“Any questions left? No? Perfect.” Hannah said right as the bell rang. The class wasn’t as chaotic as I hoped it would, especially because Hannah knew what to do.
She really did know what do teach these kiddos by telling them what they were allowed to, what they had to do and what to leave their fingers off.
Thus, it was no wonder that it went rather well, even though one person in particular still had a few issues.
“What do you mean to with ‘no genocide allowed’ ?” Louis asked loudly.
“That wasn’t for you. And now, have fun in the rest of the classes.” Hannah mumbled a bit quietly and directly strolled out of the classroom.
“Wait! Wait wait wait. For who is this rule?” It was obviously for someone who wanted to commit a genocide, my dear prince. Someone like … me!
“Don’t mind it. There are so many antiquated rules you cannot even count them. There is a rule which forbids ghosts from entering for example.” I explained and shrugged his concerns off happily.
“Ghosts aren’t real though?“ He mentioned and made me giggle a bit.
“Yeah, yeah.” I mumbled and looked over towards Luna who was approaching us swiftly. “Hey, what classes do you have?”
“Math and Elfish for the most part. What about you?”
“Surprisingly, I have the first few hours free … and then I have an etiquette class and philosophy.” The most nonsensical classes I could pick without a doubt. My sole aim was to sleep in these classes and if that wasn’t possible, then it was obviously because they were easy.
“I never thought you would pick these courses.” Luna said deeply in thought. She probably assumed I would pick useful classes like ruling or so. But there was no way I would pick these.
“You know, being who I am, it is vital to fit in society.” I claimed and smirked in her direction. A saint had to look … saintly after all.
“That’s true … want to eat together then?” She asked with sparkling eyes.
“Sure thing! I’ll be waiting in front of the canteen.” I exclaimed and gave her my thumbs up.
“Until then!” She said and turned around to chat with a few others who apparently had picked similar classes.
“So you are free?” Louis mumbled quietly and looked away abashed.
“Yup.” I said happily and smiled brightly. He kept glancing at me, despite not having the courage to face me directly.
“Do you … do you want to …” He stumbled over his words as if he wanted to invite me to a date … with two girls that is. Ellie was shooting me a few glares from time to time, but they weren’t that hostile.
“Hmm?” I asked in an attempt to encourage him to spit it out.
“Do you want to join me in my magical combat class?” He asked which was exactly what I wanted to hear. He gave me the perfect justification for joining, dispite not being a course member.
“Oh, you know … Elly was kind of right as she said I shouldn’t take that class …” I mumbled and pressed the tips of my index fingers together cutely.
“Is that so…” He said kind of let down and looked at the cat girl who turned away demonstratively.
“But I guess I can tag along anyway.” I answered and chuckled happily. In the corner of my vision, I spotted how the cat girls corners of mouth curved downwards a little until she stood up and approached us with a smile on her lips.
“I heard she wants to come with us?” She asked and looked at me as if I was her love rival … maybe I was in her eyes even though I there was zero love in this weird triangle yet. But I had to admit that Ellie did find the prince interesting and the prince liked me for whatever reason.
“I … oh, if you don’t want me around then it’s fine as well.” I proposed and smiled bitterly. She exhaled loudly im response and shook her head dramatically.
“No … no, it’s fine.” She said and smiled back. “Shall we?”
And onwards we went, leaving the nearly empty classroom behind to head for my first class of magical combat. I sincerely hoped Hannah had prepared something fun to watch for me as I couldn’t join in for the most part. With these thoughts on my mind I stayed mostly silent as Louis and Ellie kept talking about their excitement of being able to learn fighting for real.
If they knew what they signed up to, they wouldn’t be so cheerful. The moment we stepped into the training grounds, we were greeted with an eerily silence.
“Well … have a lot of fun.” I whispered and quickly excused myself to head towards the grandstand where a familiar waving figure already awaited me.
“Hey. What’s up?” Sofie asked with sparkling eyes. She was really happy to see me and so was I in all honesty.
“Not much … you know how it is. Are you always the healer at this hour?” I asked with a slight suspicion that this was the case.
“Sure thing. I was asked by the headmaster to watch over your sister’s courses for whatever reason.” She explained and looked at me a little wittingly. As if Hannah was the violent one of us …
“I see. I’ll help you out then.” I said and smiled wryly. It was at that time as two other students entered the arena and stood right next to their peers, shoulder to shoulder in military fashion.
“That’s nice to know. Oh, they are starting.” Sofie mumbled and pointed towards Hannah who stared each and every student down.
“Greetings my students. I hate speeches, so I keep myself short. This is the course for magical combat. I will teach you how to fight with everything that it entails. Understood?”
“Yes.” Only a single person answered as everyone else was quite intimidated by Hannah’s presence. And that person sadly turned out to be someone I knew very well. Schwarz. The guy who kept looking at me from time to time, expecting any kind of reaction I wouldn’t give him.
“Yes, mam.” Hannah growled angrily. ”Combat consists of fighting, but also of following orders. And trust me, I don’t care who you are so don’t expect any preferential treatment. In this class, you are soldiers and nothing more. If you have any problem with that, you are free to challenge me to a duel. Whoever wins may take charge of teaching. Understood?” Hannah questioned and stared at Schwarz intensely.
“Yes, mam!” The others said, but Schwarz apparently had a different idea.
“Actually … I want to take you up on that right away.” He said casually and stepped forwards while smiling from ear to ear.
“You can’t even beat me.” Oh my … what have I done? The rivalry between Schwarz and my dear friend Louis was already developing quite nicely without them being in the same room where they were supposed to fight against each other. And by joining in, I gave them even more reason to fight each other.
“Yeah, yeah. Keep saying tha-“ Schwarz started, but was soon interrupted by Hannah who had vastly different views on how they should act.
“Silence.” She growled and glared at both of them. “It does seem we have found the first idiots who would do everything for a little bit of fame. But alright, I guess I offered it so you two roosters can duke it out and the winner may fight me.” Hannah said loudly.
“She is good. There are usually a few who think they know everything already and brag about being taught since their childhood. But starting the course of like this may change that. I doubt any of them would act up in the future.” Sofie commented, even though I had a hunch Hannah wasn’t doing it for this reason alone. She was accustomed to training mercenaries and what I was in front of my eyes was insanely similar to that.
Together with the rest of the class, Hannah walked a bit to the side of the arena and winked towards me.
“You may begin.” She said loudly towards the two idiots in the middle of the arena.
“Fireball!” Louis shouted out and flung a ball of fire towards his opponent. It looked rather bland if I was entirely honest, but that didn’t stop me from giving him a hefty “Woah.”
As cockily as Schwarz was, he didn’t even bother with defending himself, but rather took the attack head on like he did before. He was really idiotic for not doing anything but what can I say? It was Schwarz we were talking about.
What didn’t surprise me as well, was that it was different this time. He couldn’t just shrug the attack off like it was nothing, but he was actually forced to take action once he was hit, and part of his attire started to burn nicely. His left shoulder was already burning completely, with him just looking at it in confusion until he realised what had happened.
It turned out that Louis and Schwarz had rather similar levels which must have been a shock for Schwarz. Once Schwarz blinked a few times, he snipped with his fingers and spoke his first spell very angrily.
“Ball of water.” A terribly large water ball appeared above his shoulder and splashed down upon him shortly afterwards, wetting him completely.
For a second, I had a little bit of empathy with him as he must have felt horrible, but he seemed to shrug the self inflicted damage off like it was nothing.
“Now you have done it.” Schwarz growled threateningly. “Kingdom of darkness.” The lights in the arena dimmed considerably and shadows swirled around Schwarz, hiding him from prying eyes.
Louis was having none of that though as he muttered something and conjured a huge flame in front of him, illuminating the area around him in a gentle light.
It was a fight between muscles and brain, between just doing stuff naturally, and thinking about every move one did. I could understand both perspectives but I had to favour no thinking too much about actions during battle. Those who did, were usually the ones to die because they lost the initiative.
And this is exactly what happened. Schwarz realised his usual tactic of hiding didn’t work and mumbled something. Electricity shot out from his finger tips towards Louis who could barely create a barrier around himself.
“Is he trying to be the imperator or what … oh no.” Sofie said and jumped up from her seat to rush towards Louis. I didn’t know what she had seen, but neither did I have any reason to doubt her eyes and thus followed her rather fast. While she simply jumped off the grandstand though, I had to take the far longer route as I didn’t think I was capable of doing so during the daytime.
The long way or not, it all didn’t matter in the end. Before Sofie could intervene, a snake of electricity curved around Louis shield and hit him on his right shoulder. The prince yelped in pain as his defences broke down. Within a mere second, he was hit by even more electricity until the magical protection of the arena started up and protected Louis from more harm.
The damage had already been done though as I got close. Sofie had her ear on his chest already and breathed a sigh of relief as he noticed he was just unconscious.
“Is he alright?” I asked, but Sofie’s gaze was directed not towards me, but rather Hannah.
“Why have you delayed the activation of the protective circles?” She asked in anger. It did wonder me as well a little that the prince was hurt in any way, but I could already guess why Hannah chose this measure of letting them feel pain.
“If you only fight without pain, you will never be victorious after you got hit once.” It was a rather sensible decision, at least in my opinion. Even then, Sofie couldn’t agree less.
Incredibly disgruntled, she placed both of her hands on him and mumbled something inaudible for me as I was standing in between the prince and Schwarz who looked at me victoriously. I couldn’t care less though, and I approached the unconscious prince. Careful not to interrupt Sofie, I sat down above him and rested his head in my lap shortly afterwards.
I didn’t look at Schwarz, nor at Ellie at all, it I knew both of them weren’t happy with the situation. Neither did approach us though, probably because they didn’t want to be seen as evil. I mean, who would have the heart to interrupt a healer and her makeshift assistant? None of them, that was for sure.
But my attention wasn’t on them in any way. I was focusing solely on Sofie and her magic. I had hoped to feel anything if I was close to her, or the target she was healing but so far, I wasn’t able to. Thus, I was quite saddened as the prince woke up again and looked into my eyes.
“Are you alright?” It wasn’t me who asked this question, but rather Hannah who had sneaked up on the side.
“Yes … mam. I’m fine.” Louis mumbled quietly, still resting his head in my lap. I could see he was fully healed and as Sofie got to the same conclusion, she stopped her magic. But even then, Louis made no move to get up.
“There are three lessons you should learn today. One is that fighting hurts. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t fight. And the second one is that there is always a bigger fish around. Schwarz, are you ready?” Hannah said loudly for everyone to hear.
“Obviously.” As I looked up, I caught him glancing at me angrily. He apparently wasn’t too keen on seeing me close to another boy.
“Great. You may start.” Hannah said, but I knew her better than that. Just by looking at her fists, I noticed how the light bent around them a little bit.
“Kingdom of Darkness.” And he used the same truck a second time. It was no wonder that it worked against stupid monsters, but against someone like Hannah, it did absolutely nothing. Fast as the wind, or maybe even faster as a gust of wind pushed her forwards, she raced towards the stunned teenager who was just preparing his second magic and grabbed him by the collar.
She lifted him up like a baby, flung him around like a rag doll and threw him over towards us. He only touched the ground painfully right next to us and came to a halt quite quickly, but not before Hannah was beside him once more.
“Do you have enough?” Hannah asked and looked down at him.
“… Blad-“ Before Schwarz could chant anything, Hannah had already kicked his side and stopped him from saying anything further. As he withered in pain in the ground, Hannah placed her shoe onto his belly and asked the same question once more.
“Do you have enough?” She repeated in the exact same tone as before.
“… yes.” He finally said and was freed from the weight on his belly in an instant.
“The third lesson is that you should know why you fight and if it is enough to die for.” She said loudly to everyone, but then leaned downwards and lifted Schwarz up to whisper into his ear. “And a silly crush isn’t a good reason to pick a fight with your teacher.” She apparently said. Hannah let him go shortly afterwards and turned to the other students.
“Now, let’s see what you guys can do.” Hannah said loudly. Finally, the prince freed me from kneeling behind him and stood up awkwardly.
“Thanks for healing me.” He said abashed.
“That’s my …” Sofie looked at me and smiled a bit. “That’s our job.”
And our job wasn’t over at that point as there was someone else who had a broken rib right next to us.
“Any questions left? No? Perfect.” Hannah said right as the bell rang. The class wasn’t as chaotic as I hoped it would, especially because Hannah knew what to do.
She really did know what do teach these kiddos by telling them what they were allowed to, what they had to do and what to leave their fingers off.
Thus, it was no wonder that it went rather well, even though one person in particular still had a few issues.
“What do you mean to with ‘no genocide allowed’ ?” Louis asked loudly.
“That wasn’t for you. And now, have fun in the rest of the classes.” Hannah mumbled a bit quietly and directly strolled out of the classroom.
“Wait! Wait wait wait. For who is this rule?” It was obviously for someone who wanted to commit a genocide, my dear prince. Someone like … me!
“Don’t mind it. There are so many antiquated rules you cannot even count them. There is a rule which forbids ghosts from entering for example.” I explained and shrugged his concerns off happily.
“Ghosts aren’t real though?“ He mentioned and made me giggle a bit.
“Yeah, yeah.” I mumbled and looked over towards Luna who was approaching us swiftly. “Hey, what classes do you have?”
“Math and Elfish for the most part. What about you?”
“Surprisingly, I have the first few hours free … and then I have an etiquette class and philosophy.” The most nonsensical classes I could pick without a doubt. My sole aim was to sleep in these classes and if that wasn’t possible, then it was obviously because they were easy.
“I never thought you would pick these courses.” Luna said deeply in thought. She probably assumed I would pick useful classes like ruling or so. But there was no way I would pick these.
“You know, being who I am, it is vital to fit in society.” I claimed and smirked in her direction. A saint had to look … saintly after all.
“That’s true … want to eat together then?” She asked with sparkling eyes.
“Sure thing! I’ll be waiting in front of the canteen.” I exclaimed and gave her my thumbs up.
“Until then!” She said and turned around to chat with a few others who apparently had picked similar classes.
“So you are free?” Louis mumbled quietly and looked away abashed.
“Yup.” I said happily and smiled brightly. He kept glancing at me, despite not having the courage to face me directly.
“Do you … do you want to …” He stumbled over his words as if he wanted to invite me to a date … with two girls that is. Ellie was shooting me a few glares from time to time, but they weren’t that hostile.
“Hmm?” I asked in an attempt to encourage him to spit it out.
“Do you want to join me in my magical combat class?” He asked which was exactly what I wanted to hear. He gave me the perfect justification for joining, dispite not being a course member.
“Oh, you know … Elly was kind of right as she said I shouldn’t take that class …” I mumbled and pressed the tips of my index fingers together cutely.
“Is that so…” He said kind of let down and looked at the cat girl who turned away demonstratively.
“But I guess I can tag along anyway.” I answered and chuckled happily. In the corner of my vision, I spotted how the cat girls corners of mouth curved downwards a little until she stood up and approached us with a smile on her lips.
“I heard she wants to come with us?” She asked and looked at me as if I was her love rival … maybe I was in her eyes even though I there was zero love in this weird triangle yet. But I had to admit that Ellie did find the prince interesting and the prince liked me for whatever reason.
“I … oh, if you don’t want me around then it’s fine as well.” I proposed and smiled bitterly. She exhaled loudly im response and shook her head dramatically.
“No … no, it’s fine.” She said and smiled back. “Shall we?”
And onwards we went, leaving the nearly empty classroom behind to head for my first class of magical combat. I sincerely hoped Hannah had prepared something fun to watch for me as I couldn’t join in for the most part. With these thoughts on my mind I stayed mostly silent as Louis and Ellie kept talking about their excitement of being able to learn fighting for real.
If they knew what they signed up to, they wouldn’t be so cheerful. The moment we stepped into the training grounds, we were greeted with an eerily silence.
“Well … have a lot of fun.” I whispered and quickly excused myself to head towards the grandstand where a familiar waving figure already awaited me.
“Hey. What’s up?” Sofie asked with sparkling eyes. She was really happy to see me and so was I in all honesty.
“Not much … you know how it is. Are you always the healer at this hour?” I asked with a slight suspicion that this was the case.
“Sure thing. I was asked by the headmaster to watch over your sister’s courses for whatever reason.” She explained and looked at me a little wittingly. As if Hannah was the violent one of us …
“I see. I’ll help you out then.” I said and smiled wryly. It was at that time as two other students entered the arena and stood right next to their peers, shoulder to shoulder in military fashion.
“That’s nice to know. Oh, they are starting.” Sofie mumbled and pointed towards Hannah who stared each and every student down.
“Greetings my students. I hate speeches, so I keep myself short. This is the course for magical combat. I will teach you how to fight with everything that it entails. Understood?”
“Yes.” Only a single person answered as everyone else was quite intimidated by Hannah’s presence. And that person sadly turned out to be someone I knew very well. Schwarz. The guy who kept looking at me from time to time, expecting any kind of reaction I wouldn’t give him.
“Yes, mam.” Hannah growled angrily. ”Combat consists of fighting, but also of following orders. And trust me, I don’t care who you are so don’t expect any preferential treatment. In this class, you are soldiers and nothing more. If you have any problem with that, you are free to challenge me to a duel. Whoever wins may take charge of teaching. Understood?” Hannah questioned and stared at Schwarz intensely.
“Yes, mam!” The others said, but Schwarz apparently had a different idea.
“Actually … I want to take you up on that right away.” He said casually and stepped forwards while smiling from ear to ear.
“You can’t even beat me.” Oh my … what have I done? The rivalry between Schwarz and my dear friend Louis was already developing quite nicely without them being in the same room where they were supposed to fight against each other. And by joining in, I gave them even more reason to fight each other.
“Yeah, yeah. Keep saying tha-“ Schwarz started, but was soon interrupted by Hannah who had vastly different views on how they should act.
“Silence.” She growled and glared at both of them. “It does seem we have found the first idiots who would do everything for a little bit of fame. But alright, I guess I offered it so you two roosters can duke it out and the winner may fight me.” Hannah said loudly.
“She is good. There are usually a few who think they know everything already and brag about being taught since their childhood. But starting the course of like this may change that. I doubt any of them would act up in the future.” Sofie commented, even though I had a hunch Hannah wasn’t doing it for this reason alone. She was accustomed to training mercenaries and what I was in front of my eyes was insanely similar to that.
Together with the rest of the class, Hannah walked a bit to the side of the arena and winked towards me.
“You may begin.” She said loudly towards the two idiots in the middle of the arena.
“Fireball!” Louis shouted out and flung a ball of fire towards his opponent. It looked rather bland if I was entirely honest, but that didn’t stop me from giving him a hefty “Woah.”
As cockily as Schwarz was, he didn’t even bother with defending himself, but rather took the attack head on like he did before. He was really idiotic for not doing anything but what can I say? It was Schwarz we were talking about.
What didn’t surprise me as well, was that it was different this time. He couldn’t just shrug the attack off like it was nothing, but he was actually forced to take action once he was hit, and part of his attire started to burn nicely. His left shoulder was already burning completely, with him just looking at it in confusion until he realised what had happened.
It turned out that Louis and Schwarz had rather similar levels which must have been a shock for Schwarz. Once Schwarz blinked a few times, he snipped with his fingers and spoke his first spell very angrily.
“Ball of water.” A terribly large water ball appeared above his shoulder and splashed down upon him shortly afterwards, wetting him completely.
For a second, I had a little bit of empathy with him as he must have felt horrible, but he seemed to shrug the self inflicted damage off like it was nothing.
“Now you have done it.” Schwarz growled threateningly. “Kingdom of darkness.” The lights in the arena dimmed considerably and shadows swirled around Schwarz, hiding him from prying eyes.
Louis was having none of that though as he muttered something and conjured a huge flame in front of him, illuminating the area around him in a gentle light.
It was a fight between muscles and brain, between just doing stuff naturally, and thinking about every move one did. I could understand both perspectives but I had to favour no thinking too much about actions during battle. Those who did, were usually the ones to die because they lost the initiative.
And this is exactly what happened. Schwarz realised his usual tactic of hiding didn’t work and mumbled something. Electricity shot out from his finger tips towards Louis who could barely create a barrier around himself.
“Is he trying to be the imperator or what … oh no.” Sofie said and jumped up from her seat to rush towards Louis. I didn’t know what she had seen, but neither did I have any reason to doubt her eyes and thus followed her rather fast. While she simply jumped off the grandstand though, I had to take the far longer route as I didn’t think I was capable of doing so during the daytime.
The long way or not, it all didn’t matter in the end. Before Sofie could intervene, a snake of electricity curved around Louis shield and hit him on his right shoulder. The prince yelped in pain as his defences broke down. Within a mere second, he was hit by even more electricity until the magical protection of the arena started up and protected Louis from more harm.
The damage had already been done though as I got close. Sofie had her ear on his chest already and breathed a sigh of relief as he noticed he was just unconscious.
“Is he alright?” I asked, but Sofie’s gaze was directed not towards me, but rather Hannah.
“Why have you delayed the activation of the protective circles?” She asked in anger. It did wonder me as well a little that the prince was hurt in any way, but I could already guess why Hannah chose this measure of letting them feel pain.
“If you only fight without pain, you will never be victorious after you got hit once.” It was a rather sensible decision, at least in my opinion. Even then, Sofie couldn’t agree less.
Incredibly disgruntled, she placed both of her hands on him and mumbled something inaudible for me as I was standing in between the prince and Schwarz who looked at me victoriously. I couldn’t care less though, and I approached the unconscious prince. Careful not to interrupt Sofie, I sat down above him and rested his head in my lap shortly afterwards.
I didn’t look at Schwarz, nor at Ellie at all, it I knew both of them weren’t happy with the situation. Neither did approach us though, probably because they didn’t want to be seen as evil. I mean, who would have the heart to interrupt a healer and her makeshift assistant? None of them, that was for sure.
But my attention wasn’t on them in any way. I was focusing solely on Sofie and her magic. I had hoped to feel anything if I was close to her, or the target she was healing but so far, I wasn’t able to. Thus, I was quite saddened as the prince woke up again and looked into my eyes.
“Are you alright?” It wasn’t me who asked this question, but rather Hannah who had sneaked up on the side.
“Yes … mam. I’m fine.” Louis mumbled quietly, still resting his head in my lap. I could see he was fully healed and as Sofie got to the same conclusion, she stopped her magic. But even then, Louis made no move to get up.
“There are three lessons you should learn today. One is that fighting hurts. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t fight. And the second one is that there is always a bigger fish around. Schwarz, are you ready?” Hannah said loudly for everyone to hear.
“Obviously.” As I looked up, I caught him glancing at me angrily. He apparently wasn’t too keen on seeing me close to another boy.
“Great. You may start.” Hannah said, but I knew her better than that. Just by looking at her fists, I noticed how the light bent around them a little bit.
“Kingdom of Darkness.” And he used the same truck a second time. It was no wonder that it worked against stupid monsters, but against someone like Hannah, it did absolutely nothing. Fast as the wind, or maybe even faster as a gust of wind pushed her forwards, she raced towards the stunned teenager who was just preparing his second magic and grabbed him by the collar.
She lifted him up like a baby, flung him around like a rag doll and threw him over towards us. He only touched the ground painfully right next to us and came to a halt quite quickly, but not before Hannah was beside him once more.
“Do you have enough?” Hannah asked and looked down at him.
“… Blad-“ Before Schwarz could chant anything, Hannah had already kicked his side and stopped him from saying anything further. As he withered in pain in the ground, Hannah placed her shoe onto his belly and asked the same question once more.
“Do you have enough?” She repeated in the exact same tone as before.
“… yes.” He finally said and was freed from the weight on his belly in an instant.
“The third lesson is that you should know why you fight and if it is enough to die for.” She said loudly to everyone, but then leaned downwards and lifted Schwarz up to whisper into his ear. “And a silly crush isn’t a good reason to pick a fight with your teacher.” She apparently said. Hannah let him go shortly afterwards and turned to the other students.
“Now, let’s see what you guys can do.” Hannah said loudly. Finally, the prince freed me from kneeling behind him and stood up awkwardly.
“Thanks for healing me.” He said abashed.
“That’s my …” Sofie looked at me and smiled a bit. “That’s our job.”
And our job wasn’t over at that point as there was someone else who had a broken rib right next to us.
