Once they updated Val on the proceedings, shocking him to the point he couldn't utter a word, Corwal decided to retire for the day. The sun was still in the sky, but he said he was tired and wanted some time off.
Arawn followed him up to the room they had chosen to rent and dropped down on his bed. He thought Corwal would go to rest straight away, but the man sat down at the desk by the window and took out some empty sheets of paper as well as ink from his satchel.
Until the sun set, he wrote without pause. Arawn watched the wriggling lines that shone in the sunlight until they dried with interest. It was amazing how people could give meaning to something as simple as lines on paper. How were there even enough of them for all the words?
Once darkness finally settled in the room, Corwal didn't light up any candles. He put away the pages he'd written and leaned back against his chair, stretching his arms from sitting in one place for too long.
By then, Arawn had turned around and was working on the ether. Before being materialized, the white particles didn't have any light and could be barely seen in the darkness. It didn't inhibit his practice, however. First, the dark had never posed a problem for him, and second, he didn't need to see the ether to call it to himself.
Noticing that he was busy, Corwal didn't say anything and went to sleep. Arawn worked for a few hours more before deciding he should get some rest as well. The idea of another nightmare sent a chill down his back, but he couldn't avoid sleeping forever.
Luckily, the night passed without a problem. When he woke up in the morning, the sun had barely risen. A few stray rays of light had ventured into their room, exploring the simple furnishings. There wasn't anything inside besides the two beds against opposite walls and the desk by the window.
After lying around for a while, Arawn chose to get up and go downstairs. There was only one other person awake besides him, but the innkeep was already moving about. He told him to sit down and wait for a moment; his wife would have breakfast ready in a few minutes.
Arawn thanked him and waited for his plate of scrambled eggs with ham. It wasn't much, but he didn't think he would need more.
In a few minutes, Corwal came down as well. He was yawning so widely it looked like he was trying to swallow a wolf and rubbing his eyes. "What are you doing up so early?" he asked before yawning again. "I thought you stayed up even longer than me."
The food came, and Arawn dug into his plate while Corwal asked one for himself as well. He almost fell asleep while waiting for it to arrive and had to be nudged awake. "Fine, fine," he muttered while raising his head from the table.
The innkeep chuckled and placed down his food as well as a glass of dark blue juice. Moments later, he brought one for Arawn as well. He tried it and was surprised by the somewhat bitter taste.
"Blueberry," Corwal explained while downing his glass. He cleaned his plate like he'd been starved and leaned back with a satisfied expression. "This was pretty good."
"Mhm…" Arawn was still eating and didn't bother to comment.
When he finished and the innkeep came to collect the plates, Corwal praised his wife's cooking and told him he was a lucky man. The innkeep, who was in his fifties and had a brawler's physique, puffed up. His back straightened, and he nodded with satisfaction. "She is certainly the best," he said with pride in his voice.
Corwal laughed and said a few more words in the same vein before the innkeep was called over by the other patron. His footsteps were lighter than before though, and a smile made its way onto his face.
"Do you have any plans for today?" Corwal asked suddenly, waking Arawn from his reverie.
He looked with surprise at his companion. Had he heard wrong? "You're asking me?"
"Should I not?"
"You never do."
Corwal's smile became a little forced. He gave him an irritated look before shaking his head. "Can you not be so blunt? I might have felt bad if I'd had any conscience left." He grew a bit more serious then. "We have three days without anything to do, so is there anywhere you want to go or anything you want to see? The Challenge is in four days, and there's nothing we can do to hasten it."
Not having expected to be put on the spot, Arawn didn't know what to say. The idea that he could ever have the choice to go where he wanted had never even crossed his mind. Although he was free, his movements were limited by Corwal's presence. Where the man went, he had to follow, for a number of reasons.
At that thought, he knew what he wanted to do. "Could you teach me to count and read?"
As long as he didn't have these basic skills, he couldn't survive in the outside world by himself. Only after he learned them could he truly claim to be free.
"I'm suggesting for you to explore the city and its surroundings and you want to lock yourself in the room with books? What kind of young man even are you? Where's your spirit of adventure and treasure hunting?"
Despite his words, Corwal didn't look like he was disappointed. He went to the innkeep and gave him a few coins to send a runner to the city to get him some writing materials. The man nodded and called for his daughter. A girl in pigtails rushed out from the kitchen, her face red from the heat of the fireplace.
Upon hearing her task, she beamed at Corwal and dashed out of the inn. Her father shouted after her to not lose the money and be quick about it, but the girl was out the door before he could finish his speech.
Upstairs, Corwal put away the pages he'd written earlier and took up a clean sheet. He wetted the feather pen in the ink and began writing. Unlike before, however, he was writing only one symbol at a time. There were large spaces between them, and Arawn guessed that what he wrote were the pieces from which words were made up.
His guess was proven right when Corwal began to explain them to him. Each symbol was called a letter, and the alphabet had forty-two of them. They represented a particular sound in their language, which was how words were written down.
It was simple enough, but learning all the symbols showed up to be more of a challenge than Arawn had expected. He could place a few of them to memory, but not all. They didn't resemble anything in nature and were just a random assortment of lines and dots. After he learned five, he already started confusing them with one another.
When the girl brought more paper and another set of writing tools, Corwal forced him to copy the symbols. The feather pen felt weird in Arawn's hand, and the ink splashed onto the page every other time he lowered the pen to start writing.
Still, he persevered. After two hours, he had three pages of squiggly lines that even the most lenient of teachers would have a hard time accepting as letters. Few of them resembled what they were supposed to be.
Arawn's hand hurt by then, so Corwal changed their focus from reading to counting. He named the higher numbers for him and explained them with both fingers and coins. It wasn't as hard to grasp, but by the end Arawn's head felt like a bowl of porridge. His brain had melted a couple hours into the lesson.
His excitement to finally learn how to survive on his own waned quite soon, but he continued with stubborness even he didn't know he had. It was important that he learned these basic skills, and he pushed himself for the next couple days till his eyes went blurry and his mind was no better than mush.
He wrote long into the night, copying the letters for the thousandth time. His wrist ached from the unfamiliar exercise, but he didn't care. The more he practiced, the better he became. Unlike three days ago, his handwriting had become legible. He still had trouble connecting letters into words, but he was pretty confident in writing them separately.
Around midnight, Corwal rolled over to face him and looked at him through lidded eyes. "Go to sleep. We're gonna be busy tomorrow."
"I'll be fine. It's not like I'm going to be doing anything," Arawn refuted while carefully tracing a tail of one of the letters. He didn't even raise his head when speaking.
"It's not fine. I'll want a companion who can react during the Challenge and not a zombie. Do you even know what's going to happen?"
Arawn's hand froze over the paper. Had he really not asked about what the Challenge entailed for so long? It had to be the first time he was too busy with something to batter Corwal with questions about what was happening around them.
He dried his pen, put it down, and turned to his companion. "So what is a challenge?"
"Can we talk about it tomorrow? I'm trying to sleep here."
"No."
Corwal gave him a dark look, then pushed himself up a little. "Challenge is a name for a number of official duels. Or well, they were official a long time ago. They're banned in most countries since too many good mages die in them, weakening the country overall."
"Why would the talons use it then? Aren't they afraid to get caught?"
"Who would tattle? Their own people? Unlikely. And Challenge is good when you want to prevent too much bloodshed. It's better than outright war.
"The Challenge consists of three stages. In the first one, both sides choose three people that all duel each other one on one. Each victory is one point. Second stage is three duels as well, but here people from both sides can join voluntarily."
Arawn thought about it for a moment. It seemed like both sides had to have six good combat mages. Whoever's was stronger would win the battle.
"That's pretty straightforward."
"On the surface. For the second stage, the person who comes out first can choose their opponent. This, of course, means that they pick the weakest one, but after they defeat that person, they'll have to face two volunteers from the other side. In other words, they are almost certainly going to die.
"And it's all for points that are almost worthless. One takedown is one point, so as long as one side doesn't get totally smashed, they can still win, since the last stage is four points, and they are of higher importance. In other words, if one team has three points from the first stage and three from the second, while the other team two from the second and four from the last, they are deemed victorious."
"Is the last round a group battle?" Arawn asked. Only that could explain the higher amount of points and their quality.
Corwal shook his head. "No, it's a duel between the leaders. They're the heads, and so they have to lead by example. Only a strong leader can be recognized."
"So in the end, the Challenge is just a glorified duel between the two leaders? With some bloodshed before to excite the crowd."
"You could say that," Corwal said while lowering his head back onto the pillow. "Either one faction is so strong that they can carry a weak leader by not allowing the other side to get more than one point, or the leader carries the weight of the whole faction. It's quite a fair game if you ask me."
The memory of the young woman curled up with a cup of tea on the couch flashed in Arawn's mind, and he looked into the distance through the window. They had promised to help her, but was there anything they could really do? If the end result rested on her shoulders whatever they did, why should they bother to do anything?
He wanted to believe in her, but he'd seen enough fights in the Gutter to know what to look for in a person when judging for battle prowess. There was a different air about the people who fought often and won. They walked differently, they stood differently, and they acted differently.
The woman looked like she had trained somewhere, but unless her opponent was a beginner, Arawn didn't believe in her chances. She didn't have the air of a murderous spirit that had fought her way from the underworld.
What did Corwal expect to happen then? Was he going to demand to fight in her stead?