YoTS January ~ 31!

CHAPTER 31

Fields and days blended together as the carriage train trundled towards Castle January. Yellow and blue spring flowers jostled amongst the hedgerows lining vast never-ending fields. The promise of new life was in the air as winter lost its dominion, the harsh cold replaced by crisp mornings and mild days.

Grant had lost count of the number of corn and wheat fields they’d passed. There was a reason January had once been known as the world’s bread basket. Lord January had once been a genius engineer that bettered the lives of his people - making January the most technologically advanced District - and had brought his district everything from windmills to bread ovens. That had been before the barriers went up, of course. Apparently, a restriction had come into effect after that. Raw material could now only move a maximum of three districts, and worked goods could only make it one more, and only with great effort.

Now, food from January couldn’t make it past March, so the district that had been supplying the world could now only supply at most three Districts. Try as they might, the Januarians just couldn’t consume all of the vast quantities of food grown, so merchants of House Thursday grew fatter and obscenely richer from the profits of cross-boundary trade. Sarge told Grant that this was probably why ‘physical cultivation’ took on a new form in January.

The only incident during the long trip was a broken wheel, but it almost ended the entire trip in disaster: a pothole had put the kitchen carriage out of action. Under no circumstances could the carriage be left behind. The Nobles couldn’t be expected to eat dry goods from the pantry carriage! An unlikely hero, Derek, came to the rescue; using his wide range of ironworking and carpentry skills to fix the wheel in a rush. This made him the most beloved man the entire caravan for the remainder of the trip.

Near the end of January - both in terms of the terrain and the month - the land abruptly changed from endless fields of swaying corn, to a more rugged landscape. The horses whinnied as they struggled to pull their heavy loads up the hills. In the distance, the sky seemed to sparkle from the horizon to as high as Grant’s vision could focus. “What’s that?”

“That,” Fergus answered with a theatrical wave, “is the boundary between January and February.”

Grant looked upon the barrier with awe. “I never thought it would look so… sparkly.”

“What did you expect a rift in the space itself to look like?” Derek scoffed at him incredulously. “Just wait until you see it up close. It's not so bad here, but I hear that in March you can vaguely see through the shimmering surface to April, where there are camps set up.”

“Camps?” Grant turned his attention to the giant of a man.

Derek nodded solemnly. “Yes. Camps full of refugees, wanting to pass into March. They hammer fruitlessly on the barrier, attempting to find a way across. Their end goal is, of course, January.”

That was downright confusing. Grant wanted nothing more than to be away from here, why did other people want to cross a chunk of the world to get to this district? “But why would they want to come here?”

“Grant, the question you should be asking is, why wouldn’t they? Nobles and peasants alike are fat and happy here. Life is easy! It isn’t the same in other districts.” Fergus spoke up disparagingly. “They don’t do things properly.”

“I had… I had no idea.” Grant was stunned by this revelation. “ I knew that there was an abundance of food here, but I assumed the other districts were just, you know, more of the same?”

“Lord January is the reason. He brought the entire District to heights that we never imagined possible, hundred of years ago.” As they rounded a corner, castle January appeared on the horizon. Skinny continued mumbling between swallowing a bread roll whole, “Look there! That looks like the pavilion from the plaza in Mid January! Only… much bigger.”

“Lord January is there?” Grant's sparkling eyes turn sharp, and hard.

He barely heard Derek answer him, “Him, and thousands of workers, Vassals, and Nobles.”

“Thousands of Vassals?” Grant asked his large friend. “How could that possibly…?”

“No, not thousands of Vassals.” Red rolled his eyes and grumbled. “Thousands of people in total. It is a well-known fact that the nobility, specifically Wielders, have a limited amount of Vassals that they can make. It is the number of days in a month, minus their position, then doubled. For instance, Count Tuesday the Second could have… um. Thirty-one days, minus two… double that… fifty-eight Vassals!”

“So Lord January can have… sixty Vassals? All of them with a part of his power?” Grant was uncertain how he was going to fight his way through that, but the days of January were coming to an end; he needed to make a plan. The carriage rolled closer to the monstrous building, and Grant could now make out details on flags snapping in the wind. A green flag with golden wheat at the base, with a white windmill rising above.

“The flags of House Wednesday, yes?” Grant quietly tested his knowledge with his friends.

“No.” Red grunted, used to Grant not having basic knowledge at this point. “That’s the flag of Lord January himself. You know, the head of House Monday that rules over January.”

Grant shamefacedly sank into the plush bench in the staff carriage, wishing that he had managed to get in more training time. So far he had managed only the required training of around ten hours during the trip here. The swiftly moving carriages didn’t provide many opportunities to catch up if he got left behind, unlike the ponderous Grand January Caravan. In fact, half of the training that Sarge had made him complete was simply running circles around the caravan for an hour or two each day.

Finally, the journey was at an end. The carriage rolled under the raised portcullis and through the gate. Inside, Grant’s ears were assaulted by the familiar sounds of a bustling market. It wasn’t so different from New Dawn or Mid January. Sellers hawked their wares to passers by, and workers scurrying around. The Nobility were conspicuously absent. “They must be staying in the castle.”

The carriage train rolled on through the next gate. Dogs snapped at its wheel and children squealed in delight as they played tag or leapt under its wheel in search of adventure, at the risk of being crushed. The fairytale castle and its multitude of towering spires loomed before him, growing closer by the minute. When they finally stopped, Grant jumped out, butterflies in his stomach. He rubbed at his neck; which hurt after craning it upwards for so long.

He didn't get much time to admire it up close and personal. In no time flat, Grant was bustled off to the secretive House Wednesday training area, so that he could prepare for the upcoming event and be in top shape. Fighting against targets in the training arena, near where the exhibition tournament would be held, Grant was interrupted by a very welcome voice. <Hey, wait a second? WHo are you? Is that actually Grant? Where did all that fat go? You look downright skinny… comparatively.>

“Sarge! Hello, and I hope I don't look like Skinny. Much as I like the guy, we are definitely going for different things in our lives.” Grant laughed as the world around him faded into the standard training module. The edges of his vision were hidden by fog, and he felt like he was the only person in the entire world.

<You have unparalleled powers of perception. Let's both work to put the past behind us. How about we start a proper training session? See what mess I have to work with, huh?> Sarge didn’t bother to elaborate further, only giving Grant a pithy warning of, <Do stupid things, win stupid prizes.>

The training session commenced, and targets faded into existence, running at him from all directions. His dodge and parry skills were sloppy, and his reactions slow from lack of focused training. More than once he was skewered by so many lances that he ended up looking more like a porcupine than an aspiring cultivation warrior. Even so, Grant felt like he was finally starting to understand what he needed to do. Over the next hour, his parries became better, dodging more timely, and his attacks wasted less movement. Just as Grant felt like he was having an epiphany, the training came to a sudden and unexpected ending.

<Well, would you look. At. That.> Sarge sounded in Grant’s head. <You did it. You actually earned a combat skill.>

“What do you mean?” Grant’s chest was heaving, and Sarge's wasn’t making sense.

<Open up your skill menu, take a look for yourself, my Wielder.> Grant followed the instructions hesitantly, unsure what to think of this strange and respectful new tone Sarge was taking. It took but a single glance to notice that he had a second skill besides ‘Plant Insight’.

Skill gained: Kenjutsu (1/10). You have taken the first true steps on the path your Wielded Weapon has set for you, a path not of the sword, but of the Uchigatana. You can no longer be considered useless with your weapon, but you are far from becoming a master. All damage dealt with your weapon is increased by 10 * skill level %. Current increase: 10% bonus damage.

<Congratulations, Grant. With that, I have nothing more to teach you.>

“What?” Grant screeched and fell to the ground in shock, sending Sarge into a fit of laughter.

<You should have seen your face! Ha! You just became a Novice of the sword, you think I can’t whip you into shape better than this?> Sarge was laughing too hard to continue for a few moments, but finally got around to his next point. <Novice, Beginner, Apprentice, Student, Journeyman, Expert, Master, Grandmaster, Sage, and finally Deity. Those are all of the possible ranks. Most people will never see that final one, and most skills can only be brought up to… let's say Expert. It takes a special someone to push past that and become a true Master. My training can bring you up to Expert, you will need to figure out something else after that point.>

“How long will that take?” Grant’s body ached, muscles protesting at the brutal session. The pain lingered from the many fatal wounds inflicted upon his sluggish body. He put away February Twenty Nine and limped in a daze towards one of the many exits surrounding the training arena as he waited for an answer.

<It all depends on you… but you only have a year. Get as good as you can, you don’t have any more time to waste.> Grant nodded at Sarge's words as he staggered out of the closed training area. He was more exhausted than he could remember ever being, making him wonder if there was a personal energy cost to gaining skills. As he tried to find his way back to his room, his rolling git and pale, slack-jawed expression caused people started to whisper when they saw him, and some didn't even bother to whisper.

“Look at him,” a child pointed at Grant “Look how thin he is, momma! Is that a beggar? Can I give it some candy?”

An adult, presumably his mother scolded the child. “How many times have I told you, Anthony? Stay away from the beggars! If you feed or give them money, it only encourages them!”

“It doesn’t look very well… just a cake or… or two?”

“Oh… go on then. Throw a sweet cake at the funny looking man. Or… is it a child? It’s hard to tell at that size. Don’t go near it though, it’s clearly sick.” The adult warned severely. “You may catch a disease that makes it hard to eat!”

A sweet cake flew through the air and hit Grant squarely on the cheek. He ignored it and stumbled off along the vaulted corridors, his head fuzzy from overwhelming fatigue. He ignored laughter as he passed Nobles, and barely registered the glint of Time bearing the bust of Lord January landing at his feet as they threw coins to him. The strange pity granted him access through a restricted area and he stumbled into the centre of a small pit in an attempt to get away from the terrible people. “This must be the exhibition ground itself… I probably shouldn’t be here.”

Surrounding the sunken pit in the center of the room was terraced tables. It looked like every table had direct access to a kitchen. That made sense, due to the importance placed on feasting as an integral form of entertainment. It was essentially a food hall with a built-in fighting pit. At the edge - clear from the size of chair and ornamentation - was where Lord January would be sitting. The placement gave an unrestricted view of the bouts, and there were no steps from the Lord’s seat to the exit. “Wouldn’t want him to haveta go to the effort of walking up stairs now, would we?”

“Who goes there?” A deep voice boomed through the empty arena. “Halt!”

Grant, who had been examining the fighting pit, stopped in his tracks and slowly turned to face the figure. He stood there frozen once he realised who exactly it was, and he didn’t know what to do. He knew that he was in a restricted area, but it wasn’t his fault! He’d taken a wrong turn somewhere!

“Are you deaf, boy?” The grand figure striding toward him questioned solemnly. Grant shook his head and swallowed, and the giant in the yellow garb of House Tuesday spoke again. “Do you know who I am?”

“Count Tuesday the Second.” Grant pointed a shaky finger at the name above the intimidating figure’s head, not saying the quiet part out loud: this was the most powerful Noble in House Tuesday; the leader of the Peacekeepers for the entire District of January.

“I demand to know how you got access to this area?” Barely restrained rage bubbled beneath the Count’s taught muscles and rippling fat.

“Um… I just… walked in.” Grant waved his hands helplessly, not sure what else he could say.

Count Tuesday wasn’t buying it. “You don’t just walk into Mooredoor! This entire section of the castle is a restricted area, containing the kitchens and arena floors dedicated to Lord January. The Mooredoor wing is under heavy guard, and has stringent entry requirements.”

“I got a bit lost… and ended up here, sir… Count.” Grant gulped and looked around for anything that he could use to prove his story.

“I understand that you are hungry,” Count Tuesday spoke slowly, as if to a simpleton, “but sick people are not allowed in the food hall, the arena, and you should stay out of the Noble quarter entirely. Run along. If you go out of the Castle January area, there is a workhouse on the left that provides care to the sick and needy.”

The young man nodded and made to leave, but Count Tuesday wasn’t finished. “If you are found here again, without a valid reason to be in the area… you will be behind prison bars. Sick beggar or sick Noble, the law applies to everyone! Do I make myself clear, boy?

Grant bowed, then scampered for the exit without another word.