WW Chapter 82: Morning’s Call (Patreon)

Sorry for no chapters yesterday. I've been burning out a bit, and suddenly took yesterday off. It was good to just read a book (shoutout Book of the Dead) instead of hate myself for not writing as much as I promised. Next week will be going on a short trip with family, Thursday thru Sunday. Instead of pulling myself away from vacation to try (and usually fail, leading to disappointment on every side) to write, I'm taking Thursday and Friday as my first real, forced vacation in a while. I'm hoping to be back to regular schedule, with four AR, WW, and PW chapters in the week starting on 8/24. That's one week before PW B4 goes live on Amazon, which is cool. No timeline on book 3's audiobook, unfortunately.

I cannot overstate how much me writing full time is a dream come true. That can be true at the same time as needing a break. I think that I've overextended myself and my ADHD has gotten the better of me, which leads to a pretty vicious cycle of wasting time getting distracted, feeling like garbage because I'm not at full speed, then feeling too crappy to actually write what I need to.

All that combined with (I recently checked) a bit over $12,000 of unexpected expenses because of roof repairs and rabies shots, have led to a pretty bad mental space. I really appreciate all your understanding, and I want to close the month off super strong, so I'm forcing myself to take time off, which feels, honestly, bad. However, life's getting the short end of the stick, and I don't want to suck as a husband, father, and friend just as much as I don't want to disappoint my readers.

Anyways. Should be an AR chapter coming tomorrow.

Ezra woke to the sound of tolling bells echoing through the building. He bolted to his feet, rushing out of his room and into Adonis’s. The young man startled at the sudden entrance, but after a few seconds was sitting up idly in his bed, blinking slowly as he looked around.

“Good morning,” Adonis yawned, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Is there something you need?”

“Just poking my head in,” Ezra replied, stifling a yawn as his heart rate slowed. “Didn’t realize that the bells would be so loud here. Got me nervous.”

“Mmmm,” Adonis answered, relaxing back into his bed. “Your relief should be here before too long. You don’t need to say goodbye before you leave.”

Ezra stifled a chuckle as he nodded and stepped back into his room. His room didn’t have any of the windows that Adonis’s did, but the rising sun’s light was growing higher and brighter. The bells were audible in the garrison as well, but Ezra had woken mostly to people commanding him to ever since he arrived about two months before.

“Everybody’s going to be going to conditioning now,” Ezra muttered to himself as he closed the door between his and Adonis’s rooms. “But I don’t need to go until breakfast.”

The thought of getting that bath now brought a wide smile to Ezra’s face, and he walked into the little bathroom and started lighting the fire to warm the water.

As he bent over to light the fire, though, he couldn’t suppress a groan. He had woken up with adrenaline pumping in his veins, and the nerves had purged any awareness of his physical condition. Now, as his heart rate stabilized and he was just regularly awake, his body screamed in complaint. He was so sore. More sore than he’d ever been in his life, except for maybe a few of the first times that he had exercised under the instructions of Jormun.

Even considering that, this was close to surpassing that discomfort. Ezra’s neck and back screamed while his stomach clenched involuntarily. His fingers fumbled with the flint and steel, and Ezra quickly found himself wishing that he could use flame affinity aura like Telemachus.

While the discomfort smashed into him, Ezra was in good enough condition to start the fires and then pull a chair, a simple, wooden one, close. By his own estimates, he had a good two hours before breakfast, which gave him an hour and a half before he had to leave. If he wanted to spend an hour soaking in the bath, that should be just fine.

***

“I’m sorry, can I please just come through? Fast?”

Ezra’s armor clinked against his helmet, held under his left hand, as he begged to be let into the passage between the manor and the garrison.

“I’ll be as fast as I can,” the guard answered with a laugh. He could see the state of Ezra’s wet hair pressing against his forehead, as well as the sweat that was dripping down his face. “Your name?”

“Ezra Soldier.”

“Nice to meet you, Ezra. My name is Mariusz Potter.”

The man who spoke was older than Elijah, the leader of the squad deployed here in the evening. Mariusz had a thick mustache, a few strands of silver in it, and his eyebrows were thick. The rest of his face was largely hidden under the helmet he wore, but he shook Ezra’s hand warmly as he quickly checked over a list.

“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, but since you’re leaving from the manor instead of coming in, there’s not much that we need from you. Go ahead and get going. Obviously, you’re running late and I won’t hold you back any longer.”

“Thank you,” Ezra smiled and nodded at the entire squad of soldiers as they opened the door for him. “I really appreciate it.”

Ezra didn’t say anything more as he patted the pouch on his hip that contained the key for the door on the other side of the corridor, just making sure for the fifth time. Then, the door opened, and the corridor lit, he ran to his destination.

Perhaps next time you enjoy a warm bath, you should ensure you will not fall asleep.

“Yeah, I know,” Ezra grunted back. “I think I managed to wake up fast enough that I should get some breakfast and still not be late.”

One can hope.

Ezra didn’t bother to waste any breath on talking to the old ghost as he ran. The major lights flickered into existence faster than ever before, the sound of his boots and armor echoing across the stone hallway. A part of him wanted to draw on his inner world and allow his aura to push him faster, but he decided against it. He wasn’t sure what a burst of wind might do while he was here underground, and didn’t want to chance it.

The kilometers passed quickly, and when he arrived at the heavy door, he wasn’t even winded. Pulling his key out, he unlocked the door and let himself into the nondescript closet.

After locking it back up, his steps carried him up the stairs quickly, and wearing his full armor, he, before long, made his way into the nearly empty mess hall. A few stragglers were finishing off their meals and most of the food was put away, but as Ezra turned to look at the servers, they bowed their heads and gestured for him to come forward. He could read and wasn’t surprised to see the resignation in their body language, and he apologized profusely as he took whatever they could give him.

Sausage? Gone. Bacon? Of course not. Semi-burned oatmeal? Enough to fill his belly.

He paired that with a pear that was a bit more bruised than the usual offered fruit. After the luxurious late-night snack he’d had the night before in Adonis’s room, Ezra couldn’t help but wonder what kind of breakfast the Duke and his family would be having right now. Then, Ezra laughed at even beginning to turn his nose up at the oatmeal. He wasn’t so far removed from starving as to forget the feeling of his spine and ribs seeming to be digested by his stomach.

Remembering that, he quickly started eating the food, realizing there had been a drizzle of honey on his meal, specifically. It was nearly obscured by the bitter taste of overdone oatmeal, but it was an effort somebody had taken to make his meal more palatable. He smiled as he looked towards the younger woman that had served him.

“Ellie,” he called out, smiling, and locking eyes with her. When she looked back at him, he held up his bowl and said, for the second time since receiving it in the first place, “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

She blushed, shrugged, and smiled. Ezra didn’t try to exchange any more pleasantries as he scarfed down the last of the food and then took his tray to where it needed to be dropped off. At this point, he was the only soldier left in the room, everyone else support staff. He ran out, making his way to the practice ground.

There, he saw that drills had already started, of pitting one person with a spear and shield against two who were unarmed. At this moment, Telemachus stood with the equipment, carefully maneuvering to keep his two enemies from being able to attack him at the same time.

“You’re late,” Mikhail said. His voice cracked over the din of Telemachus fighting against his foes.

Ezra winced twice over, both for being called out as well as the slip in his friend’s concentration that came as a result of the announcement. Ezra could only watch as, with a brief falter in concentration, Telemachus’s spear went over the dodging grappler. When Telemachus lost the advantage of reach, it was over, and a few seconds later, he was sprawled out on the ground, having taken a couple heavy body shots and an arm wrapped around his neck, the elbow joint under his chin.

“Victory,” Mikhail said with a flat voice. “Now, Ezra, this is your first time arriving late. I recognize you have an exemption from the morning’s conditioning, but that should mean that you are the first in line at the mess hall and arriving here.”

“Yes, sir.” Ezra bowed his head as he said it.

“While the others are allowed to rest between bouts, you will spend them squatting, holding a plank, or holding your weight on a rope. Begin with squats.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ezra wanted to say something about getting out of his armor before beginning, but knew it was foolish to. Instead, he immediately started doing squats, his legs burning already. The run hadn’t been too difficult for his sore body, given that he’d spent a fair amount of time in the bath circulating his aura through his body to help continue to speed his recovery, but he was far from back at his peak.

A couple snickers went up from the anti-Duke faction, and, now that Ezra better understood what they stood for, he hated them even more. Sure, having nobles wasn’t great, but turning that instead to mean that you could treat people even less like people, so long as you had money was worse. After all, people who didn’t have money couldn’t make enough money to get richer while those who had money could squeeze everything from those who were living hand to mouth.

Evidently, Ezra had well and truly earned Mikhail’s ire, because everybody had at least one turn defending and attacking before Ezra received the command to take off his armor.

His squats had suffered in frequency, depth, and pace over the past minutes, and his legs shook as he stood up and nodded. Swallowing against the cottonmouth that made his tongue feel sticky in his mouth, Ezra’s fingers fiddled with buckles and ties to release himself from the armor while Rose walked over with a ladle. She poured the water into his mouth, which he accepted gratefully. It would have taken him the better part of ten minutes to get the armor off under regular circumstances, but with how tired he was, the first minute or two were basically lost to doing nothing as his heart rate slowly settled itself.

It didn’t take too long, however, for his body to calm down, and he could move more comfortably. He walked over to the edge of the arena, where an armature mannequin stood. Nobody disagreed with the care he took to carefully place his armor to keep it well maintained. Telemachus and Miriam both came to help him with the buckles, and Ezra muttered his thanks to them as they sped the process along.

“How the hell were you late?” Telemachus whispered.

“The new assignment. I’ll tell you more later.” Ezra wasn’t going to give more detail when it would be so easy for other people to overhear what his assignment was or, worse, that he managed to just doze off in a warm bath while they were doing conditioning. Fortunately, neither of the other two commoner trainees cared to continue pressing him, and it wasn’t long before they were done.

As he pulled everything off, Ezra couldn’t help but let his face screw up a little when he looked at his uniform already soaked through with his sweat.

“Today, Ezra,” Mikhail said. “Take up the spear.”

Ezra nodded, pushing another pulse of aura through his entire body, to bring himself as close to peak condition as possible. Fortunately, while he’d been actively exercising more recently than whoever he’d be going against, they’d had a couple hours of conditioning that he hadn’t.

“Willem, Louis,” the command for the two strongest Adepts in the anti-Duke faction to come against him reminded Ezra that, while Mikhail wasn’t outright hostile to him, he absolutely was not a friend.

Then, the thought of even beginning to compare fighting against these two noble assholes to the training with Dominick the day before made Ezra’s nerves turn to excitement.

Just as Mikhail called the beginning of the fight, Ezra stepped forward at the same time as the other two men did. Where everyone else, when fighting as the equipped man, had taken that time carefully positioning, Ezra stabbed forward hard and caught Willem in the gut. The noble wheezed out a grunt, but held onto Ezra’s spear.

“Willem, dead,” Mikhail’s voice spoke evenly. “Wrest back the spear if you can, Ezra.”

Louis wasn’t about to let Ezra get what he wanted that easily, and charged forward. Fortunately, he was still on the side of Ezra’s shield, so he could only fight through the shield or go around it. Ezra decisively dropped the spear, turned towards Louis, and began the beatdown.

Even though Ezra’s attacking options were limited, having the shield was a whole lot more of a benefit than a detriment. When Ezra caught Louis in the ribs with a solid blow from the wooden shield’s edge with a resounding crack, Mikhail called an end to the fight.

“Victory, Ezra.”

The man’s dead fish eyes glanced at Ezra, who smiled.

“Plank.”

As they lowered himself into position in accordance with what he was told, turning his face downward to allow himself to smile. Yes, he’d continue being the strongest in the squad. Nobody could stop him.