Broken Chains

“What is a sword?”

Every lesson began the same way, with Scarlet posing this seemingly simple question to Puck. And every lesson, Puck struggled to find the right answer.

The first time around, Puck had half-jokingly answered that it was anything but the wooden stick he was holding, and he had been rewarded with a stern look and his first great bruises in training.

The second time, he had thought a little longer and asked Zephyrian for his opinion. Knowing at least rudimentarily what Scarlet was getting at with her question, Zephyrian had told Puck he would need to figure it out himself. Deciding to answer pragmatically, Puck had told Scarlet that a sword was heavy, made from a material harder than stone or ice, and should be sharp when using it. That time, Scarlet’s reaction had been only marginally better.

The third time, Puck had tried to remember as best as he could what the visions of Zephyrian had shown him. He had answered that a sword was a weapon of glory and victory. Again, only a hard hit with the stick had been his reward.

Every day, Puck came up with new interpretations for the question, and each time, Scarlet only silently listened to his conclusions before attacking and beating Puck up, clearly showing him his answer had been wrong.

Sometimes, Puck tried materialistic approaches to the question, explaining all he knew about the physics of the weapon. Other times, he talked about the purpose of a sword. More often than not, his explanations were simply a mixed bag of those and many other approaches.

Frustrated with each iterative failure, Puck had started to come up with more and more abstruse explanations. What made it worse was that Scarlet clearly didn’t expect him to succeed either, as she stood ready to attack him every time.

It was no different today.

Having stretched together before moving to the middle of the dark cavern, Puck’s muscles felt at least a little better. He held his stick in a defensive position before him, thinking about what he would answer today. Looking at his wooden stick and thinking about Zephyrian standing in a corner of the cavern, likely expecting another amusing beatdown, Puck thought about what made a sword a sword.

Suddenly, inspiration struck. Puck remembered a vision of Zephyrian's past he had nearly forgotten. In that vision, there had been no impactful battles. Instead, a young girl had used Zephyrian for fun, dragging it through the sand to draw a picture on the beach. The girl had drawn a simple but beautiful flower.

A flower…

A pen…

A tool of destruction…

Trying to connect all those dots together with the wooden stick in front of him, Puck finally knew what he would answer today. Looking up to Scarlet, he got ready and then spoke.

“The sword… the sword is whatever I want it to be.”

Steeling himself, Puck fully expected an attack he would fail to block. But it didn’t come. Looking into Scarlet’s eyes again, Puck felt her gaze as intensely as never before.

Opening her mouth and repeating Puck's words, Scarlet seemed to taste the words on her tongue.

“The sword is what you want it to be… are you sure? Is that the path you choose?”

Elated at not being immediately rejected and unsure of what exactly Scarlet meant, Puck tried to show this through his expression. Scarlet immediately elaborated.

“There is no true uniform definition of what a sword is. You simply need to know what it is for you. This could be the first time you truly spoke of an interpretation your heart could agree with. Do you understand?”

Did Puck understand? An interpretation his heart could agree with… What even was that, and how would he know if his heart agreed or not? His heart was only a simple organ in his body… But as Puck repeated those words in his head again, he felt them ring true in a way he couldn’t quite describe. Slowly and still unsurely nodding his head, Scarlet nodded back.

“To know what your sword is, is the basis of every fighting technique and every application of your sword you can think of. For everyone, this truth is different. If you truly feel your truth doesn’t fit anymore or you have a better one, you can change it. But be warned, to change your truth means you have to rebuild everything you learned from the ground up.”

Seemingly seeing the matter as finished, Scarlet started moving towards Puck. Stammering a dozen questions packed into one, Puck tried to get more explanations. But it was in vain. Scarlet seemed unwilling to talk more and simply attacked.

She didn’t attack as fast as other times though. In fact, she seemed to move in slow motion. Confused, Puck got his stick up to defend. Then, suddenly, her stick turned into a blur, and the next thing Puck knew was that he was lying on the ground, gasping for air as all the air left his lungs at once.

Looking up, he saw Scarlet standing above him, reaching out with her hand to pull him up. Still gasping for air, Puck let himself be pulled up.

“First lesson: If your sword can be anything, it can move with any speed. Don’t let your enemy find out your rhythm. Instead, impose your own rhythm on the fight.”

Wobbling back to his feet, Pucks sluggish mind tried to understand what Scarlet was saying as she was already getting back to her starting position to attack again.

Finally grasping the meaning of her words, a striking realization hit Puck. He had truly managed to answer the question he had been asked at least thirty times already.

Now they were beginning a new part of his training.

But even though Puck was sure he just had entered a new phase of his training, that didn’t mean Scarlet wouldn’t beat him up anymore. In fact, Puck suspected the beginner gloves had just been removed.