The Forced Throne

Chapter 12

"Wow! That's an awesome idea!" Mari had commented on her drawing, it was an outfit that was better fit for the conditions of this land, but still nice. She planned on sending them to a taylor. A knock on the door was sounded and she figured that it would be her father telling her it's time for their meeting. She answered the door to find her father with a frustrated look, "He canceled, if we don't have one meeting were we actually discuss something in the next two days, were leaving!" Jaron said frustratedly. 

"Oh, why did he cancel?" Alexius asked. Jaron shrugged, "His servant came and told me he had something more important to do." Alexius nodded, Jaron then said that he would meet with her later and left the room. Now having nothing to do, Alexius stared out in the courtyard where he saw knights practicing. "Hey Mari, where is the training center," Alexius asked, still staring out in the courtyard. "It's by the stables, why are you wondering?" Mari said while focusing on putting away clothes. "Just though I'd head down there and take a look around, I'll be back in an hour or too," Alexius said and Mari nodded as she left the room.

She then made her way down there, passing servants as they rushed around the castle doing whatever they were told. She walked down a long hallway that was a polished white with gold trims. They seemed to really like flexing their wealth. Alexius rolled her eyes at the thought of Hakkan shoving gold in her face. Then she finally made her way towards the stables, there was two wooden doors, she opened one to find the training room. Alexius smiled happily as she walked in. She looked around the big room, the walls were filled with weapons, armor, dummies, and metals of some rewards. 

Alexius pulled out a dummy in front of her. She bowed to the dummy as if she were in a real match, and then pulled out her sword to the dummy. She slashed it a couple of times and the studied how she hit the dummy. "I should work on fighting with my left hand," Alexius said to herself. "You should also work on your stance," Alexius basically jumped as high as a rabbit when she heard Hakkans voice. 

She turned to face him, "What wrong with it?" He eyed her for a moment before saying, "Your stance is a little unbalanced, someone could easily kick you in the legs and knock you over if you weren't paying attention." Alexius rolled her eyes, "I'm always paying attention, I won't have to worry about that." Hakkan raised a brow and walked over towards her before kicking her in the leg, making her fall over. "Ouch! What the heck!" Alexius shouted. "See," Hakkan grined. Alexius wanted to punch him in the face, but refrained from doing so.  "Come on, get up and fight me, I'll show you how a proper royal fight!" Hakkan said with a smile. Alexius stared at him confusedly for a moment before ignoring what he said and getting up off the floor.

"Fine!" Alexius said. She quickly whipped out her sword and ran towards Hakkan, he attempted to trip her, but she saw it coming. She jumped over his foot and quickly turned around to face him. Hakkans eyes widened, he obviously wasn't expecting that. He pulled out his sword, it had a gold handle with an iron blade. Some writing was ingraved on the sword, but she couldn't quite read it. Alexius slashed her sword towards Hakkan, but he blocked it. "You're not half bad," Hakkan praised. "Oh shut up!" Alexius said, putting enough force on his sword to knock his sword out of his hand and landing a slash on his arm.