Hand Of Magic

Chapter 1: Forging a Grey Blade

I had enlisted into the academy; just like everyone else, by force at age 10, told that one day we would be heroes. That’s when I met Kale; he would become my best friend in later years.

“you” he said, he was tall for his age, he had a dark complexion and long dark hair, even then his voice was deep, he had brown eyes and stared at me with an expression that I could only call curiosity. “Where are you from white boy?” he had an eastern accent.

“f..f..from bloc 213” I stuttered out, I was average height, but my shoulders were broader than most, I was still quirky and bony at the time, I had long dark hair and paper white skin.

“Name?” he asked me, obviously amused by my fear. “S..Danial Sparrow” I replied, my voice still shaky, “and yours?” I asked trying to save some dignity.

“My name is Kale, Bloc 113” He replied, I envied his charisma, he didn’t seem to care about much and was sounded proud, almost as if coming from any specific Bloc meant something.

That first year went slowly, the training was hard, but Kale and I became good friends, at the end of the first year, we were all lead out into a field, there stood our instructor, Paladin Higgins. He was not of noble birth and made his recruits suffer for it. Falling in the obstacle course was usually followed with a remark like “COME ON YOU ROYAL BASTARD! You call that movement! No servants to carry you around!? GET UP!” which was usually followed by a beating at the end of the day. His justification been “There is NO tea-time for royal dandies in battle!”

 But he got results, and his knights were always noted for the best performance, however whether it was out of fear of failing and the punishment to follow or simply superior training, few people dared to ponder, they just knew that out in the waste land you wanted one of Higgins knights next to you.

There he stood though, staring at his recruits as if we were dirt, a familiar scowl across his face, been ordered to take up position in the court yard meant one of three things, first to announce the death of a recruit who had died in training, second was for inspection, third was for punishment. But we didn’t see his black book, which meant he wasn’t announcing a death, the lack of his brown log book meant it wasn’t an inspection, finally we noticed his cane was not present, meaning no one was going to be beaten. We grew fearful waiting there, time seemed to stretch on, our squire tunics with their high collars chafed on our necks, our grey coats that signalled that we were still not White Knights, only Squires, grew uncomfortably warm, the colour of the coats had earned the nickname for squires been the “Greys”. The squadron you would one day be assigned to went with your name, and that earned you slightly more respect, but we had only spent a year there and were still a year away from been scouted for squads.

So we just stood, the odd cough that someone would try muffle up quickly so as not to infuriate our berserker of an instructor. Eventually he spoke.

“Alright you royal runts! Today marks the end of your first year of training. You started as 200 unknown weaklings, now I see one hundred and fifty possibilities, it has been a hard year. Some of you have survived with your strength” he looked at Kale and similarly burly boys. “Some of you have survived through your intelligence.”  He looked over to a small boy who had excelled in our theoretical and tactical studies; he went by the name of Micheal. “Some of you have just been some of the luckiest bunch of royal bastards to have had the misfortune of been born!” He stared at me, it was true, I had done averagely in our theoretical and tactical studies and was often reprimanded for getting my “Unit killed” because of overlooking some small detail. Physically I was not remarkable, I placed ninety seventh overall in our sparring matches. Even I was truly stunned about how I had survived. “So today we move on to your second level, I will see many more of you either leave or die before this coming year is through! Today you will select a Unit in which you will train with for the remainder of your existence as a Grey, the people in your Unit will eventually graduate with you and you will be a unit! So choose carefully!” He screamed at the top of his lungs, giving us the remainder of the day to fall into groups, Kale and I immediately sought each other out, I was grateful to have him on my side, except we lacked one crucial element, we needed a tactician, Kale was the strength that we would need in a fight, but we needed an academic, we were starting to panic when at lunch Kale said to me “what about that Micheal kid? He’s pretty smart?” I agreed, but I feared we might be too late, so we went about approaching other Greys, asking them if they would join us, we started by trying to find someone as smart as Micheal, but when everyone seemed to be taken, we started simply asking if people would join us, by the evening meal we sat down hopeless, that’s when we were approached by someone we never expected.