The day after I told her about the attempt on my life, I could tell it was bothering her. I was watching Katya fight another small group of knights in the training area where those four knights had tried to kill me. As I watched her beat down her opponents, twirling and spinning through the air, Katya seemed to have plenty of time to ask me questions.

“What weapons do you use Char?” she backflipped out of the way of a slice, then rushed in to smack her sword against the helm of the man who’d slashed at her with a longsword.

“I don’t use them,” I answered, reaching down to scratch Mountain’s massive head. “I’ve made a few in my day.”

“Really?” Katya hopped into the air to dodge a tackle, landing on the man’s back with crushing force. She released another burst of Light magic, sending the man flying. “Well, what about unarmed combat?”

“Not all of us were trained since childhood to be the heroes of a nation,” I noted stoically.

Two more men charged at Katya, slashing out her again and again. Almost casually, she began parrying their blows, bursts of Light following each blow to stagger the men. She bit her lip, thinking cutely as she held off two grown men with ease. Then, with a nod, she threw both men back with an explosion of light from her body, then punched them in the helmets in two quick movements I could barely see.

“Okay. That’s fine then.”

I wondered what she meant, but decided it wasn’t important. I made another sketch on the armor design, making a note to cut the section protecting her hops a bit to allow her to jump easier, then went back to watching her treat grown men in armor like her personal toys.

------

The next day, rather than making the armor, Richard had me go with him to a room. Filled with beat up training equipment like mannequins and bags of sand, it rested in a castle on the Chapel’s massive grounds, somewhere in the southeast corner. Richard hadn’t explained why he’d brought me there. He simply walked into the shop, told me to come and let Arthur and Hasha finish the day’s work, and guided me to this place.

“Katya tells me you have no training.”

I eyed him carefully. “In what?”

“Fighting, orcling,” Richard rolled his eyes. “This hard enough as is, don’t make it worse.”

“Damn it priest, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I growled.

We glared at each other. After a moment, Richard sighed. “Katya wants me to train you in fighting.”

“…Why?”

Richard scoffed. “Because she doesn’t want you getting hurt. So now I’ve got to train a damn orc in how to kill better. The Light must have a sense of humor.”

I thought about that for a moment. In truth, I wasn’t against the idea. I’d never been trained after all, beyond the intensive workouts Hasha taught me to increase my fitness. And I could understand why Katya wanted this, after hearing about the attempt on my life. She hadn’t inquired further, but I could tell it bothered her. But…

“Isn’t this a waste of time?” I quirked an eyebrow. “I have to finish the armor.”

“It can wait for a bit,” Richard shook his head. “I’ll just cover the basics. A bit of self-defense training might have helped from getting cut apart like you did when those Light-damned fools tried to kill you.”

“What happened to them by the way?”

“Three executed, one exiled.” He shrugged at the surprised look on my face. “They tried to kill an unarmed man. As I said, orc or no, the Chapel of Valor has no love for such cowardice.”

I took a moment to wonder how I felt about that. Before I could, Richard grabbed a wooden sword off the wall and threw it to me. I dropped it, surprised by the sudden throw. As I kneel ed to pick it up, he took a wooden sword for himself.

“Now, we’ll cover the basics of the sword, then move onto unarmed. We only have about two hours, so we’ll make sure to do as much as possible. Ready?”

“Not in the slightest,” I grunted.

He smirked. “Basic stance. Keep your body sideways. This gives an opponent less of a surface to strike. You want to have a good center of gravity, so that you won’t fall over easily. Now, big as you are, your center of gravity is higher than most, so some opponents will try to take advantage of that. You need to be careful. Take a swing at me.”

Awkwardly, I slashed downward with the blade, copying how Katya did it. Richard easily blocked the blow.

“Good, but you need to tighten up. You want to be able to strike and retreat as fast as possible. Shorten your range of motion. Like this.”

He slashed. Then I copied him. Over and over we worked. It was actually very interesting. A lot of concepts I hadn’t considered a part of fighting turned out to be a part of it. It actually gave me several ideas for Katya’s armor, or at least refinements to those ideas.

Then we moved over to hand-to-hand. And I found myself further enjoying myself.

Swinging a sword was fun. But the feel of hitting something solid with my bare hands was far more satisfying. This may have been because of the fact that my natural strength gave me an advantage. As strong as Richard was, he couldn’t stand up to a single blow if I was really trying. Of course, his training and speed gave him more useful advantages, but the gap was smaller than when I was using the sword.

After about an hour and a half of this, we finally sat down next to each other on the steps that lead into the training room. Richard, panting hard, handed me a waterskin. While I wasn’t as tired as he was, due to my orc stamina, I was still extremely grateful both the break and the water. As I sipped, Richard shook his head.

“Are you sure you’re only half-orc?”

“That’s racist,” I said calmly.

“Hmf,” Richard took his waterskin back. “Yeah well, get as many orcs baying for your blood and sacrificing babies for dark magic as I’ve had, and stereotyping becomes a matter of survival.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. If anything confused me about orcs, it was the constant hatred they seemed to have for humans. And yet, my mother had apparently loved my father. Was she an outlier, or proof of something deeper in orc politics? I considered broaching the subject with Richard, or Hasha.

Hasha once told me that ignorance and knowledge are the two things that shape the world. Ignorance constrains us. Knowledge frees us. However, both bring pain. There are somethings that we feel we would have been better off not knowing. There are others that cause pain because people’s ignorance causes them to make decisions they wouldn’t have if they had the knowledge to do otherwise.

I was an exampleof that. Those who knew me, knew I wasn’t the sort of person to attack someone for no reason (Blue eyes stared at me as the life faded from them). Those who didn’t know me assumed I was a monster.

I was ignorant of orc society. But what would I learn if I dug deeper into it? Would they be the monsters the world saw them as, or would there be something deeper there?

Ignorance versus knowledge. Both could cause pain. But in the end, knowledge was the better of the two. Knowledge gave you options. It gave you the ability to learn, to grow, to move past the pain. Ignorance may have been bliss, but a gilded cage was still a cage. Freedom, for all the pains it gives us, is infinitely better.

I resolved to finally ask Hasha about what he knew of orcs after I finished Katya’s armor. Then, once I knew more… maybe I’d go find out myself.

------

Later that day, Katya and Hasha were having yet another class together. But this time, I was apparently the example for the day as well.

“Physical and spiritual magic,” Hasha said as I ground cougar eyes, coal, and a bit of gold dust together. “Physical magics are the things that would happen no matter the emotional or spiritual energies around it. Gravity, for example, is the same in every part of the world, barring example s where someone is directly influencing it. In other words, if something is the same no matter how enraged or ecstatic one is while doing it, then it is physical magic.”

“So blacksmithing is physical magic,” Katya was sitting on a chair next to me. The chair was a bit tall, allowing her to swing her feet as she watched me create my reagent.

“Exactly right,” Hasha said with a smile. “No matter how emotional Char is, as long as he follows the exact directions he needs to, then every dagger he makes will be relatively the same.”

Katya nodded, biting her lip in thought before speaking. “So then, spiritual magic is magic that is effected by emotions? Magic that can change based on how you feel?””

“Exactly right,” Hasha and I said in unison. I continued. “I specialize in physical magic, and spiritual magic that has traits of physical magic, like runes and alchemy.”

“While I do much better with spiritual magic overall,” Hasha said.

“Wait, runes and alchemy are spiritual and physical?” Katya asked.

“In a sense,” I finished grinding the reagents together and placed them on the forge to heat up. “Runes and alchemy tend to follow certain trends of magic like blacksmithing, in that you can consistently make the same rune or potion. But they can be affected by emotion while making them. So they straddle the line between physical and spiritual magic.”

“Oh,” Katya looked between us, “So which is better?”

“Physical,” I said.

“Spiritual,” Hasha declared at the same time.

We looked at each other surprised. “Physical/Spiritual,” we repeated in unison. I glared at my teacher as he glared at me.

“How can you even say that? You know physical magic is more stable!” I asked.

Hasha scoffed. “Stable, but the results are way too static! There’s no spontaneity to physical magic, no room for adapting in the moment.”

“Oh please, because everyone likes having their magic explode every time they use a spell?”

My master, a man over a century old, sputtered. “Just because you can’t control your spiritual spells—”

Katya began to giggle as my master and I replayed an argument as old as magic itself. The reagent began to bubble as we argued, ready to be applied to the helmet I had waiting nearby.

------

So the days went on. Hasha, Arthur, and I worked around the clock. Katya, Richard, Mountain, and Jennifer were in and out, asking us questions, advising us, or, in the case of Katya, wearing the various pieces of armor to test them for fit.

It was the most rewarding experience of my life. Having my old family and new friends around me, testing ideas that had once been too expensive to try, designing something that was slowly becoming beautiful, I felt like all of my work was finally having a purpose.

A long time ago, I’d had a dream. That one day, I’d create armor for a hero. And Katya would be that hero. The sweetest person I’d ever met would be one of the greatest heroes in the land, and I felt proud to be a part of that.

So we worked. Hours were put into runes, the trash can of the shop was full of empty bottles of potions, Richard sent guards out constantly for regents and materials, and Katya beat over thirty men to a pulp to show me her fighting style. My muscles burned from the constant use of magic and hammer, the familiar heat only indicating how much I was doing.

Until, on the final day, we were done. Jennifer, Hasha, Arthur, and Richard watched as I rolled the armor stand over next to Katya, who stood in a simple cotton shirt and trousers. With them watching, I began to place the armor pieces on Katya. Slowly, taking my time, I made sure each piece was fitted. This armor, built with cougar eyes, bull hide, chromoly steel, carbon sheets made from silk and diamonds, blood, and time, hours and hours of it, was finally finished. Now it was time to put it all together.

First, Katya put on the under suit. First was an insulating set of padded shirts. Set with runes of isaz, raidō and kenaz, woven with thread dipped in Katya’s blood, the thick cotton shirts would change temperature to keep Katya comfortable, switching between cold and heat. They’d also help absorb the shock of blows the armor couldn’t divert. I’d had plans to create some sort of gel that would do the job even better, but the time constraints had caught up with me.

Then her carbon sheets followed. A shirt, trousers, socks, and gloves, all fitted to her body. When it was done, she was dressed in black sheets streaked with the yellow of the Chapel of Valor, giving her the look of a tiger.

Then it was time for the armor. I placed the chest and backplate onto her, clipping them together. As I did, Katya giggled. When I looked over her shoulder at her, she grinned.

“Tickles a bit,” her smile widened. “And look! No breast protrusions!” She tapped her shining chestplate. The design on her chest was of the Chapel of Valor’s fist, with a twist. All around the fist was the etched markings of a forest, with the mounts each race of Turab was famous for using. A tiger for elves, bear for dwarves, and a horse for humans. It was very abstract, since I hadn't had time for more detailed designs, but it could still be seen.

And one more. Katya looked closer at the horse. It was etched in underneath the fist. It was resting against a tree. And beside it was a wolf. The mount of orcs.

The horse and wolf were resting side by side underneath the etched design of the fist of the Chapel of Valor, all done in a lighter sheen than the already bright polish of Katya’s armor. Katya traced the designs. “It’s really nice.”

I smiled at the honest awe in her voice. When I looked up, the older people in the room were watching us with smiles of their own. Richard eyed the wolf and horse. I expected him to say something about putting the wolf there. Instead he simply snorted.

The backplate had the same forests etched on it, but instead of the four animals and the fist, it had two thick tubes just between her shoulders that opened downwards, designed to flow into wing designs etched on the surface. At her oblique’s was a set of gold lettering I’d modeled after the font used by the Chapel’s books. ‘Even as the Light burns the unworthy, it warms the innocent.’

Putting it all together, I moved to place the pauldrons on next. Smaller than normal pauldrons, they were made to protect as much as possible while still giving Katya full range of motion. She tended to favor large flourishes with her sword, and the pauldrons were designed to let her do those without compromising defense.

The right arm, her dominant one, had an image of a flower wrapped around a sword, meant to symbolize both the soft and hard aspects of Katya’s personality. Seeing her discuss make-up with Jennifer, study magic and history under Hasha, and fight in the courtyard on the Chapel grounds, had made me realize what a multi-faceted person she was, and the image of the thorny flower wrapping around a sheathed sword was meant to reflect that. I’d asked Jennifer how best to reflect to show the many aspects of Katya, and this was the idea we had come up with.

Her gauntlets were much as the same as when she’d last worn them, with only the addition of a fake rune on the top of her hand. Shaped like the symbol of infinity, it served two purposes. First, it looked nice. Second, it would throw off magic users. Those who saw it would be lead to believe the symbol had some sort of purpose, and would try and decipher the rune to disrupt her. If they did, they’d only be wasting their time, and giving Katya a chance to beat them down. Richard’s idea, one that I’d been surprised by.

I placed her leg armor on next. Nothing fancy on the outside, just mirror bright chromoly steel covering her thighs, calves, and buttocks. She lifted her feet for me to put on the boots.

Then I wrapped her belt around her waist. The belt had a pair of thin chromoly plates covering each hip, and another sheet of carbon hung around it. The thong for her sword sheath hung on the left side, and a set of small pouches with various equipment I thought might be useful for her were woven onto the back.

Finally, Richard stepped forward. He took out a black silk scarf embroidered with the symbol of the Chapel in yellow. With a certain amount of gravitas, he wrapped it around her shoulders, then stepped back.

“So… how do I look?” Katya twirled around for us to look at her.

I felt a bit of pride fill me. At the beginning, I’d decided to make her simple armor. But then I kept thinking back to that ridiculous armor she’d been wearing the first time she’d come in. I’d been okay with the idea of her wearing it as ceremonial armor, with my armor being simple battle armor.

Except that a certain professional anger had filled me. How could the men who’d made it design something for looks alone, then have the audacity to let others believe it was functional?

Well damn them. I’d made Katya armor that was beautiful enough to put the original to shame, while being far more useful.

“You look beautiful dearie,” Jennifer said kindly.

“Formidable as well,” Richard rapped Katya’s pauldron, nodding at the dull sound the armor made.

“Thank you again,” Katya smiled brilliantly at me, then laughed when Mountain licked one of the hip plates.

“Not a problem,” I turned and picked something up. “By the way, Arthur made this for you.”

“Arthur?” Katya gave him a surprised look. The skinny blacksmith shrugged.

“I didn’t know if you had one. And Char told me your last armor was shite, so I figured I’d put some time into it.”

“He just finished work on one that was half-done,” I smiled at the older man, who tried not to look like he was worried about what Katya would think. “But he makes great swords.”

I handed her the sheathed sword. The longsword was cut to Katya’s preferred length, and rested in a sheath made from horsehide. The hilt was wrapped in the skin of a stingray, a flat animal that lived off the coast of the oceans around Jarvin in the artificial coral reefs.

Katya took the blade out of the sheath, eyes brightening at the sight of the shining surface.

“I’m not a wizard or anything, so I had Hasha put in the rune for electricity,” Arthur nodded to the aforementioned wizard, who grinned, his long ears twitching. “Should help in a good fight. It’s called Stormcall.”

I groaned. “Ugh, what a horrible name.”

Arthur punched me in the shoulder, growling in displeasure.

“I love it!” Katya swung it around. A small burst of electricity came from the blade, and she giggled happily. “Yes! I can’t wait to fight with these!”

“You’ll get your chance in the morning,” Richard looked over at Arthur, Hasha, and I. After a moment of hesitation, he nodded. “I’ve already had your payment ready. You’ve done well, all of you. Thank you.”

The three of us shared a satisfied smile.

“Well!” Jennifer clapped her hands. “I think this calls for a celebration! Who wants to go to Allgowlden City? My treat!”

“Allgowlden City?” Katya place her new sheath on her hilt and sheathed her sword. “What’s that?”

Richard, in the meantime, paled. Apparently he knew full well that Allgowlden City was Jennifer’s infamous brothel.

“Oh, just my little establishment,” Jennifer giggled girlishly. “We can go, have some food, drinks, and simply relax and celebrate.”

“Oh, that sounds great!” Katya said.

“Maybe I should just take Katya home, let her get some sleep…” Richard said softly. He looked at Hasha, Arthur, and I for help. The three of us gave him toothish grins, simply watching as he sputtered once more to protect his charge from being corrupted by Jennifer.

“Oh, please Richard!” Katya clutched her hands before her, eyes wide as she pouted up at him. Mountain stepped alongside her, whining pitifully.

Jennifer smirked as Richard slowly broke down under the sad eyes of the girl and dog. “Well, I’ll just send a messenger ahead to let them know we’re on our way, shall I?”

As she spoke, I looked over in the corner. A helmet lay on a shelf. It was almost finished. It just needed one more rune. One more.

I decided to put it off. For now, Katya wasn’t going to get into fights. I could hand it to her before she entered that den of monsters. The helm had nine runes working in concert. One more, and not only would Katya’s armor be truly complete, but I’d qualify for my rune grandmastery.

For now, it was time to celebrate. Before we left however, I picked up something. Ever since the assassin, I’d been paranoid. Justifiably I suppose. It only made sense to have something prepared in case of another attack.

Stashing my equipment in my satchel, I rushed to join the others.