Ether

ONE

Mira really needed to stop favoring her left.

When Clard's fist landed on her right side, the wind was knocked out of her. She found herself gasping for breath and, while desperate to fill her lungs with air, no attention was paid to her feet. She tripped over herself and onto the ground, her left hip searing with pain that shot all the way down to her toes.

Clard's smug face was infuriating. Two years her senior, the nineteen-year-old Captain of the Palace Guard was smirking down at her as he approached, his brown eyes light with amusement and wrinkles of the moment framing his wide smile. He reached a tanned, calloused hand out to her, as if she needed his help to simply get up.

Mira grunted and pressed her teeth tightly together as she braced for the pain her hip would cause in protest of the movement she was about to make; she leaned back on her palms, her wrists, and forced her abs to lift the weight of her body as she spun on the ground, knocking Clard's legs out from under him with a swift sweep of her own.

Clard hit the ground with a grunt that almost made Mira feel bad for him. It probably would have, if she hadn't been so focused on her next task. She quickly seated herself across his chest, her knees pinning down both of his large arms, and she took her wooden sparring knife from her belt and held it against his throat.

"Admit defeat," Mira said, hoping that she was imitating the smug tone he always used as perfectly as she believed she was.

"That was cheating," Clard said, looking obviously unamused at his position beneath her.

"It was not."

"I had clearly already won."

"No such thing was clear. Would an opponent on the battlefield be dead from you simply punching them in the side? Not even you can have so much faith in your own prowess."

"We are training."

"For battle, Clard," Mira said, pressing the knife harder against his throat. "And, in battle, your opponents do not play dead unless sure they cannot win. I had no such doubts. It's your own arrogance that has put you in this position. Admit it."

Clard opened his mouth, closed it with a sigh, and then opened it again. Mira waited for it – the beautiful sound of surrender given – but it didn't come. Instead, all she heard was a loud crash and splintering wood.

"What –" Clard began, but Mira didn't wait for him to finish his question. She had already removed herself from her position on top of him and was running down the outer hall of the palace. Aetheria Palace had a Wall Major and a Wall Minor. The Wall Major separated the palace from the outside world. It was thirty feet tall and ten feet thick, with cast iron gates defending every entrance that were fused with Ether Stones that made them impossible to open by someone who hadn't been blessed by their Sister Stone – a stone that was one of many that rested in the king's scepter. The Wall Minor was a small wall that surrounded the palace building itself, only ten feet tall and two feet thick. The space between this wall and the palace was called the outer hall, and, unless Mira's ears were deceiving her, the noise had come from someone trying to exit it.

When she rounded the bend, she saw something that fell just short of a giant mess. A cart had overturned. Chickens were squawking as they laid uncomfortably on their side in their thrown cages. Fruit littered the dirt ground of the hall, ableberries and vaars having rolled into every conceivable crack and crevice in the area. Crates that had undoubtedly once held the aforementioned fruit were tossed all around, some having split upon impact and now mere useless, cracked boards. An old man – Mister Rarfen, if Mira's memory served – was beside his horse, trying to calm it as it bent uncomfortably, the straps of the overturned carriage burdening its back and forcing it to kneel.