The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 298 - Qatrand: The Witness Ceremony

Soft-booted, small feet padded silently across cold stone floors. The pre-dawn air bit chillingly through her formal training garb. The dark black tunic was cut in the severe Yecine style to fit the child and make her look as androgynous as possible.

Qatrand er Yecine focused on walking tall and straight - on keeping her shoulders rigid like the older men who surrounded her. Their footsteps with harder soles echoed in the torch-lit corridors heading toward the Arena.

She had seen five winters and in that time spent more of it in a certain section of housing than any of these halls. The elders’ she knew the faces of were unreadable as always. They offered neither encouragement nor censure.

Not in public. She was to prove herself worthy of being the heir to the others on her own. They would critique her with tones of disapproval during a later meeting, if necessary.

They usually found it necessary..

A servant hurried past, head bowed, careful not to meet any of their eyes. Female servants were rare anywhere the young, yet-to-be-nicknamed Qat traveled in the Yecine household - and those few that came close never spoke to her.

Even at this age, she ’understood’ why. She was not meant to learn anything about being a woman. That was not a component of their plan. They did not even talk about her as if she were a girl, to her face.

That was also about keeping up the girl’s pretenses without making mistakes - and ruining their plan when talking with other elders that they could not entirely prevent. Acknowledging what she *actually was* over what they ’needed’ her to be was never going to happen.

The procession eventually reached the Yecine’s private arena. Like everything in their designs it was stark and strong - built to stand centuries of wear. The circular space carved deep into the estate’s foundation was used in the deeper past for blood duels and other combat rituals.

Torches that were already cast a series of flickering shadows across the sand-strewn floor. The scent of sword oil and the iron of dried blood hung heavily in the air. They led Qatrand to a raised observation platform to be a Witness.

"Watch closely. This is the weight of a cultivator. Our legacy."

Movement caught her eye as the youngest elders wheeled in a large cage. Through gaps in the cloth covering, she glimpsed wool and curved horns. A young ram had been brought inside the estate.

She had been taught that some of the mortals under their family raised the creatures in a nearby valley, though she had never seen one herself. A second cage covered with more iron than cloth was brought in from the opposite side.

A rumble of barely contained violence and other hissing noises came from this one. Her father stood with the young elders. His sharp eyes were fixed on her reaction to everything - a judge to the witness harsher than most in the room.

The door to the ram’s containment was opened first. It stepped out cautiously at their prodding with hooves clicking against the stone and sand. The elders nearby closed off the cage once it was out.

In the torchlight, its wool seemed almost golden to the young girl. It moved with the nervous youth it held as it bleated with its head turning to survey its surroundings. Looking for an exit away from what it sensed was coming.

"Nature teaches the hardest lessons. Watch and learn what it means to be prey, heir presumptive of Yecine."

One of the old elders she wasn’t familiar with spoke and his stern voice seemed powerfully charismatic in the arena. The second door was yanked open by the men below to reveal a massive mountain cat. Muscles rippled beneath its tawny coat as it paced out.

Yellow eyes that had not eaten for days fixed on the ram immediately.

The creature barely had time to bleat again and turn before the predator was upon it. A brutally efficient lunge from the predator ended with teeth on the back of a helpless neck. Bones cracked and blood sprayed across the pale wool.

The almost gold became orange flecked with pink in the lighting.

Qatrand’s hands gripped at the stone railing with white knuckles. Her mind rebelled against the scene below.

Not from fear, because she inordinately trusted that she was safe around her family. Not from the sight of blood, because she had seen it during training accidents.

’I-it was young.’

The thought rose unbidden. What troubled her was that choice. They hadn’t picked an old creature for this lesson. The elders brought a sacrifice that had not had the time to even grow up strong.

The mountain cat’s rumbling growl echoed off the arena walls as it held the kill in its mouth. Its eyes turned toward the assembled Yecine with the interest of protecting its found food. Anper stepped forward, drawing his blade with practiced precision.

"Now watch, my son, how a warrior faces nature’s savagery."

The intended heir stared at it all with her pigeon-blue eyes, unable to look away. The big cat tucked its head down to the ground and released its fangs. Its back arched in preparation to defend against the two legged interloper to its meal.

Just like she did not fear for herself, she trusted in the strength of her father. Knew without worry that he would be fine and the predator would not. In her heart, she mourned less for the second death she was about to witness, but for the one that had already occurred.

The first sacrifice that had been deemed necessary for her instruction.

The mountain cat launched itself too aggressively through the air, losing some of its hunter’s grace. Taking a single firm step, Anper’s heavy blade moved in a precise arc into the path of the animal’s momentum.

The sharp edged metal parted fur and flesh. A cultivator’s strength fueled the instant sweep through the bone of its neck. The predator’s attacking screech cut short as its body tumbled past where her father first stood when it leapt. With that one step, he would have evaded the attack even without countering.

Only a drop of blood touched his shoe, after the large cat’s head bounced and splattered the warm liquid on the sand nearby. His familiar, certain, lecturing voice carried clearly up to the observation platform.

"This is the difference between a beast and a warrior. One kills from hunger or sport. The other kills when it is their duty."

The elders all nodded in grave approval. Their eyes turned expectantly to the young heir as two male servants entered the arena grounds with a sword cleaning kit and leather apron.

"Come."

The barked word from her father held no room for hesitation. Qatrand descended the stone steps obediently. Each foot was placed carefully with her head held up high, as she had been trained for this moment.

The apron they tied around her was stiff and made for a small adult instead of a child. The hem dragged in the sand despite being folded and pinned up ahead of time. When she reached the man, her father extended the blade he used to kill the creature with two outstretched hands supporting it.

"Clean it properly."

Her much smaller hands accepted the great weight without a sound. Qatrand remembered countless practice sessions with wooden trainers. Some of them were almost as heavy as that blade.

But this was different. The handle was warm but the metal was cold. Thick crimson trailed down toward the guard. The blood of a creature slain to teach her another sort of lesson. To make of her what they wanted.

And the girl did not want to disappoint them.

She knelt as instructed beside the cleaning kit. Maintenance of weapons was something she had been taught this year. The first cloth came away red as she wiped the blade. Each stroke was mechanical and careful not to cut herself.

Her eyes remained fixed on her task rather than acknowledging the cooling bodies nearby. Until that was no longer an option.

"Now for the other duties. A warrior should not waste."

The young girl attempting her best to be their perfect heir rose and turned toward the fallen ram. The wool was matted now as its lifeblood puddled into the sand from its wounds. The golden hue she imagined in the flickering torchlight was almost completely lost to darker stains.

Young fingers trembled as she helped the mortal servants position the limp corpse on the arena’s chain and pulley. A table had even been brought in as she cleaned her father’s sword. The young child knew what was expected of her.

Qatrand had been made to read the process for dressing a hunted animal almost as soon as she could read at all. She had also been given a knife to practice cutting on hunks of raw meat last week.

She learned on the day of her Witness ceremony that she should expect to use a skill they bothered to teach her sooner rather than later. An unnoticed tear slid down her cheek as she made the first cut. Then another slice where the book said to.

She did not sob or make sounds, but the silent grief was evident in every careful movement. The servants worked with the child efficiently without daring to push the little novice aside.

By the time they moved to prepare the mountain cat’s body, the Yecine’s eyes had gone dry and her hands no longer shook.The tears for the young sacrifice had run their course, leaving behind something more distant and empty.

Something that knew, less in words than in feeling, that it was pointless to voice her wants over what had already been done. She cut into the second creature’s hide with a slow but steady hand.

Anper watched it all from several paces away. His jaw tightened at what he perceived as her feminine weakness giving way to an intense dispassion. Neither reaction was what he had hoped to see from something labeled as his *heir*.

The father’s image of strong progeny was more confident than this kind of pawn.

The other elders saw only that the child before them successfully completed the tasks. Without complaint or resistance. As much as they asked of any of their kin.

They noted this obedience with approval and understandably missed the small shift in the set of those pigeon-blue eyes. Qatrand er Yecine ingrained the ritual’s original lesson more than any of them had done in their own youth.

An introduction to death was what it had been boiled down to in their minds. A way of showing that a warrior takes up arms in a purpose different from a creature using its claws and fangs.

But so many of them at her age missed that there were things that were defenseless in the world - and that it was their duty to gain the power to protect them.

The helpless ram represented mortals as much as the very young. They would all come to understand it, in their own ways, but so very few understood it without any further prodding like she had. Because for the young cultivator, it was an instinctive part of her.

The seed of a protective nature germinated because of the Yecine’s own Witness tradition that day. It would take further root under their lessons on duty. This would later prove to, ironically, be at odds with the faction of elders that raised her... and their carefully laid plans.

Because the very young Qatrand, as a thin but sturdy sapling, would not see Elua er Goltbred as anything other than a cute, young, defenseless creature that needed her protection. Even when one... (two?) of those were proven false, she had already given her word!

But there were still four more years for that sapling’s promise to first flower...

The heir stood quietly when the gruesome work of dividing the creatures into sections to carry off into the kitchen was done. The servants wrapped it all on the table to be carted away after the elders left.

Blood had soaked through parts of the borrowed apron despite her careful movements. The black hid it well, but the stains that changed the reflectivity on her training clothes were obvious to the cultivators in the room..

They took the cleaning kit and leather apron away from the child. The servants efficiently bundled away all the evidence of the morning’s lessons and left. Her father then spoke with a voice just a little tighter than normal.

That tightness meant extra lectures.

"You may return to your quarters to prepare for training."

She bowed to Anper and the assembled elders before turning to leave. Qatrand would not physically look back at the ceremonial arena as she departed. Her small shoulders were held rigid as she walked alone, back the exact way they had come.

There were no thoughts of doing anything other than what she had been ’suggested’ to do. Even knowing she would be talked down to. The morning sunlight lanced through the high windows of the corridor and shined on the dyed black hair.

And on the blood staining her clothes.

Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m