As a boy, the only thing the Weeping Monk wanted to do was to make his father proud. His father has high expectations that he can't reach but he'll try anyway. No matter what happens when he fails.
A collection of one-shots and drabbles centered aro...
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He blinked the sweat away from his tired, burning eyes and steadied his grip on the sword. It was much too heavy, and longer than one a boy such as he should be wielding. But Father said in no uncertain terms that he was to master the sword or else he was to forgo food for the night. He dragged a tongue across his dry, cracked lips, accepting the sting. It was a fleeting pain, one that couldn't be compared to the pang of hunger curdling in his stomach. It had been days. He needed to succeed.
His fingers throbbed as they tightened around the hilt of the sword, his breaths evening from his body-wracking haggard pants. It was much too hot for a boy such as he to be out, pushing his body to new heights, his head covered by a thick hood. It scratched against his cheek and kept his breaths, hot and thick, trapped around his neck. Father told him to wear it, it was for his own good. Father only wanted what was best for him. Father wouldn't steer him wrong.
"Again!" Father's voice cracked through the silent woods.
All at once the man across from him, draped in the traditional clothing of his brothers, one of the other Red Paladins, rushed at him like a raging tide. The sword dragged against the ground behind the boy as he forced his tired, weak legs to move forward, to carry him, to do what Father asked of him. He had to make Father proud.
With a roaring cry, the Paladin towered over him, sword drawn, face twisted in a snarl. The boy looked up at him, into his eyes. Always into their eyes. It wasn't the soft parts of the body that left people exposed, the boy had learned, it was the eyes. They were the key. They gave everything away: direction, intention, thoughts, weaknesses, truth. He would know, he'd become intimately aware of his reflection, marked from birth, since he was a young lad.
Grunting, the boy ducked away from the charging Paladin. The tip of his sword still dragged against the ground, slowing him down, but that was what he needed. The Paladin was much too fast, uneven, unbalanced. He took time to right himself in the space that the boy needed to become oriented and close in from behind. A swipe of his sword nearly knocked the boy off balance but, with gritted teeth, he held himself steady and watched his aim ring true as the tip of his blade caught the back of the Paladin's robes.
The audible rip and tear of fabric burst into the quiet tree line, the tall and quiet spectators to the spar. The Paladin turned, charging again, rushing at the poor boy with a force of a bear that made the boy hesitate. Too slow. He brought his sword up, blocked an overhead chop, and allowed the follow through to carry his arms upwards by his ear. The fluidity of the Paladin's follow-up strike came towards his side and he tensed, ready for the pain of the offending blow, for the result of his mistake, when the flat side of the blade smacked heavily against his hip.
The vibrations of metal on bone shot up and down his leg, a hollow thrumming of his defeat. Grunting, the boy fell to his knees, his sword landing a heavy thud on the ground. His dirty hands clasped his hip as the strange tremors settling down towards his foot, as if his nerves all became livewires at once.
