253 Decisions Decisions

"What do you think we should do about this?" Thomas asked, staring ahead at the general as he led the duo down the stone stairs. "We need her and she is our friend."

"I know but…I don't know," Frey whispered back. Their feet met grass as they arrived at the oasis and continued around the shallow lake. Frey read through the note again, resisting the urge to rip it up and stomp on it. "Maybe the person behind the notes is lying to us. We don't even know who this guy is."

"He was right before," Thomas shoved the other note into Frey's hands, which still had bits of ash on it. "And it doesn't matter if the second note is a lie. This is an incoming threat that we have to deal with, because clearly the writer of the note isn't going to help her. She doesn't have any allies besides us either."

Frey cursed under his breath. "How much time do you think we have?"

Thomas glared at him: "How should I know?"

Frey shrugged: "You're the one who gets the notes. Why is it you? The only person I can think of is Miss Vessa but if that's the case, she would have just stopped Jackal from smoking out the Knight's Academy in the first place." Thomas snatched the notes away and shoved them into his spatial ring right as General Alexander turned to look at them.

The general had same expression of calmed anger that he used for the Enforcer as he relayed: "I understand that this situation is a shock but whispering to yourselves in another's presence for so long is extremely rude. Marble is usually the only prick who cares for one's social class but Thomas, you should really get your act together as a noble. First you cursed in the arena, which I admit was extremely hilarious and it was difficult to hide my smile, but this is not as entertaining. Frey, as a Captain I expect the same from you. Don't you two have questions? It's rare that I choose a disciple, let alone two, but they are usually more talkative than this."

"I need time to think about it." Frey whispered to Thomas before turning to the General. "No, I don't have any questions. This place is very…green."

He could almost hear Thomas's heart sink as the noble followed up: "I had a question."

Alexander paused, waiting for the question that Thomas never gave: "And...your question is?"

Thomas scrunched up his lips as he and Frey followed the general: "So why are we practicing here instead of at your home? Where are we going to sleep?"

"Practice inside a home?" Alexander asked over his shoulder as he made it to the other side of the oasis, stopping just before an opening in the oasis's sheer stone walls. "That's a recipe for breaking my stuff. Forget you I'll destroy my house if I practice there. I was banned from practicing by the Kingdom after I flattened half the mountain peaks in the region."

"Not all of it," Alexander shrugged. "As I tried to explain to the court, who fined me for destroying the Knight's Academy…again. Nowadays I just go deep underground to practice by using a tunnel I constructed under my bed, but don't tell anyone I said that. As for where you will sleep, you'll use the two guest bedrooms I have. I don't have servants so you have to make your own meals using the food in the cabinets. I get my water from the lake. If you need to go to the Knight's Academy, run or pray I'm in the mood to jump you there."

"Jump us there?" Thomas asked, still in shock and staring up at the flat mountain peak above. "What kind of jump is that?"

Alexander blinked. "A jump. You're kidding, right?" He let out a long sigh and ducked through the dark entrance in the stone wall. "Are you coming?"

Thomas walked through the entrance fine but Frey smacked his head into the top of it. He cursed and ducked inside, rubbing his forehead. A wave of nostalgia washed over him. It didn't appear to be a man-made room perse but rather an oval-like cavern with some faint evidence of humans shaping the ends. The low ceiling, the horrible smell of dried sweat and blood, and the dim illumination from the few light small crystals crudely shoved into the walls brought Frey back to those simple days of training with the rest of the Virility guards in the Pit.

He took another step but his foot hit something soft. He looked down to find that he was stepping on Thomas who was clutching at his bruised knee. "Sorry about that," he helped the noble to his feet and pat him on the back.

"Goddess…" Thomas wheezed, "You are heavy." The noble stood back up and nearly tripped again on the uneven stone ground.

Now that their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the finer details became clear. It was as if a monster had been trapped the room, and had clawed at every inch of stone, turning the once smooth space into a collection of jagged surfaces. The only sense of order was the storage for the training equipment.

Over in the back corners were metal barrels containing wooden practice weapons of all sorts of shapes and sizes: spears, claws, maces, hammers, swords, bows, tridents, and many other instruments of violence.

In other barrels were training dummies. Their patchworked stitches barely contained the straw protruding out of their brown, ragged forms. The stone might have been off-putting but by far the worst part of this cavern was the smell of the hardened blood and dried sweat. Brown fungi had even sprouted at certain sections of the surrounding walls.

"Welcome to my hell," General Alexander said, his bright smile widening to near Jackal-like proportions. "When I first became a student in the Knight's Academy and a disciple of my master, she told me to swing a wooden stick at a stone wall of the oasis out there." He pointed over to the entrance.

"And that's exactly what I did, day to day, month to month, year to year. She made me switch to other weapons, try different stances, and any other torturous method of training she could think of. I most likely went through an entire forest because I broke so many training sticks. I eventually carved out this entire chamber."

Thomas raised his eyebrows. "Are you going to make us strike a wall for the duration of our apprenticeship."

"Hell no." Alexander huffed. "It's a terrible way to train. You just stare at a fucking wall all day and wait for your stick to snap so you can take a break and get another. It kills your wrists and you get so many blisters." He shook his head, smiling to himself.

"Uh General," Frey sheepishly interrupted the man's nostalgia. "Can we first take a tour of the home before we spar?"

"What's the matter, Frey?" Alexander asked. "Are you nervous because you left Elero behind? You know, sometimes you just think you left your companions behind but in reality, it was just the circumstance that pushed you apart. Just talk to her about it the next time you see her."

Frey seemed to consider the words for a moment before responding: "I'm fine. Let's just get this over with as soon as we can." He leaned over to Thomas and whispered. "Do you trust Elero with our lives? Are you absolutely sure she isn't hiding anything from us?"

"W-well." Thomas stuttered. "I trust her but she told me that everyone has their dark sides that they don't show to people. I'm not about to pry into hers." Frey let out a long sigh and cursed. "What's wrong? Not the answer you were hoping?"

"No, but I'm starting to think that I'm never going to get a proper answer. Doevm said that no decision is completely right or wrong so maybe I can just be reckless for once." His lips curled into a faint smile. "Let's get this training session over with. I need to talk to Elero. I think I know what to say."