A Blade Disrupting

by **Bennar Witt** on March 29th, 2015, 8:01 pm

14th of Spring, 515 A.V.

Benji was shaken up. Really he was frightened, but it was a jittery, non-distinct fear. There had been a nasty fight in the Obsidian Club earlier. A patron had ordered a drink and instead of waiting for his own, had downed the drink of the man next to him. This man, a burly sort who Benji knew to be a laboring man on one of the tea plantations that surrounded the city. Not an even tempered sort of guy.

He did not take well to having his drink, his money, tossed down the throat of another man. There was an ensuing scuffle and the first man had pulled a vicious looking dagger from within his robe. The bar erupted into chaos then. Patrons screamed and rushed towards the door, Rynas sprinted around the bar, sliding easily over a stool or two to try to stop it. The two men came at each other and the knife was between them.

There was struggling, but the man with the knife was far drunker than the farmer. He ended up slashing wildly, and Benji was not sure if there had been any wounds had by either party.

“Witt! Witt! Go find some shyking Shinya.” Rynas was hissing at him. The man was rolling up his sleeves as he skirted the edge of the drunkard’s reach. Benji had nodded dumbly and gone sprinting out of the room.

It had taken him a few terrifying minutes to find any Shinya. The two he had found were clad in light blue robes with black sashes. One carried a pair of short swords at his hip, the other a mean looking long spear. Benji had hurried up to them and breathlessly explained the situation in a few quick sentences. The Shinya had teared off towards the club, not waiting for him to keep up.

When he had finally reached the Club is was deserted except for Rynas, Deniss, the two Shinya, and the farmer. He lay slumped against the bar, clutching his hand. The man was pale and there was a pool of blood underneath him. They had all looked up at him with grim faces as he came stumbling into the Club, all save the farmer.

Deniss ended up sending him home a bell before his shift was over because of the incident. The Shinya had grilled each of them for a description of the culprit, then they had retrieved more of their kind to escort the farmer to a local doctor. The city guardsmen had left with a gleam in their eyes, clearly on the hunt.

Rynas, Deniss, and Benji had spent the next half bell cleaning up the bar and mopping blood from the floor. When Benji had left Rynas and Deniss were sitting at the bar deep in conversation about what had happened.

by **Bennar Witt** on March 29th, 2015, 8:02 pm

As he walked home Benji felt the shock of the whole situation hitting him. The adrenaline and the running had kept him from really feeling it before, but now it was there. He didn’t know what too do. He didn’t think he could sleep, and he didn’t think he could eat. Paranoia set in as he turned every corner, expecting the knife-wielding man to be there, ready to finish the job. But he never was. He was long gone, most likely. Hiding in terror of the Shinya that were most certainly scouring the city by now. But that sort of logic just wasn’t there for Benji as he stumbled through the city.

Was that farmer going to be alright?

What goal had been achieved in such a violent act? Why did some men bear such violence in them? Benji was by no means a pacifist, but irrational acts with such dire repercussions never made sense to him. His rational mind, his logical world was one in which actions, for the most part, were governed by thought. A Kina’s worth of alcohol was not worth prison, and the wrath of the Shinya.

Idiocy.

He ran a hand through his hair and found his temple pulsing. His heart was racing, long after the event. Benji could not shake the feeling of helplessness he felt after that bar fight. He had not been working at the Club for long, and this was his first fight there, and it had been quite a vicious showing.

Without really knowing why, Benji slid through the front doors of a nearby shop, the Touch of Fire. The place was a well-known smithy, and he only had a vague idea of what he was doing. The idea had come to him, unexpected and sudden, upon seeing the familiar shop’s sign on the way home.

Inside the smithy he had never found cause to enter before he found himself standing in a small display room, empty save for an apprentice polishing a vicious looking sword. Most of the items on display were some sort of farmer’s tools, but there were a few cases laid out with weaponry. To these Benji gravitated. The apprentice eyed him with a quizzical look.

“You looking for something particular?” She said. Her rough, callused hands were only matched by the roughness in her voice. The muscles that bulged under her skin were all much more pronounced than his own. He suddenly felt silly in the shop, looking for a weapon to defend himself.

“Uh… No, just looking for something to defend myself.” His words came out weak and shaky. Damn my nerves!

She looked at him with a more earnest scrutiny. He felt her picking up on his frightened state and she put down the sword and rag on a counter behind the display cases. With one hand she pulled her ponytail over her shoulder and walked around to the displays he was looking at.

by **Bennar Witt** on March 29th, 2015, 8:02 pm

“Well do you have any experience with any of these?” She asked.

“No, no experience with anything.”

“Something simple then.” She nodded and leant over the display. There was an assortment of daggers in little leather scabbards, swords, and hammers. Benji nodded vacantly as he glanced between the various blades. How big had the attacker’s been? Did it have one edge or two? Does that sort of thing matter? He had many questions plaguing his mind, but voiced none of them.

He found one that caught his eye, or rather a set. A double edged dagger about the length of his forearm sat in a brown leather scabbard, with protrusions of a set of three smaller sheathes branching off of one side of the scabbard, each containing a smaller blade with a simpler handle. The dagger was topped with a simple black leather grip, but each of the smaller blades had a bare hilt of metal. “What is this supposed to be used for?” Benji asked curiously, pointing out the set.

The apprentice grinned. His choice was clearly an amusing one for her. She opened the display from behind and pulled the set out to lay it on top in front of him. She then unsheathed the dagger and one of the smaller knives. “A very well made steel dagger, and these are throwing knives.” She tapped the smaller blade.

It was a miniature of the dagger; The blade had the same shape and dual edges of the dagger. Benji let his hand grasp the leather of the dagger hilt. As he hefted it, the image of the wild patron swinging his own flashing blade around became more vivid in his mind. Benji stepped back and tested the dagger in the air. It slid through the space in front of him in what he thought could be a menacing way. In reality, it probably looked idiotic, and now the apprentice must surely know he had no idea what he was doing.

“A good place to start.” She nodded at him.

A blade to keep attackers away. I might be the target of aggression next time.

“How much would this set cost.” He asked as he set the dagger back down carefully.

“That one is thirteen Kina. If you want we have some less expensive daggers that come without the throwing knives.”

“No, I’d like to have them. Thirteen you said?” Benji began to fish in his leather purse for enough money to pay for the blades. After he had paid her, she showed him how to slip the conjoined scabbards onto his belt and where best to rest it for his right handed grip. The girl was surprisingly gentle and polite, for a woman who worked a forge all day.

In the end Benji did not know if he was safer, or even if he felt safer when he walked out of the Touch of Fire. But he would at least have something to protect himself if someone attacked. I’m a petching mage. I could burn them to cinders if I needed to. The thought made him feel a bit silly for going through the trouble of purchasing the dagger and knives. Perhaps he would not be in a position to be able to conjure flames, or else would not be able to concentrate?

Benji thought back to the moment the man pulled the blade. Could he really have focused on reimancy in that moment? Could he have been able to weave a defense for himself? He felt the doubt like ice in his mind. All this time and he had not thought about the dangers of the city. He would have to take a more diligent approach in his studies of the magics from now on. A more practical setting and distractions would have to be introduced to better equip him.

ledger