Sebastian was beginning to think Abel secretly hated him.

"Get up, Bash!"

She stood across from him on the other side of the indoor training hall she and Astrid had commandeered in the guards' barracks for the past week. Her long, auburn hair was pulled back tightly by an elastic piece of cloth, hands placed on her hips like a war general assessing her weary soldiers. The white armor of her guard's uniform lay stripped off in a pile in the corner, leaving her in nothing but the thin linen beneath it.

"Muscles need to be broken before they can rebuild."

It was the fifteenth time Abel had recited the same saying in the past hour alone. Sebastian wished he could roll his eyes at her, but even his eyelids felt beyond sore. With a grunt, he pushed his hands against his sweat-soaked thighs and forced himself upright.

There were three others watching his pathetic progress along with Abel: Matthias, Melvin, and Astrid who seemed positively delighted over Sebastian's physical duress. When she caught Sebastian scowling at her, Astrid wiggled her fingers at him in such an annoying way that Sebastian half-pondered following Spirit's threads to her and using them to snap those fingers clear off.

Did no one else see the violence these bloody lessons were sending him towards?

"By the Scribes, I miss my books," he muttered. 

Nonetheless, and having no real other option, he demanded his legs into a steady jog once more, swiping the beads of sweat from his forehead and out of his eyes.

For all his belly-aching, he was growing stronger. The definition in his calves and chest had sharpened, lines carving out cleaner, rounded muscles growing more defined. As the hours of grueling training wore on, Sebastian found himself gaining more pleasure with his progress. 

"A little too pleased," Abel had teased him when she had caught him flexing in front of a mirror earlier that morning. 

So, he had taken to glancing at the ridiculously muscled royal captain every so often, just to keep himself humbled.

He glanced at Matthias now as he ran past and snorted to himself. It had become the captain's custom to watch every millimeter of movement Abel made as if she were the one in possession of some hidden magical talent and plotted to burn down the entire fortress with it.

Not completely implausible, Sebastian had to admit.

Abel paced him along the edges of the obstacle course she and Astrid had designed. They had brought in a variety of different sized rocks and stones, some as large as the fishing boats from back home, and had placed them into a maze-like configuration that he had to leap, dodge, or jump. Large standing torches stood at equal intervals around the arena, flames flickering with menace, causing Sebastian to nearly gag against the added smoke and heat. Astrid had even commandeered a few wardrobes and tables and covered them in leaves, vines, and bark to mimic trees. She often frowned at them, disappointed in herself that she hadn't been able to drag up real trees from Earth itself. Not with that cuff on her arm, anyways. But she could still perform smaller feats; whenever she was feeling particularly nasty, Astrid would use her elements to cause patches of the floor to freeze over without warning.

Yesterday had been the first time Astrid had begun tossing in unannounced opportunities for him to call on the elements himself. Already, it had been nine times that Sebastian had failed to stop her random bursts of magic from knocking him off his feet while running the obstacles: thick vines that had shot up from beneath the ground; rocks that moved without notice, threatening to crush his toes; water that pooled from basins she had set up to flood into his shoes. At least with the dampening ability of her cuff, each attempt of hers weakened. There had actually been six attempts where Sebastian had successfully used the elements and halted Astrid's attacks, but, in his concentration, he had tripped over the physical obstacles and fallen, nearly bashing his two front teeth out.

Whoosh!

That particular sound had become far too familiar over the past few days. Sebastian dropped to his knees immediately, throwing his arms over his head.

The missile sailed over his head and stuck into the wall instead.

"He ducked," Astrid said into the cavernous space. "I cannot believe he ducked. Again." She nocked another arrow in her crossbow. It would perhaps be best if Sebastian remained on the ground and cowered. "Use the elements, Seabass! When your muscles tire, it remains fully awake. So, use it!"

"Try Air again," Abel offered. "You did it earlier. Flung that arrow nearly twenty feet from you."

"Yeah," Sebastian panted, "but I almost impaled Melvin!"

"I was wearing my helmet, sir," Melvin offered with an energetic salute. "No harm was done!"

Sebastian wasn't so sure about that; he could see the dented scratch the arrow had made on the side of Melvin's helmet from halfway across the room.

"Besides," Astrid added, "being made into a cyclops would have been an overall improvement on the corporeal anyway. Now—" she raised her weapon—"I will give you a five second head start. Run, fisherboy."

Cursing her, he took off, counting down the oh-so-generous seconds she had promised him. One: Sebastian jumped off the ground and over a compilation of stones. Two: A wave of water sloshed from a basin, aiming for his head. Sebastian squatted and rolled under it, popping up with surprising agility. Three: He skidded to a stop before a patch of slick ice, walls of wardrobes and rocks on either side. The only way out was through. Four: One of Fire's hot threads burned against his forearm, flickering towards him from the nearest torch. He had gotten a little more comfortable using Fire, but he still didn't like it. Quickly, Sebastian diverted the thread to the ice, which melted with a steaming sizzle.

Five: Abel shouted out a profanity.

It caused Sebastian to slip against a corner of ice that hadn't yet melted from the flames. He chanced a glance towards a cursing Abel.

Astrid's crossbow was locked and loaded on Abel's upper right thigh.

His connection to the elements surged in his gut. It happened so quickly, his vision swam in little black stars. Regardless, Sebastian's hands moved. An earthy thread from the wood of the wardrobe nearest him wrapped around his wrist; on instinct, he grabbed it and pushed it outwards.

The wardrobe blasted across the training floor, hurtling in front of Abel just as Astrid's arrow fired. It struck the furniture and exploded the wardrobe on impact. Sebastian lost control of the thread, and it shattered to the ground in a mess of broken wooden shrapnel.

He had never realized so much could happen in five seconds.

"Well," Matthias spoke into the ensuing stunned silence, "that was unnecessarily dramatic." He brushed the jagged splinters from the shoulders of his uniform.

Melvin clapped his hands. "But it did get the job done!"

Sebastian could only gape at the violent destruction. "What if I had failed?" He spun to Astrid with heated cheeks. "You could have shot her!"

She shrugged. "You could have healed her."

"Is this how you were trained?" His limbs shook from the residual adrenaline. "Having the people you care for threatened to get you to perform?"

The words had burst from him without much thought they could be true. Because she couldn't have truly been taught that way. Whom would have done such a thing? Her own mother? The saviour of Rainier? Imogene would never have been so harsh, so surely it must have been Matthias's stoic doing. But Astrid's expression flickered, her face half-turned towards Matthias who remained so impassive as to not even meet her gaze, and Sebastian somehow knew.

She had been taught with threats, and not by her captain. 

Something in him lurched for her.

"Look, Astrid, I—"

She cut him off. "This hero complex of yours has gotten severely out of control." But he heard the tension in her tone despite the thin smirk she put into place as she toed a larger piece of the wardrobe's door. "Fix it."

"What?"

"What can be broken can be put back together," she said. "That was what I was taught, Seabass, since you seem so suddenly curious over my tutelage." Her crossbow motioned to the damaged wardrobe. "You broke it. So, fix it."

There would be no use arguing with her. Not in whatever state his words had shaken her into. Abel met his stare, shrugged, and then nodded, stepping out from behind the wreckage and taking a place between Melvin and Astrid.

Weary under their attention, Sebastian sighed and closed his eyes. He felt for that deep reserve within him, the spot where Astrid had placed his hand on her stomach. It pulsed beneath his search. A second heartbeat that was a steady hum, encouraging him closer. He visualized the wardrobe, recalling the shape and size of it the best he could.

His books had taught him to keep his eyes open to find the threads, but Astrid had explained it as more of an instinct. A natural reaction to the world around him. His sight would only cause his brain to question what it saw. So, he closed them.

Someone gasped.

Even with his eyes shut, he felt the shift in the weight of the air. He lifted his hands before him and swept his fingers over the smashed wood on the floor. His nerves tingled, and he sensed how the pieces of the wardrobe had lifted from the ground. In his mind's eye, he saw how they floated in the air, bobbing aimlessly around, awaiting his direction. The hair on his neck stood at attention like a static charge. Scents of soil and damp grass wafted around him as Earth's thread raised to his call.

"Bash..." Abel breathed. "It's...lovely."

Sebastian opened his eyes, arms lowering to his sides once more. In front of him stood a rough estimate of the wardrobe he had destroyed. It was not completely the same; there were some shards that were missing or had been reassembled in the wrong place. The doorknob, which had been forged from an alchemical mixture by man and not of Earth herself, still lay on the ground. But it was definitely a wardrobe.

Sebastian glanced from Abel to Astrid and awaited her critique.

"Well, it isn't perfect," Astrid said through pursed, twitching lips, "but it will do."

Abel snorted. "Are you kidding me? That's pretty damn impressive! I don't see you rebuilding furniture like some famed master carpenter!"

"Because I don't go around exploding them."

Sebastian felt the pleased grin on his lips. The elements still sang beneath his skin, tickling his nerves and looping in his blood. They remained there, hovering just out of his reach, even after he felt Matthias's stern eyes upon him. The royal captain assessed him from head to foot, sharp jaw ticking rapidly like a waiting grenade.

But instead of exploding, all Matthias offered him was a stiff nod towards the obstacle course as he simply demanded, "Again."

_ _ _

Some cute, fun times are coming up before the doom of the second task falls upon Bash. 

Hope you enjoyed this light, short chapter. Thank you so much for reading and interacting with us!