It had been a week since Fondval had settled into its new world when Rou came to find Emrys, who was sitting alone near the well, his hands clasped behind his head, enjoying the semblance of rest he rarely allowed himself.
"Emrys," the boy said, stopping a few steps away.
"Rou."
"I have a request."
Emrys opened his eyes, or at least made the gesture out of habit more than necessity, turning his face toward the boy's voice.
"Shoot."
Rou hesitated for a moment, his two friends standing just behind him, as still and silent as usual.
"We want you to train us."
Emrys remained silent for a few seconds, letting the request hang in the air.
"Train you for what?"
"We want to learn how to fight," Rou replied, without the slightest hesitation this time. "We don't want to be helpless in case Stigma attacks our village again."
That's not quite what you want, is it?
Emrys had already guessed the true emotions hidden behind that carefully constructed sentence. He had sensed them the moment Rou approached him. A dark and gloomy aura that had no business being around a ten-year-old child. It had nothing to do with someone who simply wanted to protect his village. It was something harder. More personal.
Anger that had nowhere to go.
"Why you, specifically?" Emrys asked, curious to see how far the boy would go with his watered-down version of the truth. "I could train the adults. That would even be the most logical choice."
"Because the adults already have their jobs. The fields, the forge, all that. We don't have anything in particular to do."
"That's not wrong," Emrys admitted.
The kid did his homework. I understand why he didn't come to see me directly. He took the time to prepare.
He remained silent for another moment, genuinely weighing the question rather than simply giving an immediate answer.
Hmm. I don't really want to do this, but I have to admit it would be a good idea to train them. Even though they're relatively safe here, I have no way of knowing whether there is somewhere in this world a way to reach UBW. So it would be good for the inhabitants to be able to defend themselves without relying too much on me. And even though Iklia is injured, no one died during the attack. Maybe that changes things. I might be able to make him give up his stupid desire for revenge.
In another version of this story, a version Emrys did not know but could easily imagine, this same boy would have lost far more than his peace of mind that day. He would have lost friends. People he cared about. And that kind of loss, no amount of training, combat, or wisdom acquired over time would have been enough to truly heal.
But here, no one had died.
Maybe I still have time to change his mind. Before that anger becomes something harder to undo.
"All right," Emrys finally said.
Rou blinked, visibly surprised by how quickly he had answered.
"All right?"
"All right. I'll teach you how to fight."
The boy remained silent for a moment, as though he had prepared himself to argue for much longer.
"Just... like that?"
"Just like that," Emrys confirmed. "But on my terms. And at my pace."
"What does that mean?"
Emrys stood up, casually brushing the dust from his pants.
"It means we start tomorrow morning. And you don't complain when it gets hard."
A smile, the first genuine smile Emrys had seen from him since their arrival in Unlimited Blade Works, spread across Rou's face.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," Emrys replied, an amused echo of Dubs' voice unintentionally resonating in his own. "You might regret it as early as tomorrow."
*
Training did indeed begin the following morning, at dawn, in a cleared area on the edge of the village, where Fondval's green grass still gave way slightly before meeting the scarlet desert.
Rou and his six other companions all showed up, the seven of them displaying a level of seriousness that was almost comical for their age, as though they had been preparing for this exact moment for weeks.
Damn, I'm going to have more work than I thought. It's not just Rou that I'm going to have to calm down.
The negative emotions Emrys had noticed in Rou were also present in all of his friends.
I still wonder if this is a good idea.
"Well," Emrys said, placing his hands on his hips. "First lesson."
"We're listening," Rou replied.
"The first thing you need to know is that you know nothing."
The three children exchanged a slightly bewildered glance.
"That's... not really a lesson," one of them pointed out, a boy whose name Emrys had learned in the meantime.
"That's the foundation of every other lesson, Adrian," Emrys retorted. "As long as you think you know things you don't actually know, you won't learn anything properly. So we're starting from scratch. Stances, balance, breathing. Combat comes later, once I determine that you've got a decent handle on these first factors."
Another boy named Farel let out a disappointed sigh, clearly not very enthusiastic about the prospect.
"We thought we'd learn how to use a sword right away."
"Yeah, I figured. That's why I was quick to crush your hopes," Emrys replied, a smile audible in his voice. "Everyone thinks that at first. That's exactly why most people who fight badly fight badly."
He spent the following hours making them repeat simple movements, almost disappointing in their simplicity. Staying upright without losing their balance. Shifting their weight from one foot to the other without stumbling. Breathing deeply so they would never panic, even under exertion.
The seven children complained, just as Emrys had predicted, but none of them gave up. Every morning, they returned with the same quiet determination, despite the soreness, despite the frustration of not progressing as quickly as they wanted.
*
The news spread quickly throughout the village.
Other children, followed by a few older teenagers, began showing up early in the morning, intrigued by the rumors surrounding Emrys' improvised training. Some came out of simple curiosity, while others had more serious motivations, having heard about the now very real possibility of leaving Unlimited Blade Works regularly to gather news or trade with the outside world.
"You do realize it's dangerous out there," Joran had pointed out one evening, watching the growing group that followed Emrys every morning. "Even with a password to enter and leave, the world is still at war."
"That's exactly why I'm training them," Emrys had replied. "I'd rather they know how to defend themselves than see them go outside without knowing how to do anything."
Joran hadn't pressed the matter any further, but Emrys had sensed a complex mixture of concern and gratitude in his heart that didn't really require an answer.
The training gradually became more organized, taking on a more structured form as the number of students increased. Emrys divided them into small groups according to their age and endurance, moving from one group to another to correct a stance here, encourage an effort there, without ever truly stopping himself.
Bern, for his part, began forging training weapons, reinforced wooden swords and light shields made from a metal Emrys had helped him select from the strongest materials they had been able to recover.
"It's strange making weapons for kids," Bern admitted one day, hammering an unsharpened blade with a level of care that contradicted his own words. "But whatever. If it can keep them from getting killed later, I suppose it's a necessary evil."
*
Rou and his six friends were, unsurprisingly to Emrys, the most dedicated students of all.
They always arrived first, always left last, sometimes continuing to train long after the other children had gone home, exhausted and demanding dinner.
"You should rest a little," Emrys told them one evening, as the artificial sun of this strange world began to sink behind the distant hills.
"We're fine," Rou replied, out of breath, a wooden sword still clenched in his hand.
"I wasn't saying it for your sake. I was saying it for my ears," Emrys retorted, a smile in his voice. "The noise you make every time you fall is seriously starting to tire me out."
One of them let out a small laugh, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve.
"We are making progress, though. A little."
"A little," Emrys conceded. "It's a start."
He observed the three children for a moment, their determination almost tangible despite the obvious fatigue weighing on their shoulders.
He could still sense that same dark aura around Rou, that anger that refused to completely fade, but it seemed, day after day, a little less pressing, a little less ready to explode at the slightest opportunity. It seemed that simply channeling all that energy into exhausting training was enough, for the time being at least, to keep it under control.
Well, looks like it's working. Step by step, we'll get there.
"Tomorrow," Emrys said, "we move on to blocking techniques."
"Finally," Farel said, a tired but sincere smile on his lips.
"You're going to regret saying that," Emrys warned.
He wasn't wrong.
*
Weeks passed, then months, and Emrys improvised training eventually became a true institution within Fondval, a morning ritual as deeply rooted in the village's routine as the harvests or visits to Bern's forge.
Rou, Farel, Adrian, Grey, Heim, Nono, and Lonni continued to improve at a pace that eventually impressed even Emrys, each developing a style of their own. Their talent was undeniable. Even though Emrys had only taught them the basics...
Rou, in particular, showed a natural aptitude for close-quarters combat, a controlled aggressiveness that reminded Emrys, in a troubling way, of the same determination he himself had possessed at the beginning.
"You're progressing quickly," Emrys told him one morning after a particularly successful sequence. "Maybe too quickly."
"Is that bad?" Rou asked, still out of breath.
"It's not bad. It's just... don't let it become your whole life, you know? Training, fighting. There are other things, too."
Rou remained silent for a moment, his gaze settling, almost despite himself, on Iklia, who was sitting nearby, laughing at something Farel had just told her.
"Yeah," he finally said, his voice a little softer. "I know."
Emrys nodded, satisfied, sensing that dark aura, still present but definitely lighter than it had been at the beginning, calm a little more with each passing day.
It'll take time. But we're on the right track.
Emrys became lost in his thoughts while periodically feeling his armor and muttering things to himself.
Lonni, standing nearby, saw this and sighed.
"He's doing it again."
At those words, Rou stopped staring at Iklia and looked at Emrys before sighing as well.
"It's been more than two months already. When is he going to find one?"
Although he appeared completely disconnected from reality, that wasn't true. Emrys was still on alert and could hear everything happening around him.
"You think it's easy," he retorted. "I've been looking for a proper name for my armor for more than three years."
"And here we go again. Why do you tire yourself out so much just to give your armor a name?"
"But I've already told you, kid. Names have power."
It had been three years since Emrys had received his armor, and three years since he had been searching for a name.
Originally, Dubs was supposed to name it, but he believed that since Emrys had participated in its design, he should be the one to give it a name.
From that day onward, Emrys became obsessed with it and began searching through all the legends and mythologies he knew in order to give it a name. But so far, none of them seemed appropriate.
"You don't realize how complicated this is. I need a name that sounds cool, but also one that doesn't clash with the world around us. It's a very delicate balance."
I'm not going to call it Vajra in a medieval fantasy world.
"It was funny at first, but now it's honestly starting to get annoying. If you can't make up your mind, we'll come up with the name ourselves," Rou said.
"Hey. I never asked you to do that."
"We don't care."
The seven troublemakers and Iklia then began throwing out suggestions one after another. After twenty minutes of intense brainstorming, Iklia finally offered a suggestion.
"What about Pridwen?"
Pridwen, huh? Emrys thought. King Arthur's shield.
"Not bad. I like it. My sacred treasure will be called Pridwen."
The others congratulated Iklia. Especially Rou, who kept praising her so enthusiastically that she eventually became embarrassed.
Seeing that she was starting to feel uncomfortable, Emrys brought the discussion to an end.
"To celebrate Pridwen's christening, we're doing two extra hours of training. What do you say?"
A chorus of collective groans rose from the small group gathered around him, but no one, not even Farel, the grumpiest of them all, actually considered leaving.