Chapter Two: Epic Training Montage

The first day was the hardest.

Lon'qu left the castle on the night of their fated acquaintance and found lodging somewhere in Ylisstol, promising to be waiting in the courtyard every afternoon for Owain's lessons. Owain excitedly invited Mother to watch, but her lips became a thin line and she shook her head.

He'd been training with Lucina for a while already, but Lon'qu was much stricter than his noble cousin, and after only a few simple drills his heart was racing and sweat was pouring down his face. He was swaying on his feet by the time their spar began—beginning with a bow to honour his opponent, as Lon'qu instructed.

Perhaps, he thought as he gasped for breath and was snapped at to react faster, despite his burning muscles, he had bitten off more than he could chew. Several hours of swordplay in the morning had made him sore enough. To take on several more in the afternoon made his fingers tremble and his response times dwindle like candles reaching the ends of their wicks. Lon'qu's blows came harder and harder.

But he would not lose! If he was to be the Chosen One, he would need to take advantage of every opportunity! Train on mountaintops for days on end, taking only dew and determination for his sustenance! ...He wasn't sure where he'd find a mountaintop, but he could always improvise!

With a shout and a sudden burst of speed, he whacked Lon'qu's blade out of the way and ducked under, throwing himself forward to attack—

—but when he thrust his arm out, he spasmed from knuckles to shoulder and dropped the weapon. His teacher rewarded him with a hard smack across the shoulder blades from the flat of his own sword, sending him sprawling.

"My hand," Owain gasped as he tried to push himself up and his right arm buckled. It was shaking as if it had a life of its own, still wracked with little spasms. He tried to grasp the hilt of his wooden practice sword, to continue the bout, but couldn't close his fingers around it. "My sword hand."

"You've cramped. Too many hours of training today, I'd wager. The weakness will fade in time, as you spend more days practicing."

Owain managed to sit and cradled his right arm in his left. "This is no weakness! My sword hand is...twitching! Twitching for justice! No, revenge! No, twitching to fight all night! This is merely a glimpse of my prodigious power, Master Lon'qu! Can't...contain...my potential!"

"What an odd boy," he said as he crouched to give it a look. "Can you pick up your sword?"

Owain stubbornly tried again, but couldn't seem to manage it. His face burned with shame. Failed already, and it was only his first day with the Champion. Lon'qu sat beside him with a heavy sigh and reached for his arm.

"That's it," Owain said, "just cut the whole thing off. Exact the blood price for the time of yours that I have wasted. I shall fight with my left hand from now on or I shall not fight at all."

Lon'qu was silent. The next thing Owain knew, firm and surprisingly gentle fingers were kneading the complicated muscles of his hand. They worked up his wrist and forearm.

"This will help," Lon'qu said. "If you rest now, we should be able to continue later."

They sat in silence for a while, and Owain just closed his eyes and marveled at how the pressure was calming the trembling in his arm and easing the pain. He was never one to sit still or quietly for long, however, and soon all his questions from yesterday afternoon were bubbling up:

"So how did you meet Mother? Was it a fruitful happenstance? Star-crossed destiny?"

"It was Chrom's fault," Lon'qu answered. "I was traveling with the army already, he wanted her guarded, and I had all the qualifications."

"Wow! Hand-selected by my Exalted uncle! You must have been the very strongest!"

He shook his head and shrugged. "The fastest, maybe. The least busy."

"Tell me, what was it like?" Owain tried to clench his cramped fist, and this time was successful. "Protecting somebody? Is it euphoric?"

"It wasn't just anybody. It was Lissa. So it was mostly just...annoying."

He tasted the word like he had something stuck between his teeth, but Owain laughed.

"I knew it! Mother is too much of a free spirit to have a dark shadow like you stalking her all the time. O, riotous princess! I bet she tried to escape!"

"Every day."

"You must tell me more!" he urged. "Tell me all about Mother as a girl!"

The sword master was quiet for a long while as he worked. "I'm...not sure how to. She moved too fast for words. She was very...bright. She could make anyone smile."

"Even you?" Owain asked, wide-eyed. Lon'qu snorted but his lips did not quirk upward.

"Especially me. Eventually she got it into her head that we should be friends, so then she started following me. I wasn't keen on that."

"Why not?" he demanded. "Mother is my best friend in all the world! She's great at it!"

"It wasn't that simple. I had...baggage."

Owain gasped. "A mysterious past to match the mysterious man! Lon'qu, you hardly need my embellishing. You're exciting enough on your own."

Lon'qu rolled his eyes and stood. "Back on your feet. Time for parry-riposte drills."

xxx

He spent his days training until he literally couldn't lift a sword any longer, and all his nights reading. He still searched for stories where fathers sacrificed themselves for sons and the sons found a way to redeem themselves, but was still unable to find anything in castle's entire library. It seemed no son in history had ever been so useless. So shameful.

But Father gave him inspiration. It gave him a reason to get up in the morning, even though he knew the day would be filled with cuts and bruises.

"Can't you be more gentle with him?" Lissa asked one day when Lon'qu walked Owain back to their rooms. His right eye had swelled nearly shut and he was pretty sure that whole side of his face was purple.

"No," he said at the same time Lon'qu did.

"His enemies will show him no mercy."

"I'm going to be strong for you, Mother."

He was the man of the house, and there was no use in wallowing in his self-hate. He had to become the hero he wanted to be. The hero Donnel was. He spent hours up late, reading in secret while Mother thought he was asleep, memorizing clever quips and writing down exciting names in his journal to remember for later. He taught himself the soul of every sword and lance and axe, the breed of every knight's horse, the colour of every dragon's fire or poisoned breath. If his saga had truly begun, he wanted all the details to be perfect.

Besides. Maribelle had been talking more and more often about leaving to join the war effort, which meant Brady was sniffling more. And Lucina was so serious during their lessons and spent so much time in the great hall staring at the portrait of Uncle. Stories always made Owain smile. What if he could mash all the best parts of them together to create his own, and to make them characters? Would they not smile again, then?

As the weeks passed, his arms and lungs got stronger and he learned bigger words. He began jotting down little stories of his own before bed. No word came from Chrom. Mother was waiting by the window every sunset when he returned from his training, hair bronzed by the orange light, eyes straining for the sign of a messenger's horse. Lon'qu started going on walks with her around the courtyard in the evenings, and then around the corridors when the weather grew brisk. Owain joined them sometimes, but usually went off on his own to find his friends, or to immerse himself in more epic tales of great heroes to see what their virtues could teach him.

By the middle of autumn, his breath clouded the air when he went to meet Lucina at dawn. Frosty grass crunched under their feet. She settled into her stance primly, feet spread and spine straight in the stance of the Exalted style. Thanks to Lon'qu, Owain's own stance was a little different. His knees were supple, his thighs tense as springs ready to launch. He held his blade like a Chon'sin native, tip up and ready for slicing, rather than the stab-first technique Lucina had taught him. His left hand clenched and unclenched at his side, ready to aid him in the Feroxi fashion, adding a surprise element of hand-to-hand combat if his blade should fail him.

Lucina was stone-faced, as always. Owain smiled.

"Lightning Master-Strike!" he cried as he burst into action. She blocked and parried; he raised his sword just in time. "Glaring Iceburg Fortress!"

"How in the world is a wooden pratice sword anything like an iceburg?"

"I'm just practicing for when I get a real sword!" He threw his weight forward—"Silver Arrow of Piercing Light!"—and she side-stepped.

"Owain, you sound ridiculous. You read too many stories."

"You," he said with another thrust, "don't read enough."

There was her smile. He'd nearly forgotten it.

"What use do I have for reading? With Father gone, I must be my own heroine."

"Nay!" Owain argued. "I am the protagonist of this tale! You are but the sidekick to my hero!"

"We'll see about that!"

She knocked him flat. It was glorious.

xxx

Lon'qu was less amused with his creative names.

"The blending of the styles I can teach you and the style of Lucina will be useful," he said that afternoon, "but shouting out your attacks only foretells your intentions."

"But I've come up with so many great names," Owain complained. "I have thirty whole pages in my book-for swords and bows and staves and anything you could want! Mother likes 'Golden Summer Sun-Bringer' for hers."

"Less talking. More fighting."

xxx

Another week passed before he asked Lon'qu the name of his own sword. They were sitting on a bench in the courtyard after his lesson, resting and watching the sunset. Owain was trying to fortify himself against the freeze of the coming months, and after so much time in Regna Ferox, Lon'qu seemed like he hardly noticed the cold nights at all.

"Does a sword need a name, Owain?" he asked instead of answering.

"Of course it does! It has a soul!"

"When it breaks, does it go to Heaven?"

Owain quirked an eyebrow. "You know what I mean. Come on, you're a Master! A Champion! You know everything there is to know about swords."

Lon'qu was silent for a long time. Just when Owain thought he was going to be ignored, his teacher murmured,

"Mantis."

"What?" Never had Owain been so utterly disappointed. "Really? That's not very...fierce."

"It has a very special meaning to me."

Lon'qu unsheathed the blade and Owain studied it with him for a while before he ventured,

"Why?"

"I have always been fascinated by insects. By the time I got this sword and knew how to use it properly, I was nearly obsessed with the praying mantis. The females are so powerful. They have claws just as the males do. And I thought...if every human girl was given a blade, as we give our boys..." His knuckles went white over the hilt. "The butterfly was my favourite. The mantis was hers. She thought the praying made it look peaceful; we were too young to know it was a battle stance."

"Lon'qu? Are you okay?" His teacher looked pale in the low light. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing that matters any longer." He stood. "Come. Let's go back to your mother, before she wonders where we've been."

There was a story here, Owain realized as he followed. One he wouldn't find in a book, but in the life of another person. And he was determined to figure out what it meant and how it ended.

xxx

As the weeks went on and the new year passed, however, Lon'qu showed no signs of opening up.

Owain was starting to feel quite poorly about most aspects of his life: he enjoyed his sword fighting lessons but felt he wasn't making any progress, and Lucina and Lon'qu both only had criticism for him. All essential and kindly given, of course, but nothing that made him feel like he would ever be any good. Mother still didn't smile very often and the one letter they'd gotten from Uncle was hastily scribbled and very short. It contained no news of how the army was faring and mostly just hoped they were well. They couldn't write back, since Chrom would be on the march and a return letter might never find him.

The letter Lucina got was marginally longer but just as hurried. Her mouth was always a straight line, even though Owain had faith. Uncle was the Exalt, after all. The most heroic man to ever live, outside Donnel and his Trusty Pot. Uncle was invincible.

Things all compounded one night, after Owain's lesson with Lon'qu, when he remembered what they were having to eat that night.

"And I was so hungry, too," he groaned as he set his wooden sword down and began to stretch out his tired muscles. Lon'qu shot him a critical look.

"Are you not going right to your supper?"

"Yeah, but we're having bear tonight. I can get it down, but it always tastes funny."

His master's eyebrows knit. "Bear for supper In Ylisstol? Only country folk eat that."

"Mother requests it sometimes."

"Your mother doesn't even like bear." Lon'qu was sounding more confused by the second.

"She says it reminds her of better days."

"I see." Lon'qu waited for Owain to finish his stretches and then looked away. "You could eat with me tonight, if you like."

"In town?" With his awe-inspiring sword master? "Can I really?"

Mother gave permission right away, even though she also gave Lon'qu an odd look over Owain's head.

"He will be safe," was all the man said in reply, and then he was leading Owain away.

It was exciting to be in the city, especially once they left the wider and cleaner streets that Owain, Inigo, and Brady had been allowed to explore. The air was filled with the smell of cooked meat and smoke, and on every side merchants cried their wares. Women rushed home with loaves of bread or baskets of clothes and children hardly younger than Owain were underfoot. Everybody had dark circles under their eyes. He caught the gaze of one boy on his practice sword and realized without them exchanging a single word that he was not the only one who'd lost a parent and sworn revenge.

Lon'qu finally showed him through a narrow door. The hallway was dark, but off to the side was a kitchen with a cozy fire burning.

"My apartment is on the top floor," he said, "but we all share the kitchen down here." He motioned for Owain to grab a seat at the humble wooden table and then ducked into the pantry and came out with a sack of potatoes.

"So what're you going to make?" Owain asked with wide eyes. Lon'qu only smiled.

An hour and many loud stomach-grumbles later, plus several questions about cooking on Owain's part that his teacher patiently answered, he was handed a plate laden with fried potatoes and dumplings and water chestnuts and was ordered to follow Lon'qu upstairs. He tasted a slice of potato while the man's back was turned and burned his tongue.

Lon'qu's room was very small and sparse, but neat: just a bed, a dresser, a wooden chair, and three swords lined neatly by the window. Lon'qu sat in the chair and Owain elected to sit by his feet on the floor, afraid he'd spill if he hopped onto the bed.

"Is this what people eat every day in Regna Ferox?" he asked.

"Potatoes, yes. The rest is more common in Chon'sin."

"What's that like?" he couldn't help but ask. Books told him so little about the other continent. "Do you have any stories?"

Lon'qu had plenty. Slowly and quietly, in between bites, he wove surprisingly well-told tales, both sorrowful and wondrous. Owain heard about the dirty slums of the city and the women that sometimes threw him bread, the hot summers where he collected rare butterflies, the stories every child grew up reciting about dragons with lion manes and princesses in the stars. There was a girl named Ke'ri in a lot of them. By the end of it, Lon'qu seemed more legendary than ever: growing up starving and ending up a Champion. He'd travelled all over the world just as Owain hoped to do, and had way more true stories to tell than Owain did. He didn't even do any fun embellishing.

"What happened to Ke'ri?" he asked when their plates were clean. "Did you leave her behind after all that when you moved across the sea?"

Lon'qu stood up from his chair. "It's time to bring you home."

Owain wasn't sure what he'd said wrong, but he kept his mouth shut on the way back. The streets were quieter now and people were pulling their shutters closed, readying for bed. He shuffled his feet when they reached the castle's gates.

"Thank you for dinner, Revered Teacher. Your stories shall nourish my spirit just as your fried potatoes nourished my body."

Lon'qu cracked the slightest smile-the first Owain had ever caused. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah." He turned to go and then blurted, "I know you're not Ylissean, but I'm really glad you're here."

And then, for the first time outside of correcting his stance or massaging out the cramps in his arm, Lon'qu touched him. Just a short ruffling of his hair, so quick it was over before he could believe it, but it happened.

"Me too," said Lon'qu.

Author's Note: Turns out that if you fence for 5+ hours without a break and you're new to swords, your hand and arm will indeed cramp too badly to make a fist. Not that I learned that the hard way.

Thank you so much to all the people who have already been reading and leaving me your thoughts. I had no idea that anyone besides the friends who started all this would have any interest!