Chapter Six

"I know you want to leave just like that and head towards the city." Elysia gave Tengeshi a wary glance. "But I think we need to work on our defense too."

"Why?" Tengeshi stood up from the stone he had been resting on and looked towards the west where he knew the city would be. Though he knew the city might not be one he would recognize, it would at least have a map and directions to get to Yrale. The thought of being able to at least get on the right track made him impatient to get there.

"Think about how we got here in the first place."

"That's easy, you somehow grew wings and decided I would be a great flying companion."

"Right, and our friends just wanted to fly with us to keep us company, right?" She gave him a meaningful look. "If we just sprint headlong back to civilization, we might not make it. We have no weapons to defend ourselves. We don't have any friends to rely on, even where we are going."

Elysia let her words sink in for a moment, and she thought she could see the moment that they reached him. "So, what do you propose we do?" Tengeshi sighed as he admitted defeat. Though they both had about the same amount of experience in traveling, he knew only the safe roads and cities. He knew from her experiences that she was at least adept in sword training and she had been more diligent in her life force training.

Elysia looked around their small clearing in the woods for a moment. Her eyes carried a playful glint as she looked up. Before Tengeshi could ask, she activated her agility and strength glyphs, jumping up to a tree's lower hanging branch. She grabbed the branch and twisted, severing it from the tree. The branch was wider than her arm, and almost twice her height. Though she had the strength glyph activated, he could still see her struggle with the weight when she landed.

"Should I even ask?"

"No." She looked up with a smile as she set down the branch. "Instead I'd rather commission two blades from you."

Tengeshi looked from the branches to Elysia with confusion. "You want me to make toy swords?" Though the thought of having some sort of protection appealed to him, having nothing but carved branches seemed like a joke.

"You can make these swords for now. We will train before every meal from now on." Her eyes lit up as she said the words 'for now.' They were in the middle of nowhere with an unknown kingdom in the distance, so it would stand to reason that they would need to be equipped with actual weapons eventually.

Tengeshi looked at her for a moment longer before bending down and grabbing the branches. He then went to his travel bag and brought out some potatoes and a chicken. He then began gathering other branches from the surrounding area and went to their clearing. Piling the sticks like a tent, he went to one of the trees and pulled off a few handfuls of paper thin bark. When he placed that inside his wood tent, he looked at Elysia. "Could you light this for me?" His face was still slightly pale from the long trip back down, he would need to restore some life force before he felt better.

Elysia gave a tight smile as she pulled a paper out of her pocket and placed it under the kindling. She placed a finger on the paper, then it sparked a flame to life within the kindling. In seconds, the branches Tengeshi collected caught fire.

While Tengeshi worked on whittling down the branches, he set Elysia to work on cooking the chicken. He knew she wouldn't be able to cook it perfectly, but he needed food in order to increase the rate of recovery for his life force.

Though Elysia had never prepared a chicken before, she had seen Tengeshi do it multiple times through his eyes. It didn't take long to gut it and place it on a spit to roast over the fire. She also attached two potatoes to sticks and held them over the fire.

As he began to see a blade showing through the branch, he smelled the aroma of spiced chicken and his stomach growled. Though She wasn't an experienced cook like his father, Elysia still gave the old man a run for his money.

Tengeshi put down his carving tool and the branch, moving over to the fire where Elysia was cutting off sections of the chicken and putting them aside on a travel plate she had grabbed from his bag.

Taking a leg and a portion of the sliced meat as well as a potato, Tengeshi sat next to his friend and began to eat. Though it had been an hour or so, his life force was only half replenished. He remembered just how hungry he was after traveling to his father's shop to drop off the finished weapons. Even though traveling had taken less than three hours, it was like cramming two days worth of travel time into it.

After he had his fill, Tengeshi closed his eyes. Seeing the life force replenish, he smiled. Though he had only trained in life force a few days, it seemed his regeneration of the energy was increasing in speed slightly. "Keerna said life force increases the more you use it, right?" He opened his eyes and smiled as he saw Elysia stuffing her face with a potato. She tried to swallow it all, but couldn't all at once, so she just nodded.

Tengeshi laughed lightly as he brought out a water skin and handed it to his friend. "Did she ever say anything about decreasing the time you wait for your life force to replenish?"

"I was told that the stronger your source becomes, the less time you will have to wait." Elysia said after washing down her mouthful. "If you just train your life force, it might take the same amount of time for it to replenish. But if you train your body as well as your life force, then it will increase faster.

"So even after increasing the amount of life force I can use, if I don't train my body, my source won't improve and I'll have to wait longer for it to replenish? But I haven't trained my source. How is my life force replenishing faster?"

"You have been training your source. You've been using the agility glyph as well as the strength glyph to heave that large pack." She smiled as she grabbed a piece of meat.

"I thought you elves don't eat meat." He looked at her curiously.

"And I thought you humans don't use life force." She lifted an eyebrow as she placed a strip of chicken meat in her mouth. Her eyes rolled back in pleasure. "I've always wondered what this tasted like."

Tengeshi smirked back at her. He supposed he did give her some dried meat earlier. He had originally thought that she fed it to an animal she had met or something. "You aren't exactly what I remember from my dreams."

"Sorry." She wiped the grease from her fingers off on the grass without looking at him.

"No, don't apologize!" Tengeshi waved his hands. "It wasn't a bad thing." He then took his carving tool and began to work on the blade once again.

Though they sat in awkward silence, it was still amazing to meet Elysia in person. Though he had dreamed of her since birth, he rarely got to see her face and when he did, it was only for a moment. Tengeshi put more focus into the blade he was carving out. Before his meal, he had just been able to see the outline of the blade. After twenty minutes of carving, the blade was already almost free of the branch. And ten more minutes, he was carving the glyph of durability onto the hilt before wrapping it in leather. The finished product looked nothing less than a finely crafted blade. He had even sanded the sides to a point in case they needed it for more than just sparring.

After another two hours, he had finished with the last sword and wrapped the hilt in leather scraps. When he passed the sword to Elysia, she took it with respect in her eyes. "This one looks exactly like the training sword I used when I was home."

The weapon he had made her was similar to his, yet the sword was a little thinner and the blade itself was longer. When he watched her training through her eyes, he noticed the way the weapon almost whistled through the air. He remembered Keerna telling her that it would be much more efficient after they trained with their agility glyphs. He knew that eventually he would have to unwrap the hilt and add the glyph, but for now they would only use durability.

Elysia swung the blade a few times and listened to it. The sword sung just like the one she left on the practice field. "You truly are your father's son."

Tengeshi gave her a half smile as he got to his feet. His sword was the average one handed sword he had seen his father make a hundred times over. Though he probably couldn't replicate the process with iron yet, making one out of wood from memory was not something out of his skill level.

"Right then," She swung her sword one more time before getting in a ready stance. "Let's start our training."