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Kinich, Mualani, and Kachina were hanging out, just like every week, when the idea was proposed.
It was Mualani who suggested it first. “How about a spar?”
Kachina looked up from where she was sitting, gemstone in her hands glittering in the sun. “A spar?”
Mualani nodded. “Yeah! We could all use the extra practice every once and a while, and you can’t tell me you aren’t bored out of your mind just sitting here.”
Ajaw chimed in, “I agree! It would be much better to watch you maim each other than to sit here with this loser still alive! Go ahead, sacrifice him in the name of the great K’uhul Ajaw!”
If he was going to say anything else it was cut off by Kinich flicking him into time out.
Kachina glanced back down at her gem. “But what if he’s right, what if we end up hurting each other?”
“Oh come on, you think either Kinich or I would let that happen?” Mualani slung her arm over Kachina’s shoulder, the young girl perking up.
“Yeah, you’re right! Okay, let’s spar!”
They both turned to Kinich, putting on their best puppy dog eyes. He rolled his own. “You realize that it looks like rain, right?”
“That’s half the fun!” Mualani whined.
“Fine,” he grumbled.
The two girls pumped their fists into the air. “Yes! Come on. I know the perfect spot!” Mualani dragged the two of them behind her, leading them off toward a large valley.
Soon enough, the three of them all stood in a triangle of sorts, weapons at the ready. Kinich hoisted his claymore a bit higher so that it was held in front of him in a similar fashion to a normal sword.
“Alright, I say we go for a visionless spar!” Mualani called from her corner of the triangle. Him and Kachina both nodded in agreement.
When the spar began, the two girls shared a look before simultaneously turning to him.
“Sorry Kinich, gotta deal with the master first!” Mualani taunted.
“Y-yeah, I agree!” Kachina shouted.
He sighed in exasperation and turned his claymore into a defensive position. “If you insist.”
Mualani grinned. “Maybe if you start crying we’ll go easy!”
The words were harmless, a fun jest, but they struck a chord deep inside Kinich he thought he had long since buried. Suddenly, he wasn’t with his friends in a random field near the Children of Echoes, and he certainly wasn’t at the end of his teenage years. At that moment, he was seven again, looking directly into the eyes of his father.
“Maybe, just maybe, if you cry, boy, I’ll go easy on you.”
He flinched hard, backing away. His breathing quickened, his hands shook, and whatever he was holding was dropped from his hands. The world felt fuzzy, out of tune. He pushed back the tears in his eyes as he started at his father, a man who was long since dead.
“No,” he whispered, “I, I can’t…” He was distantly aware of voices calling his name, but when he saw a hand raised in front of his face he scrambled backward.
When had he fallen to his knees? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure how long it had been, eyes squeezing shut and arms brought up to protect his head from the beating that was sure to come. “No, no no no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt me again,” he frantically whimpered, uncaring of how pathetic he was at that moment. He felt hot, wet tears slip down his face, no matter how hard he tried to keep them from falling. Something else was falling down on him, cold water drenching his hair and clothes. He barely registered it, but it felt like rain.
Rain, it was raining the day his father died. The day he slipped and fell off a cliff, the day he had to carry his father’s body up a cliff.
His breathing got faster and shallower, the world slowly fading away, and the last thing he heard before he blacked out was a cry of his name.