From slavery to servitude 12: from winter to spring, a growing once more

The day that followed became what it was. As were those who followed. The days. The weeks. The months. Every morning, George would wake up, feeling but a faint legacy of the sore muscles of the last day.

Coated in the attire of one in practice, breakfast waited for him alongside the mistress calling to him. Chores could wait as they always did. The dusty cupboards and the valuable relics, most of all, felt the dull touch of dust during the week.

Since the start of his training, they became displaced in the back burner, leaving George to take a long, nourishing bite in three different bowls. He did so under her words 'Leave nothing, minion. As with the rest, you'll need it'. Words decisively sweeter. More delicate. They moved behind his head as her hand rested on his shoulder, gently idling, a small chip of encouragement at every turn.

And the rest of the day revealed itself, both a surprise and an expected outcome: grueling, grinding, polishing of his senses. Every second of every day beyond the morning was pure, unrelenting practice. Every day had its own set of strife for him to tackle. Like before, they were the same, yet brought a level of exhaustion that still caught him unprepared.

Every day brought him on a knee, bruised and battered, wheezing and struggling for air. So much to be done, so little in the way of progress. The mistress saw him as a creature like her. An individual that could dance and grace his movement as she does. That he was human mattered little to her, hence, her standards for the man was that oft he same as her kind,  not the set that would have seen him recuperate sooner, rest sooner, sleep earlier. It was too much for men like him, far from even the relative strength of those in armor. Even then...

"No...not yet. I can...still..." ...with his knuckle slamming on the coarse floor, George dragged himself up. The aching nature was but his body, wheezing and panting, sometimes, threatening to puke. His innards, burning. His muscles, melting once more under intense lactic acid. His skin, pungent with excess sweat. His lungs, struggling to gulp a breath of air and turning against him. And his head, buzzing under the pressure from every source of pain gnawing at it, pounding against itself in pain and suffering...all of these were an external blight, begging, demanding, throbbing for him to stop.

His mind constantly refused. No matter the pain. No matter the lingering discomfort. No matter the struggle to soothe his battered body to another attempt at every minute, it refused to yield, to break as it almost did before. All by her terminal desire for him to see him elevated to her side. A glimmer of violet light scolding the encroaching, aching darkness around him.

This simple glance in her way dragged his mind back in control while it dragged him back to his feet. Over. And over again. So many times that it could be said that both sides lost count. And again, she nodded, calling him to his objective the same way she ever did. The day's goal. The gap he had to cross. Teeth grinding against each other, he'd go. Success. Or failure.

Within success, the lilac elf would simply put a new notch for him to cross. A new mountain to climb that demanded his utmost, regardless of how dried of strength he was. And he'd acquiesce, knowing that he was doomed to fail, fated restart from the beginning. He'd go, wanting to make sure to burn every ounce of reserves between breakfast and dinner that hadn't died yet. If there was a bit left in his body, then he'd go.

Within failure, George would only double his struggle, placating his bare-knuckle against the jagged floor. With heat slagging off his drenched outfit and sweat pouring down his lowered visage, he'd go again, forcing his muscles through. Striving, struggling, grinding, however long it takes. Failure no longer became a punishment. It only served to toss him back forward, slowly burnt out into hard-earned success into another lesson.

And every evening, at the same time, no matter the sea of time passing through the dark elf went to stand before the scar-riddled man staring far in the waning sun 'Minion, you have done enough for the day'. Hands-on his shoulders, gentle as they are firmly holding his fatigued body in place, her honeyed, sweetened voice whispering behind, hiding no more of the pride she held for his progress, as minimal, or monumental it was.

Her words spilled no lie. He was making progress. Monumental, even, to her eye, the equinox of stern and gentle look. The time for the man to needlessly, worthlessly tire himself out when no more road was to be built was over. She no longer passively watched the man attempting to go beyond the point of his limit, preferring to hold him close, whispering, and ordering him to the depth of her culinary halls.

He'd eat while she mended him, burning and sewing away the leftover bruises and cuts that feasted on his body. With a constant smirk on her chocolate lips, she'd go at him, perking him up in supper and mending before the cycle began anew, making sure that yesterday's pain had no place at culling him in any way.

The sea of time continued forth while the cycle repeated. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Growling leaves. Brimming leaves. Withering leaves. Dying leaves. Winter claimed the land once more, coating the vast reaches of her manor. Every green foliage that used to greet them was now choking under a thick layer of frost.

The howling winds of the bitter cold sweep the land, managing to bite the ground underneath the condensed branches of hailing trees. George's progressive molding into the ideal henchman prompted his mistress a more and more extreme climate in training. No moderation between two extremes.

Its environmental grasp waned with time, as the sauna pure of summer failed to bring the man to drop from exhaustion. The gallon of sweat that burned from his scolding trials failed. The heatstroke, harsh as it was, failed. Their effort to bind him down only served to grind his fortitude to polish, making it easier to ignore, to endure. It broke down his body, only to see it structured, reinforced away from the tickling sun licks.

The same could be said of winters. Shivering, in strife with a constant invasion by frostbite, incapable of biting down the man's resolve. Every shot, every swing, every run, on the clock, or otherwise, become predictable, outclassed by his toughening body.

Designed to be a monument to his failure, the foil of the bitter, harsh winter became the failure itself, unable to drag him down when the best of conditions couldn't keep his head high by the beginning.

"Good...good. Keep going, minion, seeing your physical debate pleases me." All this time, judging him for each ounce of forwarding, the mistress stands ever nearby, unaffected by the extreme of the elements. Her elven body ever was more than a monument to beauty, radiating a dull and dim violet over her once-chocolate skin. It was concealed, hidden by the mundane of their lives.

It was subtle in change, coming more and more with every day that George managed in his hurdle. Slow and brief. gradually longer in presence. Gorging itself on the extreme temperatures that besieged her over her minion's continual training.

The lilac of her hair shifted as well, pledging itself as the tribute for the change, taking the more typical glossy ivory that matches her eyes. Looking at her was like looking at a dim vial of violet potency, alluring and dangerous to do so, let alone, touch.

He only had time to glance at her, notice partially. Her disciplining under heat and cold couldn't bring him down any longer. Hence, an all-out mix of everything she subjected him to for months. It all seamlessly weaved after one another, they string one after the other. Until...

A soft, but booming lash echoes in his mind. Hearing it prompts George, for a moment, locked midair with eyes crackling focus on uncarved targets, to stop. Many of them flanked him high and low. Hidden and obvious. Dexterity compelled him to cast his serrated daggers into the hidden ones painted in stringent crimson. The most immediate and concealed targets.

The obvious ones, fat and wide in targets, would have to be left without dagger digging deeply. He turns to his mistress, her whips, coiled back to her hips. It had the only purpose of signaling his stopping point and nothing else.

"Good, good, stopping on a coin is no issue either. No wasted movement. I am pleased." She walks close, arms crossed under her chest, perfectly on the cusp of D-cup. It calls to his eyes for a brief second, refusing to be ignored. The texture of her dim violet skin seems to enhance it, covered by her combat-focused gown, not unlike those from the East. It did a strong work of covering her assets...

...and a horrid job at the same time. Her curves and weight left little to his imagination. The jacket mixed in ninja affairs looked a size too small, leaving less to cover. Neither do her bottoms, pants that tightly hug her waist to the depth of her ankles. If George was asked about their roundness, lying would be outright impossible.

He forces his stare away, fast enough for him to seemingly have never even done so "Anyone could manage with you as the overseer, ma'am."

Her eyes wince a bit. Just briefly enough to be eluded by his attentive standing. She shakes her head "No, no, no, my minion. Anyone just 'following' orders so blindingly would have failed abjectly. This course you take every week would have made sure of that. You know to think before acting. How to move. When to move. Why you move. How you go by it. The strength you put in your movement could have me deceived for a male among our kind. Well...if not for your paler texture...and rounder ears among other things."

"I must insist, you are simply exceptional at handling a regime like this." George nods once...to another shaking of the head.

"Now, now. Neither of us needs dismissal like this. You have progressed magnificently through this struggle. The sort that others of your kind, the supposed betters, would have difficulty stomaching."

His eyes wince by a minuscule, head slightly receding backward "Really? I mean...I wasn't exactly at a physical peak when we began. Had you taken one of the more suited, it might have shortened the time for you to train them..."

The dark violet elf stared down his slight, intrigued in his disbelief. She remains cross-armed, doubling down on her recognition "My brethren would chide you for the sense of overinflated ego that many of your kind often carries around. Yours, if you had any, would be warranted. Yet, you persist in the other extreme, swaying away from my compliments."

A violet, alluring grin on her lilac lips stretch her peerless features as a thought crosses her mind "I feel like doing the opposite if you are going to insist. In fact..."

With no warning, no sense of transition, the dark elf in violet paces forward, an ever ramping smirk on her lips and a glare in her honeydew lenses "I think I will. No better way to set my Csaltòs on the way to his true fate, hmm?"

So far from his sluggish, acrid state of the beginning, George can easily see how 'in the way' he was in her walking pace. Thinking no better, his immediate action is to take a step back. An easy way out of her approach.

Or, he would have, if not for her acute voice locking him in place "Minion, did I say you could move?"

"Well, you're--

"I know exactly what I am doing. You are to remain still, am I clear?"

"But, you're still--" His concern is snuffed out by the touch of a finger lining with voice. Quick, straight, it quiets him long enough for the man to feel her closeness. Her immense presence siphoning every ounce of attention from his senses. Most of all, his nose, acute from the entire ordeal of her training.

It learned to harness from sensitivity he never thought he could dwell in, let alone the way he could move his body. Though, as of now, none of it were working out their new comfort zone. None but his nose lured into an impromptu plunge into a spicy, yet sweet smell pouring from her slow, deliberate and intentional embrace.

Her arms spread out and lock behind his nape, giving him a much stronger blow of said scent. But, it takes a backseat to another sense whispering in his inner ear. Warmth. He feels warmth flowing to him. From her nubile touch, he feels something formless slowly breathing into him, something...burning. He feels it intensely, threatening to burst out, overwhelm him as it undulates in and out of inside him.

And yet, at the same time, he feels his body acclimating to it, guiding it to the depth of his stomach. Slowly and quickly trickling it, subconsciously. Like it was merely playing into a function he didn't know he had. Like it long belonged inside him. It just needed a contact.

Her warmth gradually simmers down in his stomach after traveling his body in a hidden fashion. It nurses down, now on standby. Clearly, she shared something with him. He just wasn't sure what. But, somehow, somewhere, he knew it was a token of trust. A pledge from her, giving him a part of her as he gave his all in exchange. He feels her credence.

And then, her giggle "Hmm, you catch on quickly, minion. Your body already knows what it must do. It is more than refined enough to hold my token of trust. One that will come out soon enough...as soon as if gets used to it."

"Ma'am?" His voice speaks confusion, but his subconscious already is in the know of this 'heat'. It spikes passively in his entrail, quietly adjusting to a slight increase in temperature. Small and benign enough that he would barely notice it if he focused on it. As of now, it feels passive, inert. It feels like it needs a....trigger.

"As I said..." Her eyes closed in this caress open after what assumed a year passed. She directs them to her minion's pair, locking them in a stare "All in due time. For now, a simple something to jumpstart the process."

"Ohh, very well--wait, what? Jumpstart--" In times before, George would never have the senses and reflexes to feel her hands swarming to his back, fixing something in a split-second to his hips. Nor her elven speed pushing her away from him and a shimmer of blades breathing from their scabbards.

The glint of twin metals come to his eyes, sending his 'fight or flight' instincts into a pre-emptive response. Her voice comes again, this time, an order "Minion, spar with me!"

"What, wait?! Fight?! Ma'am, I don't think I can--" His body springs into a reactive defense, instinctively pulling a thin, deceptively strong piece of metal from his side in the way of her dual daggers. Blue sparks grind their ways out of their clash, spurned out by a brief, violent detonative light. His incomprehension persists "Ma'am, I'm not sure I should be--

"Minion! The time to speak is done! Your blade will be your voice!"

"Eh?!" Her dash came so fast. Her swinging of blade, even faster. With no time to think, he pulled metal from his side, not knowing it. In these few seconds of struggles, his eyes caught up with their clashing bodies. An empty sheath clings to his left side, empty of the blade he currently holds against hers. A long, deceptively sturdy sword makes its way into his view, the glint he flashed without thought.

It came from a long-standing affinity that her acute eye saw in the shaping of the regime he endured with the weapons of choice. Claymores and their overwhelming brute strength.

Daggers and their darting, agile bites.

Sheathed swords and their definite, dexterous swings.

The shackles and the sickles, bound together, urged to act as an extension of reflexive combat.

And iron cast hands, coursing from the fingers to the shoulders, ready to endure anything hurled at them like a great shield, yet small enough to softly coat the flesh beneath.

Her eyes saw the man at home with the sheathed blade as she sees it here, more than ever "A very fine reaction, minion! Your body and mind were quick enough to pull out whatever I laid on your hips as a tool of defense. And instant knowing of said weapon. However..."

A booming dash spreads out as the weight of her overwhelming strength is suddenly gone. His body's honed senses of feeling instinctively shift to counter a twin set of violent swings, further fizzling out metallic clanks and a sprout of sparks. Only within the relative aftermath, quick as it is to pass to another unseen swing, can his eyes see the elf.

"It seems your eyes have yet to catch up with the rest of you. No worries. Our sparking silver will remedy this!"

"Ma'am! I seriously do not think I am ready for this! This is--this is too much for me!!!" His words fall deaf to the loud, repetitive clanking of metals biting at each other with George on the backfoot. His hands could keep up. His ears, his touch, his smell, everything but his eyes follow.

Predicting her next strafe and sonic attack is relegated to his touch senses, constantly twisting and spinning. The battle, however, becomes entrenched in their minds, the one thing that matters in this bitter winter.

Every minute drags on like an hour, slow in their eyes, especially his, gradually adjusting to the chaotic rhythm of clashes. The one-sided assault from her end becomes murky between the two as they start exchanging blows.

No longer on the backfoot, Georges swings back. The winds welcome the echo of silver in their travel, spreading it far and wide. Its coldness, however, remains ignored by the two, entirely focused on connecting their tools of the trade with the other's flesh.

George left his worries of injuries behind. For either of them. Besides knowing how a hesitant footing was a spell for doom in the rush of combat, the silver metal sheathed in contrariant metallurgy workings is no stranger to him. Whoever to lose under first blood would be bleeding out their spiritual essence in trickle quantity instead of blood.

Besides, again, hesitance with something like her, for a second, a half of it was doom. So he ventures forth, clashing again and again, against her. Seconds become minutes. Elongated, stretched out minutes.

And it would indeed be minutes before they stopped, having traveled throughout the frost forest, marking woods with their failed hits. Only ending as it became clear that George was losing. Even with the new appreciation for his...new form, the dark mistress was literal leagues beyond him.

Hitting in ways he couldn't fully intercept, making a waste of his momentum, forcing unsavory shifts in his defense, all come through subtle movement. Too hidden for the inexperienced man to contend with, much least against one with decades older than him.

And then, the cuts came. Tiny chips at his left arm, his right foot, and one aimed at his back, all within the worst of his time. The effect is instant and focused, searing his 'wounds' in blue hues. It's akin to bleeding out, draining strength from George who feels numb.

Her training, however, nurtured his defiant mental. Inflated it with a searing sense of pride. Again and again, she made it clear that a sycophant had no place under her palm. Said mind that he bears prompt him to spit on his faltering stamina, planting his newly 'gifted' sword on the ground as a crutch. Rather lean on the slightly chipped blade than to have fallen on the snow...as others might have. Dropping so easily would be against the tenacity he enjoyed under her eye.

He remains to stand, forcing his faltering body to remain awake, to remain alert, even with his continual 'bleeding'. A sight that pleases the dark elven shifting back into sight, preceding a soft boom behind her heels.

"Ahh, do you feel like accepting my recognition now, minion?" she asks, an everlasting smirk on her violet lips, receding into their more natural, glistening chocolate, aided by her ivory hair drinking up this unseemingly violet tide back into itself.

Her daggers are long back into their scabbards, left to dangle on her chiseled and womanly hips as she walks forward. If not for this constant struggle against his lids threatening to blackout, it surely would be a sight for the man fiercely breathing through his nose.

"Even with your form so empty, you still manage to keep a grip on your surroundings, quickly burying that weapon on yours to keep a lid up. I'll repeat myself once more: you have done much better than many others that were supposedly experts in combat. Certainly better than the men who barely could swing their sticks back at that dull city of yours."

Her hand rummages down a tiny case, the inside, glimmering. The sigil of a goat's skull is present on its lock, accompanying the white and red finish on the whole thing.

A patch of dimly glowing leaves ground to solid paste welcomes itself into George's eyes, hiding her second hand from his view. The warmth of the patch she presses on his 'wounds' is only superseded by the impromptu sensation of glass on his lips by a vial she slowly presses on, calling to his hand.

He catches and holds in, emptying the blue content inside, tasting of blueberries. He thinks to her question, rhetorical as it is. He remembers how ravenous the others were about catching one in the central cage...and his unwanted entry into that place, choked full of subservience. How they praised those who left their pride irreversibly shattered.

"Oh, I remain serious in my words, minion." She continues, passing over to another 'wound', pressing the bundle of crushed leaves on it "My 'cousins' were tripping over themselves trying to get the gold 'emberi', the shiny human and his failed retinue. But, I never thought they were in this for the wider picture. Men like this are always caught up in their complacency. Ushered in an early 'nepotizmus' or 'nepotism' like you 'emberi' would say."

Her words swirl in her tongue like her hands passing through cuts on his body "Inevitably, tumbling from their lavish position from an outside event like an invasion very often leaves them broken, unable to 'take on their chins' and look up once again...not that my 'cousins' are here to help, to begin with. They never learned to deal with struggles that couldn't be wavered with gold trinkets. Not like 'emberi' like you, minion. Do you honestly think I just arbitrarily selected you out of anyone else? A poor, barely living man with nothing to his name and no legacy?"

"So you're telling me it was intentional? That you wanted someone weak? Meek?" George holds the empty vial, a measure of stamina returned to him, enough that he no longer bears down the sword in his weight.

"Why not? Diamonds are often found in the bowels of dirtying coal. Lotus flowers bloom amidst filth and decay. My father is such a man, a man once considered a dredge by human standards.

Her pride churns to bile, surprising to George "The 'apes' that tried to work you to death are clearly blind to the goldmine they had, blind to the wealth they never appreciated. Much like my cousins, unfortunately, looking to the shiny men."

"I mean..." George stops, once again, thinking. To say that they didn't have a speck of consideration for us workers is not wrong---"wait...your family? You're telling me that your family is prone to scavenge people like me? As their henchmen? Really?"

A haughty smirk haunts her peerless visage, showing off a glimmer of white between her fudge lips "Family? My csaltòs, you should scale it up a bit more. Try our entire lineage."

The grin she shines is met with disbelief from George, only bolstering it further "My, oh my, our close and distant cousins in pale and dark skin really did have you believe that we are all so depthless to see you lot as little more than thoughtless apes if you're so easy to dismiss my word, are you? So much they miss with this viewpoint. If I did not know any better, I would be prone to think that they simply lack the resolve to polish your senses to our standards. A pity, but, I have nothing to complain about. Our family has enjoyed the men that serve behind us for generations. Even the more standard elves of our kind that lives among nature are not so blind as they are. And I am no exception, my csaltòs. A shame that the monster kind isn't as picky. But, anyhow..."

Her hand reaches out to George, long done with the mending of silver cuts "Come, my csaltòs. The fire I see in you will come to fruition soon enough. Right now, however, the biggest hurdle of your training is over. I wish to have my minion by my side as my left hand from now on. For sparring, and traveling, either by business, or leisure. This will be a good experience for your 'emberi' eyes to adjust."

"N...now? Does that mean I'm..." He takes her hand, softly. It feels like silk on his palm, teeming with gentle warmth not unlike the low roar embedded in his stomach. She did tell him once that he was to be her personal henchman, the to-go man for anything she might ask.

"Oh, yes, it is time for you to begin your true service, my minion. Do expect to travel a lot, what with a chalice such as I am often sought out. Many seek me out. Many".

"No problem, then. I'll follow you." The snow stopped appearing in George's eyes. It already was barely a presence, even with the howling, but now, all on his view was her illuminating visage. Someone he never thought he would ever be eager to serve under when he was dragged in the depth of the mountainscape.

He ignores it, but his heart springs up a typhoon behind his ribs. He ignores it, but the heat simmering in his stomach flutters, acting like the flapping of butterflies swarming around a light. He ignores it but, perhaps, with her touch, this her candid stare and everything in-between, he might have...he ignores it...tries to, at least...