“Get up, quickly now! We have to move, let’s go!” yelled the voice again, with a smirk at seeing Rex’s stunned face. “What is going on? Who’s here?” Rex blurted out, ripping his head around frantically, his brain still frozen from the shock of suddenly being woken. “Well, if I was someone here to do you harm, you would already be dead, you aren’t ready quickly enough” chuckled the person. As the fogginess cleared Rex recognised the voice and he saw a familiar face, “Bloody hell Markus! You scared the absolute shit outta me, why can’t you wake me up properly?” he responded sharply, sitting up while rubbing his eyes, he then realising the sun hadn’t even started to appear on the horizon yet, “Bit early don’t you think?” “No such thing as too early to train, you won’t always get the chance for a wake up at nice hours if your life is at stake, I want to show you something before we go to my training grounds, go and fetch Lacey first though, you and her have training with me after our s
As Rex and Lacey watched Markus start to ascend the stairs, both seemed to hesitate for a minute. Rex looked at Lacey, and Lacey looked at Rex, both seemed to be waiting for the other to make the first move to start heading up, almost like they both had the same idea, suspicious stairs, suspicious old man. “Ladies first” Rex said, bringing his arm upright to point up through the staircase, attempting to usher Lacey through. “I am no lady, get up there wimp” Lacey sneered holding her ground, seeing right through Rex’s attempt to get her to go first. “If both of you don’t get your asses up here, you’ll miss out on the surprise I planned” Markus called out through the clouds. Both Rex and Lacey jolted from surprise at Markus’s booming voice, looking up the staircase, it looked to be at least 500 metres of stairs to the clouds, but only a few seconds has passed since Markus had left, this is odd, he was able to climb that many stairs in the space of a few seconds, something was fishy.
“How is this possible?” Rex said, not showing any signs of hiding his excitement at seeing Fafnir for the first time in almost a week. “Your father is a smart man, he informed this man to provide some assistance, he cannot speak with me, but he can facilitate this meeting for us though, in turn bypassing that spell on your chest to subdue me” Fafnir replied. “So can this spell be removed?” Rex asked, he was eager to be rid of this restriction. “It can be removed, with little effort to someone trained in weave magic, the spell was designed to allow a user to cast many spells, sharing the load between ones mana pool and physical strength, in essence drawing fuel from your mana pool and your own energy reserves at the same time. It was ingenious for battle mages, if you trained strength and extended your own mana pool, you would be a force to be reckoned with, it has been modified in a way that the spell draws strength from you to continue feeding it, in essence, if you lived for 100 y
“You hit me in the back by surprise!” Rex yelled, jumping to his feet to face his attacker. “In a fight, you never want to be surprised, pay attention, typical male response!” yelled the woman that faced him. Her name was Marcia, she was another of the great generals under the emperor’s command, she was head of the Azure army, this army consisted of all females that rode on the backs of great birds called Skylarks that each woman had to tame herself, with Marcia as their leader, no man had ever been accepted by a Skylark as its master in over 500 years, so no males ever tried to tame one anymore. “First lesson, always expect a fight” Markus called out. Looking towards where his voice came from, Lacey and Rex were astounded, he was not able to be seen! “What magic is this!?” Lacey called out, for Rex he felt this was the same magic Duncan had done to them at the staircase to his house earlier that morning. In the next second, Rex felt a sudden need to duck forward, feeling an odd i
“What did you want to speak about?” Lacey asked, turning towards Markus as they walked towards the horses that were tied up on the edge of the training grounds. “It is about something a wise man told me not long ago, about your future” Markus replied with a huff, Lacey could see what he was about to pass on weighed on him heavily, “Let me start at the start.” Their conversation lasted right up to them reaching the castle walls, the guards bowing and saluting moments before Markus passed them, bowing his head back, Markus followed by Lacey continued riding their horses right up to the palace, Markus noticing Marcia’s skylark perched up high on the roof. ‘Lucky man’ Markus smirked to himself, still looking at the magnificent bird, knowing that no male has ever ridden on a skylark in over 500 years, especially on Marcia’s skylark of all birds, also feeling a little jealous wishing it could have been him. “What’s on your mind father?” Lacey asked, seeing the look on Markus’s face. “Oh
“You might be a prince, but no one respects people who are late, let me put it in perspective for you, it is your coronation day, you are late, the whole of Dracoterrum notices and thinks you cannot even handle turning up at the right time for that day, how are you going to handle a kingdom, it is your wedding day, everyone is waiting for you to arrive, you’re late, your new wife will think she was not worth enough to you that you could make it on time” said a loud booming voice from across the room. Looking over the room, Rex saw a short old man in robes, grey hair and long grey beard wearing square glasses standing in front of two desks and long corridors filled with books branched out from behind him, stretching on for what seemed like forever. “I will certainly remember your lesson from today onwards” Rex said back, trying his best to hide his smile. “It would be wise for you to remember those words young prince. Lacey, you should know better by now, why you would not inform him
Following Lacey closely, Rex was able to see how the city was structured, close to the palace, the buildings were quite elaborate and the further away they got, the simpler they seemed, Lacey seemed to notice Rex looking at these new buildings differently and was like she read his mind. “These houses belong to the people who do not work at the palace or families who are not merchants or officials, these are everyday folks, like farmers or miners” Lacey said, while they walked down the road leading away from the palace, not a few days ago, Markus brought them up this very road, but Rex had failed to notice the change in living conditions. They had made it a few blocks away from the main south gate when Lacey said, “The shortcut is through here, it will save us an easy 30 minutes of walking” and shot off to Rex’s left through an alleyway. “How will cutting through here save us 30 minutes of walking? How far away is this bloody market?” Rex questioned, to him 30 minutes of walking mean
Turning to face the person the hand that was touching him belonged to, Rex was slightly surprised, Lacey was now standing next to him, with her hand on his shoulder, looking straight into his eyes with a soft gaze he had never seen before from her. “But look at what he did, we both knew what he was going to do as well, he deserves worse!” Rex yelled, turning back to face Frog, who was now moments from death, dangling limp from Rex’s grasp. “He will get what he deserves” Lacey said, forcing Rex’s head around to face her, “Please Rex, put him down.” “But..he was going to…” Rex replied fiercely. “I know, I am ok and I have you to thank for that” Lacey said, “Now let’s bring him to the castle so he can be punished for that.” “Fine!” Rex growled, dropping Frog into a heap on the ground in front of them. “Thank you Rex” Lacey said softly, in fact she was partly a little terrified Rex had snapped like this, she had never seen even the smallest hint of anger from him, no matter what situ