her third captain’s promise

Cody wasted no time at all, lunging himself at the Beast General. His eyes shone with vibrancy as he lunged towards her, the edge of his sword catching the sun's rays and shining it back on to her face.

Kiera ducked, the blade of his sword narrowly avoiding her. He was fast, but Kiera had dealt with fast Beasts like him before.

Cody had never managed to win in a duel against her, but that did not mean she could let down her guard while fighting him. She remembered what her mentor told her as they trained.

'Thinking you are better than your opponents is the quickest way to pull yourself into a false sense of security. It is also the surest way of getting yourself killed.'

Cody was younger than her, but there was a swift intelligence about him. Even if it did not look like it, the smaller Beast carefully calculated his actions before following through with them. His calculations and his quickness made for a deadly combination. But she found that those calculations quickly tired him out.

Sometimes Cody did bring a new set of moves to their duels, but with each added flowery action, Kiera would counter it without much trouble. That did not stop him from experimenting with new techniques though. He hoped to someday beat her with a technique he had developed all by himself.

Kiera smiled as she deflected another attack from Cody. The younger man ignored her smile, his eyes were set into a razor-sharp focus. He only paid attention to the path of her blade as it carved through the air.

Suddenly he changed tactics. He stepped back, prompting Kiera to take a step back as well.

She looked at him as he geared up to lunge at her again, only to be pleasantly surprised when he did not do as she thought he would. Instead, he feigned to her left to the spot she was open to attack.

Just as Cody feigned, she had also feigned an opening at her left side.

Cody grimaced as Kiera met his sword with hers. Metal against metal, the two swords continued clashing together in a continual dance of blades. In time, Cody grew more and more impatient. With this growing impatience his footwork became sloppy, and he became prone to cutting corners with the fundamentals. It was a fatal flaw of his. One Kiera had repeatedly nagged him about before, but her Third Captain never listened.

Her foot goes out, and Cody tries to change his footing but she still manages to catch the tip of his boot. That is all that it takes. Even when he does not fall, the little mishap caused him to lose focus, leaving a direct path for the General to attack.

Kiera stopped her sword, the tip of her blade mere inches from Cody's jugular as the length of it went across the part he had left open for her to exploit.

"Just like that, dead."

He huffed out in frustration when he realized his blunder had cost him dearly. Kiera withdrew her blade away from her captain and sheathed it as she let out a light laugh.

"I see you still have the nasty habit of getting impatient. If you rush it your whole technique will begin to fall apart, no matter how fancy your footwork may be."

"Someday I'll win, and when I do I will take your position as the twelfth Beast General."

Cody patted himself down, blowing up the dust from his clothing as he said the usual promise after their fights. Kiera has heard the same verse from him hundreds of times and she had never really thought as to why her captain wanted her position so badly. She thought asking him now was as good a time as any.

"Is there a reason why you want to become a Beast General?"

Cody stopped shaking the dust from his sandy blond hair and looked at her, taken aback by her sudden question. He showed a slight discomfort on his face but he still answered her.

"I don't want to become just any Beast General. I want to become the twelfth Beast General." She was surprised by the earnestness he displayed as he answered her question. Kiera had thought her Third Captain wouldn't take her question seriously and answer her with some joke, but the sincerity of his response made her think her captain was more mature than she had originally thought.

"Why?"

Sunlight streaked through the cloud of dust that Cody had shaken out of his clothing and hair. The cloud enveloped them both in a haze. It wasn't enough to make either of them cough, but the amount of dust in the air did slightly annoy her.

Cody shrugged, embarrassed.

"Why do you want to know?"

"I'm only curious. Besides, this will be my prize for winning the fight." She smiled, "unless you would rather empty out your coin pouch right now. It's your choice."

The younger man never seemed to have any money. Cody had a habit of spending all of his money on a whim and because of this Kiera would often have to bare the bill whenever he came up short at the tavern.

"Alright, I'll tell you."

Kiera waited patiently as her captain looked away shyly. She saw a tinge of apple red on his cheeks even as he had his head turned.

"I was born weaker and a lot shorter than my siblings. So when I enlisted into the Beast Army all my brothers thought I would come back a failure. They would often tease me, saying I could never become anything more than a bottom rung warrior. Even when I came first in most of my classes, it still wasn't enough for them."

"Their taunts got to me and I became angrier with every passing day. I kept hearing things about a prodigy who won battle after battle at the Academy. She had come from a commoner background, an orphaned Beast, and somehow she was never fazed by the taunts of her peers. No matter what insults were thrown at her, it never seemed to shake her resolve. I became jealous of her." It was then when Kiera realized he was talking about her.

She barely remembered the remarks her classmates had made to her at the Academy. Kiera had only one goal in her mind and anything that was not related to that goal did not interest her in the slightest. She never thought Cody had heard of her from her Academy days and she was especially shocked to hear him openly admit at being jealous of her.

Her? A orphaned commoner child that was fortunate enough to catch the gaze of a passing Beast General. It wasn't as if she did not have her fair share of failures, but her successes were all the other Beasts talked about. She was famous, but only because her case was special, unprecedented really. She managed to become an important figure in the Beast Army, and all at a young age.

"One day," her attention went back to Cody as he continued his story, "when all my family and I were sitting down to a meal at our family home, I finally cracked under my brothers' teasing. I told them all I would become a Beast General. This happened right after you took on the position as the newest twelfth Beast General. I proclaimed to all of them that I would steal the position from under you."

"Ah," it all made sense to her now. His incessant need to fight with her every couple of weeks, the way he would repeatedly say he would become the nexf twelfth General.

Cody's cheeks reddened even more.

"I said I would not return to the family home until I became the twelfth Beast General."

"Oh." The word fell from her mouth. It hung in the air among their awkward silence.

"You still have a long way to go before you beat me."

Cody turned his head back to her. He was back to his normal self she realized as he glared at her.

"I know that!" He hissed at her, an action that fit a cat more than a Coyote Beast.

Within his glare, Kiera saw the hard set determination that had made Cody into the strong Beast he has become. "But I'll keep trying. I know I can become stronger if I keep training and developing my technique. Someday I will rise into your position."

"Hmm." She brought up her hand underneath her chin, pondering. She searched for the right thing to say to someone like her Third Captain. He did not react well to kindness or sincere comments, as he thought such comments were only mockery in disguise, or worse, pity.

"I'm sure you will, eventually. Maybe you won't be able to take my position, but I can see you becoming a Beast General in the future. At least you're making the effort."

He threw up his hands into the air. There was exasperation in his voice as he yelled out.

"No, it has to be your position! Hey, are you listening to me?"

She laughed over her shoulder as she walked away from her raging captain.