Starting to Train, Tragedy Amidst the Grain

The boy felt as if his knees could no longer hold the weight of his body, no matter how small and lightweight he was. As he fell down, the sword in the commander's chest started slowly falling, not being quite deep enough inside the body to stay steady.

He stayed like that, not moving when the blade nearly fell right on top of him, falling only a hair's width away from him. Not moving when the soldiers that refused to surrender fell from the sky. Not moving when night fell nor when day came once more. Only moving when the sun was already high up in the sky. Grabbing the sword sheath off of the commander's body.

He tried to wear it around his middle as the commander had before him, only to quickly realise he wasn't close to wide enough and the sheath just fell back on the floor. With no other option he decided to wear it strapped around his torso, with the sword hanging on his back.

Upon arriving at his house, he quickly and quietly hid the sword and sheath behind some wild flowers at the back of his house before going to the front door.

"JAIMY! thank Daxé you're alive, where have you been? we were worried sick." His mother cried out as she saw him, not even bothering about the bloodstains on his clothes as she grabbed her son and held held him close.

Being this close to his mother Jaimy could clearly see her eyes were red from crying, worry had obviously kept her awake all night. He felt sorry but didn't know how to put it into words, so he just put his arms around her as they stood there in silence.

As they stood there his father walked in with his shovel. He had just finished preparing a field to start planting new crops in the afternoon.

"Jaimy, you should be ashamed of yourself sneaking off and staying away all night at a time like this. You made your mother worried sick all night." he said harshly when he saw his son had come home.

Jaimy looked down at his feet guiltily, hoping his father wouldn't give him a beating. His father was usually a kind and loving man but when he got angry you couldn't guess what he was going to do next.

Luckily for Jaimy his father just walked past him to their kitchen to start making some lunch. After all, he didn't have much time before he had to go back to the field.

To apologize Jaimy helped his father plant the new crops in the afternoon until he was so tired he fell asleep in the middle of the field.

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The next morning Jaimy woke up excited. He had just had an amazing dream where he was an adult and fought to Ebuxians, all alone against 500 of the Ebuxian elite soldiers. He had flown through them while agily dodging all of their attacks and using the blade he had gotten from the commander he slaughtered them all.

This dream had caused him to become even more determined to go on the path of training to take back their platform from the Ebuxians.

He stepped out of bed, quickly ate breakfast and ran to the back of the house, picking up the sword before running to the small forest at the side of their fields.

Jaimy tried taking out the sword from the sheath strapped to his back but found once again it was way too heavy for him to use right now. He only just barely managed to slide it out for a single centimeter before it fell back down.

"I need to get more strength." He whispered to himself before starting to use every kind of training he knew. Push-ups, squats, pull-ups, sit-ups, …

He trained all morning before finding a place in the forest where he could hide the sword and running back home for lunch. Taking as little time as possible to eat his lunch and running back to the forest to continue training.

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Two years quickly passed like this, Jaimy's determination never wavering as he went to the forest to train every day. After only one year of training purely his muscles he had enough strength to swing the sword around, unfortunately he didn't have anyone to teach him how to use it, which caused quite a lot of funny scenes of him slicing the air in two to then be pulled aside by the momentum of his own slash.

After the second year his self-found technique with the sword had grown from "random slashing" to something which could be compared to the techniques of the earliest warriors of the Phiko. Useful enough for small beasts but if he got into a battle with an actual soldier he'd be down within 3 rounds of combat.

After he got home that day his father asked him if he could take care of harvesting the grain of that season. His father had gotten ill the past few days and didn't have want his illness to spread among everyone through their crops. If that happened even just once people would stop to trust in their crops and they wouldn't be able to get enough money to pass the year anymore.

So when Jaimy woke up the next day he went to the forest to pick up the blade and ran to the field his father wanted him to harvest. Using the sword to harvest wheat was anything but efficient but Jaimy didn't care. He just wanted to train more, become stronger and fulfill his dream.

After he spend 3 full days harvesting the wheat he finished with slightly over half the field, his father usually only needed half that time but was still impressed by the speed of his son. After all, his father was a grown man while Jaimy was still only 8 years old…

On the 4th day, when he was training with his sword further there happened to fly a squad of Ebuxian soldiers above the farm on patrol. When they spotted Jaimy training with a sword in the field the 9 soldier squad swooped down, landing in a circle around Jaimy with weapons unsheathed.

"Drop the weapon brat!" one of them, seemingly the leader of the squad, shouted. He had a rather bright red skin and long black hair that was already starting to turn grey.

Jaimy, shocked at the sudden development, stood paralysed, not able to even move his fingers to let the sword fall to the ground. The soldiers, seeing he isn't listening, move up to slap the sword out of his hand and push him on the ground, two of the soldiers keeping him unable to move at all as they inspect the sword he was holding.

"Sir, this is an old Nustrian blade," One of them said to the leader of the group.

"Only rebel scum have them these days, kill the boy, find his family and kill them. We can't let these rebels continue doing as they please," The leader said while sheathing his sword.

As all but two of the soldiers fly off to search for Jaimy's family the last two look at each other.

"Is this really needed? he's only a kid playing around…"

"If you can't do it i will, hold him down."

The soldier that was hesitating moves so he can block all movement from Jaimy as the second soldier stands up, unsheathes his sword again and places it on the back of his neck.

"Should you be an innocent, please forgive me and may you rest in peace. Should you be one of the rebels, know that you had this coming."

The last thing Jaimy knew was a sharp pain in his neck as a warm liquid slowly ran down from it.