The Northern Noble is a Grinder (Chapter 15).

The Northern Noble is a Grinder (Chapter 15).

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Commissioned by Sivantic

Word count: 2500

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The days blended into one another under Lord Trelawney’s tutelage.

Mornings were spent eating and training the body.

Days were spent hunting and killing powerful monsters.

Afternoons spent at half-rest or killing more to make quota.

By sunset, we were back at Coastal Fortress Trelawney, and we were consuming a banquet.

After that it was rest whilst learning of monsters or new skills.

Day after day passed, with brief breaks that distressingly felt increasingly like wasted time, until the final battle arrived.

A battle against Lord Trelawney himself.

Alice wore shimmering silks harvested from gigantic frost spiders in dark caves. When she stood still, she all but blended into the frosty clearing that our battle was set in. She wielded a bow composed of the legs of the same spider that a normal man could not hope to even bend. The arrows she wielded were of wyvern bones. Light enough to fly long and fast, but durable enough to withstand the strength of hammer blows without flinching. Twin venomous fangs of an immense snake-like creature hung on her belt, ready to be drawn in an instant and fill her target with paralyzing, necrotizing poison. Her strength lay in being unnoticed and striking with fatal blows before retreating to safety.

Chloe focused on materials that allowed her to leverage her family’s blade in battle while avoiding attacks. She wore light plates composed of wyvern scales and reinforced with enchanted steel, but they only served to protect from one or two blows at most. Her focus was on using flight during combat to evade blows, and she wore a winged helm that covered her face and protected it from howling winds. In battle she was like a living whirlwind of blades at the frontline, attracting attention through sheer deadliness, and attacks sent her way were evaded, parried, or batted aside by strong gales of arcane might. Her blade was typically a flurry of light blows, but whenever she found or created an opening, she would strike with devastating lightning.

I had considered many paths, but I chose the one most appropriate to my station.

A living weapon meant to change the tide of battle by my mere deployment. After learning how to defend myself with melee weapons and my own hands, I was permitted to devote myself to my family’s magic. My family’s lineage was famed for usage of flames, and the greatest of our family heads created infernos that ravaged the armies of our foes while leaving our people untouched. In battle we held lances of light and heat at our command, which would strike down all that dared to approach us or those we protected, including spells. Our ‘flame’ was in fact a combination of mastery over heat, light, and movement, which in combination could harm anything in sufficient intensity and speed.

I held a staff in one hand and a catalyst in the other. The catalyst was forged from the heart of an immense magma worm we hunted in one of the few volcanoes of the north. The staff was made from a dread beast summoned by the tribals in distant lands, and it allowed exceptional control over heat. A four-legged beast of two canid heads composed of flame and shadow. The base of the bone staff exuded a smoke-like shadow that defended me from attacks, while the baleful eye turned into rose-gold crystal at the top allowed me to harness light more effectively.

Speed was something I had to conjure on my own.

My armor was a reinforced cloak with too little armor for my liking, but too much essence and material from other creatures would interfere with my casting. I needed to feel my staff and catalyst while melding them in harmony with my own power. Being covered in enchanted steel and wyvern scales would make that harmony impossible. Instead, I wore lightly enchanted threads composed of the fine fur of the shadow creature, and I was grateful that it was fine enough to be made into clothing and cover me respectably.

I had a sword at my belt along with a buckler. On the other side was a mace enchanted to amplify force when swung. If needed, I could take flight even without the boots Lord Trelawney gave us, but I had no confidence in combating him in the air.

In fact, I had little confidence in combating him even with all the current limits he imposed upon himself.

“Alright, final exam time. If you can hold off against me, you’re all free to go unless you want to become minor deities.” He was out of his armor, and his wires were not in play. He was clad in a boy’s uniform for school. Shorts, high socks, leather shoes, a jacket, and a blazer. He seemed more fit for playing on a field with other children rather than terrorizing us now. “Either you last five minutes against my assault without any of you going down, or you put a scratch on me. Ready? Go.”

‘Go,’ began the fight instantly.

We knew we could not last against him for five minutes, so we implemented our plan instantly.

With a roar and the sound of air splitting, Chloe launched herself at him. Encompassing herself with raging wind, she was like a drill that split apart the earth in her passing. The soil was upturned and acted more like water being split as it curled inward around her path. Lightning crackled in her passing, sparking between the ‘waves’ of soil that reached for the sky.

She crashed against Lord Trelawney with her ancestral blade covered in power and might none of her ancestors ever had.

He floated away just out of her reach, but she dragged him back with her wind back to her blade, and she aimed for his neck.

Her blow collided, and there was a horrific noise.

Silence.

No sound of skin being broken.

“Nice, speed and control, but your ability to destroy is too low with just one hand.” Lord Trelawney instructed her. Then, for a moment, there was bright, piercing light that drowned out all shadows, and suddenly Chloe was flying back through the upturned tunnel of soil she created, blasting apart the tunnel formed by her charge. She struggled to recover… but she gave me the time that I needed. “Ah, good plan.”

I let loose innumerable bolts of force at him. Heat and light meant nothing, so I focused on controlling the near-invisible ‘bubbles’ of force that I conjured. My staff and catalyst were of little help, but I didn’t have the time to make use of them. The projectiles resembled blurry spheres the size of my fist, and from my experience a single strike with them was enough to crack rock and dent armor. A single blow from one could kill an ordinary man.

For Lord Trelawney to not just endure them, I conjured a streaming barrage of hundreds that struck at him from above, below, from his sides, and at his front in a dizzying array of patterns.

Before they could make contact, though, he leaned forward… And suddenly he was in front of me.

His ability to accelerate and decelerate while in flight was nearly like teleportation.

The only reason why I wasn’t thrown back like Chloe was because we planned for it.

Suddenly, he whipped his head back, and an arrow passed where his temple was a moment ago.

Our initial plan was now thoroughly foiled, so I simply put into practice what I knew.

Use absolute force to eliminate my enemy.

Orbs of force came into being all around me, and I slammed them into him. They popped suddenly before reaching him, and I was terrified to realize that he discerned their weakness already. They needed very little to ‘pop’ and waste the potential within them. I alternated, switching to more stable constructs, but he was already upon me with a reared-back fist. The half-formed structures gathered in front of his fist only to crumple and break apart one after the other, but it bought me the time needed to kick off the ground and retreat.

He bulldozed through the equivalent of a castle wall by following through with his punch, and a grin played on his face.

Chloe returned to battle a moment later, not giving away her position until she had to roar to summon every ounce of her strength. Her family’s blade flashed a brilliant white as she channeled lightning through it, and this time Lord Trelawney was forced to evade rather than take the hit. Chloe manipulated her body in midair like a puppet, turning sideways and changing the downward swing of her blade into a horizontal one that swept across the ground before once again changing her orientation in place so as to lunge at him with a thrust.

She took his attention through those elaborate movements, allowing me to strike once again.

This time I formed a dizzying array of lights and sent them to occlude his vision. My staff grew heavy for a moment as I relied upon the fragmented will of the shadow-beast that remained within. It yearned to attack, not to blind, but it complied nonetheless. The split second it cost to cast worried me, but for a moment Lord Trelawney was taken aback and was almost hit by Chloe’s lightning-imbued blade, and I judged it worthy of training.

A lance of heat from my catalyst in my left hand gathered and swirled. Snow melted, grass burned, and soil began to bake, but I held it fast and waited to strike with it at the right moment.

Which came as another arrow surged from seemingly nowhere towards Lord Trelawney from Alice’s hiding place.

He evaded Chloe’s sword aimed for his neck at the same time, and the arrow neared his heart. He allowed himself to fall flush against the ground, and then he rolled as Chloe changed the arc of her blade downward. Chloe was putting her all towards manipulating her body through the air in such a manner. Her reserves were just slightly better than Chloe’s and nowhere near mine. She was slowly getting slower, especially as she had to re-imbue her blade with lightning while maintaining her flight.

Through her actions, though, Alice’s arrow had nearly caught him, and she kept him suppressed even after he dodged.

Thus, I was allowed to let the ball of heat that I gathered go forth.

Chloe held until the last moment before retreating, and the orb of pure heat exploded upon Lord Trelawney. He was engulfed by the sphere as it expanded instantly after I released my control. Water in the air flash-boiled and created explosive steam that Chloe was quick to get rid of. Snow disappeared in an instant, while the ground that was reached became glass. The heat was so strong that at the epicenter a half-sphere crater was created that dug out the ground, as vaporization occurred.

I would have hesitated to use such an attack on anyone else, but Lord Trelawney… emerged from the ball of heat unscathed.

But he was forced to create a barrier of his own power around him, which he had to lower to move once again.

That gave us an opportunity.

Chloe and Alice surged forward while I did the same. I gathered heat, light, and force at the tip of my staff with as much force as I could muster. My plan was to unleash it upon him at point-blank range, practically with the tip of my staff against his skin. Chloe unleashed her own secret weapon and drew a second blade from the armory while throwing her ancestral blade forward and controlling it with her mind so she could slash at him with full force from two directions at once. Alice was ready with an enchanted gem filled with power to attach to him and explode with immense force.

Lord Trelawney responded just as we were about to make contact.

Alice was struck first, her relative fragility exploited as he simply thrust out his hand in her direction and made her charge go out of control with a burst of primal force. Her weapon flew into the air while she tried to recover, extracted forcibly from her hand, and it flew to his hand instead. My eyes were barely able to widen as he placed the highly explosive gem in the path of my staff, and I was forced to stop and release my attack into the air, lest I detonate the gem that I empowered with Alice over so many days.

As a pillar of pure-white destruction surged into the sky, Chloe’s strikes surged forward, and he raised his free hand to stop it.

Then, suddenly, a cut appeared on his cheek.

Our victory seemed to come from nowhere until Chloe let loose a breath, and a third, hidden blade made itself known by drifting out of the shadow of her second sword.

It was a long, narrow thing that broke apart like glass and fell onto the floor, but it had given her just an inch more of reach for her strike.

Allowing her to place a scratch on his cheek.

My breath caught in my throat for a moment as I looked upon the scratch. It was so shallow that it didn’t even draw blood. It was like a faint line created by a fingernail upon bare skin.

Still, though, Lord Trelawney’s smile went from ecstatic at battle to accepting.

He nodded once, and all pressure dissipated.

I felt myself almost fall forward until he caught me with his wires and helped me stay up. I had fought with all I had from the start of the battle, expending nearly all my reserves in less than three ‘attacks,’ with the last one taking the most of my power to only misfire.

But we achieved our goal.

“None of you died, and that little trick at the end would’ve killed Aigen just fine. I’m just that much tougher.” Lord Trelawney proclaimed proudly and looked at us in turn. Chloe was on the ground with her hands on the floor. Her helm was off, and she was desperately trying to take in air. Sweat dripped from her brow, and as the cold returned from my banishment, she started to visibly radiate steam. Alice was standing, but she held her chest with both hands, and I knew she was heavily bruised from the attack. Still, though, I could feel nothing but triumph from them. Triumph that I shared. “Needless to say, I consider the three of you as having passed my little bootcamp.”

He raised his hands and gave a singular clap.

“Your training has officially ended! Get out there and have some fun trouncing all the troubles that arrive on your doorstep!”

My training was finally over.

Now, it was time to return home and see what I could make of it.