Knight Of The Setting Sun

Letters by fire

The sun is now setting, wes and harold have been making and polishing swords the whole day. It seemed as though wes had finished before harold, but on his way out, Harold revealed that he had made about 80 extra swords over the past few weeks that Wes had to polish hidden under a sheet, causing wes to lose the bet and stay the whole day. Now the day is coming to an end and they're both walking home.

"Don't be mad, consider it your first free lesson. When someone makes you a deal they usually have a trick planned out" harold can't help but let out a hearty laugh as he tries to console Wes.

"Whatever, I just hope I didn't miss the letter, they only stick around for a few minutes before they combust."

Harold sounds confused, "Why would they do that? it doesn't make sense."

"It's to make sure that those who get in are serious about it so they have to remember the location, time, and what to bring if your accepted. Now if you don't mind I need to check to see if there's any burn marks" Wes runs off in the direction of his house and Harold yells out to him.

"Stop by my house for dinner, I'm pretty sure you've just been eating bread. Come by and eat something good for you yeah!!" Wes keeps running but gives a thumbs up to assure his uncle.

After about a minute of running Wes barges into his house looking for any sort of burn, or letter. After looking through all of the rooms and finding nothing, wes flops onto his bed and lets out a sigh. He turns on his side ready to sleep but remembers the promise to eat dinner with his uncle and gets back up, and changes into his battle uniform, since all he owns that he likes to wear are his work clothes and this.

It's a black uniform with silver hemming, made more for mobility in combat than for protection, it has a face mask part that he wears as a scarf to protect from any sort of smoke, and goggles he won in a raffle that used to show shapes in sandstorms until he accidently broke them when a splint from a staff cracked them, making them purely aesthetic.

Once he got it all on he walked out the door and slowly walked towards Harold's house, he gives one last hopeful look at his room through the window when a flash of light causes him to cover his eyes. Looking back at his room through the window he sees the letter, though it's not in his room, nor is it outside. The letter is trapped inside of the glass. Unable to open the letter, wes picks up a rock off the ground and smashes his window with it, before he has time to note the cuts on his arm from the glass he starts opening the letter, once he opens the top lights on fire and slowly travels down, and wes starts reading.

"Hello, sir Wesley James. We apologize for the wait, our transporter couldn't send the letter as he was on a mission for the school. Regardless we would like to inform you that due to the large number of applicants we cannot accept you into the Academy. However that does not mean that you cannot prove to us that you deserve the spot more than another applicant. due to the large number of hopeful students this year, we have decided that rather than accepting people based on what they sent in, we would cull the numbers by half. We are making this possible by having all the applicants have a duel with another applicant, the winner gets in, and the loser is free to try again next year. Your duel is scheduled to happen in 12 hours in your hometown of Baleria. You may use one weapon of your choice, and any magic that you may know. Best of luck, director Flynt."

As wes read the last line the entirety of the letter was a flame that wes had dropped and ran to Harold's house as fast as he could, with the biggest smile on his face that he'd had in a long time, and busted into the house. Harold, ready to kill the intruder notices it's wes and angrily lowers his knife.

"Dammit wes, you scared te shit out of me. If I had known you were that excited for dinner I w-" Wes cuts him off before he can finish.

"I GOT IN!!... well sort of, I have to win a duel tommorow, and I need a weapon, I was wondering if I could use one of the swords you made today?"

Harold takes a moment to process what wes just said, and without speaking walked into a room for several minutes. As wes was about to check on him, harold came back out holding a staff in his hand. "This is a staff your father gave to me when you were a little child. He told me to give it to you when the time was right, I guess now is that time." He holds the staff out towards wes, and wes takes it. Something about it felt right, as though it was made for him.

"Thank you uncle... really, thank you." After that wes ate dinner with his uncle, and went back home to rest before his duel.