When Damien woke the next day, the amount of sunlight streaming through his window told him he had slept late into the morning. He was a bit surprised that his mother hadn’t woken him for training, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain about getting a few extra hours of sleep after three days with maybe four hours of sleep scattered across them. He stretched and went to the kitchen to scrounge breakfast before he went to do his morning training. He was eager to finally get to use his new weapon, a glaive his father had called it. He would have to put some thought into what he wanted to call it though. His father was always adamant that a man should have a name for his weapon, he told him regularly that a nameless weapon is a tool, something you use and discard on a whim. A named weapon was one you cherished, your most trusted friend in dangerous times, and inevitably the one you end up the most skilled with. Generally Damien would start tuning him out pretty early on in his speeches revolving around the subject, mostly because of the somewhat creepy way he would start caressing his warhammer whenever the subject came up, but now that he had his own personal weapon he knew his father wouldn't stop pestering him about it until it was named.

When he went outside he saw his mother finishing her morning exercise, and his father was watching. “There he is!” his father’s booming voice rang out, “Come on son, show us what your outrageously expensive weapon can do!”

His mother smirked, “Men, spend years teaching them how to use nearly every type of known weapon properly, and the first thing they do is run off and make themselves one nobody has used in decades because they don’t want to use one of the ones they’ve been taught to use.” She worked to set the practice circle up for a live weapon, setting up extra dummies and having his father pull the racks of practice weapons out of harm’s way. It only took a couple minutes before they finished and stepped back, and she gestured for him to step into the circle with a broad smile, “There you go, try not to make a fool of yourself!”

I wonder if I’ll ever live this down, using all of my father’s most expensive material, and using it to make a weapon nobody has seen in decades. He thought wryly, as he settled into a stance in the center of the circle, his new weapon held at the ready. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, there was just something right about how it felt in his hands, unlike any other weapon he had held in his young life. He opened his eyes, then lashed out with a fierce horizontal slash that bisected the closest dummy in front of him without slowing down. He spun it around like a staff to strike with the heavy spike at the next dummy as though it were a mace, shattering it into a spray of straw and splinters. A spin and twist of his wrist brought the backside of the blade down across a mock shield on one of the dummies and tore it from its grasp before a quick thrust speared through its head.

He withdrew the blade and sent it into a vertical spin as he turned to the left and thrust forwards at a fresh dummy with the spike, driving it through the center of its chest and shattering the wooden pole that supported it. He followed through with the thrust, letting the spike fall to the ground where he planted a foot on the dummy and used his momentum and weight to free his weapon from the dummy’s chest before pivoting and bringing the blade around in a devastating arc that effortlessly sheared through two dummies that were set up near each other.

He continued to dismantle all of the dummies in the training area with an effortless grace that one would usually associate with long years of practice, and not the single day that he had possessed the weapon. He barely felt winded by the time he finished, and he turned to face his parents with a broad grin on his face, only to do a double take as he realized that there were more people there than there should have been. His parents must have been so wrapped up in watching his display that they hadn’t noticed the approach of their unexpected guests, and when what could only be Lord Erick, judging by his fancy clothes and the score of guards spread out around him, started clapping they both spun around.

“Bravo young man, quite the display! Unusual choice of weapon I might add! Spectacular! Why, I haven’t seen anyone use such a short polearm since I was a child! Let alone with such grace and skill! Truly magnificent!”

His father had gotten over his surprise and folded his arms across his chest, “What do you want with us Lord Erick?” he asked, more than a hint of irritation in his voice and a scowl descending over his face.

Lord Erick offered a smile that Damien assumed was supposed to be reassuring, yet came across as more snakelike and vile than anything else, “When I heard that you had requested a master’s token from the guild I couldn’t imagine the son of the region’s finest weaponsmith failing his test and just came to offer my congratulations to your young protégé Mister Smith, no need for hostility. Now, young man,” he called to Damien, “I imagine that the weapon you are holding was what you made to prove your mastery, and judging by its quality it would seem you couldn’t possibly have failed. As such, I would like to extend an offer to work for me directly. One of my men extended such an offer to your father some time ago but he declined, I was hoping you would be more amenable to such an arrangement?”

Before he could begin to consider an answer, his father stepped forwards, his expression and voice filled with rage, “Me and my family are not and shall not be beholden to you or anyone! You can take your foul offers of slavery elsewhere, I’ll not-urk!” His forward progress and tirade stopped suddenly and Damien stared in horror at the sudden appearance of a crossbow bolt protruding from his father’s neck. In the sudden silence, he heard a series of twangs and soft thumps as more crossbow bolts struck his father. He barely noticed his mother’s shriek as she leaped at the nearest guard and brained him with a heavy wooden training mace, then ripped his sword from its scabbard and drove it into the chest of another guard before either of the men could react. Damien’s gaze was locked onto his father’s fallen form, his lifetime of training for combat was forgotten as he dropped his weapon and ran to his father’s side and falling to his knees. At the sight of his father’s vacant, unblinking gaze he wailed in despair.

“My, my, such an unfortunate turn of events. Your father seems to have caused my guards to think he was about to try and harm me.” Erick brushed idly at something on his jacket, “Now, back to the business at hand. You have a choice to make young man, you didn’t threaten a lord, nor did you kill four,” He paused a moment, then gestured at a wounded guard that was groaning in pain on the ground. Which caused Damien to finally realize that his mother had carved her way through five of the guards before evidently being tackled and captured by them, and was now being held at sword point mere feet from him. At the lord’s gesture one of the guards stepped up to the wounded guard and ran him through. “Five of my men. That being the case, I’ll not try to stop you if you desire to go elsewhere to pursue your craft after all of this unpleasantness. However, the penalty for assaulting my personal guard is torture and death. I might be willing to reduce your mother’s sentence to imprisonment should you decide to work for me though.”

Damien turned his tear streaked gaze towards his mother, who shook her head at him, “Don’t do it-” a crack cut her off as one of the guards brutally backhanded her across the face.

He turned back to face Lord Erick, “Fine! I’ll work for you! Just don’t hurt her anymore!”

Lord Erick’s face stretched into that grotesque predatory smile of his, “Excellent! We shall get you set up at the keep as quickly as we can, I will personally ensure that you do not lack for materials as well!”

Damien heard a cry followed by a squelching sound and spun his gaze back to his mother, who had thrown herself forward onto the sword they had been threatening her with, “Now you have,” she coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood onto the guard holding the sword that pierced through her chest, “no… leverage…” The guard holding the sword yanked it free, sending a spray of blood across Damien’s face. His mind went blank, he couldn’t comprehend what had just happened, it had to be a nightmare, his parents couldn’t be dead.

As he desperately tried to come to grips with the sudden and brutal loss of his parents he heard the lord swearing, “Damned fools! I needed either a willing smith or the leverage to force him to do my bidding! I can’t very well send him one of his mother’s fingers as an incentive to produce high quality weapons when you idiots went and let her kill herself!” he pointed at Damien, “Bind him. I shall have to think of a way to salvage this.”

Damien barely felt them roughly binding him with iron shackles, desperately hoping that the coppery taste of his mother’s blood was a dream, or a delusion, or anything other than this horrible reality. One of the guards asked, “My lord, shouldn’t we kill him? Won’t he just want revenge for us killin’ his folks?”

Lord Erick waved his hand dismissively, “Wasteful. No, I have a better idea. The Empire is always searching for gladiators, I imagine that the slavers would pay a premium for one like our young blacksmith here. Strong, healthy, and exceptionally well trained in the use of a weapon that hasn’t seen much use in the last hundred years or more. Yes, that will do nicely I think. This fine young man gets a chance at fame in the Coliseum of Burning Sands, and I at least make some gold and gain some favor with the southern empire out of this failed venture.” He turned away, “I shall have to write up orders to ensure that he is allowed to keep the weapon, wouldn’t do for us to send a man specializing in a rare weapon without sending along the weapon itself, not to mention the value gained by him making the thing himself. Bring the boy, burn the house and smithy, stake the heads and declare them traitors.”

Damien finally stirred from his numb detachment when the guards started to saw at his parent’s necks, violently struggling to return to their sides. He threw off the two guards holding him, and bulled through a third before something heavy impacted the back of his head, a flare of pain shot through his mind and as the world went black, he collapsed.