Chapter 82 - 83
After thanking him for the gift one last time, Alistar left the modest cabin and began the long walk back to Caedmon’s estate, though he stopped along the path by the Hanging Hill to store the little crystal inside of his mother’s locket so that it sat side-by-side with the translucent, rosy memento of his time with his family in Crystellum. He made sure to wrap the second stone with a strip of cloth that he tore from his trousers, which were already tattered in many places from all of the day’s training, to make sure that it would be safe to use on somebody else should one of his loved ones fall into a perilous situation in the future. As far as he knew, anybody that touched the original crystal would die almost instantaneously from the overload of magical energies that the strange stone contained and he didn’t want to risk contaminating Mr. Herst’s gift by letting the stones come into direct contact with one another.
Madeline is going to be angry with me, he sighed, glancing down at the state of his clothes. He decided that he would mend them himself, and that from now on he would use these pants solely for his training sessions.
With all of what he’d learned from Mr. Herst still ringing throughout his mind, Alistar ran home as fast as he could, eager to make up for the training that he’d missed with Zech and Jaden down by the Greyline. He hoped that he would be able to cut a log in half by relying on his swordsman’s aura by the end of the week, with a single, clean cut and not the slow, whittling strategy that he’d used to escape from today’s lesson. In this way, his master would surely acknowledge his achievements.
***
Tramon Lawson woke up with his face pressed against the dinner table of his small home, a pool of drool around his dry mouth and sodden beard. The sun had gone down quite a while ago, leaving his surroundings painted in darkness as he straightened his back amidst a fog of lethargy.
Scowling at the pounding headache that stabbed at his head in a merciless manner, he fumbled around his table for a moment before his hands brushed against the cool glass of a half-empty bottle, which he quickly brought to his lips in a desperate manner. He spat out the mouthful of water with a frown, focusing his senses and then reaching out for a second bottle that sat nearby to where the first had been resting.
"It’s as they say," he mumbled to himself. "Sometimes it’s the poison that’s the best cure."
Exhaling slowly as the whiskey lit a fire within him, he stood up on unsteady feet and unshuttered a window to allow a still stream of moonlight to pour into the room. He had a fire going in the hearth a short while later, at which point something clicked in his mind and he rushed to the doorway. He’d forgotten about the kid.
As expected, there was nobody in sight outside of his home, as most of those that lived on the collegia’s grounds had long since retreated to their quarters for the night. Had he really slept through the entire day? He’d forbidden the boy from leaving unless he managed to cut one of the many practice logs that were arranged around the base of the nearby tree, which was basically an impossible task for a novice like Alistar. Talented though the kid may be, even a young Tramon had required an entire month of practice before he’d been able to satisfy the same requirement for his master, and that had been five years into his training.