"Focus on what's in front of you… Keep your shoulders back, your stance wide, and your grip loose. Strike HARD."

I swung the sword again, every impact wearing and rubbing against my hands until they were raw. "I am focused," I said back coldly.

"Siya…" She growled. "How many times do I need to tell you…" she gently grabbed a handful of her silver hair and began to speak under her breath. "It's not that hard to remember, honestly."

My fingers began to twitch and shake, my hands trembling untill my grip loosed and the sword sunk into the mud between the uneven cobblestone that cut against my bare feet. "If I told you to fly… Could you do it…"

She growled, lifting her training sword off her shoulders and using its edge to split a dummy in half, cracking and splintering it to pieces. "This isn't flying, It's something everyone should be able to do, much less everyone born a noble. Your sister could do this 2 years ago already."

I lifted a hand to my face to look at it. 'They aren't bleeding yet, but they will soon… Around… 4 more strikes I think. Honestly, tearing callouses doesn't even hurt anymore.' I sighed, regriping my sword and sliding it out of the mud. "I know what I'm supposed to do Mara… I just can't do it…"

Her voice quieted as she turned away for a moment. "If you really understand, why can't you do it? I don't understand what's wrong with you…"

I felt a sudden chill, unsure of how to respond and hesitating in my speech. "U-uhm… Was that… A rhetorical question? Or… Do you actually want me to tell you…"

She lowered her hand, placing it on her hip and letting out yet another sigh, making me start to feel the weight of each one. They were much heavier and more filled with life than mine. "Can't you just… I don't… Just try your best…"

I looked back at the sword, my hair falling past my face. It was so dirty, and had been that way for so long I wasn't even sure what color it was. "It's too heavy," I said bluntly. "Four more strikes and my hands will bleed."

"Well, then you have three more in you."

'I guess I saw that coming…' I gripped the sword again and slid my feet into the proper position, counting each strike and following the arcs and paths I had followed thousands of times. My sword hit the dummy and burned in my hands. 'That's 1…'

"Siya…" She groaned.

'What? But that was perfect? Honestly, it was one of my better swings… Although I am a bit shaky…'

I looked down to see bright red blood sharply contrasting the mud that was splattered on the cloth scraps I used as a shirt, and only then could I feel it running down from my nose. 'I'm a bit dizzy… But it's not so bad really… It's bleeding a lot though…' "Can I sit down for a moment?"

"No, we're not done yet."

A strong chill ran down my arms with a wave of emotions as strong as the wind was cold. I took a step to hold my balance and by the time I got a hold of it whatever those feelings were, they were all gone, repressed or otherwise buried under the snow that surrounded us and cut against my hardened skin. 'What was I doing? I mean, I was swinging my sword, but which stroke? Which direction? How many times left?'

I took a deep breath, only to realize I had let go of the very sword I was supposed to swing.

"Siya… You may be weak, but you're stronger than this. I know you are. Pick it up."

"It's nice… That you think so highly of me…" I muttered, a fake grin somehow taking to my face from how ridiculous it all seemed.

'My arms don't want to move anymore, I'm not even sure if I could lift one above my head.' I tried out of curiosity but with no luck. My arm stopped just below parallel and I let it drop, 'Guess not.' Picking up the sword was just as hard, the tip being stuck in the mud as it only made me more dizzy. 'She is right though… I'm usually not this pathetic… Maybe I really am just tired of it all… I'm sure my muscles didn't actually get weaker somehow.'

I looked up to see her clenching her fists as tightly as she could before suddenly relaxing. It was hard to read her face. Cold, calculating, and never showing emotion to the enemy. I recognized it all too well. It was the only thing we had in common… Besides our blood…

"You have to catch up… You don't have to be better than Lu but you have to catch up to her…"

'I know she's better, but I trained harder for longer, and I'm older… It's safe to say it's beyond me… It doesn't even hurt knowing how disappointing I am anymore.' I sighed, pushing my hair back with a deep breath as I tilted my head back until the bleeding stopped.

"One more…"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

'One more…' I echoed in my mind. 'So that's how many were left.' The impact of my final swing shook the dummy and scratched the wood, tearing open my hands, as if my sword was laughing at me for trying. 'So I was one off… I must be really off my game today… Or maybe I really was just holding it too tight? Meh, but that means she was right. It's not like it's impossible, but I don't like it…'

As I watched more blood drop from my hands and mix with my sweat, I somehow ended up on my knees with no memory of ever falling. My emotions running through me like a silent hurricane being admired from a safe distance. Before they boiled over I looked up at the dreary sky and let them all fade away. None of them would do me any good, anyway… It was better to at least pretend like I wasn't feeling anything. It was better than the alternative, that feeling that I really was just a 14-year-old girl who needed her mother's arms to cry into. I hated it, and so I would never feel it again.

"Let's call it for today," Mara finally said, racking her sword on the wall. "At least for this part of your training. It's just too much for you right now. Your body hasn't recovered properly, did you not sleep last night?"

I glanced over to her again, blinking several times to refocus my eyes and taking a moment to process her words. "As well as usual…"

She came back over and squatted down so that we were at eye level. Grabbing my arms and inspecting the tears in my skin. "Siya, do you even care about this at all?"

Her hands were so warm on my cold body that they sent chills down my spine. I opened my mouth to say no, but no words came out. The truth was that I didn't. I didn't care about any of it. Getting stronger, learning to swing an oversized sword, running miles on end without stopping, I couldn't have cared less. Still… "What kind of question is that… When I look like this?" My eyes teared up but I somehow managed to hold it in, stabilizing my voice and returning to my cold lifeless shell I created for myself. For a moment her eyes widened, softening to those of a little girl looking at a dead rabbit and pitying it. But the moment I choked back my tears everything went back to the way it was before… My voice chilled, and her eyes narrowed again. Had things been different I would have probably tried the loveable little girl approach… But under the circumstances we both knew it was a waste of time…

The fact was that I didn't care, and I think we both knew that… How could I say it out loud though, to her of all people? After all, she wasn't just my instructor… She was the woman that gave birth to me… If I didn't become good enough my entire family was going to be punished. I couldn't look her in the eyes and essentially tell her I didn't care what happened to her. Even if that was also true…

"Even if the answer is that you don't know, you should still answer the question…" She groaned, turning my head toward her to look at my nose and see if the bleeding had stopped on its own.

"I… Don't…" I slowly shut my mouth again as she let go, nearly making me fall to the ground like a corpse as her steadying hands left. "A-at least not in the way you want me to… Wielding a sword… Upholding the family's honor… I don't care about any of that…" I sighed, sitting down and propping myself up against the training dummy I had been striking as I detached myself from the conversation entirely. "Now wearing real clothes that aren't itchy and small, being allowed to take a hot bath… An extra hour of sleep. I care quite a bit about those things… And… You made it pretty clear that to get them I have to do the other stuff… So isn't it basically the same anyway?"

She clenched her fist with a low whine. She never actually struck me outside of training… But her strikes during training made it hard not to feel at least a little scared that she might…

A long pause hung in the air. This time it was her that was having trouble looking at me, when she finally did, she began to speak in a soft, almost sad voice. "You…. Should count yourself lucky."

I wiped the drying blood from my nose. "What a statement… I must say I'm intrigued, what possibly led you to that conclusion?"

"Even now your life is still far better than that of others, by all rights you should be dead."

"Luck is relative, if I want to be dead then aren't I unlucky? You can't win an argument like this Mara… Even if you did somehow win… I doubt it would change my mind if I'm being completely honest…"

SHe let out a deep growl. "If that's the case, one could say that every second you're alive is luck, simply because you want something that's bad for you, yet despite any of your efforts you haven't achieved it yet."

'So we're really doing this again…' "Maybe, but don't you think some things are worse than death?"

"Nothing. Death means that you are done. If your entire family dies before your eyes, it is still better than you yourself dying. From your perspective, you are alive. You can still live, you can breathe, and you can fight."

'Well… At least her argument's consistent…' "If nothing is worse than death, then why would someone choose to die in order to save others? If someone dies to save another, that man would be called a hero, but he would not willingly die to save the other man unless he thought that the other man's dying would be worse than his own death. Likewise, if the life you have is worse than death, it would be lucky for you to die no? Although, I suppose it would be luckier if your life changed to no longer be such that you would prefer death."

She grimaced and her speech began to slow down, thinking more carefully with every word. "If you die then the chance for that change to happen is non-existent, that is why nothing is worse than death. When you are alive, there's always a chance for something to happen to make things better."

"True… I mean, I guess so… But the chance of the inverse is far higher. It's more likely that things will only get worse. If a king loses his kingdom, is it more likely that they will be given back the crown, or is it more likely that they will be forced into hiding, persecuted, and eventually killed."

She stepped forward and looked down at me, maintaining her calm demeanor but making me shrink back slightly against her towering presence.. "You said luck is relative, that means that if the majority of people in your position would desire a specific outcome, like living, then you would be lucky."

"Hm… Possibly… If we assume relativity based on majority… Honestly though, most people in my situation would have probably offed themselves a long time ago. Of course, I'm only assuming, and my experience with other people is limited, so there is that." 'I've never really considered it myself either, so maybe it's not the case? It's not like I'm depressed, just in a perpetually miserable situation, so… Actually, I don't even know where I'm going with all this, my head hurts… And I'm cold…' "Can I go inside now?"

She fell silent and I slowly shut my mouth, thinking back over my words, too tired to properly filter them. I tried my best to give an awkward smile like I was joking, even though I wasn't. 'It's no surprise that she would look like that. Of course those words would be surprising coming from a sheltered 14-year-old girl…'

As far as she was concerned, the only concept of death I had was in reference to bugs and animals… After a long pause, she opened her mouth again. "Regardless… I think you are lucky that you are alive, and everyone else around you considers it the same. You're lucky because–"

"Because you didn't kill me?" I interrupted. That was ultimately what the conversation was about. I could tell she was starting to get emotional for once but my blood was starting to feel like it was freezing over from the cold. Still, a part of me burned with a pain that wanted her to hit me, if only to prove me right. It was over a decade ago that she had tried to kill me, but ever since then she remained… Peaceful? I sighed again, slightly raising my eyebrows and letting my tension go along with hers. "Maybe I am lucky… But the only reason I'm still here is because I kind of like having someone on my side… If I started hurting myself then there really wouldn't be anyone that cared anymore…"

She froze in place. I was usually reasonably well-behaved, if not only because I didn't like being punished. It made sense to act how she wanted me to. My life would be more tolerable. In that instance though I doubted I would be punished. Not when she had that look on her face… The look of defeat… As if she had just given up entirely…

'I shouldn't have said that… I'm not entirely alone. The guards, my father when he's around… Even if no one ever tries to fix the issue, at least… Well, I guess if they aren't trying to fix the issue they aren't really on my side after all are they…' I sighed. 'More like neutral parties… Which is fine… It's not like anyone hates switzerland… Hated? I guess I don't know how time works between dimensions or whatever…' The thought crossed my mind, but somehow earth seemed like the fantasy at that point, faded and forgotten memories. The only thing that stuck was the pain and adrenaline, the only two things I felt like I still felt.

Mara stood silent, her eyes open wide, glaring at me, and her jaw clenched. Seeing her like that somehow calmed me down for some reason, bringing my mind back to the present.

"I warned you…" I whispered under my breath.

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