Ignite the Sun
Chapter 47: Rivalries

Chapter 47: Rivalries

The remaining part of the day was rather uneventful - they mostly stayed in their room, read books and chatted about unimportant stuff.

"Since Cass isn’t with us, and you’ve already told Ellie how we’ve met, how about you tell her about your first encounter with our grumpy friend? Personally I think this story is much more entertaining than than ours." Isara smiled.

"Yeah, because you’re not the one appearing in that story" Calen looked at Elira. "I can tell it if you’re interested though, it’s not that embarrassing."

"I think I would like to hear it." The Alchemist admitted.

"Alright then, let’s set the scene: What might come as a surprise for you it that I met Cass before Isa, we were both six when our paths crossed." He chuckled. "Oh yeah, and that thing I said about picking up the sword to beat the shit out of Cass? Well, that wasn’t a figure of speech..."

***

Calen was running for his life - it didn’t matter that he lost the people who were chasing him twenty minutes ago, his heart was still pounding and his fear lingered.

His sprint was interrupted only when he looked over his shoulder, and ran into something solid.

He felt the impact, and fell to the ground, getting his entire body covered in mud.

"Hey!"

Calen looked up to see what did he ran into - it was a boy around his age, his raven black hair, sharp gray eyes and rather tall stature would be intimidating, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was also completely covered in mud.

"Sorry about that." Calen stood up, and began shaking off the wet dirt.

The boy didn’t seem to like his nonchalant attitude.

"How dare you, I am a noble and you will repay me for your insolence!"

Calen blinked in surprise.

"I don’t have any money."

"Cassian, what happened here?" A low and gruff voice came from behind Calen.

When he turned around, he saw a tall man clad in metal armour - his features were so similar to the boy’s that he couldn’t be anyone but his father.

"Father, this peasant ran into me and is being mean about it!"

Calen frowned - he wasn’t mean, in fact he just apologised for what he did.

The man looked angry, and Calen expected he would start yelling at him, but to his utter surprise that wasn’t what happened.

"Cassian, such language is completely inappropriate!"

"But father, Lord Oppin said that the common folk is beneath us." The boy argued.

The man pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I should have never taken you to that stupid gala." He mumbled, then sighed and finally looked at Calen. "What’s your name boy?"

"Calen, sir."

"I’m Vandrel." The man introduced himself. "Where are your parents Calen?"

"I didn’t have parents."

The man’s expression remained impassive, but his tone changed to a more gentle one.

"I see. Do you live by yourself or are you a part of the House of Dawn?"

Calen was in a dilemma - he didn’t want to lie by saying he lived on his own, but if he told the man he was a child of Dawn questions about why he was here would folow, and he very much didn’t want to answer those.

"House of Dawn." He finally admitted.

"Very well then, we’ll escort you back home."

Calen was grateful to avoid interrogation, so he simply nodded in agreement.

"He just ran into me, and we’re going to walk him home in exchange!?" Cassian seemed positively furious at the turn of events.

"What would you do in this situation then?" Vandrel asked.

"I... I... I challenge him to a duel!" The boy pointed at Calen.

"Is that so? And how are you going to duel without even knowing how to hold a sword properly?"

Cassian turned beet red.

"I would fight him after our first lesson, not now!" He squeaked.

Vandrel turned to Calen.

"Do you accept his challenge? You don’t have to if you don’t want to."

Truth to be told, Calen did want to accept - he apologised for their collision, and yet the boy kept making a fuss and belittling him - he wanted to wipe the floor with that self important prick.

"I accept." He said confidently, maintaining eye contact with Cassian.

Vandrel observed him carefully, and then nodded.

"I’ll pick you up from the House of Dawn at daybreak in two days."

"Father, that’s when you’re supposed to start my training." Cassian frowned.

"Exactly, Calen will join us and learn swordsmanship alongside you."

Seeing his son’s incensed expression, he added:

"You didn’t want to fight someone who couldn’t defend themselves, did you?"

Cassian mumbled something, but didn’t argue with his father.

"Now we need to escort you so that I can inform Miss Berk of your lessons."

It turned out that their destination was only a few hundred meters away - Calen must have made a giant circle while running away.

Miss Berk was standing in the door, seemingly waiting for them.

"Sir Vandrel, what an unexpected surprise! Did you find Cal causing trouble? I’ll give him a piece of my mind later."

"Nothing of the sort Miss, he simply ran into my son, and we chatted a bit - as a result I have decided to take him on as a student, if that’s alright with you of course."

Miss Berk’s eyes went wide - apparently Vandrel taking on students wasn’t a very common occurrence.

"Of course you can train him sir, what kind of educator and guardian would I be if I denied one of my charges such a rare opportunity!"

"I will come to fetch him every other day for training, starting from the day after tomorrow. Make sure he dresses in something comfortable and light."

She nodded along to the explanations, before remembering Calen was still standing there.

"Cal, go inside - this will take a while, and you don’t need to to be here."

Before going in he send a one last glare at Cassian, which he returned in kind. Inside one of the kids he knew saw the interaction, and approached him.

"You’ve made a new friend?"

"...not quite."

***

Elita looked quite shocked by the story

"I didn’t expect young Cassian to be so..."

"Bratty?" Calen supplied.

"Annoying?" Isara offered.

"Different."

"A very generous description." Calen chuckled. "He was a major pain in the ass until our first duel, and he kept up the aloof persona for almost a year."

"What happened then?"

"I think he wanted to be more like his dad - cooler, as he would have said it back then."

"Sir Vandrel is a badass, I’ll give him that." Isara agreed.

"I’m a bit confused." Elira admitted. "You said the story was embarrassing, but there wasn’t anything like that here."

"That’s because the story isn’t over yet, he just likes dramatic pauses."

"Don’t criticise my storytelling if you’re not willing to tell stories yourself." He grumbled. "But yeah, she’s right - the embarrassing part is the duel itself."

"I take it you lost?" The alchemist asked.

Calen smiled.

"You’ll see..."

***

Calen was extremely tired, but at the same time very excited to start training - when Miss Berk came back she explained who his mentor-to-be was, as he was completely clueless about his identity.

When he heard he would be taught by Vandrel the Oathbound, the Captain of the city guard, and one if the most famous knights in the kingdom, he was ecstatic.

His luck was never particularly good, so to land on a tutor like that by a complete accident was basically a miracle.

That said, when Vandrel came to pick him up he suddenly felt nervous - he realised that he knew nothing about swords, knights or fighting - he didn’t want to embarrass himself.

They reached their destination fairly quickly, it was a small arena attached to the inner city wall specifically for the use of the guards. Since Vandrel was the one in charge of it, he simply reserved the thing for the entire morning to teach the boys there.

When he saw Cassian he exhaled in relief- the knight’s son looked just as tired as he felt, it was good to know he wasn’t the only one too excited to sleep.

"We’ll start with running - five laps around the arena, then we’ll move onto strength exercises." Vandrel announced.

Calen frowned.

"Sir, I thought we’re going to learn how to wield a sword."

"If you want to be a swordsman, you have to build up enough strength to hold a sword first."

Cassian snickered at Calen’s question.

"I don’t see what’s so funny about that Cassian, you asked me the exact same thing this morning."

The boy’s ears reddened.

"Alright, if there are no more questions you can start running."

As their made their way around the sand filled pit, Cassian made sure to stay one meter in front of Calen, taunting him with the silent ’you can’t reach me, I’m faster.’

Soon enough what was supposed to be a regular jog turned into a race at a breakneck pace, with the boys pushing each other and jabbing at each other with elbows.

By the time they were finished, they were both laying on the ground panting, not able to lift even a finger.

"I see we’re done with the warmup, get up and pick one of the weights so we can start the next exercise."

This was going to be looong day.