Chương 1: Blade Of Old

The nearly translucent tip of the ethereal longsword missed Calder's eye by a hairsbreadth as he leaned just far enough back to avoid the sweeping blow. The distinguished, almost severe features of the spectral knight before him snarled in distaste at the close miss. Calder ducked under the next sweeping blow and shoved off his back foot, extending both his arms in a powerful stab. The knight contemptuously flicked his sword in a short arc and stepped around the blow to Calder's side.

Calder grimaced at how exposed he was now. Ahh well, it was worth a shot. He had to roughly fling himself to the side mid-lunge to avoid a swift diagonal chop towards his neck. The knight didn't let up, dancing right back into range and aiming a stomp followed by a downwards stab towards Calder's prone form. Calder did the only thing he could; he shoved a hand against the cold stone of the tomb floor and heaved, rolling away.

He tried to spring to his feet, but it ended up as more of a stumble as he found himself facing slightly away from the knight still. The soul of the knight capitalized on his clumsy recovery, showing no mercy. The spectral blade pushed straight through his back and out his chest. There was no pain, only a slight cold that radiated from his heart and down his limbs. Calder looked blankly at the tip of the sword protruding from his chest.

"Ahh hell, couldn't you have at least let me turn around…" The blade was bloodlessly withdrawn from his chest; no wound to be seen, but the cold lingered uncomfortably for a few heartbeats longer. Calder turned sheepishly towards the Spirit, already knowing what to expect. It had a disappointed, almost disgusted look on its face and gestured angrily towards where he had rolled around on the ground like an idiot.

"Yeah, I know. I knew I was screwed the moment I had to fling my big ass onto the floor…" He said almost apologetically even though he knew the spirit couldn't hear him. The knight shook its head in disbelief and knelt near the floor, slowly showcasing how to roll over one's shoulder and spring back to your feet in one smooth motion. He repeated it twice and then on the third example added a blistering upward swing of the sword as part of the motion.

The knight expectantly looked at Calder and gestured at the floor. Man, I am not built for these acrobatics. Can we go back to counters and how to kick someone's leg out from under them, please?

"Sorry I'm the only bugger who can see you around these parts. Let's get to rolling!" Calder said in jest and looked at the knight he knew couldn't hear him. The knight gestured at the floor again, a bit more angrily this time. With a sigh, Calder dutifully knelt and began practicing the roll over and over as the knight demonstrated what he was doing wrong. Calder knew he was damn lucky the spirit was bored enough to train him to begin with; he didn't dare test its patience too much.

He had learned more in the last year of training with the knight than he had in the last three years of guard training. Lord Dectus, as his sarcophagus said, was on a whole other level compared to the town guard commander. Phil was an accomplished warrior and a kind soul who was nearing his seventieth level. He could handily beat the pants off nearly anyone in town. But the ghost of Dectus was literally a figure from legends of old.

It was like he could see the future, and every move he made had a purpose; all his attacks were direct and brutal or purposefully sweeping to throw off your rhythm. Calder couldn't even imagine how powerful he must have been in life. Last time he had dusted the graveyard's ledgers for his grandfather, he thumbed through to Dectus's short paragraph. The man had been a second-tier warrior well over the hundredth level and a candidate for the sword of the sea.

The honorary title given to whomever the king chose as his personal bodyguard. Calder finished rolling around embarrassingly slowly and pulled himself to his feet, bowing respectfully towards the knight. Dectus waved him away dismissively and strode off contemplatively deeper into the halls of the tomb. Really wonder why his soul hasn't passed on and, more importantly, how he has avoided going utterly mad. He rushed deeper into the Royal tombs. He had chores he needed to keep up on.

He and his grandfather were the only caretakers of this part of the cemetery, and it was an important job with many tasks. And with his grandfather's ailing health, it was mostly just him now. Calder Braced his stout leg against the first antechamber door and wrapped his hands around the fine metal handle. With a grunt and a heave, he hauled the massive round metal door slowly open, revealing today's task.

The stone room ahead was where one of the current king's great-grandparents rested, and the consecration runes hadn't been redrawn in nearly a decade. The Chamber had royal red tiles with intricate golden lines painted across the floor. A mural spanned both walls, telling the story of Gundrim. The Serpents bane, king of old.

One side started at his youth as a mariner, and the mural's beauty built from there with broad sweeping strokes that crescendoed just above the room's two sarcophagi, showing a battered blonde man with a trident in one hand leaning against the corpse of a beast of scale and fang that towered above him. Waves crashed over the corpse and his triumphant but exhausted form. I feel like you must have been a great leader. The tales of you always mention how you put everything on the line personally to defend your people.

Simply because you were the strongest among them and it was right. If only our current king could ask you for advice, maybe you would have the solution to how we survive this war. Calder's thoughts of speaking with the dead reminded him of the fateful day years ago when a seer had come to the royal tomb. At that point he had been living with his grandfather for a few years, helping him with the tomb and the cemetery grounds. He had started to catch… glimpses of those who were left behind.

Whispy shadows in the form of a woman, just on the edges of his vision. Always in the lightest of blue hazes, like the morning fog. They were fleeting; the moment he tried to focus on the form, it was gone. He tried to ask his grandfather about it, but the pragmatic old bastard hadn't understood; he had thought it was just the whimsy of a child's imagination. Over the years the glimpses became less and less fleeting until one day they were just always there.

Going about facsimiles of life, some meandered, lost and alone, confused. Others just seemed bored, roaming like fish trapped in a too-small bowl. There weren't many spirits—three in the cemetery grounds and two at the tomb. He kept it to himself for months, dutifully doing his job until one day when he was arranging flowers, one of the more restless spirits, a stunning elven woman wearing a flowing, waterlike gown, walked over and mimed out moving the flowers into a spiral pattern.

Obviously more to entertain herself from the interminable boredom than anything else. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Calder carefully rearranged the flowers into the spiral and looked up at her. What he saw was shock and hope. He was the first who could see her in gods know how long. After that he had interacted with the Souls he could see whenever he had time. It seemed to greatly brighten their days.

Only a few months later, a wise woman, a seer from the Church of the Veil. Came along with a noble lord's entourage to speak with one of the departed. Calder and his grandfather weren't allowed in the tomb during the rituals and waited outside dutifully. After it was all over, the wise woman wandered the grounds until she stopped knowingly next to the elven spirit, giving a polite and unrecognizable hand gesture in greeting. The elf returned it with a smile.

And made a series of sharp, complex motions with her hands before pointing to Calder. The wrinkled crone turned towards him and gave a toothless smile.

"You can see them as well? That's an uncommon gift, young man. If you ever need guidance, seek me out in the church of the veil." She finished with a rattling wheeze and then bowed at the elf without saying anything else. That all had happened many years ago and still stuck with Calder to this day. He wasn't insane; he just saw the world a bit differently than most folks. He had kept it to himself even still though. His grandfather's health and his training as a guard had taken over all his free time.

When he had finally earned the hybrid class he hoped for, then he might consider asking the old seer some questions. Alright, buddy, stop daydreaming; this paint is from the damned royals and is worth more than our cottage. Calder refocused on his task on the king's sarcophagi; he had the consecrated paint in one hand and a fine enchanted brush in the other. The runes weren't complex to refresh; he simply had to paint over what was already there.

They were just numerous and intricate—thousands of lines crossing over each other in a gridwork tapestry that formed an arcane spell he couldn't even begin to truly understand. But what it did was simple: it stopped the dead from rising and didn't let the damned Ghastly Grotto steal any of his charges to add to its ever-growing dungeon halls. Long, smooth, slow brush strokes were the trick for Calder to refresh the enchantment.

He wasn't the most dexterous of individuals, so he was very thankful the Litoral Court mages who originally installed the consecration purposefully made it easy to maintain. If it was in one of the finer sweeping magical languages used for enchantment, he would have been screwed. Calder let the time blend by as he meticulously continued his work in near silence. He was long used to the slightly musty smell of the tombs; honestly, he preferred it to the powerful incense stench around the more recent burial sites.

With one last long brushstroke, he finished the first corner of one of the main enchantment weaves. Calder let out a long sigh of relief and stood up tall from his hunched position, stretching his back and carefully putting the cap back on the magical paint. He set it and the brush neatly on the floor next to the sarcophagus.

"Well, this is going to take me a couple days to finish; I guess I'll just chip away at it between the other dozen things I have to get done. But for now... It's time for some good old-fashioned guard training. Gods, I hope no one else picked a class. Ricktus is awful to spar with since he became a Swiftblade Swordsman." He mumbled almost happily to himself as he began the trek out of the tomb, making sure to grab his training sword from where he had left it next to Dectus's sarcophagus.

Calder rolled his shoulders and strapped the longsword high on his hip and began a slow jog through the halls and up the grand staircase of the tomb. As always it was abandoned; no one but he or his grandfather came here except for during holidays. He crested the top step and shuddered as the icy air hit his skin. The lightest of snowfall was trailing down, blanketing the nearby cottage at the peak of the coastal crag and covering the cemetery grounds to his left.

He took just a moment to let the shock of the cold pass over him. The cliffs to his right were a stark grey stone that fell away a handful of strides from the cabin down a sheer stone face to the crashing waves below. A single brave fishing vessel could be seen in the distance reeling in vast nets hoping for a lucky winter catch. The endless rows of common gravestones wound away to the left, sloping down the hill along with the path of the road.

The uniformity was occasionally broken by the larger private mausoleums of some of the town's richer families. Calder jogged down the trail, waving amicably towards the elven maiden who had paused her rounds to see him off with a wave of her own. Mr. Egbert, the crotchetiest of the ghosts, was desperately and pointlessly trying to shoo some seagulls from their perch on his gravestone.

Calder waved out of habit, but the grouchy spirit didn't do much more than frown in his direction before going back to trying to bat at the birds with ethereal hands. Ahh, someday I'll get you to smile! I mean, probably not, honestly. From what I heard, you were a right bastard even when you were alive, but it never hurts to try! The jog down to the town's outskirts was short; the guards trained in a clearing in front of the mill on the edges of town. Calder could see he was already slightly late.

The windmill blades from the mill were spinning madly, and the miller was working away. Flaxen flashes of mana could be seen trailing from inside the open doorway. It still amazes me how much that man gets done by himself with that class. Right in front of the mill, a group of four figures were doing warmup stretches, the relative silence broken occasionally when Phil shouted at one of the trainees for slacking.

Calder put on the most speed he could and sprinted the last fifty strides, arriving into their midst in a heaving mess. Cardio was not his forte.

"Ahh, the gentle giant finally graced us with his presence." Phil said sarcastically, his face took on a slightly concerned expression as he saw Calder gasping for air.

"God's lad, take a moment; you were really moving for something that big," he finished with a chuckle. A young man with short red hair stepped up to Calder, handing him a canteen. His sharp features and striking eyes were almost regal.

"Gentle giant my ass, the last blow you landed on me damn near broke my fucking leg," Ricktus joked. Calder took a deep pull off the canteen and gasped one last time before answering, "I already said sorry I pulled that kick too. Not my fault the gods saw me being born and decided there wasn't enough muscle in the world." Calder smiled at his friend's rolled eyes and joined in on the stretching. They continued through the stretches for a few more minutes before Phil addressed everyone.

His tone had an uncharacteristically serious tinge to it.

"Alright, lads, today is sparring again."

"Again?" Joel grumbled and rubbed his shoulder from the previous day's minor injury. Yeah, that's fair; the training sword broke on that hit. Sorry about that one, Joel. Phil sighed but spoke in a patient tone, "I know, I know. But lads, news from the front came in, and… well, the war still isn't going well… The Soul fuckers advanced another league, and from the sounds of it, we barely stopped them from taking Pilmouth." Everyone's gaze grew dour at the news; it wasn't surprising they had been losing since day one.

Gods I hope I can be good enough in time; every day it seems more likely that I'm going to be fighting for real… I need to spend more time with Dectus." So, pair the fuck up, Ricktus. You and slow but deadly—he's been pulling some moves that I sure as shit didn't teach him, and I think you're the only cadet that probably won't get maimed if a training sword decides to be extra sturdy." Calder hefted his wooden blade and faced his opponent.

He spread his legs shoulder-width and raised the sword so his hands were crossed slightly in front and above his face, one hand high on the pommel, the other holding the bottom in a firm but flexible grip. It was a position that let him leverage his bulk into a powerful strike from nearly any overhead angle. Ricktus raised an eyebrow.

"Phil didn't teach us that…" Calder smiled and tensed his muscles as he prepared to explode forward.

"No, he didn't."