[Flashback] Taking up the blade (Solo)

[Erzotol Silverden]

Timestamp: 12th of Summer, 495 AV

Golden grass whispered in the wind around him tickling ever so lightly his golden brown legs as he stood on the hill overlooking his pavilion. Just before him his father waited in the waist high grass, shirtless as well, his toned muscles glistening with the sweat as he moved through his exercises. Looking over his shoulder, he could see his mother waiting by the pavilion's entrance, her brown eyes watching Erzotol carefully while she kept Emizal close by her side. Her reassuring gaze gave him strength for what was to come, though his father's gaze only brought anxiety bubbling up within him.

It was his first day of training, him being yet the eldest in the family meant that he was the first for almost everything, and as always it seemed then as if the weight of the whole world was on his shoulders. What if he failed? A product of the blood of warriors, failing at this would be most dishonorable, disgracing his very birth and his narrow survival on that harrowing night. His knuckles turned white around the handle of the wooden longsword, and his whole body quivered with anticipation. He took his first steps to his fate, and with that met his first test in his young life.

Wordlessly his father slashed at him with steel, the shortsword cleaving downward through the air, and Erzotol the boy hoisted the wooden sword before him only to have it knocked from his hands and be sent to the ground when his father dipped his shoulder and pushed him over onto the ground. The dust that choked the air made it hard to breath, the sandy grit causing him to launch into a fit of coughing, and barely after struggling to his feet he was knocked down again to the ground.

"Get up.. Try to hold your ground more than a few seconds this time" His father rumbled in his deep voice, and pushing himself up to his feet, there was a sharp pain across his shins as the wooden longsword slapped against his legs. His thin arm reaching down, he scooped it up as quick as he could, and swung it hard across in the direction he thought his father was. The man was not there, and swishing into nothing but air Erzotol overbalanced and stumbled forward only to feel a stinging pain across the back of his his calf that sent him quickly to the ground. Hot wetness quickly spread across the back of his leg, the area where he had been slapped by the flat of his father's blade having broken the skin with painful scratches.

He could hear heavy footsteps just behind him, and it was all he could do to twist around sword still in his hand only by chance as he swiped hard again only to be met by air, his father quick to step in the wake of the failed parry to slap the flat of his shortsword against the Erzotol's exposed fingers causing him to drop the wooden sword with a cry of pain.

"You'll learn to be a Silverden yet"

[Erzotol Silverden]

As if the very ground was on fire, he turned around and ran to his mother, jumping into her protecting embrace to get away from the wicked pain of his father's sword. It seemed so much safer away from the anger the man put out, and the lacerations he marked upon the young drykas's skin. The loving arms of his mother wrapped around him only briefly before he was torn from her grasp, and with it the sense of safety he felt. Through the dirt he was dragged by his foot by his father's none to gentle hand and clawing the ground he fought to halt his progress and at least obtain even ground with his tormentor. His hands ran across something rough and immediately wrapped around the hilt of the wooden practice sword, a treasure in and of itself, and twisting around his slashed it across, anywhere that might bring this torment to an end. The sharp wooden edge slammed into his father's elbow with a jolt that finally released the death grip he had on Erzotol's shoulder and the boy was quick to roll away from his father and scramble up to his feet, wooden sword held flimsily before him in a attempt to ward away the strikes he knew to be forthcoming from his crazed father.

There was, and it came in the form of a vicious slash of the steel shortsword, the blade bitting into the side of his wooden longsword and again tearing it from his grasp. Before he could even lift up his arms to block or scramble out of the way his father stepped into his reach and laid him low with a heavy punch to his chest, the hard thud causing him to double over and fall to his knees. Callused fingers patted the top of his head, only to grab it viciously and twist his head up to look at the scowling visage of his father.

"Your done for the day, the weak can only do so much. Go clean and feed the horses, then the Zibri, then you better find something else to do to keep you busy till well after sunrise for if I run across you doing nothing.." He said leaving the threat hanging in the air before he stormed off into the pavilion. Broken and disheartened, he kneeled there for a time before getting up and moving to do as he was told.