Chapter 76 - 77
"What’s with that expression? Do you not trust my words?"
Alistar considered the series of logs that Tramon had set up outside of his home at the collegia. The grizzled man had felled a modestly tall tree and then cut its length into several sections, all of which he had lined up in the shade beneath the young oak where Alistar had spent many hours meditating over the past two years.
"I do, it’s just..."
He stared down at the small stick that he held in his right hand, which was about the length of his arm with the width of his thumb. Did his master really expect him to be able to cut these logs in half with nothing but this brittle, ordinary stick?
"Lucian’s sake, give me that."
Tramon snatched the stick from his hands so quickly that Alistar couldn’t have held onto it even if he’d wanted to. After standing in front of the nearest log, his master narrowed his eyes and then swiped out with the stick, which almost seemed to pass through the hefty object like a ghost through a wall. When the barky surface remained unchanged, Alistar felt the need to comfort his master so as to save the impatient man from feeling any sense of embarrassment.
"Don’t worry, Master. I’m sure you would have cut through it if you were sober."
Tramon had been holding his cane in his other hand and didn’t hesitate to smack Alistar’s left knee with it.
Buckling to the ground as he grit his teeth, Alistar felt indignant. "What did I do?" The man smelled strongly of alcohol, his flushed face betraying that he had already begun to enjoy some booze despite the earliness of the day.