tied up here for a little while longer.

  Erich felt his stomach twist. Elias was a fourth tier swordsman and the master of the Green River school. Most of Erich’s training as a second year student had been with his uncle, Ben Saphir, who was a third tier swordsman and Elias’ assistant. Ordinarily the master only taught the third and fourth year students, but after months of fruitless practice, Erich had become a bit of a special case.

  The school couldn’t discharge him because his father was a major sponsor and his uncle was an instructor. Still, it took Erich a good month more than the next slowest student to establish his initial image, and he seemed wholly unable to learn the school’s signature Winding Stream Sword.

  Only when Elias stepped in and introduced Erich to the Swaying Willow Blade, a secondary and less effective sword style that grew from the same roots as the Winding Stream Sword, did Erich show any progress. Unfortunately, only Elias had any real experience with the Swaying Willow Blade. That meant Erich was getting a lot of hands-on time with the owner and master of his entire school.

  “If you weren’t such a hard worker-” Elias began, only to cut himself off. “Regardless, it’s a shame that you can’t learn the Winding Stream Sword. I’ve seen how hard you’ve practiced both as well as the amount of progress you’ve made since we switched sword forms for you. Even if your talent is abysmal, I refuse to let a trainee like you go.”

  “Still,” the master said with a sigh. “It’s easy to forget that you’re about to use mana on your own for the first time given how all of your peers have been using it with the Winding Stream Sword for months now.”

  Erich felt his skin squirm, but he maintained his stance. To his side, his fellow novices shot him sympathetic glances. They might have traced their image and adopted their first techniques earlier than him, but he was on good terms with all of them. Infighting, arrogance, and rivalries between novices were common to the point of being unremarkable in the Capitol or a regional hub with multiple martial arts schools, but Burrwood was a smaller city. Most of the sons and daughters of well to do families knew and generally liked each other even before they entered an academy to prepare for their years as war levies.

  Elias tapped Erich’s stomach with his baton.

  “Here,” the master said. “Close your eyes and focus on the image. Try to recreate the moment when I guided your mana to first etch it into your body. You should remember something warm and invigorating, like water gushing forth from a spring deep inside of you. Harness that Erich. Then, once you feel like it’s under your control let it fill your body while you practice the stances of the Swaying Willow Blade.”

  Erich took a deep breath, his consciousness following the air into his lungs and traveling downward until it was deep in his stomach where Elias’ baton was still resting. For a second, there was nothing but darkness. Then, a hazy green light began to shine from somewhere in the indeterminate distance, illuminating a blurry picture of a river winding through a forest.

  There weren’t many details. Erich knew from talking to his companions that this was a bad sign. Many of them could hear the water gurgling and count the leaves on the trees lining the stream’s banks. Even pulling the image, the foundation of his martial arts and mana, up was a struggle for him

  Panic began to stir inside of him. Despite Elias’ instructions, it felt like Erich was reaching into the void. No matter how hard he tried to find his mana, the image of the gently winding river was firmly out of reach. The more he pushed, the further and more indistinct it seemed to get.

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  Pain began to fill Erich’s stomach. He could feel the image vibrating, as if he were pushing it too hard to try and wring a single drop of power out of it.

  He bit his lower lip. It was there. He could feel it. The image was shaking like a dog after a rainstorm, quivering and indistinct, but buried in its blurry depths there was mana, warm and potent.

  Then, like a weed pushing up through the cracks in a cobblestone road, the power wormed its way free of his image. His body calmed as it trickled into him, tingling and hot as it triggered a rush of adrenaline and endorphins. Erich felt like he could run faster than a horse, like he could lift a wagon on his own or jump over a wall without any preparation.

  “There you go,” Elias said approvingly. “Hold tight onto that feeling and start practicing your forms. By channeling mana for the first time, you’ve opened up space for a technique in your image. The second technique will take much more than that, but for now it is just a matter of using your mana to inscribe it into your soul.”

  The advice was esoteric, and he was too mentally exhausted to fully parse his instructor’s words. Erich didn’t know exactly what Elias was telling him to do on a deeper level, but on the surface, the instructions were simple.

  Hoping that his next steps would become clearer as he practiced, Erich dropped into a guard and closed his eyes. The Swaying Willow Blade consisted of six stances. He swung his sword in short controlled actions as he moved from one form to the next. Darting feints and swift parries, all designed to open up room for counter attacks, blended together as warmth filled his body.

  Erich’s arms tingled as mana filled them, and move by move the sword style that he had spent the last three months on began to grow, the stances molding together organically until there was no longer any room to separate them. Heat swelled inside Erich until it felt like he was feverish. Delirious, he kept practicing, his sword strokes growing faster and faster until they were all but a blur to the unaided eye.

  It was like he was in a trance. Erich’s thoughts slipped away, replaced by the immediacy of his actions. He wasn’t a person swinging a sword as he tried to imitate a willow. He was the sword and he was the willow. Each parry and feint felt as natural as taking a breath or reaching his leaves up toward the sun.

  Suddenly, the heat disappeared mid-stroke. Erich stumbled forward, mind blank as the almost supernatural level of focus and control evaporated in the blink of an eye.

  “Congratulations on making it into the first tier,” Elias said, a hint of approval in his voice. “I wish it could have been with the Winding Stream Sword, after all it is the core of the Green River School, but that doesn’t lessen your accomplishment. If we were to take off the months you wasted pursuing the Winding Stream, your rate of growth is just as fast as anyone else in the school.”

  He stopped. Unspoken words held heavy in the air.

  “But the rest of the school’s techniques and arts use the Winding Stream Sword as their base,” Erich replied, voicing the concerns he and his instructor both shared. Elias nodded, his expression sour. “I will never learn the Lost River Steps, the Waterspout Thrust, or the Rainbow Crescent. Without a second technique, no matter how much aether I process and absorb, no matter how many tiers I progress, I will always be a second rate warrior.”

  “It’s not entirely hopeless,” Elias responded, uncertain eyes betraying the comforting tone of his voice. “About a year ago I noticed that my body has been struggling to keep up with the growth of my arts, and I started working on a body strengthening technique that I’m tentatively calling ‘the Oak Body.’ It uses the Swaying Willow Blade as its base, and it should give you the resilience and stamina unmatched by anyone else in the school.”

  “The only issue is that it’s unfinished,” Elias continued with a sigh. “I am still a long way away from achieving the fifth tier, and that is the only possible way for me to finalize the technique enough to teach it to you. I can share my notes with you, but-”

  “It’s fine,” Erich said, trying not to let the relief that was flooding through him show. Years of training to improve his body, to install the Green River School’s image into him, and to learn a martial art, and only now he had succeeded. A year and a half from his eighteenth birthday. He was months behind his fellow trainees, but at the very minimum, Erich was finally a martial artist.

  “Even if Oak Body isn’t complete, I can polish the Swaying Willow blade while I accumulate aether in my image. We both know that the process has been slower for me than the rest of the trainees. Unless something major happens, I doubt I’ll be able to accumulate enough to reach the second tier before I have to join the army anyway.”

  Erich pursed his lips, trying not to let the sour taste of dissatisfaction interrupt the triumph of finally achieving his goal.

  “At the very least,” he continued, “now that I’m a martial artist I won’t have to enter the army as a base levy. That should help both my family and give me the slimmest chance of survival.”

  Elias frowned slightly. The action highlighting the scar that covered most of the left side of his face.

  “You shouldn’t think like that Erich,” his master replied unhappily. “The numbers aren’t great, but forty percent of the martial artists that are drafted by the Empire survive their ten years of service. Plus, as awful as the wars are, they are an opportunity to grow stronger. Remember, aether may accumulate slowly on its own, but in combat it comes much quicker. I certainly don’t want to go back, but without my time on the Southern Passage, I wouldn’t have been able to found the Green River School.”

  “And of that forty percent,” Erich responded quietly, “how many come back maimed in body or soul? I’ve seen the former levies in the slums with their missing limbs. I’ve heard the screams from the martial artists that were driven mad by having their images shattered in battle. I’m not going into this blind. As a martial artist, I can stop the Saphir family from being crushed by the Empire’s taxes for a decade. If I had my choice-”

  “Erich!” A happy shout interrupted him. Before he could react, a hand slapped against his back.

  He turned around to see the rest of the trainees from his year surrounding him. Harold still had his hand on Erich’s shoulder, and behind him Timothy and Kaden were practically bouncing from foot to foot as they lined up to congratulate him. Only Gwen wasn’t bubbling over, rather her arms were crossed in front of her chest while her face wore its trademark severe glare. Still, even she gave him a quick nod, acknowledging his accomplishment.

  “I’ll leave you to it then,” Elias said, turning to walk away from the training field. “The fourth years need my guidance, and you deserve a moment to celebrate how far you’ve come. There will be plenty of time to train later, and I’ll make sure to get you my notes on Oak Body so you can study it on your own, but for now, enjoy yourself.”

  “Erich,” Harold said happily. A strange ringing sound filling Erich’s ears that made it hard to hear his words. “You have to get up. The cinderborn are almost here.”

  His friend shook him harder. The ringing was much louder now. It was hard to hear what he was saying.

  “The archers are firing at their levies, but it's barely slowing them down.” Was Harold yelling? Things were getting hazy and distant but he was still smiling lazily, his words not matching the unhurried movement of his lips.

  “Erich!”

  His eyes snapped open. Crackling flames danced above his head, illuminating the shattered wood of a barricade. Harold was leaning over him, the hair on the left side of his head singed off to reveal a nasty burn.

  A ball of flame soared lazily overhead, holding still in the featureless black sky for a second like a false sun before it shattered into two dozen streamers of flame that screamed toward the ground.

  Harold grabbed him by his arm, dragging Erich to his feet. A ribbon of fire hit the ground some thirty feet away and detonated.

  Scorching air knocked the two of them back into the wreckage of the barricade, and when Erich looked back, the dull brownish stone was burning. The ringing in his ears was beginning to fade, replaced by a dull ache in his right side.

  “I’m going to need you present and in control of your senses here buddy.” Harold snapped his fingers in front of Erich’s face. “The first fireblast knocked you around pretty good, but the cinderborn aren’t going to stop to take tea just because you’ve had your bell rung.”

  Awful reality flooded into Erich as he reached down to touch the hilt of the curved sword at his waist. His mana resonated as soon as he touched the weapon, and warmth ran up Erich’s arm.

  He could hear the shouts coming from the palisade where clumps of bowmen were firing as fast as they could into the rocky plains. A team of spearmen, some of them still frantically buckling boiled leather cuirasses into place, hurried into position to fill the gaps in the wall, supported by a handful of martial artists.

  Three veterans from the Iron Ax school ran past the two of them, not even bothering to spare Harold and Erich a glance as they joined the poorly armed and armored levy soldiers in the gap. Overhead, one fireball after another soared in the air, floating above the fortress like portents of doom.

  Erich took a deep breath before drawing his sword and giving Harold a tight nod. His companion’s blade sang as it left its sheathe, and he gave Erich a quick, pained smile before turning and running toward the wall.