The Fellowship of Tears

Young Master Gart (1)

"Sit down, everyone!” Young Master Gart shouted loud enough to ensure that the trainees paid attention to him. He added a harsh tone to his voice for the benefit of the younger trainees who usually took a little longer to pay attention to his instructions.

As one belonging to the first class of disciples who started their training under Master Tszarek in 973, Young Master Gart was a senior disciple of the Ragha Martial Arts Academy.

Upon their graduation from the academy after ten years of being personally trained by Master Tszarek, disciples of the academy took on the title of young master, to distinguish them from the original master, Master Tszarek himself. They are distinguished by their black robes which bore a badge with the seal of the Ragha Martial Arts Academy, a sturdy-looking fist with the illusion of a tiger breaking out from it.

As a young master, Gart had to teach martial arts to younger practitioners for ten years. After ten years he would then be called Master Gart. By then, as a formal master, Gart may accept personal disciples and charge them fees for imparting his knowledge in martial arts. However, he would still be attached to Master Tszarek, so his own disciples would have to refer to Master Tszarek as grandmaster.

For the moment, he and the other young masters had to train younger practitioners in accordance to Master Tszarek’s instructions. They also had to submit themselves to regular assessments, thus the need to continuously train as well as to expand their martial arts knowledge and skills.

The elite disciples from among them were required to stay in the academy to train the disciples and apprentices there. The rest were sent to the cities and big towns to establish training centers for aspiring recruits. This started over three years ago from the story’s present setting.

The present setting is 791, the twenty-second day of Samaya, or the fifth month of the year. Just like on Earth, the world in our story has twelve months, but every month has exactly thirty days. At the end of each month, the bigger of their world’s two moons, named Ganawil, blocks the smaller moon, named Bulan. This monthly event is called Rahang Nimgan, which means blocking the younger sister. Ganawil and Bulan are regarded as goddesses.

Every three Rahang Nimgans, the young masters teaching outside the academy had to report back to the academy for a two-week expert-level training and assessment. By this time, Young Master Gart should already be on his way to the Ragha Martial Arts Academy if not for an unfortunate incident five days ago. The assessment was actually a comprehensive sparring competition to determine which three among the regular senior disciples may challenge for a spot among the elite young masters.

Whoever among the elite young masters was defeated would have to relinquish his slot to the regular young master who had beaten him. The defeated elite young master would, in turn, lose his elite status and be relegated to the status of a regular young master. As such, the elite young masters would give their all to the challengers even as the challengers would strain every sinew to try to match them blow by blow.

So far, after thirteen assessments, only one successful challenge was recorded in the annals of the Ragha Martial Arts Academy.

The defeated elite young master apparently could not handle the psychological stress and lost his sanity. He was last seen running away from a group of kids whom he thought were a pack of wolves. He ran over a ravine and died from a fifty-meter plunge.

From then on the elite disciples never let up on their training. They even organized sparring sessions among themselves after training their juniors. They were sure they too would lose their mind should a fellow young master from the regular ranks trounce them during the assessment.

As one of the best among the regular young masters, Young Master Gart had earned the privilege to challenge an elite every assessment. Unfortunately, he also always fell short at snatching a spot among the elites.

The memory of the last assessment was specially painful to him. He was on the verge of winning over his opponent, but he got distracted by his own excited thoughts of impending victory. The next thing he knew he woke up at the infirmary with a throbbing head that felt like a huge rock had descended upon it.

The falling short during huge moments had been a common theme in Young Master Gart’s martial arts journey. What is more tragic, however, was that this was always caused by a tendency to get distracted at a crucial moment. He could have easily been one of the elite disciples if he could have only learned how to rein in his emotions.

Considering his status, Young Master Gart was supposed to have been assigned at one of the cities or towns closest to the Ragha Martial Arts Academy. However, because of the special case of Kasgar as the home village of Blink who emerged as the top disciple among the second class, Master Tszarek felt it was only proper that the best non-elite young master should be the one to train the prospective talents over there.

In so many ways, the presence of a martial arts training center in Kasgar was an anomaly in the entire kingdom of Ragha. Though it had a vast territory that was bigger than many towns in terms of land area, the fact was Kasgar was still a mere village with a very small population of only about five thousand. The nearby town of Calandra had a population of over thirty thousand but did not have a martial arts training center.

With the establishment of the training center, the nearby villages welcomed the opportunity to send their children to Kasgar to receive martial arts instruction. For those villages a little farther off, the more affluent families paid for the board and lodging of their children in Kasgar. Their families were very clear about this point: this was a rare opportunity for their families they could not afford to miss.

A martial artist in the family would give the family a certain prestige that would grant them certain privileges and open up opportunities for them within their community. It was really nothing more than power generating influence. And in the world they lived in, martial strength was the greatest source of power.

The families from the farthest villages could have sent their children to a city or town that was closer to them than Kasgar. However, from prior experiences, the children from the cities and towns made life miserable for the children from the villages whom they bullied constantly. Their parents would rather have their children endure in a faraway village than suffer in a nearby town.

Being a town, the residents of Calandra scoffed at the idea of sending their children to learn Master Tszarek’s martial arts at a mere village, notwithstanding that it was very close. They would rather send their children to Shramez, which was a distance of at least three days on foot.

At the time Master Tszarek’s martial arts was the best in all of Ragha. It wasn’t even worth arguing about it. A disciple of the academy who had been training for five years could easily beat a young master from the big families who had been practicing the family martial arts for more than ten years. The best part about it was anybody could learn Master Tszarek’s martial arts for free for as long as one could endure the harsh training and become strong enough to stay in the academy for ten years.

Before Master Tszarek established the Ragha Martial Arts Academy eighteen years ago, learning martial arts was a privilege reserved only of the wealthy and powerful.

When Master Tszarek went around Ragha in 972 to recruit prospective disciples, the established martial families scoffed at the idea of learning martial arts from an unknown foreigner. They also looked down at the idea of being mixed in with children of commoners.

They had since regretted their arrogance and did all they could ten years later to get their children into the academy by all means, including bribery, another regrettable action that put them into shame in the eyes of the virtuous Master Tszarek.