.
.
.
Side Story: Nina
.
Her cousin was a Sword Saint.
That was the first thought in her head when she felt the sword against her throat.
Nina Farion learned an important lesson at that moment.
She was fourteen years old. Beyond the mountains, to the far north where the three magic kingdoms had no reach, she had nearly grown to adulthood.
-Not that age mattered in that place.
This was the Holy Land of the Sword. Nothing was more important here than skill.
Nina had never known a different culture. She was the blood of the Sword God and took to her training like a fish to water. She swam up the current towards mastery, from the moment she first held a blade. All the masters agreed that she was meant to be there- she was a prodigy.
But the girl remained good-natured and humble her entire childhood, when others may have grown rebellious or moody. Despite all the praise, she never grew an ego.
After all, she had to face the crushing reality of Jino Britts every day.
That reality grounded her. It was a stabilizing force in her life, something she could never escape.
She could not remember the first time she met Jino. No matter how far back she looked, he was there. His father was her father's direct disciple, and his mother her aunt. Their families were linked by both blood and the sword.
Nina was a friendly girl. Despite her great skill, she was grounded and dependable; other children could bring her their troubles. She surrounded herself with friendships. In the training dojos, she was a leader. She let her heart out to her close friends, hiding nothing.
The boy was her opposite. He was cold and detached. To the other children, he was less of a peer and more of a thing to be avoided. When a child saw Jino Britts running through town on one of his morning jogs, they put their head down and turned the other way.
-Not to say that Jino was violent, or a bully. The problem was deeper than that; it was a matter of understanding. The other children did not understand Jino.
Nina didn't think he even noticed. He never spoke about it, never voiced feelings of loneliness.
He seemed to take direct actions to isolate himself from others. Even his family. Even her, his only real friend.
He would disappear into the woods for days, without any special notice. He would drop away, and she had to follow his tracks for hours to see him.
Those tracks always lead to some hidden, snowy clearing. He would always be swinging his sword in silence. That silence always surrounded him.
She was his only friend, but that didn't mean she understood him.
Nina learned at a young age- there were some people that you couldn't relate to. They thought differently. They focused on different things. It did not make them scary or strange. It did not bother her.
Although she might not have understood Jino completely, she did understand what he loved. He loved swords, and so did she. More than anything else, they were peers, and she was happy with that.
Jino Britts was her friend. He was different from her, and everyone, perhaps. That was not what made him terrifying.
"Good job, Jino." Her voice left her mouth.
He stood a few steps away from her, in the empty training yard behind his home.
A week before, he had been injured while training with his father. It still confused her; his father was a Sword Emperor, not the kind of man who could accidentally hurt his son while sparring. Jino had been forced to rest through those few days- that boy who did nothing but train. He probably felt like it was torture.
And after that one week, he recovered out of the blue, surpassing her in every way.
It was the day he became a Sword Saint. It was not the day he first bested her in a spar- though she could remember that vividly. It was also not the day she last saw him, in her life. But it was perhaps the most terrible day of those first fourteen years.
She felt a difficult emotion, standing there in the snow. His gaze was heavy on her, binding her like steel rope. She could not find the name of this emotion, though it was certainly unpleasant.
The feeling was darker than the day she had first killed a man in a duel. It was more painful than when she had broken her arm, sparring with Lera, the Sword Saint from the central dojo. It was more terrifying than the day she saw her father cut down an enemy swordsman.
Nina Farion worked with herself, forcing her mouth to smile, forcing out 'good job' to the boy four years younger than her.
She saw something finally rise in his face, warming that frozen expression. His lips tore open, bleached teeth sparking against her eyes.
That laughter bubbled from Jino and spilled into the yard from his small body. He laughed for a long few seconds. It was a display of alien, childlike emotion.
"Nina," he breathed out, looking at her with those dark eyes. His hair was cut short, brown. "Did you see that?"
"-That was it, wasn't it?" she said, "The Longsword of Light. It had to have been. It was so fast I couldn't even move."
She was amazed she didn't choke on the words.
He nodded, twice, bobbing his head up and down. His eyes were moving everywhere- from up to the sky, towards his house, to her, but they always returned to the wooden sword in his hands.
He wore a white training Gi, a common outfit, with bandages around his shoulder. His eyes were still dark. They were always dark. Like black pools, she sometimes thought.
"I can still feel it- the Battle Aura." He looked at his hands again. "It's like electricity. It's buzzing… all around me. It's perfect."
She was still smiling. She wondered if she should stop, let the expression drop, or keep it.
His eyes fell on her again, and then away. He never looked at one thing for long.
"Let's go show my dad." She found herself saying.
. . . . . . . . . .
Everything moved quickly after that. It didn't take long for the two children to arrive at the central dojo, and it didn't take long for her father to ask Jino to fight.
All the dozens of Sword Saints and the two Sword Emperors watched it happen.
Her father stood up, drawing his sword, and clearing the floor. He asked Jino to attack him.
Once again, the boy moved faster than she could understand.
Jino and her father, the Sword God, stood ten paces apart. One second later their swords clashed together.
She couldn't even see it happen. -That was what disturbed her.
That dark feeling returned, rising from deep in her chest like black tar. It did not leave her for many weeks.
Eventually, she found a name for it. Hopelessness.
It was the lesson she learned that day.
Jino officially became a Sword Saint. Her father nodded to him, smiling that feral grin he only showed when he was impressed by a swordsman.
Then he looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
"Well, looks like your friend's figured it out. When are you gonna be there?"
He barked out a laugh after saying those words. Jino looked on in silence. The same as always.
. . . . . . . . . .
"Nina, are you doing alright?"
She looked up from her bowl steeped in food. A mixed meal of poultry and brown rice, bought in town. Her mother always told her to eat between training sessions.
Her friends were walking outside in the market square, a day in the fall. A few girls her age, between fourteen and sixteen. They were all Advanced or Intermediate rank, children of Sword Saints who lived here year-round. Jino was studying with their parents in the central dojo.
It had been a month since he dueled her father- a month since he had become a Sword Saint. Black tar still sat in her chest.
Townsfolk passed them as the cluster of girls walked down the crowded street, snow-coated buildings leaning in from all sides. The non-swordsmen always gave them a wide berth. Some looked at them with fear, others looked with respect, but the difference did not change their distance.
"Yeah. Why're you asking?" Her voice came out.
They said something about how she had been spending less time with them. She couldn't make out the exact words.
Their faces popped out at her; all of them pale and brown-haired. They were more concerned with the boys in town than with their training. More concerned with buying new makeup than anything else. It was always the same. Of course she had been spending less time with them.
She had already wasted time that day. Jino was getting more ahead of her by the minute. He didn't take breaks- he never took breaks.
She found herself thinking of the past years in disdain.
Every day, Jino jogged out into the woods to train alone. She had never seen him sit around, talking with friends. She had never seen him think about something besides his goal.
Their difference was their commitment. He was more committed than her, and that was the simple truth. He was more obsessed than her.
No wonder he broke that four-year gap between them. No wonder, when she spent her time doing things like this.
She blinked, broken out of her thoughts. Those pale-faced girls looked at her with wide eyes.
They said something else. She responded with something else.
Minutes passed. More words.
The conversation died.
She said her goodbyes to the girls. She headed back up the main path, the snow flattened under wagon tracks and foot traffic. Small houses and training dojos surrounded her as she left the town behind.
She took a moment to breathe, alone.
I need to stop this.
No, I need to work harder.
She wondered which of those two voices would lead her to what she wanted.
The girl had taken to swordsmanship like a fish to water, her whole life. Every day she swam up the current towards mastery. All the adults told her that she was meant for it, it was in her blood as the daughter of the Sword God. It was a path laid out for her from the very beginning.
Sometimes, Nina Farion wanted to walk out into the woods and fall asleep forever.
The other kids had no frame of reference for someone like Jino. He was different from most in the way he thought, but Nina knew him. She knew what he loved. He loved using swords. She loved using swords too. She could relate to him because of that.
They were peers, walking the same path. But Nina could see a new day coming soon. He would go so far ahead that there was no point in looking back.
If that happened, she would end up like all the other kids. Jino would become alien to her. Completely and utterly alien.
. . . . . . . .
Four months later, Nina Farion became a Sword Saint in the dead of winter.
It was her fifteenth birthday.
That day, after performing the Longsword of Light and beginning to see the world in a new shade of color, she was allowed into the central dojo.
Despite this, she never defeated Jino Britts in a spar again. The gap between the two continued to widen.
Jino Britts studied under the eye of the Sword God in the central dojo a few times a week. Other days he left to train by himself for countless hours. He did not seem to follow any routine, only training and studying as he wished. Despite his age, he held one of the fastest swords in the central dojo. None of the other Sword Saints could read his gaze, or understand his thoughts.
Nina Farion continued to train alongside him, losing touch with those friends of hers and following the path she had chosen.
In her father's eyes, she finally began to mature. He looked on the two children- though Nina was an adult by then- with pride. They were the young stars of the Holy Land of the Sword, and likely to head the next generation of great swordsmen.
Another year and six months passed. Time moved slowly on, as it always does, and the two Sword Saints grew used to their stations. The lesson Nina Farion learned that terrible day finally cemented itself.
She grew stronger. She entered into some life-or-death duels and achieved victory in them all. Her sword had become fast, though not as fast as her cousin, of course.
The boy, Jino Britts, fell even deeper into coldness than the years before. His body filled, and gained height and muscle. His expression grew stony as he aged. He, as well, had settled on his path. He also engaged in a handful of life-or-death duels, alongside Nina. The two wetted their swords and were shown the ways to kill.
They were still only children, and naive as all young Sword God Style users are. But they had gained resolve.
And then one night, with snow piling high outside the central dojo, a girl with red hair entered through the doors.
.
.
.
*Author's Note*
Interlude time... and this was a pretty depressing one, but what can you do. I hope I got across what I wanted to with this chapter. I enjoy reading and writing from different character's perspectives, but I also know interludes can get tedious, so I try to keep it to one or two per arc. There's still not much dialogue or moment-to-moment beats in this chapter, but with Nina's headspace here I think it was the right choice.
That said, next up, shit finally hits the fan.
.