"Hundred meters to go!" The guard jogging beside Damien yelled, his expression too bored for someone exerting himself.
"And it's been thirty minutes since we started running. If you want to keep up with the hourly requirement, I'd advise you to speed up," he added, not in the least looking drained from the running.
Damien let out a loud, exhausted breath. His panting noises were growing louder with each kilometer they covered. Just as Clement had warned him, he was beginning to feel his muscles stiffen the more he forced them to move. It was as though they were turning into lead. He couldn't even flinch without a ripple of soreness spreading all over his body.
However, seeing the five-kilometer mark in the distance—two guards dressed in black and holding what looked like white flags—he forced himself to sprint. The moon was almost within his reach now.
'Five more kilometers, then I'm done.'
Fired by determination, he took off like a fired shot, covering the hundred-meter distance as if it were nothing, his legs slapping on the ground loudly.
The wind whooshed coldly past his sweaty face, and he closed his eyes for a moment, accepting its soothing embrace. Thanks to the trees lining the track, he hadn't felt the heat from the sun in a while, which made running in the forest much more bearable.
However, even with the conditions favoring him like this, his body decided to play the ultimate traitor. When he reached the two guards standing by the five-kilometer mark, Damien's legs began to quiver like leaves in a hurricane, their subtle shake a dead giveaway that he was losing strength.
"Ugh!" He groaned, stopping to support himself on a tree.
"Should I carry you back to the palace, young sir?" One of the guards standing next to the tree asked him, tapping his shoulder as if to draw his attention.
Damien didn't know which grated more on his nerves: the guards' low expectations of him or his guide's effortless jog while he clung to a tree, wheezing like a deflated balloon. However, one thing was crystal clear: his current predicament boiled down to one major issue...
His weakness.
With a click of his tongue, he tried to force himself to stand, but his legs didn't have the same idea as his mind. Like jelly, they jerked side to side weakly and made him flop back on the tree again.
'Fuck, why now of all times?'
Damien groaned inwardly as the guard who hadn't said anything yet rushed to support him without asking for permission. Unlike the others, she wasn't wearing a cap. Rather, her hair was tied into a bun above her head...a bun that looked awfully familiar at that.
"I'll take him back to the palace. You guys wait for Lord Clement here," the woman raised her head as she spoke to her colleagues, and Damien stilled when he noticed the little mole on her eyes.
She was one of the ballerinas who had left to train with Eden. He was sure of it.
"I can still move on my own. I just need to rest for a while," Damien forced his stiff arm to move and slipped it away from her neck.
Before he even realized it, his hands were quivering by themselves, and he clasped them together, a conspiracy theory already cooking in his head.
What was she doing here, dressed like one of the guards? Where was her other ballerina colleague? And most importantly, where was Eden?
He couldn't bring himself to ask her the questions for fear she might be dangerous. After all, she had somehow managed to slip behind Lord Clement and the guards unnoticed.
"Then can I leave you with them whilst you rest? I'll be back in five minutes. I'm sure that's enough time for you to rest, hmm?"
Damien nodded at his guide, his eyes constantly landing on the ballerina. Amongst the guards, she was the one who looked the least scary, and yet, she had somehow managed to do something so dangerous.
In the palace quarters at that!
"Make sure he's attended to. He's Princess Eden's guest." The other guards nodded at his guide, and with a swift nod, the man vanished into the distance.
It took Damien one momentary blink for him to disappear completely from his sight, and in that moment, he realized why his guide had that bored look on his face throughout their marathon.
He had been slowing him down.
"Whoa! How can he run so fast?" Damien blurted out, not able to hold his curiosity any longer.
Before he knew it, the ballerina was in his face, knees on the ground next to him.
"It's called flow state," she notified him, a gentle smile on her face. "It allows us Gibbits to direct the aura in our bodies where it's needed for maximum body performance."
Damien forgot he was suspicious of her for a while, tilting his head curiously at her. "Can it make me sprint five kilometers in less than thirty minutes?"
Before the woman could answer him, a loud boom echoed somewhere deep in the forest, making the teen flinch as he stared behind him.
"What the?"
BOOM!
Another loud sound came from the woods, this time, followed by the crackle of trees falling.
The ballerina rose from the ground, assisting Damien up as they stood facing the direction from which the sound was coming. With a rather proud grin on her lips, she turned to face the boy.
"Want to see for yourself what else the flow state can make you do?"
Immediately realizing what she meant, Damien recoiled within himself. He had almost forgotten about her switching identities, but now that she was asking him to head into the forest, his walls fortified once again.
"Hmm, I'm not sure it's safe to head into the woods with that sound coming from them."
"Don't worry," the ballerina cooed. "That's just my daughter and Princess Eden training."
Damien's heart solidified like stone in his chest. Training that made such powerful sounds? Just what kind of children lived in Gibbous?
"It's okay if you don't want to see. My daughter hates unwanted attention anyway—"
"I want to see!" Damien cut her off, his voice filled with determination. "I want to see your daughter and Princess Eden training!"
At this, the woman smiled at him, lowering herself to the ground and gesturing for Damien to hop on her back.
"Oh, it's fine, I can—"
"We'll need to sneak up on them without making any noise, or my daughter will stop."
Not about to lose this chance to learn, Damien immediately followed her advice and hopped on her back. He glanced at the guard standing behind him, and the man smiled at him as if to praise him for his thirst for knowledge.
"Hold on tight to me. I'm going to move without supporting you."
"Hmm," Damien nodded, wrapping his arms and legs around her tightly like she asked, and before he realized what was happening, the ballerina began pirouetting on the same spot with him on her back.
He couldn't help but acknowledge how strong she was. Her biceps, her legs, even her neck, everything was delicate and yet, more athletic than Damien's body.
"Get ready for take off," the woman notified him, and Damien tightened his grip on her.
In the most graceful yet powerful leap ever known to the boy, she lunged into the air, stepping on a Kirkia tree branch not too far from the ground as she stretched both her arms to the sides in a rather fashionable ballerina's pose.
"This move is known as an assemblé, though I'm sure you won't be needing to use it in your entire lifetime."
After dishing out her insult and bragging, she aimed at yet another tree branch and leapt once again, this time, with more speed and skill than the last time.
*****
In a few minutes, they came to a halt high up in the trees, a distance away from the clear land where two girls, a woman, and a man were training.
Damien spotted Eden's green hair in an instant.
She was resting split-legged on two tree stumps facing each other, bending her upper torso in one direction. Supporting her was the missing ballerina the boy had been wondering about. She was helping the Princess with her posture and balance, something he noticed she needed very little help with.
As for her other companion, well, she was the spotlight of the training session.
Immediately assuming that she was the daughter of the ballerina carrying him on her back, Damien watched as the blonde-haired girl paid her respects to the man before her—a tall, imposing guy who was dressed like one of the guards.
Once they were done bowing to each other, the man immediately swung a staff at the girl, his eyes gleaming with intensity. She dodged. Her movements were fluid and precise, just like her mother's had been during her journey with Damien through the trees.
With a swift kick, she sent the staff flying back at the guard, standing in one of the beautiful ballerina poses that made her mother gleefully clap her hands.
"She's doing it!" She screeched excitedly.
Damien noticed it too. Her concentrated pose. Her body, her posture, her angle, everything seemed to flow into what looked like a dance.
"See how she's focused? She's channelling her aura to all her pulse points. Once you get used to it, you can do that as if you're breathing, without needing to focus at all."
Damien listened to the ballerina's words, his eyes glued on the girl. The guard had stopped attacking, as if waiting for her to make a move first. When she finally raised her head and glared at him, Damien felt a chill crawl up his skin.
"Watch what the flow state can do to you once you master it."
Like a bolt of lightning, the girl shot in the man's direction, flipping her body mid-air like she was flying. He retaliated with a powerful punch, which she blocked with her hands.
Then it turned into a physical battle that looked more like a dance.
She'd throw a kick. He'd duck. Then he'd throw a punch and she'd bend her upper torso, throw another kick with her outstretched legs, and still get blocked.
The fight was intense, interesting even. Like a choreography. But the intense glares on the two fighters' faces were enough to tell Damien they weren't dancing. This was a fight. A real training session.
Damien watched, mesmerized by the blonde girl who couldn't have been much older than him as she landed a series of swift kicks and blows. She was fast, precise, strong...everything he wasn't.
"Is she trying to enroll at Gibforge too?" He asked her mother, realizing what the Vampire lord meant before he took off.
"Yes. It's been her long-time goal, and I hope she accomplishes it. Although..."
"Yes?" Damien urged her to continue when she suddenly stopped talking.
The ballerina's eyes darted around the forest, a flash of fear in them. Her once fluid body immediately became stiff, and her eyes widened. Even her delicate skin went pale.
"Is something wrong?" Damien asked, his heart clenching tightly in his chest as the realization that he might have made a bad decision by following her into the woods hit him.
Just then, he felt it too. The immense aura coming from behind them.
"He...He's here."
Before Damien could ask who it was that she meant, the woman lunged in the direction of the fight, stumbling on the training grounds in mere seconds.
"Everyone, get in position. He's coming with the Princesses' lunch!"
Immediately after the words left her, the blonde-haired girl dashed in Eden's direction, flopping next to her and lying on her lap as she pretended to sleep. Eden started stroking her, and the ballerina's clothes changed as if the ones she'd been wearing before were an illusion.
"What is going on—"
"Ah, there you are, your highness. I was beginning to think you went too deep in the woods today," a low, authoritative voice cut Damien, and he flipped himself around to look at its source.