Chương 69: [The Blade Just Arrives]

The group chat had been quiet for about an hour when Olly got the message he'd been waiting for. He was on his bed, phone in hand, rereading the messages for the fourth time when his dad's voice came through loud and clear. He sat still and focused, making sure not to miss anything. Olly. It's Dad. I'm safe. We're alive, all of us. We're in another world — there's magic here, other races. I'm using magic to speak to you right now. I'll explain more soon, I promise. Love you both. The last of his doubt was gone.

His dad was alive, in another world, using magic to talk to him. He shook his head. He opened the group chat. just got a message. anyone else get one tonight? Already off the bed and into the hallway before he'd finished sending it, heading for Jake's room, the phone screen lighting up with replies before he'd even knocked.

After yesterday, Leo had expected half the usual faces. A fight that close to home should have made people reconsider their mornings, find somewhere else to be. The training ground proved him wrong before he'd even crossed the barricade. People were already there, arriving early, conversations running across the grass. Word had got around overnight and everyone seemed to want to be part of it rather than run from it. Leo raised his eyebrows when he saw the group.

Any sensible person wouldn't want to be here, yet here they all were. More voices behind him — he turned and spotted faces he recognised from the second group, the ones who'd watched the fight happen yesterday. They were showing up early to watch practice, trying to learn what they could from the sidelines before their own session started. The scorch marks were still there on the grass to the north. Dark patches where Phil's magic had hit, the grass burned black in rough circles.

Where Leo's lightning had landed the ground showed it differently — thin branching lines scorched into the dirt, spreading outward from the point of impact. On the far side, small pock marks in the soil where Parmo's shards had hit, the grass around them undisturbed. Before Shai had called things to order a few of the trainees had made their way over, finding reasons to be closer to the lads than they'd normally stand before a session started.

Sarah, a woman in her mid twenties with blonde hair and blue eyes, around the height Luka used to be before the UI got involved, stopped near Luka, watched him for a second, then said, "Can I ask you something? About yesterday."

"Yeah, go for it," Luka said.

"That dome shield — I've read what the codex says about casting and how to get magic to work, but how did it feel to hold it under that many arrows at once? How did you know it would stay up?"

"Honestly? I didn't, not for certain," Luka said.

"I'd been testing it all morning, so I knew I could cast it in time, but I was already low from training so it was a bit of a risk. Nothing I could do though, we were needed and we drew their attention. It was hold it or die." He glanced at the spot where the kobolds had been.

"Was scary in the moment, if my mana was higher I think I would have had an easier time of it." Sarah nodded.

"What did it feel like? Holding it with people inside." Luka thought about it for a second.

"Different to practice. When it's just you and a dummy there's no risk." He looked at the others briefly.

"You ever hear of people doing crazy things when people they care about are in danger? Lifting a car enough for someone trapped underneath to get out, stuff like that. It was kind of like that I think. I knew if I dropped it we were dead. I just kind of refused to let it fade. I was useless for the rest of the fight after that though."

A little further along, Dan — stocky, brown eyes, curly hair permed tight on top above shaved sides — had found Phil near the scorch marks and was pointing at the burned circles in the grass, saying something Leo couldn't make out over the noise around him. Phil grinned at whatever it was and said something back that Leo didn't catch either. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Parmo had Richie beside him, the lad gesturing at the pock marks in the soil where the shards had landed. Richie had a top knot and a beard, both a light ginger, sides shaved close, wearing a flowery pair of shorts and a black vest that made him look like he'd wandered in from a beach somewhere.

"Does the cold not get to you?" Richie asked.

"Your own spell, I mean."

"No," Parmo said.

"Your own magic doesn't hurt you. If it did, Leo would have fried himself about a month ago." He caught Leo looking over and grinned.

"To be fair, with Leo, I probably wouldn't notice the difference." Leo gave him the finger and grinned back. Richie had made his way toward Sam by then, and Leo caught most of that conversation from where he was standing, close enough to follow it without being pulled into it.

"I've been at this two weeks now," Richie said.

"I know what I want to cast, I think I understand how it works, but I can't get the emotion part to fire. The codex explains what it is but not what it actually feels like."

"Yeah, that's the part the codex can't really help with," Sam said.

"The intent and the knowledge you can work on directly, but the emotion is tied to who you are more than anything else." He nodded toward Leo.

"He played around with it, kept it light, tried anything that sounded fun from stuff he'd seen in games and films. That was what worked for him." He looked over at Phil.

"Phil got competitive about it. Didn't want to be the last one still trying while everyone else had theirs." He looked back at Richie.

"What's your instinct when something isn't working?" Richie went quiet for a moment.

"I think I get it," he said.

"Cheers, I'll give it a go once training's done." He looked over at Leo.

"So how did you end up with lightning? Did it just click for you or is there some kind of random element to it?" Leo laughed.

"You're going to think this is stupid."

"Go on."

"You know Star Wars? That scene in Revenge of the Sith where the emperor electrocutes Mace Windu." He shrugged."I imagined what it would look and feel like, to have lightning coming from my hands." He paused.

"I think having that line in my head helped as well cos it clicked straight after. The UI flagged curiosity as the emotional key afterwards, so." He spread his hands.

"That's about it really." Richie stared at him.

"That actually worked?"

"He was the first to get anything," Parmo said.

"We kind of worked off what the UI told him after that, applied our own thing to it." He nodded at Leo.

"Didn't get the big spell straight away either, started with a smaller version. Think if the spell's too high level you get a stepping stone first."

"It's kinda daft," Leo said, "but it worked." Phil had wandered back over from the scorch marks, still grinning.

"Don't let him be modest. We all got ours within a few hours of him cracking it." Shai's voice cut across the ground.

"Right, let's get started." The conversations died as people spread out, moving to their trainers. Leo turned to face forward and Kai was already looking at him, that flat evaluating focus that hadn't shifted since the first session. Leo held it for a second then looked straight ahead.

"Stances. Full sequence. When you change position I want no pause between the stance and the step. You're stopping. Stop stopping." Leo went through the sequence. Kai watched without comment, arms folded, tracking every transition. When Leo finished Kai stepped forward and adjusted his back foot without saying anything, then stepped back again. They went again. After the third run Kai held up a hand.

"Better. Now we add something." He picked up a training sword from the rack nearby and turned to face the post at the edge of the training area.

"Watch." He moved into a high guard, stepped, and swung at chest height. The strike landed clean but there was a beat between the stance and the movement, a fraction of a second where the blade had to travel to find its target.

"That's what you're doing," Kai said. He reset.

"Now watch again." This time the stance change and the step happened together, one continuous movement, his body already committed and rotating as his feet moved. The blade arrived at chest height with the full weight of the movement behind it, fast and clean. He stepped back and looked at Leo.

"First time I moved the blade to the chest. Second time the chest was already where the blade was going." He set the training sword down.

"The stance is the decision. The movement is the strike. The blade just arrives." Leo looked at the post. He'd been treating the stances as positions to get into and out of, the attacks as separate things that happened after. He could see now that Kai had never been teaching him positions. He'd been teaching him how to load a strike before he'd thrown it.

"Again," Kai said.

"This time let the step carry it." Leo tried. The first few attempts the old habit came back, the slight pause between stance and movement where his brain was still deciding, the strike arriving a beat late. Kai said nothing, just watched, let him find it. By the sixth attempt the gap was smaller. By the ninth it was almost gone, one or two of them flowing the way Kai's had, the strike coming out of the movement rather than being added to it. He was mid-transition on the tenth when his vision flickered.

The notification appeared and he missed the step entirely. Kai was on him before he'd straightened up.

"What was that."

"Did you hear about the communications tab we got yesterday?" Kai gave a short nod.

"I just got a message from Mike," Leo said, still reading it.

"He wants all of us at a meeting. Nine o'clock." Kai looked at the sky, gauging the light. Then back at Leo.

"You have two hours," he said.

"I want to see that transition clean before you leave." He turned back to watch, arms folded, waiting.