(Bellz pov)
Light of the morning sun woke me up. My whole body hurt and my head felt like I had been drinking the day before which I obviously hadn't.
I noticed that I was on the floor Infront of the mirror in my room. "Did I sleepwalk?" I looked over to my bed in hopes of getting some signs of me sleepwalking, like if my covers was a mess or something similar but my bed just looked as if I had simply gotten out of bed.
It didn't really give me any clues. When I used to be Linus I sometimes sleep walked and it would sometimes leave my bed in a complete mess and after I joined the military I sometimes made my bed in my sleep.
*Knock knock*
"Bellz are you up?" The sound of Lillys voice could be heard on the other side of the door. I got up and opened the door to let my sister in. "I had a weird dream last night and wanted to check on you."
"Weird dream?" She gave me a nod and looked over to the mirror and then back at me.
"I think it was a dream...I heard some weird noises coming from your room and when I went to check I saw you laying on the floor...but it wasn't you...it was a girl a dromos. An aqvata dromos..."
I Stared at her for a bit in confusion. "What happened next?"
"I got spooked and went back to my room and when I woke up I went to check on you."
"A dream?" I wasn't so sure, something felt off...
I ensured Lilly that I was fine but she gave me a worried look. "After what happened yesterday I feel worried for you...please tell me if something happens Bellz..." She gave me a hug before leaving for her room to get changed.
I got dressed and headed downstairs to the kitchen were I found my mother and father preparing breakfast.
"Good morning Bellz!" My father said with a happy tone.
"Bellz, Rachel and Maxime is coming over today. Your father and I have decided that it might be a good idea to have you start training together with Lilly."
I looked at then both in confusion. "I thought dromos wasn't allowed to learn magic before they get their disc?"
My father let out a deep laugh before explaining. "We are not talking about magic training. We are starting basic combat training in case we are not here to protect you."
My heart started to beat faster as the thought of seeing what this world had to offer when it came to combat. Sure I had a lot of experience with guns and some hand to hand combat and knife combat, back from the military.
But swords, battle axes, bows and anything of the classical medieval fantasy stuff was making me feel excited.
"After breakfast when Rachel and Maxime arrives you will be instructed by Ton and Rachel in basic combat." My mother said as she put a pot of a stew made from the moose father caught yesterday on the table. Together with the stew we had some bread made from rye flour.
As we ate breakfast Lilly kept giving me weird looks. It seemed the "dream" she had really stuck with her.
-----
"Yo! How's it going Bellz and Lilly!" Maxime the foxkin greeted us with his happy go lucky attitude. Even though he was three years he seemed very intelligent for his age and always had questions about everything.
At first I found it a little annoying but it helped me a lot through the last year as it made it easier for me to not being the one with all the questions. All though it wasn't that often we meet it was still helpful to have him around.
Rachel smacked him in the back of the head. "Maxime! What did I say about greeting people?"
Maxime looked up at her and scratch the back of his head and sighed before turning back to Lilly and I and put one foot in front of the other and gave a deep bow with his left hand to his chest. "Greetings miss Lilly and greetings mr Bellz. I hope this beautiful day has done you well so far."
Rachel gave an approving nod before walking over to Ton and starting up a conversation.
"What was that?" I asked Maxime when Rachel was out of what I hoped was hearing distance.
He sighed and looked over to his mother before telling me. "She insists that I learn proper ethicet. I told her that I wanted to be an adventurer when I grow up and that if I ever had to interact with nobles I had to learn it..."
"That sounds kind of boring..." I said as I thought about it for a while.
"That might be the case but I think it is good to learn. But enough about me my red friend. I heard you got your first disc Lilly?" Maxime shifted his focus towards my sister.
"I did!" She said proudly as she held her hands to the sade and puffed out her chest in a proud stance.
"Let me see! Let me see!" Maxime said as he seemed to almost salivate at the thought of a magic disc.
I might have been excited about someday learning magic but he seemed almost obsessed.
"Maxime! It is rude to ask someone of their disc!" Rachel said as she noticed his behavior. "Showing the disc is a sign of true trust as a disc could reveal many personal information and sometimes secrets."
His ears sloped down and his fluffy tail hung low as it showed his disappointment.
"It is up to Lilly to show it." Father said as he walked up to us.
Lilly thought for a bit before she seemed to have gotten a brilliant idea. "Maxime! If you beat me in a spar I will show it to you!" She said with a wide grin.
Maxime thought for a bit before he agreed to it, but he added some rules to it. "No magic and this is not a one time deal! If I don't beat you today I get to retry anytime we have training."
Lilly agrred to it and this seemed to have given birth to two rivals.
-----
We entered the training hall where father had put a large rack filled with different kinds of weapons made of wood. Every weapon was sized to the size of us children.
"Now then kids, today we begin your first training session. Maxime has joined us as Rachel asked me to train him. He seemes to have big aspiration in life!"
Us three stood in a row as we inspected the weapons in front of us. There were swords, daggers, bows, axes, staffes and spears. But also weapons I had only seen in games and movies, like a double edged glaive and sword whips.
"Today we are starting simple, we are beginning with swords as it's a weapon that's always easy to get a hold of and learn the basics of. But it is a weapon that takes a long time to truly master."
We grabbed a sword each and took our place on the training room floor.
"Now I want each of you to do one hundred vertical swings like this." Father swong his sword down in a perfect straight line. "Rachel and I will keep count, so just follow along."
"One." I swong the sword as he instructed.
"Two."
"Three."
We kept at it for awhile but after the twentieth swing my arms started to burn from the unfamiliar exercise this body was experiencing.
I looked over to my sister and saw that she too was struggling but when I glanced over to Maxime I saw someone on the brink of collapsing.
We kept going even though all three of us was struggling. When father had counted to one hundred he looked at us with a proud smile and said.
"You get a few minutes of rest and then we are doing one hundred horizontal swings to the left then the same to the right."
The training was intensive and sometimes I wanted to give up. But something inside me as we started to get close to the last swings felt different.
My body temperature started to rise to an uncomfortable level, but...it didn't feel wrong...it felt good...as if I could keep going forever. I didn't mention anything to my father or Rachel, I just kept going and followed along the training.
After we had our third break it was time for some muscle building exercise. We did sets of push ups, sit ups and squats. But the warm feeling inside me kept going, everything felt so suddenly easy.
"Now then children. I heard that Lilly and Maxime had a bet?" Rachel said as we finished the last of the squats. "You two are allowed to spar but the rule will be set by me, understood?" They both gave an exhausted nod.
"Good. The rules will be that the first to touch the knee to the ground or falling completely on the back looses."
They both agrred and then stood in front of each other waiting for the signal to start the spar.
"Ready? Go!"
Lilly was the first on the attack and Maxime did his best to dodge and counter. But Lilly had the upper hand. It didn't seem as if the spar would last long.
I watched them for awhile when the weird feeling from yesterday came back.
"Hello? Can you hear me?" The female voice I had heard yesterday was back. But this time I tried not to freak out. I just ignored it, it wasn't real after all. It was all in my head. "If you can hear me please respond. We need to talk."
"Bellz, what do you think?" I heard my father ask me something. I looked at him and asked. "What was that?"
"I asked who do you think will win?" I returned my focus on the spar again and said.
"Lilly will win." And not oong after that Maxime fell to the floor.
"Seems like you were right there son! Hahaha!" Father laughed.
"I feel like I will fall asleep again. Please we need to talk." The strange voice echoed one last time before fading away with the strange feeling.
I had decided that I was going to ignore the voice from now on. But what I had never expected was what Triss had to say later that day when she came to visit.