(Point of View: Garen)
The afternoon sun was beginning its descent, painting the guard post walls in shades of orange. It had been an unusually quiet day in Serena Village. Too quiet. My gut—honed by years of battles and ambushes—told me that calm often precedes the storm. Or, in this case, sheer stupidity.
A repetitive metallic sound broke the silence: clang… shiiing… clang… It was coming from the back training yard. I frowned. Thom, the young guard on duty, was supposed to be cleaning weapons, not clanging around like that.
I set my tea down and peered out the back window. Just as I suspected, Thom wasn't working. He was standing there with his wooden practice spear, but not doing the basic drills I'd taught him. Instead, he moved with a new fluidity: his parries were precise, and his thrusts, quick.
Facing him, barely visible if you didn't know where to look, was Kael. With two simple wooden daggers, he moved like smoke—testing Thom's defense, deflecting his spear with barely a touch, all while offering corrections that only I could barely catch. Yet, they both seemed to be enjoying themselves.
I sighed. On one hand, I was glad to see Thom putting in the effort—he had the makings of a good guard. On the other, Kael acting as his instructor was like asking a fox to guard the henhouse. His methods were, to say the least, unorthodox. And Thom was supposed to be cleaning the armory!
I decided to intervene before Kael taught Thom how to disarm someone with nothing but a shirt button. Stepping quietly into the yard, I tried to compress my presence, determined not to startle them.
"I see the armory is already sparkling clean, isn't it, Thom?" I asked in a measured tone.
They both froze. Thom stiffened like a board, the wooden spear trembling in his hands. "C–Captain… I… we were…"
"Checking the structural integrity of the training equipment, Garen," Kael interjected smoothly, sliding his wooden daggers into his belt with infuriating ease. "It's essential practice for our brave guards."
"Ah, 'structural integrity'," I repeated, raising an eyebrow. "It looked more like a private duel during duty hours." I fixed both of them with a stern look. "Since you have so much spare energy for your 'structural reviews,' perhaps you'd fancy a more… thorough performance evaluation." I drew my own heavy, laminated copper sword. "Show me what you've learned—both of you, against me, now."
Thom visibly paled. Kael, however, grinned—the smile of a predator who had caught the scent of his prey. "With pleasure, Captain. We'll play for keeps, right? It's been a while."
An old spark ignited within me—the warrior's blood, never completely dormant. I nodded slowly. "Whatever you want. But be warned—you'll face the consequences. Prepare yourselves!"
Then the yard transformed from a mere training ground into a battlefield.
The air around my sword rippled as flames burst forth—not the controlled orange I used for intimidation, but an intense, almost white sky blue at its core. The heat was palpable; the surrounding air crackled as my Fire aura fully manifested.
Kael let out a short, excited laugh and dropped his wooden daggers. "Now that's more like it!" He extended his hands, and the air immediately swirled around him, tossing up dust and dry leaves. Small tornadoes, no larger than my fist, formed in his palms, spinning with astonishing speed. With a quick gesture, he sent those wind-blades hurtling toward me. Mid-flight, the compressed air transformed into translucent daggers that whistled lethally in my direction.
Inspired—perhaps more out of terror than training—Thom planted his wooden spear in the ground. He closed his eyes as a biting cold swept through the yard; within seconds, a nearby puddle froze solid. The moisture in the air condensed on his spear, layering until it became a solid, two-meter-long rod of gleaming bluish ice.
Fire, Air, and Ice! What began as "subtle practice" had escalated into a full-blown elemental brawl.
"Now!" Kael shouted.
The wind daggers came first, a dozen from different angles. I moved swiftly, my blue fire sword leaving incandescent trails as I deflected and dissipated the airy projectiles. Each impact produced a brief burst of hot air and scattered wind.
While I focused on the incoming daggers, Thom charged with his newly formed ice spear. Each thrust sought to freeze, and every sweep threatened to shatter my bones. I clashed my fire against his ice—steam exploded in dense, hissing clouds that momentarily obscured our vision. It was a battle of elemental wills: heat versus cold, my flaming sword smoldering under the strain, his icy spear cracking and reforming with every parry.
Kael vanished amidst the steam. One moment he was nowhere, the next he reappeared beside me with a larger whirlwind forming, threatening to tear me apart. I had to unleash an expansive wave of Fire to repel him, feeling the strain deep in my core.
The fight was fierce—a spectacular chaos of clashing elements. I dodged a hail of sharp icicles that Thom rained down from above, parried a cutting gust from Kael that nearly ripped off my cloak, and returned fire with pillars of flame that forced them to retreat behind the now-damaged training posts.
They were improving: Thom showed surprising mastery over Ice—raw but potent—while Kael was as lethal and elusive as ever, his Air magic both creative and unpredictable. They pushed me hard, and a genuine smile spread across my face. This was living!
Maybe I got a little carried away.
In a moment of total focus—parrying a vicious ice thrust from Thom while dissipating a wind vortex from Kael—I channeled too much Fire. My sword flared with blinding white intensity, releasing a wave of pure heat across the yard.
Thom's ice instantly evaporated with the sound of a thousand boiling kettles. He was thrown backward by the thermal shockwave, landing with an "Oof!" in a conveniently placed pile of hay. Kael, caught in the blast, slammed into the guard post wall with a dull thud that set it trembling; he slid down, leaving his mark in the wood.
And me… the recoil from unleashing so much energy sent me stumbling back, crashing spectacularly into the horses' watering trough. The trough split in two with a pathetic groan, drenching me in cold, unpleasant water.
The three of us ended up sprawled in different parts of the yard—panting, aching, and (in my case) reeking of wet horse. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the steady drip of water.
"Well…" Kael gasped from the ground, rubbing his head, "I think… the structural integrity… needs a review now."
Thom just groaned from his hay pile.
Struggling to my feet, dripping and smelling like a stable, I surveyed the wreckage—the scorched and frozen ground, the broken trough, Kael's imprint on the wall. I sighed.
"Alright," I said hoarsely. "Lesson learned. All three of us… to Elara's clinic. Now."
Limping and leaning on each other, we headed that way. The prospect of facing my wife's calm yet piercingly judgmental gaze while she patched us up was almost worse than the fight itself.
While Elara tended to our wounds (raising an eyebrow at the stable smell on me, lecturing Thom about controlling his cold to avoid magical hypothermia, and warning Kael about concussions and not using walls as cushions), I made an executive decision.
"Thom," I said in my most Captain-like tone, "for using unsanctioned elemental magic and engaging in unauthorized combat during duty hours, you'll have two weeks' pay docked." The boy nodded miserably.
"And you, Kael," I continued, fixing him with a stern stare, "for instigating the conflict, endangering a guard, and—frankly—just being you, you're forbidden from coming within ten meters of the guard post for a month. Plus, you owe Magnus three apple tarts—I just ordered them." Kael began to protest, but the glacial look Elara shot him from across the room silenced him instantly.
I sighed again. Being Captain was a full-time job, often involving reassembling my own (ex-)comrades after their foolishness. At least the afternoon wasn't boring anymore.