Children of Heroes

Prologue

Alexa's eyes lit up as the seraph blade did. She reminded Jace of himself - always excited to be introduced to new weapons; always intrigued and fascinated by the opportunities they introduced to battle.

As Alexa ran her little fingers over the blade in wonder, her mirror image gawked at it. "Daddy," Elizabeth hissed. "Mommy said you shouldn't-"

"I know what Mommy said," Jace said flippantly. "But you're gonna have to learn about these things sometime, and it might as well be now."

Swiftly, he drew another blade from his hilt, muttering, "Azakiel," as he did. Light unfurled from it, casting shadows across the training room floor. He handed Alexa the first one - she took it with the eagerness of Simon being given a new video game - and passed the second to Elizabeth. After a hesitant pause, she plucked it from Jace's hand. She obviously hadn't considered the weight of the blade, as it fell like a rock, pulling her little arms down with it.

Across the room were two wooden human-shaped dummies. Jace led his daughters over to them, feeling electricity radiating off of one and nervousness off of the other. He stood each girl in front of a dummy, and instructed, "Right, guys, it's a race. Whoever kills the dummy first wins-"

Already, Alexa was off. She swung the blade at the dummy's abdomen - it left a tiny chip in the wood, but her little arms didn't have enough force behind them to make a clean cut. She was treating the seraph blade like an average sword, and it wasn't working well in her favour.

Elizabeth glanced uncertainly up at Jace; he gave her a grin and a nod of encouragement. She turned to face the dummy, took a deep breath, and attacked. Her blade cut through the air, slicing through the dummy's neck at the perfect angle. It went almost all the way through - the head fell backwards, clinging to the neck by a few splinters. Alexa, who was standing atop her tumbled dummy with her blade plunged into its chest, gaped at her sister.

Grinning and ruffling Elizabeth's hair, he commended, "Great job, Lizzie. Looks like someone's been paying attention in Battle Theory."

As Elizabeth beamed up at her father, Alexa demanded, "What? How did you do that?"

"The neck is the weakest point," Elizabeth informed proudly, as if reciting from a textbook. "Strike that part and the enemy will almost always fall." She held her hand out to her decapitated dummy.

She was correct, of course - Elizabeth often failed to be wrong. The dummies had been specifically designed to mirror reality, explaining why Elizabeth's blade had swept through the dummy without complaint. The wood there was softer.

"Absolutely," Jace smiled. "Now, you guys are gonna have to stay quiet about this, don't tell your mom-"

"Don't tell your mom what?" Jace turned to find Clary at the training room door, cradling a little bundle of cloth in her arms. Her eyebrow was arched high up in her forehead, and it only rose further when we saw the two dummies: one with a seraph blade protruding from its chest, one without a head.

Jace fumbled for words. "Uh, well... I, uh..."

"Mommy, look what I did!" exclaimed Elizabeth, gesturing excitably towards the dummy she had annihilated.

Glaring at Jace, Clary spoke through clenched teeth: "That's lovely, honey." She sent him a pointed look. "What part of 'no seraph blades' don't you understand, Jace Herondale?"