Chapter Eight: Training

Early Afternoon, 25th June 2017

After I was told to keep the sword sheathed at all costs, we were led by the King and his entourage up the spiral stairs and back through many of the same hallways we had been through earlier. Both Kate and I stayed silent as we were guided to an unknown place for a reason we had yet to be told. The King seemed to like to keep things mysterious. The sword was becoming incredibly frustrating as the blade's side knocked against my leg with every step; I briefly started to hold the handle in place to stop this but a stern look from one of the guards soon put a stop to that. Along the way, the King quietly sent one of his guards off to get something. I asked him what but was completely ignored. Kate smirked, quietly happy that I knew what it was like.

We eventually realised, however, that we were heading back towards the cells we had begun our strange journey from. This worried us; the last thing we wanted to do was be back there. I glanced over to Kate as she turned her eyes towards me, our eyes meeting with mutual concern. Walking down the long corridor full of the familiar cells on both sides, we approached an intimidating iron door. This door was completely lacking in any sign of comfort, there was no window to speak of, only a slit that could be opened from the outside

Nervously I asked, "What are we doing here?" No one responded until I remembered to finish with, "Your majesty."

"There is no need to worry, Harding." The King began, "We are simply here to test your powers." This put me slightly at ease, but also made me worry about how we were going to do such a thing. I had very little idea what my 'powers' were or how I was supposed to be able to use them. I sincerely hoped he didn't expect me to just be a natural.

We reached the unlocked and slightly ajar door. The King's closest guard it pushed with some effort, holding it open as the rest of us walked through. This cell looked very similar to the cell that I was all too familiar with, although the lack of any window in the door meant that no light from the corridor could come in and no window to the outdoors meant no natural light either. Without the clearly temporarily lantern placed on the floor to the left of the room and the open door, the cell would be in complete darkness. It must have usually been used as a punishment for the more unruly captives. The walls were lined with scratch marks of varying legibility. Some almost formed letters (although never words), while others were the crazed carvings of evidently inhumanely treated prisoners, devoid of the little human contact they got in the other cells. It was a haunting place but, unfortunately, one that the King seemed to want me to remain for now.

At the far end of the room stood a tall but narrow wooden table with a small piece of scrap iron placed on top of two small wooden blocks. It was barely lit by the two small light sources, but I wouldn't have been able to work out what it was for even if it was perfectly lit by a stadium floodlight.

King Harold was waiting at the door, watching for the guard he'd sent off to return. Without saying a word, the guard came back and handed the King a small wooden box; a box that I was far too used to seeing. The diamonds.

Without thinking I immediately said, "No. I'm not doing this if it involves those bloody things."

The King forced the box in front of me and sternly said, "Harding. You have the sword, you can use the diamonds. You can control their power."

"How do you know that? Some ancient book said so? How do you know they weren't just having a laugh when they were writing it?"

The frustrated monarch couldn't give any answer other than, "It has been right so far, has it not?"

I realised that this was completely true. Everything it had said about me had been true up to that point, it was all just less graceful than as it seemed when written down.

Not having an answer to that, I reluctantly grabbed the box from the King and started to psych myself up for my first attempt at using the sword. I was told that the book didn't have a lot of detail about how the powers were used, but the idea was the lightning was supposed to fire out of the tip of the blade in the direction I pointed it.

I was about to have a try when the King suddenly turned to one of his guards and said, "Escort the woman out of here. It's too crowded and she will certainly be a hindrance."

"Fucking what?" Kate shouted as the guard moved towards her. "Why am I even here? You wankers have done nothing but sideline me this entire time! 'No place for a woman.' 'She'll be a hindrance.' You can fuck right off!"

"Kate!" I snapped, simply wanting to concentrate on the task at hand. "Can you please just go?"

She glared at me, shocked that I took the King's side on the matter. I didn't waver on my stance, however. "Fine! Show me where my chamber is, I'll take my distracting fucking gender elsewhere." She powered out of the room as the guard followed her to take her to our chamber. I realised I could have handled that better, but I was incredibly stressed and couldn't deal with Kate arguing with the King about why she should have been there. I would have preferred her to be there but not like that.

Pushing the guilt to the back of my mind I prepared once again to use the sword. As I drew it, the King and his entourage stepped back as far behind me as they could, which wasn't particularly far in the relatively small cell. I held the box of diamonds in my right hand and aimed the tip of the lightweight sword at the scrap iron with my left. As I took a deep breath, I prepared to open the box, manoeuvring my hand so that my thumb was pressed against the lid.

I muttered the words, "Fuck me," as I flicked the lid off the box, the clacking of the wood hitting the floor echoing around the small room. The bright blue light flooded out of the box and blinded me as usual but, after a few seconds, it faded. There was no pain and I wasn't transported to another time or place. The light weakened and revealed the same cell I was in before, but with everything covered in a blue tint. I stood perfectly still, expecting everything to go tits up at any moment. When nothing happened, I kept my body still but turned my head to look at the King to my right. He looked slightly surprised at something and stepped back, while not saying a word. Looking at the guards caused similar reactions, I couldn't work out why but I was too afraid to ask, just in case speaking triggered something. Anything was possible where these diamonds were concerned.

I glanced over to the box of diamonds I was still holding and realised they were no longer glowing. For the first time, I could see that there were three small diamonds in this box, all perfectly alike in their appearance. They looked exactly like a scaled down version of the diamond I had seen in my dream.

After half a minute of nothing happening, I looked back towards the scrap iron and started to pathetically shake my sword at it, hoping something would happen. Nothing did. This was getting frustrating. The blue tint slowly faded from my vision over the next minute until I could see everything in its normal colours. I sighed, sheathed my sword, and put the lid on the box containing the muted diamonds. I supposed that I would have to wait some time before I could try again.

A brief look at the King and his guards showed serious relief. "Your eyes," the King began, pausing to put into words what he had just seen, "They were blue. Completely blue! I've never seen anything like it." The guards still looked uneasy but they tried not to show it.

A bit confused – perhaps rather dimly – I replied, "What do you mean? My eyes are blue."

"No, you misunderstand me. Your eyes were completely blue. Each eye was wholly blue." That explained the unnerving looks they gave me. "Did you feel any power from the diamonds?"

"I think so?" I couldn't really tell at the time. It seemed to me like everything was the same but blue, though I could feel some indistinct sense of power. "I'm not really sure though. I couldn't get anything to happen."

"Time, Harding. You will get there." He thought for a moment, "Do not take too much time, however. We can't take too long."

This was starting to sound ominous, "Sir…" I began, causing one of the guards to start glaring at me. "Shit. Your majesty." The guard simply nodded. "What exactly do you expect of me?"

He took the box off me and handed it to one of the guards who marched off to store it somewhere safe. "All in good time, Harding. You will join us for tonight's feast." He was about to leave the room when he remembered to say, "As long as she behaves herself, you can bring your woman as well." I weakly muttered her name in some vague attempt at a response, not loud enough for them to notice, but it was enough for me to feel as if I'd helped her plight in some way.

The King indicated to one of the guards, "Take him to his chamber. He is allowed to use the training rooms to work on his likely lacking fighting ability if he wishes as well. We will fetch him for the feast later."

The guard nodded, trying to remember everything he had just been told. Without another word, the King left with the other guard, leaving the one remaining guard in the cell with me about to take me to my chamber, where a likely very pissed off Kate would be waiting for me. I was instructed to leave the sword in the cell where it would be locked away safely before we headed off.

We approached the door of the chamber to find the guard that had taken Kate back standing to attention outside. I was let in and instructed that I'd have to knock on the door and be escorted to wherever I wanted to go if I wanted to leave. With that, he slammed the door shut and locked it.

I found Kate sitting in one of the chairs on the far side of the room.

"Should I go?" She sarcastically began. "My spare X chromosome is clearly just going to get in the way." I knew this would be coming, and it wasn't entirely undeserved, but I didn't have anything planned for a way out. I decided to improvise.

"Kate." I paused, giving myself time to think as a very expectant Kate scowled at me. "I'm sorry for snapping at you, but you have to understand how bloody stressful this whole thing is."

She stood up and took a few steps towards me. "I get that, Mark. Could you just try to not be such a fucking twat?"

I was starting to get a bit frustrated, "I should try not to be a twat? How about you with your bloody shouting matches with the King? I'm dealing with some ancient magic bollocks and your only concern is sexism? I'm afraid there's slightly more important things going on! I nearly killed someone!"

She looked incredibly offended, likely having not listening to the actual words that I'd said, and came back with, "You have no idea what it's like here for me. No one even acknowledges my existence unless I'm doing something only a man is supposed to do."

We went on like this for a long time. I had no idea how long, but after using as many words as possible to throw the same two points at each other, we simply ran out of things to say. I decided I needed to get away from her, so I took the King up on his offer of the training rooms. I bashed on the door to get the attention of the two guards outside and demanded I be taken to the training rooms, leaving Kate in the room by herself.

I was in a horrible mood. On the way over to the training rooms in the lower section of the castle, near the cells again, I had some time to think. While I didn't necessarily think I was wrong with what I said to Kate, I did sincerely regret the way I said it. I certainly could have been more understanding of her struggles, especially since she was the entire reason that I was alive at this point.

I decided to push the thought to the back of my mind and focus on smashing the shit out of a dummy soldier in the training room. Made of straw, six were lined up in front of the far wall propped up by a wooden cross and wearing a thin length of dirty white cloth to keep everything together. I was given a wooden sword to train with, lest I accidentally hurt someone with a real one. They were clearly ignoring the fact that I had been given an ancient sword imbued with lightning that same day.

The room wasn't particularly large but it served its purpose well enough. It was circular in shape with the six dummies set up along one half of the circle opposite the small wooden entrance. Straw left over from old dummies was scattered across the floor and had been gathered into small piles on the sides. There was a small rack off to the right containing a few more wooden swords and torches lined the walls to provide the light; it was certainly less glamorous than the rest of the castle. Without much hesitation, I trudged over to one of the central dummies and smashed my sword down on its straw shoulder.

Half an hour passed and I was still going at the dummy with full force, angrily hacking away at it with a distinct lack of skill until there was very little straw left on it. The guard that escorted me had gotten bored of watching me completely fail to be graceful so he had gone outside to wait for me to be done with my stress relief. After what I thought were a particularly vicious set of strikes against the target, I stepped back, completely out of breath, and observed the damage done. There was straw strewn all over the floor at the base of the wooden cross and the cloth was barely hanging onto the dummy itself, it was hanging onto the construction by a thread and was nearly touching the floor.

"Fucking hell," I heard a voice behind me say. "What did the poor guy do to deserve that?" I looked behind me, Kate was at the door grinning. She'd changed into decidedly more sensible clothing, relatively similar to the clothes I had been given.

I quietly said, "Oh, hi. Yeah, he's… Suffered somewhat."

She walked over to me and said, "I got the guard to take me here because I wanted to apologise. I know you've got a lot of shit going on right now that I can never understand."

She was about to continue but I quickly interrupted her with the words I had been thinking about over this time, "No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lashed out like that; I'm just really bloody stressed right now. You've got your own shit to deal with though, you don't need me standing here and dismissing your issues with this place."

"Hug it out?" She opened her arms and smiled at me. I dropped the wooden sword and gave her a hug, "Thanks, I'll try to be less of a whiny bitch in the future."

I pulled back, grinned and said, "And I'll try to be less of a self-centred dick."

"Deal."

We sat on the hard wooden floor and chatted for a while after that. I got her up to date on everything that happened when she left the cell when I was trying to use the sword. She just made a joke about my inability to 'finish' and laughed to herself. To be fair, these stories were becoming less and less interesting as more started to happen. When I first saw one of the diamonds, it was all we could think about, but by this point it was almost part of our normal lives.

After a while, Kate jumped up excitedly and held out her hand towards me as she said, "Right, get up. I briefly saw your sword 'skills' so I'm going to teach you how to use one of these things properly."

I grabbed her hand and she hauled me up as I half-jokingly said, "It can't be that hard surely? You just aim the pointy bit at the bad people."

She chuckled condescendingly, indicated for me to pick my wooden sword up off the floor, and got one of her own from the rack. We stood near the centre of the circular room, but with a few feet in between us, and she began the lesson.

"First of all, you're going to want a proper stance, one where you won't get knocked off your feet if a fly coughs on you. Do as I do." She held the sword with her right hand and kept her left behind her, her legs were far apart and facing slightly diagonally to give her balance, and she held the sword forward and at the ready. I tried to copy her stance as best as I could. She could tell I looked slightly confused about the stance, it looked nothing like the kind of thing I had seen in films and on television, so she went on to explain it a bit. "Always keep your sword ready to block any attack at any angle but don't go jumping the gun on your blocks. Keep your free hand behind your back if it's not being used, it's just another target if you're leaving it exposed. I found that out the hard way." She dropped her stance to raise her free arm, pull back her sleeve and showed me a large and gruesome scar on her forearm, proving her point quite succinctly, before returning to her stance and continuing on. "Keeping your legs like this should help you stay balanced if you get hit from most angles, and you should be able to readjust fairly rapidly if needed." I stood in place and nodded along; she was suddenly taking a strangely serious tone, so I felt like I really had to pay attention. She watched me adjust my stance a small amount before she gave me a small nod and said, "That'll do. Now try to attack me and pay attention to what I do."

I obliged and tentatively moved forwards, attempting to keep the stance up but likely not being very successful. She seemed to sense my hesitation and so said, "Really go for it, don't worry about hurting me." I paused for a moment before attempting a swing from right to left as fast as I could. She immediately brought her sword around, hit mine away then moved forward a step, grabbed my sword wielding arm with her free hand and went to stab my stomach with her sword, stopping an inch away from me. Everything happened so fast, it was genuinely terrifying. She let go and stepped back but I stayed in the same position for a while, completely motionless, trying to make sense of what she had just done

"What the fuck just happened?" I said as I regained my composure.

Kate chuckled lightly and said, "Years of living on this sodding island happened. But you just learned an important lesson, don't make an attack if it will leave you vulnerable. It's just not worth it."

"Yeah. Too right..." Just before Kate was about to give me another instruction, I asked her, "Why do we need to know how to duel anyway? Won't we be fighting those monsters?"

She looked slightly disappointed at my poor attempt to get out of training, "Learning this will improve your sword fighting skills in general. Plus, you never know what you'll face. I've seen a few skeletons with swords in the past and, with everything that's going on, I want you to know how to handle a sword properly." I reluctantly agreed with her and we continued on.

We spent the next hour or so training. I tried blocking some of her attacks, usually unsuccessfully, and attacking her some more. Over the course of the practice, I could feel myself getting better. I was nowhere near her level but, after being bruised several times by her wooden sword, I started to get better self-preservation instincts and I even got one or two light hits in on her. Kate taught me about using my legs and my free hand to catch my opponent off guard and sometimes just grabbing their weapon-wielding hand if possible. The fighting was absolutely nothing like I expected it to be, it was up close and messy rather than just hitting each other's swords.

After the hour had passed, we were interrupted by one of the guards coming into the room to inform us that the King's feast would be ready shortly and we had to be readied. We finished up, put the swords back, and followed him to the castle's bathing rooms.

Kate and I were separated off and bathed to royal standards. I was washed head to toe which, while incredibly necessary, was very awkward when being done by the King's servants.

My patchy beard was also shaved and we were both put into fine clothes. Mine were fairly similar to those that I had been wearing previously, but the tunic was a dark green and the clothes were generally of a higher quality and adorned with gold-laced designs. Kate was put into a tight-fitting red dress, similar to that which she had worn previously.

It was hard to imagine what to expect from this feast. I had relied on Kate for any historical insights but she came up blank as well. We only knew that we had to try and blend in with the others.