Strike me? I don't care, go ahead, I may end up bruised, but I will not be broken. I'll just walk away annoyed, but you may live. Strike the innocent around me? And I will rip your arms off and beat you to death with them. -- Fighting Fit
Only the Master Bai called the resident Hellkin a Lord. It might have been sarcasm. It's hard to tell with Elves. The rest of the Dojo either referred to him as Trainee Hellkin, or that Hellkin. As if there were any other in the entirety of Wolklippenstadt.
Some debated his status as Trainee, but the Master allowed him to wear the red, even though he had his arm in a cast and a sling.
Several other Novices had already tested his skill and failed. The devilborn could beat any challenger literally single-handed. He never picked a fight with any other student, and it seemed like nobody could make him angry.
Until Trainee Larych attracted his notice by menacing a band of particularly puny foster kids who were not yet ready for their first lesson as Novices. She was taking their kibidango off them and threatening them with a pummeling if they didn't surrender the goods.
She had two of them in hand when something struck them from her fingers and sent them back into the grasp of the kids. In the next blink, the Hellkin was between her and her victims.
"This is not the Way of Shadows," snarled the blue-skinned demonic boy. "This is the way of thugs and thieves. Are you a thief, Trainee Larych?"
"You have no right to intervene," she sneered. "Do you fancy yourself to be the Master?"
"Do you? What lesson are you teaching here? Let the babies have their candy."
"Or what?" challenged Larych. "You've never started a fight in your life, cowardly teuf!" She had more insults, but the world spun around her and she couldn't breathe, and there was a blooming pain in several of her joints.
She would later learn that they were all dislocated.
The children she had been menacing had run off. All that was left was Trainee Hellkin, busy constructing a travois out of loose material. All she could hear was the harsh squeak as she tried to breathe.
"Relax," said the Hellkin. "The harder you struggle to breathe, the more trouble you'll have doing that."
It was hard to not panic. Air was nigh impossible to reach and the Hellkin was going to touch her. He had already touched her. He had to have done it to do so much damage. Still, if she wanted to be awake, she had to focus on her emotions. And she needed to be awake to be certain that the devilborn wouldn't take any liberties.
He only dragged her onto the travois and then used that to haul her into the infirmary.
His report to the healers there was, "She was bullying the foster children. I stopped her. I should hope I also taught her not to say rude and speciesist words." He paused by her ear to whisper, "Call me teuf again, Trainee Larych... and they will never find your body."
Rumour had it that the Hellkin immediately used his single able hand to write a full and unimpeachably honest report of the events of that day. A testimony that the foster kids endorsed.
The Master didn't need to do anything more. He merely appeared for a handful of seconds to say, "You have shamed me with your actions."
She never bothered the foster kids again.
[Photo by Some Tale on Unsplash]
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