Edge of Perfection

Honored Kra’lai-kha Loxzil strode into one of the many forges within the settlement of Bah’li. As the settlement’s eldest smith - or n’rika - Kra’lai-kha looked down at the hunched form of the young yautja who had been sitting at the hearth, sharpening a short blade for the past six hours. At seven foot, five inches, the youngling was surely an anomaly. At the age of one hundred and twenty, they were older than his usual pupils.

“Mal’rah, why do you focus on this singular blade with such pointless fervor?” he said, slight admonition coloring the words, “You have been here within your forge for an entire year, and yet, you have only this to show? You do not even leave the sanctuary of the settlement but for firewood to see!”

“Honored Kra’lai-kha, there are still blemishes on my blade. I will not present such a failure of a forging before the Craft Masters.” There was a growl laced into the response.

In the background, strewn around the forge’s many tools and materials were the discarded works of nearly three decades of crafting. Long, short, engraved, bare, small gems and trophies linked to the pommels - the variations of adornments seemed to grow less and less detailed as the piles drew closer to the spot the youngling sat upon, even if their quality sharply rose.

Kra’lai-kha let out a barking laugh, “A failure? Mal’rah, the failure is your incessant need to toil away at one small facet of your work, day after day! I begin to think you would rather be in this room picking away at every small detail of your latest obsession instead of joining your fellow unblooded kin in a Hunt!”

What had once been a promising and fiercely aggressive yautja pup - who had easily drawn the eye of Bah’li’s n’rika - had slipped further and further into an obsessive streak of perfectionism in his work the last few years. There was no doubt that Mal’rah was a skilled combatant. His time in the early years of training had shown an unrelenting intellect that allowed him to take down both larger and faster sparring partners in a meticulous manner, even compared to the other unblooded yautja in the settlement. Even on the short Hunts into the mountains for lessons on finding the ironsand-like kith’ya needed to craft the blades of the Loxzil Clan, Mal’rah had proven an apt tracker and diligent stalker of the local fauna. One would think that Mal’rah’s pride would be all-encompassing, but it appeared to be focused on one, single, infinitesimally small point - or edge in this case. Kra’lai-kha had watched this, and after pondering for some days, struck the young Mal’rah as deftly as a killing blow with words that he knew would enrage the youngblood aspirant.

Mal’rah went as still as a statue, pausing to place the current blade onto a cloth at his side . A few moments went by in silence. Then, springing from the ground, Mal’rah began to cast defiance into the face of his teacher, thoughts of consequence completely absent from his mind, “I have sharpened this blade - the failure that it is - beyond even that of the greatest n’rika! Even you, Honored Teacher, have not witnessed such sublim-”

Kra’lai-kha let out a roar, planting his foot onto Mal’rah’s chest and driving him to the ground. The floor shook as he leaned down and spoke in a measured tone, simmering with hostility.

“Insolence in the face of the truth, Mal’rah?” Kra’lai-kha spat.

He pushed Mal’rah across the floor of the forge until his head collided with the stone base of the furnace with a grunt.

“You have yet to see how your obsessions have blinded you! Come, I shall show you your follies!” he roared, shoving off from the youngling, “Take up this ‘masterwork’ and prove it to me in combat.”

Kra’lai-kha stalked out of the forge, leaving the youngling to scramble for his blade and race after him. Their path took them to the center of the Dueling Arena. Kra’lai-kha had removed his armor, and had taken up a dueling stave as Mal’rah entered the circle denoting the edge of the fighting arena.

“You forget your place, youngling. You have let your pride speak with the little experience you have yet lived. You say you have made a blade that can, what? Rend the stars from the heavens? Cut down a Xrab’erild with a single blow?” Kra’lai-kha roared, squaring off at the center of the circle, drawing a line in the dirt with his weapon. “Prove it then, strike me!”

Mal’rah was shaking with rage, the insults driving into his core. His ego and pride - a source of armor that had built up over the years of perfectionism - had been breached in the most damning of ways: the scorn and ridicule from his own teacher. The other younglings? To Mal’rah, they were beneath him. Not once had they bested him in combat. Not once had they found the quarry of a Hunt before he had. Not once had they shown as much dedication to the craft of n’rika as he. They did not deserve the response that was broiling, brewing, and spilling out between his mandibles. He discarded his armor in haste, gripping the short blade in his hands.

Holding the blade to the sky - unadorned, with no decorations, a simple wrap at the grip - and roared, “May Dlex guide my blade and cut your doubts from your tongue, Honored Kra’lai-kha!”

Dashing at his teacher, Mal’rah approached his opponent obliquely, striking at Kra’lai-kha’s torso with a quick slash. The elder Blooded yautja evaded the strike, snapping the dueling stave into the side of his pupil, who let out a grunt of pain, backing away for another approach.

“You know our ways, you have the strength, yet you do not see your mistakes, Mal’rah!” Kra’lai-kha began stalking forward, not giving the youngling time to formulate a plan, “You think this mindless effort is strength, yet you do not realize its shortcomings!”

Mal’rah fell back from the approaching elder Blooded, attempting to find a weakness in Kra’lai-kha’s stance. Glancing down, he realized that the edge of the arena was coming near. It would not do well to be trapped against the barrier that outlined a duel - to do so would be dishonorable.

“You sit, think, and think, and think, and do not act! You are stuck not because you can improve further, but because you are scared that it is not enough! Well, youngling, show me the fire that I saw when you were a pup! Or does your fear of failure in the eyes of the Loxzil overpower your pride?” Kra’lai-kha yelled in challenge, adjusting his grip on the dueling stave.

Mal’rah felt anger boil up like bile, acidic and biting - and poisonous. He noted his teacher’s grip on his staff, too wide to do much more than block. A roar of fury and determination ripped from the Mal’rah as he charged, swinging the short blade at the defensive stance of Kra’lai-kha, planning to cleave through the elder Blooded’s weapon and strike true.

The blade cleanly passed through the staff, bisecting it. But Kra’lai-kha was fast, showing agility that he rarely brought to the forefront when teaching his young Unblooded wards as he dodged the immense strike from Mal’rah. Whipping the severed staff’s pieces as if they had simply sprung into becoming batons, Kra’lai-kha went on the offensive, striking young Mal’rah multiple times as he backed off once again, scrambling to avoid the edge of the fighting arena.

Even falling back, Mal’rah bellowed with indignant pride, “See! Not even a quarterstaff can stand a blow from my blade! You cast doubt on my skill, yet cannot stand before its might!”

Mal’rah, in his revelry, aimed with purpose at the descending strike of his teacher, planning to cleave the remaining pieces of the quarterstaff in twain.

A sound akin to wood shattering echoed within the arena. Yet, the staves were still only two pieces. They had held - however, Mal’rah’s hand had not fared as well. It was twisted and broken. The baton-like weapon had deflected the now dulled blade - which, while it had held an edge capable of splitting even a sword on the first strike, had only the sharpness of a normal hunting blade now. It stood no chance against the mass behind the solid wooden dueling staves.

Kra’lai-kha pressed forward, battering the injured youngling back. A strike to the leg, stomach, and knee forcing Mal’rah away and nearly driving him to the ground. “See your failure, Mal’rah! See the very thing you have spawned from your useless desire toward singular perfection. A hunter is skilled, they are blessed by gods as the chosen children of Paya and Dlex! Yet you squander your gifts by allowing them to force you into this spiral of waste!”

Kra’lai-kha kicked Mal’rah into the dirt. As Kra’lai-kha strode back toward the center of the arena, Mal’rah attempted to regain his wits. Never in his entire time training had he been beaten so assuredly. He was still attempting to rise as Kra’lai-kha stood over him, the now dulled blade in his hand.

“You think this blindfold is a masterpiece? Feel the error of your choices, Mal’rah!”

The elder Blooded slammed the dagger into Mal’rah’s shoulder with such force it drove the youngling into the ground, head striking savagely onto the floor and shattering the blade within his very body as the tip struck the compacted stone beneath the dirt-filled arena. All went black.

A handful of hours went by. Mal’rah rose from the ground, dizziness washing over him. Bested, disgraced, yet left to live. He gathered his things, and sat, pondering.

Mal’rah picked the blade’s shards from his body as best he could and stood. He walked across the settlement, passing Kra’lai-kha as he did so. He spoke not a word to his teacher, going straight to his forge. There, Mal’rah collected his works of the past and set them aside. He placed the fragments of his “masterwork” upon the anvil within the forge, then turned and walked away.

Two years passed. During this time Mal’rah did little crafting but for the tools needed to survive. Rarely was he seen within the settlement of Bah’li, preferring to spend his time out in the mountains. Some of the other Unblooded yautja would spot the Mal’rah on occasion while working on the outskirts of the dwellings of Bah’li, but never for long.

As the snow swept down from the mountains, Mal’rah returned to his forge for a fortnight. Kra’lai-kha looked inside, seeing the young yautja hard at work on something. Yet, he did not intrude. He saw no reason to impart wisdom any further upon the young yautja.

As the sun fell, Kra’lai-kha felt a presence at the door to his own forge. He placed down his jial-be’zil and turned. Mal’rah stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, a glint of metal showing at his bare shoulder, just above his pectoral - a shard of metal lodged permanently within his body. He drew a sword from his side.

“It is done. Honored Kra’lai-kha, I now see.”

He turned the blade, kneeling, and held it out for his teacher to see.

Kra’lai-kha grunted, strode forward, and took the blade.

Four feet long, the blade was a dark silver with a peculiar pattern to it. It seemed to be made of many different pieces of metal, yet, it appeared to hold true. Inscribed along the spine of the blade, it read: May the wisdom of Kehrite pass through this blade and into my heart. The grip of the blade was fashioned in leather, with a small piece of metal pressed underneath the wrappings - a shard of the very knife now resided within the blade and the young yautja’s body.

“I know my path, Honored Teacher. I have forged my past into my future, and have come through the fires of failure changed.”

Kra’lai-kha looked up in surprise. Mal’rah had the same air of intellect, but it was tempered in the coals of his burnt-through perfectionism. Gone was the obsessive drive toward single-minded goals - the Unblooded yautja had finally grown into his abilities in full, without the overbearing weight of his prideful need to be perfect. He stood, driving the blade into the dirt in front of his forge. It struck a rock hidden in the ground, and a ringing note sounded from the blade. Kra’lai-kha looked into the eyes of his pupil at the noise, expecting to see a flash of worry that his blade had been damaged. Mal’rah met his gaze, solid and confident.

Kra’lai-kha nodded, “Mal’rah, collect your belongings. It is a long journey to the Craft Masters of Atla’tes Conurbation. It is time our Elders lay eyes upon your work.”