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Kassandra is nineteen and Alexios twelve when she realizes that she still fights like their father taught her all those years ago.
She stands tall with pride and swings her weapon with the might of Ares and the power of Athena. Whenever she is faced with a new opponent, she falls back into the stance her father spend hours beating into her legs.
Kassandra had always been much stronger than the other Spartan children her age, and despite her estrangement from her home country, she fights like a Spartan. She’s loud when she prepares to strike, and even though she’s never been in a battle of a hundred or a thousand men, war cries follow her every step. She’s mighty - and while she doesn’t know much about the world or the origin of the spear she wields, Kassandra knows her strength above anything else. Her potential is great, even if it’s limited by Kephallonia’s size and poverty.
Kassandra fights like her father taught, she fights like she was born for battle.
Her brother, however, is another story. The myths the world will tell about Alexios won’t be about a war hero, slaying armies single-handedly. He might be a child still, but Kassandra can tell by the way he fights that this isn’t what his legends will be about.
Alexios doesn’t raise his weapon like their father, doesn’t stand like a Spartan. Instead, he wields his blade like Kassandra taught him. Perhaps he was destined to fight unlike a Spartan by design. After all, he has no memories of Sparta, nor of their parents.
He’s more a child of Kephallonia than Kassandra ever was. He introduces himself as such, though he prefers to be known as Kassandra’s brother. Kephallonia is the place they live in, but it’s not their home as a permanent residence they are too attached to.
Home, Alexios had once said, is his sister telling him stories and Ikaros soaring in the skies above them.
Kassandra agrees wholeheartedly, even if she made fun of him trying to sound so erudite. And so, the realization that Alexios doesn’t fight like a Spartan surprises her only mildly.
Alexios is a small child, the tiniest of all the village kids still even though he has started growing quite a lot in the last months. It certainly isn’t for the lack of food that he stayed small for so long, Markos had fed them well, and Kassandra always makes sure her brother doesn’t go to bed hungry, even if it means she has to.
But either way, Kassandra had begun training Alexios when he was five, petite and frail. She had told him how to make himself seem even smaller and how to strike fast and lethally. She hadn't cared about any honor Alexios might insult with his battle approach, her intention was and will always be to ensure his survival in a world that wanted him dead as a babe.
Alexios learns to move even more silently than she does, and he never attacks from the front, always from the back and all the other blind spots you haven’t accounted for.
He has fast fingers too, liberating a few coins from Kassandra’s belt far too often without her notice. It should anger her, but Kassandra is proud of Alexios’ talents and is only annoyed that she can't keep up with his pickpocketing. He can blend into the shadows as good as Hades, and when it comes to delivering messages or running errands swift and discreetly, he can give Hermes a run for his money.
Her brother is a smart kid, and he’s getting stronger every day.
Kassandra is glad that he’s doing well, despite the cruelty of his early year or the mess that’s Kassandra attempting to be sister, mother, father and teacher all in one.
And so Kassandra is nineteen and fights like she wants the world to see her while Alexios is twelve and wields his blade like he wants the world to see everything but.