The Age of Solace: The Silver Wolf

Chapter 9: New Faces

 Syrah awoke in her room alone. She sighed as she realized her brother must have slept over with some unknown female, yet again. Kicking her covers off in irritation, Syrah fumbled around her room in order to get ready, nearly knocking over several pieces of furniture in the process. She was a warrior of darkness; the morning sun was her one true nemesis.

'Why can't we schedule one day a week where we just sleep all day?' Syrah groaned in her thoughts.

Despite occasionally waking up early to watch the sunset in her spot, she hated mornings for the most part. The life of a warrior was an exhausting one... She stretched out as she donned her armor, knowing that she was scheduled to aide in the royal guard's training shortly after breakfast. Without any missions or mysterious happenings, Corvin's Blades were expected to help out the knights in their duties. In Syrah's case that meant helping the peons be slightly more competent than they currently were. Of course, in her eyes they were still tools compared to the work and prowess of her and her colleagues, but she had to admit that the knights had a place in the kingdom along with their own duties, and that she should be glad to help.

She supposed she was not actually bitter towards the knights, but rather hoped for a more exciting or useful role than demonstrating combat maneuvers as an example for what the knights should strive for. Her brother got to work in the armory, with all the glorious weapons. The arrogant jerk Castor, when not challenging newcomers into duels, helped out with the scouts and occasionally spies. Raven... well; frankly everyone was too scared to argue with Raven about roles, so he always ended up doing whatever he wanted to at any given time. Besides, she could have it as bad as Blyke Evanstar, who had to help the servants cater to the horses, including mucking the stables.

'Yeah, I suppose it could be worse...' Syrah thought to herself.

There was also the duel with Castor and the new guy, Faradeigh, to look forward to. He challenged all newcomers who were not of noble blood, trying to teach them their place or something of the sort until a time that they joined his ranks. A few times he had admitted to his attempts of getting rid of such commoners, but Stella never had any of it. Syrah was surprised he was still around, but when special abilities are as rare as they were, certain things had to be overlooked for the greater good.

Castor had never lost a match before, and never did he challenge veterans. Some of the new blood had put up really good fights against him in the past, but unfortunately none had ever succeeded. He was the kind of person who needed to be pegged down a couple notches. Syrah thought of him as a bigot. He had tried to court her in the past, but she would not have any of it, going so far as to threaten killing him with the intent of going through with it.

She shivered as the thought entered her mind, experimentally summoning her weapon before giving it a few spins and expelling it back into the shadows. Taking a breath, she tied her hair in her favorite red ribbon to the side of her face, used a similar ribbon to put up her ponytail, and headed down to meet her friends in the mess hall for breakfast.

"Oh, hey Syrah!" The young voice of her friend Blyke called, "We saved you a seat!"

Syrah smiled a tad as she sat next to the younger warrior. Blyke was fourteen years of age and had potential to be the top of his age bracket, but unfortunately his abilities were quite unpredictable, and he had next to no control over them. His older brother Dester was Cornelius' age of twenty. Although he was in the age bracket before Raven, his power nearly matched the one-winged veteran. Dester was also a bitter rival of Castor's. Syrah was unsure of how or why, but the two did always seem to be at each other's throats, though Castor's attention was currently taken by Faradeigh at the moment.