Caspian"s scowl was a fierce sight to behold, which the many maids who ran from him as he stomped down the hall could probably attest to.
d.a.m.n that arrogant, good for nothing Sorceress!
Anger wafted off his frame in waves, like smoke pouring from a volcano that was ready to erupt.
Caspian couldn"t remember a time where he had ever been this angry before. Christo annoyed him, but the young man had never angered him to the point where he wanted to beat something to death. Erica had a way of getting under his skin that no one else had ever been able to do.
There was no destination in mind during his angry march. He stomped up and down stairs, through hallways, and across lobbies. Yet no matter how far he stormed, or how many maids he sent scurrying from his malicious presence, the boiling hot anger remained.
At some point Caspian located a door, through which he entered and discovered a familiar room. It looked a lot like an entrance hall, for it was large, long, and rectangular in shape. Yet Caspian had been here before, and he knew it was no entrance hall. The stone floor gleamed brightly as if freshly polished, and a long mat covered a good portion of that floor. Padding had been laid out along the walls, and several weapons racks sat off to the side along with half-a-dozen training dummies.
Feeling the need to relieve himself of this anger, Caspian wandered further into the room, yanking his sword from its sheath as he stepped up to the nearest training dummy, a human-shaped object made from straw and wood.
Thrust. Hack. Slice.
Caspian let himself fall into the age old routine that he"d created for himself. His movements were harsher than normal. Vicious chopping motions mixed with furious hacking attacks. Stilted movement. Tense form. Caspian could tell that he wasn"t as graceful as he normally was. His timing was off, his rhythm shot. He might as well have been wielding a club instead of a sword.
It didn"t matter. He couldn"t care less about grace or speed, swiftness or surety. Finesse was lost on him. All he wanted, all he needed, was to release the pent up anger that had been building inside of him since he"d met Erica on that Spirits forsaken train.
"It"s not often I see someone else in here," a ragged voice said suddenly. Caspian was so surprised he almost dropped his sword. He spun around and saw Derek standing several feet away, posture slumped, his pale face reminiscent of death warmed over. The older man grinned at him, despite his obvious exhaustion. "You"ve got talent, though your movements seem labored and unnecessarily wasteful."
Caspian scowled. "I couldn"t care less about being wasteful."
Derek raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"Yes, really."
Derek continued to study him as if he was a puzzle that needed solving, his eyes far keener than Caspian had seen them since their first meeting. "You seem to be a little frustrated. Would you like to talk about it?"
Caspian stared at the man in red armor for a moment longer, grunted, then went back to swinging his blade, his movements every bit as jerky and vicious as before.
"No, I would not like to talk about it."
"Suit yourself." Derek shrugged. He then walked over to a section of the wall, leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, watching.
Caspian tried to ignore Derek. He moved through his forms, but where before his movements had always carried an undeniable grace, now they were harsh and stilted, like an ogre trying to dance. He couldn"t concentrate on anything except his anger, which continued to bubble beneath the surface, throwing a red haze over his vision. He felt ready to explode.
Several minutes later...
"I just don"t understand!" Caspian growled, the sound akin to that of the dragons living on the peaks of in the Hemonstalia Mountains. "That woman"s always making light of everything! She"s constantly teasing me and treating me like I"m some kind of child. She won"t even let me do my job properly! It"s like she doesn"t trust me, or that she feels I"m incapable! What"s worse is that she doesn"t even take her job seriously!"
Caspian drew in a deep breath, his shoulders heaving, even as surprise at his outburst fluttered through his mind.
"You mean Erica?" Derek asked.
"Who else would I mean?" Caspian snapped, scowling like he"d just tasted something foul. "That woman is more irresponsible than anyone I"ve ever met. She goes shopping when she should be looking after her city. She loafs around when there"s doc.u.ments that need to be looked over and signed. It"s like she doesn"t even care about doing her job, like she couldn"t care less about the citizens who depend on her."
Derek chuckled at Caspian, which only served to further upset him. "Yes, I suppose I can see why her actions would bother you. Her personality can be quite... abrasive."
"Now there"s an understatement if I ever heard one," Caspian muttered.
"It is true that she doesn"t have the best personality," Derek continued, "but have you tried putting yourself in her shoes? Have you attempted to look at the world through her eyes? If you did, then perhaps you would come to understand why she acts the way she does."
Caspian frowned mid-swing. His sword, which he"d been trying to weave through a complicated set of patterns—and with little success at that—halted.
He looked over at Derek again, lowering his sword and casting the older man a curious glance.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you seem to have forgotten that Erica is a Sorceress."
"Trust me," Caspian said dryly, "I am well aware that she is a Sorceress. I was there when she battled that a.s.sa.s.sin. I saw the destruction caused by her Spiritual Evocation. That"s not something I"ll be forgetting anytime soon."
Derek shook his head, the patient smile he wore letting Caspian know that he had missed the point. "Yes, but you"re only thinking about her as a Sorceress in terms of the power and magic she wields, not what it means to live the life of a Sorceress."
Caspian frowned as he studied Derek further. He thought for a moment, contemplating the older Knight"s statement, trying to divine his meaning, only to come up blank.
"I"m not sure I understand."
"Erica is a Sorceress," Derek repeated, stressing the t.i.tle as if it held great importance, "which means that she is one of the oldest people in the world. She has lived for a very long time. Maybe not as long as some of the other Sorceresses—certainly not as long as Lady Sylvia de Floresca. But, she has lived long enough to have watched everyone she has known and loved, including her own family, age and die."
Caspian mind went blank for just a moment as he finally realized what Derek meant. The older Knight continued.
"Living for as long as they do, it"s no real wonder that most Sorceresses are wont to become jaded and cynical individuals. Erica is no different. She is over five-hundred years old, and she has lost a lot since the time she became a Sorceress. Friends, servants, Knights, family. None of the people that Erica has allowed herself to care for have survived. Time ravages everybody, after all. Everybody except for Sorceresses. And elves, but that"s another story entirely."
Derek paused, his eyes closing, and Caspian imagined the older man was thinking about something painful. His grimacing face reminded Caspian of the time Christo had accidentally slit his own wrist while learning how to wield a dirk.
Derek continued speaking, his voice growing softer, more emotional, more raw. "How would you feel if you had to watch everyone you knew, everyone you loved, die of old age and disease? Meanwhile, you"re stuck in time, unchanging, unending. All you can do is stand there and silently witness the end of all the things you hold dear. Could you deal with that? I do not believe so. I know that I couldn"t."
In spite of himself, Caspian"s mind went back to the past, to a time when he had a family, his mother, and how she used to treat him. He remembered very little of that time—even his mother"s face seemed blurry and out of focus whenever he tried to recall it.
However, his body still remembered. It remembered her warmth when she held him. His ears remembered the gentle tinkling of her voice when she sang to him. His nose remembered how she always smelled of lavender. He also remembered how, despite the difficulties she had faced, in spite of how hard it was for her to make a living, she still somehow managed to grace him with a smile every single day.
Her smile. It was the only aspect of her physical appearance that he remembered. He couldn"t recall anything else and, for some reason, every time he tried to remember, his head felt like it was being split open. Regardless of his lacking memory, Caspian still remembered enough about his mother that he could easily paint a picture within his mind, a pictograph of simpler times long pa.s.sed.
His mind then traveled several years into the future, to a time of fire and brimstone, of dead bodies rising up to devour the flesh of the living, of his mom trying to protect him, only to end up being torn apart herself. He later learned that people had called what happened to his town a raid, but he knew better. He knew what really happened.
He remembered that day well. The day he had lost everything. He also remembered what happened after that day, his rescue at the hands of the one woman he would ever show deference to, along with his vow to never let himself be hurt like that again. To never let himself feel the pain of losing someone he cared about again.
And then he tried putting himself in Erica"s shoes.
Caspian had always told himself that he didn"t make friends because everyone hated him. And that was partly true. Everyone at the academy did hate him—he wasn"t even sure if Christo"s offer of friendship was genuine. However, that was only half the reason he didn"t try to make friends. The truth was that he refused to make friends because he didn"t want to feel the pain of losing them. He was afraid.
If losing his mom made him never want to befriend another living being again, then how would someone like Erica, who had outlived everyone she loved, all of her family and friends, feel?
"She"s keeping everyone away," Caspian murmured, closing his eyes and trying to ignore the icy stakes piercing his heart.
"I suspect so," Derek said, shrugging. "Without looking into her mind, there is no way for me to be certain. However, I believe that she has taken to acting the way she does in order to avoid getting too close to others. That way, it"ll hurt less when they die."
"But aren"t you and she...?" When Caspian trailed off, Derek raised an eyebrow.
"Lovers?" When Caspian just blushed at the blunt proclamation, Derek chuckled a bit, before he was forced to stop due to a coughing fit. He waved the younger man off when Caspian tried to see if he was alright, coughing into his hand a few more times before speaking. "We are indeed lovers, of a sort. However, just because we share a bed doesn"t automatically mean we"re married. I suspect that Erica"s only in this for the s.e.x, not because she actually wants to be in a true relationship with me."
Caspian clenched his hands into fists, their shaking a reflection of his uncertainty, of how he no longer knew what to feel.
"Doesn"t that bother you, though? To be seen only as a tool? A toy? Doesn"t that upset you?"
"Not really." Upon seeing his incredulous expression, Derek could only smile in a manner that seemed almost self-deprecating, as he further elucidated upon his words. "It may have bothered me at one point, but after coming to understand Erica as I have, I"ve accepted that this is just the way she is. And I know that even if she won"t allow herself to love me, that does not mean that she doesn"t care about me. She does, just in her own unique way."
"I"m almost afraid to ask about the kind of caring she displays," Caspian"s tone was dry and sarcastic.
"It"s just as well," Derek replied with a straight face. "You"re a bit too young for her kind of caring."
"And now I feel as if you"ve just insulted me."
The two stared at each other for a good minute before sharing a laugh—which was interrupted when Derek began coughing again.
Caspian felt a little better after speaking with Derek, and he had a much clearer understanding of Erica. A part of him sympathized with her, even though he still did not like her personality.
He didn"t think he would ever be able to truly accept Erica"s faults the way Derek apparently had. However, for the sake of keeping things cordial between them for the duration of his time here, he would at least learn to tolerate them.
At least, he hoped he could learn to tolerate them.