A Will Made of Steel
The training yard was never kind. The air was filled with sweat, dust, and the sharp, rhythmic echo of wood on wood. But to Vivian, it was more than a place of endless drills—it was the crucible, the battlefield between her unwavering will and her desperately failing body. Every moment here was a testament to a truth she had only recently discovered: that a scholar's determination could be forged into a weapon sharper than any blade.
From the first day, she stumbled. Her delicate, formerly ink-stained hands blistered and bled from gripping the practice sword's rough hilt. Her feet dragged and tangled where others, like the seasoned veterans, leapt and flowed. When she swung, the heavy wooden blade seemed to possess a spiteful gravity, pulling her arm down and away instead of obeying her command. Every breath she took felt like inhaling fire, a burning reminder of her inadequacy.
And yet—she never yielded. This was the iron core of Vivian: she would not quit.
Lyra, still small, her small wooden stick clutched tight in imitation, often sat perched on the splintered fence to watch the proceedings. Sometimes she copied her father's authoritative stance, sometimes she mimicked the elegant, deadly spins of Gessa. But more often, she found her eyes fixed on Vivian. The pretty scholar-girl who was always on the verge of falling, yet, impossibly, never quite fell. Lyra saw a fascinating kind of courage in that perpetual near-failure.
"Again," General Grey commanded one morning, his voice as steady and unyielding as iron. It was not a question, but a decree.
Vivian raised her sword, sweat streaming down her pale brow to sting her eyes. Her arms felt like lead, her muscles screaming in silent protest. Across from her, Gessa stood with the practiced ease of someone born to the fight, her blade light and extensions perfect. She was a living sculpture of effortless violence.
The clash was swift and decisive. Vivian's form was all wrong—too stiff, too cautious, too slow—and Gessa, seeing the gap, pressed her advantage instantly. The wooden blades cracked together with a jarring force, and Vivian stumbled back three paces, the shock running painfully up her arms. Lyra held her breath, her little hands squeezing her stick so tightly her knuckles went white.
Vivian staggered but refused to fall. She took a moment, adjusting her grip on the wet hilt, and lifted the blade again, a silent promise in her eyes.
"Again," she whispered to herself, the word catching on her ragged breath. It was a prayer and a challenge all at once.
Gessa arched a perfect brow, circling her like a predator. There was no true cruelty in her voice, only the tired pragmatism of a warrior. "You'll never keep up like that, scholar. Your body simply wasn't made for this. Go back to your books, where you belong."
"I said," Vivian panted, her eyes flashing with a sudden, unexpected heat, "again."
Lyra's heart hammered against her ribs. She leaned forward so far she nearly toppled from the fence, an irrepressible shout bursting from her lips.
"You can do it, Vivian!" Lyra shouted. She didn't know why, but she needed the scholar to know someone believed in her.
"Lyra, whose side are you on?" Gessa said, pausing her circling, sounding genuinely annoyed by the disruption.
"Um..." Lyra hesitated, glancing at her imposing father, then back at Vivian. The scholar was still standing, still holding the sword, even though she'd been down to a knee a moment ago. "Both?" Lyra finally said, a mischievous grin spreading across her face.
The other soldiers watching from the shade laughed, a rough, appreciative sound that eased the yard's tension.
The next clash was quicker, harder, driven by Gessa's renewed focus. Vivian blocked—barely managing to get her guard up—but the sheer force of the blow rattled the bones in her arms. She dropped to one knee, gasping, the sword trembling violently in her grip, kissing the dirt.
General Grey's voice rumbled from the sidelines, carrying the weight of command. "Stand."
Vivian's chest rose and fell like a storm-tossed sea. With a Herculean effort that felt like tearing her own flesh, she pushed to her feet, wobbling precariously. Gessa's expression shifted; she frowned now, not mocking, but genuinely frustrated by the scholar's refusal to concede the obvious.
"This is pointless, General," Gessa muttered, turning away from her opponent for a moment. "She'll break before she learns a single proper stance."
"Gessa." His tone, sharp and flat, silenced her completely. "Again."
Vivian raised her blade for the umpteenth time, her jaw set with a determination that transcended pain. Her legs shook so violently she looked like a leaf in the wind, but she did not retreat an inch.
That was the rhythm of the days that followed, a brutal, monotonous pattern. Gessa, strong and sure, a hurricane of skill. Vivian, frail but fiercely determined, a rooted sapling weathering the storm. And Lyra—always there, a constant fixture on the fence, sometimes giggling when Vivian tripped over her own feet, sometimes clapping with a disproportionate fervor when she lasted longer than expected in a defensive stance.
At night, the soldiers whispered their doubts around the cookfires.
"She's wasting the General's time."
"She's just mule-stubborn. That's not skill."
"She'll never be a knight. Never earn that steel."
But Lyra heard it differently. She saw the truth others chose to ignore. She saw how Vivian's hands bled raw from the blisters that never quite healed, yet she returned each dawn with them freshly and expertly wrapped. She noticed the way Vivian watched her father's movements with sharp, studious eyes, memorizing every shift in weight, every subtle feint. She realized that though Vivian's arms and legs failed her daily, her mind and her will never did. She was learning, not through muscle memory, but through tireless study.
And slowly, grudgingly, others noticed too. The tide of opinion was beginning to turn.
One mid-morning, when Vivian, exhausted and dizzy, dropped her blade mid-swing with a loud clatter, Lyra gasped. But instead of sneering or walking away in disgust, Gessa did something utterly unexpected. She bent down, picked up the sword, and pressed it back into Vivian's trembling hand.
"Don't let go," Gessa muttered, her voice lower than usual, almost a private confession. It was a sound of grudging respect. "A sword listens only to those who refuse to drop it, even when their arm is gone."
Vivian blinked, surprised and breathless. Her lips curved into a small, exhausted smile that reached her eyes. "Then it will have to learn to listen to me," she promised the blade, and Gessa, and the world.
Lyra caught the subtle shift—she saw the way Gessa looked at Vivian in that moment. Not with scorn, not with ridicule, but with something sharper, heavier. Recognition. The warrior saw the same fire that burned in her own heart, only banked by a lifetime of different pursuits.
From then on, the teasing changed. Gessa still mocked, but there was a lilt of fondness in it, like someone she secretly admired but would never admit to. The scorn had become a tough form of mentorship.
"Your stance is awful," she'd say, yanking Vivian's foot violently into the correct, painful position.
"You grip like a scholar holds a quill," she'd add, adjusting Vivian's hands until her knuckles were white.
"You'll never beat me," she'd smirk, a genuine challenge in her eyes.
To which Vivian always replied, breathless but unshaken: "Watch me."
And Lyra, little witness to it all, would giggle and chant, "Vivian's going to win someday!" earning herself playful flicks on the forehead from Gessa and gentle pats on the head from Vivian. She was their unofficial, pint-sized cheerleader.
One evening, as the sun bled a glorious, bruised orange across the yard, Lyra sat beside her father, copying his stern, still form. He watched her quietly, then spoke, his eyes fixed on the sparring pair across the yard, who were moving with a focused intensity that had eclipsed the earlier mockery.
"Gessa fights with pure, honed strength," General Grey stated, his voice a low rumble. "Vivian fights with sheer, unbendable will. Neither is enough alone to make a true knight."
Lyra tilted her head, trying to process the adult complexity. "But… who will win, then?"
General Grey's lips curved faintly, a rare and profound sign of his private satisfaction. "The one who learns to integrate the strength of the other."
Lyra didn't understand then—not fully. But she would remember the words, carry them like a seed in her heart. Because she saw it happening, slowly, organically, like dawn after a long, dark night. Gessa's brutal strength began to temper, softened by the patience she never thought she'd need to teach another soul. Vivian's technical weakness found rhythm, steadied by the furious, stubborn intelligence that simply refused to yield to the pain.