Tales from Septins Mind

Up to Part 7 for Mild Corruptiion, woop. Still in stuff I wrote when Iw as 16/17 I’m afraid haha, don’t despair I’m trying to get a new part done before I’ve posted all the other ones up

Part VII, Dreams again…….no, Training

Nicolayuth slept poorly that night. There were many possible reasons for this; Discomfort, lice, rats. The real reason was because of the underlying threat which Spider had had in his voice when he had spoken to the boy.

No one had ever managed to frighten Nicolayuth as much as Spider had. Now this was something that Nicolayuth was unused to, he was hard to frighten and now even as he tossed and turned for half the night he tried to conquer that fear. He fell asleep still trying to conquer it.

His sleep was troubled by strange dreams where he was crawling in the dark, through tunnels and through knee deep slime, with the mocking voice of Spider all around him.

“Failure! Disgrace to humanity!” The voice called out. “So this is the great Nicolayuth?” Continued the voice mockingly.

Nicolayuth yelled his anger at the walls of the tunnel around him. Then he felt a sharp pain in his back and staggered around to see Spider stepping back holding a stiletto, blood dripping off it. Nicolayuth’s eyes went dim and he fell to the ground.

Then the dream changed, he was on top of a tall spire and looking down he saw undead warriors shuffling along, at their back a Vampire cried out arcane words to the wind, bending reality to it’s will. Spider appeared beside him and pushed him off, declaring.

“Useless rubbish. I don’t know why I took you in.”

Nicolayuth fell screaming and before he hit the dream changed again and he was in an alley, blood making his grip slippery on the knife. He looked up and saw Spider wielding a bloody sword.

“Failure again, Nicolayuth. You will never be good enough to beat me.”

Once more Nicolayuth felt his eyes dim and his grip grow weak. With a hoarse “No!” he tried to leap at Spider but he stumbled and fell. His lifeblood seeping out of him onto the flagstones. His last view of Spider was of him laughing and wiping his sword clean on his body.

Nicolayuth awoke, scrambling at the rags which covered him, his heart beating wildly. Then he saw a dark silhouette rise from the floor on the far side then leap an amazing leap to latch onto the far wall before leaping again to land at the head of Nicolayuth’s sleeping pallet. Then a candle was lit and Nicolayuth found himself looking at Spider’s grinning face.

Nicolayuth noticed that Spider’s incisors where slightly pointed, and in the light of the candle Spider’s face was mostly in shadow so at a distance he could indeed look something akin to the spider he was named after, minus four extra limbs. Spider then spoke, in a soft hiss.

“Time to get up my beautiful apprentice.” Nicolayuth made as if to protest but Spider silenced him with a hard look before continuing. “I get up before dawn to fine hone my skills, if I am up, you are up. I will not take any arguments in this matter.” That was enough to cow Nicolayuth this time round.

Spider walked off, muttering something about early morning breakfasts.

Once he started to walk off Nicolayuth rolled out onto the floor with a plonk, landing on his feet and stumbling around for his boots and socks. After a while of useless searching he shrugged and began casting around for a candle. That was easier. The next thing was to find a match. That was slightly harder but it was eventually done. Lighting the candle made finding the socks and boots a whole lot easier, funnily enough.

So it was about five minutes later that Nicolayuth was wolfing down a breakfast of half stale bread and cool water in a jug along with Spider. After this was finished Spider got up and beckoned for Nicolayuth to follow. They went up a ladder to the rooftop of Spider’s lair.

The rooftop was surprisingly relatively clean to the streets below and not much dust was on it. Spider walked slowly out to the middle of the rooftop, Nicolayuth following him.

Spider suddenly spun around and with a growl he said.

“Your training begins now.”

He suddenly directed a punch at Nicolayuth, who, taken by surprise and caught unprepared was sorely winded by the punch for a few minutes.

“All right.” Stated Spider. “Now I’m going to teach you how to block and counter punch that, and overall, you are going to learn to not be unprepared or caught off guard. Attend.”

So it was that Nicolayuth began his learning of how to defend himself with nothing but his body. After an hour of this Spider turned to knife fighting. To do this he got out two knife length and shaped pieces of wood, so as not to damage Nicolayuth too much by using real knives.

They continued doing weapons practice for 2 hours. At the end of it Nicolayuth felt like one big bruise. Spider however was completely unmarked, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat in defending himself from Nicolayuth.

“So tell me boy, did you receive any close combat training from that fool Arthur?” Demanded Spider suddenly as he watched Nicolayuth limp off to get a drink.

Nicolayuth drew himself up, trying to keep some vestige of pride around him. “Yes. I got full body training from him every day!”

Spider curled his lip and snorted in contempt of what the boy called full body training.

“It would appear boy that either he was a poor teacher or you are a poor learner. Which is it?”

Nicolayuth said nothing but finished his drink and returned to the centre of the rooftop. Spider, smiling disarmingly then called to him.

“Attend.”