Sarai is the first person to ever see him hold a sword.
Soren is loitering in the courtyard after crownguard practices, and Sarai is prone to sparring with the soldiers, as their new captain. She’s only been here for six months since Captain Amaya became General Amaya and left for a stint at the Breach, and Soren finally feels well enough that he can lift one of the practice wooden swords left lying around.
He swings it a few times, adjusting his grip experimentally - imagines himself as a brave, powerful hero instead of a recovering, sickly boy - and grins triumphantly as he follows through. He then accordingly almost topples over from going too far, and actually does drop the sword when he hears, “A warrior, are you?” and nearly shrieks.
Captain Sarai stands behind him, hands on her hips and a teasing smirk on her lips. His ears burn.
“I’d like to be,” he says petulantly, scooping the sword up and then holding it out to her.
She bats his hand away. “Adjust your grip,” she says, drawing her own sword and carefully laying her hand over the hilt. “Like this.”
Soren does his best to follow. “Uh, why?”
“Your sword is ideally going to make contact with something solid. You don’t want your wrist to be flimsy and break.” She rests her sword by her side, one arm crossed over her stomach. “Now show me your fighting stance.”
Soren does, Captain Sarai’s smile softening, directing him over to one of the dummies.
“Alright, now swing your sword. Aim true,” she tells him. “You can’t take back the strike of a sword. Every hit has to matter.”
Aim true, Soren thinks. He swings.
Two years later, Queen Sarai dies saving his father.
He gives Callum a bit of leeway, because the kid just lost his mother, but Soren can’t hold out forever, because he’s lost his mother and his teacher, and, well... Callum would never be a warrior like them. It’s an easy thing to pick on.
Nine years after that, Soren stands in the shadow of the Storm Spire, his sword held aloft with shaking hands. Another one of her sons is here, helpless, and poised on the precipice of a coward’s blade, the end of the staff sharp enough to puncture even if that wasn’t its intended purpose (or maybe it was).
“And I will do whatever it takes to protect his life!” Soren spits, dust in his eyes. This is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. “Do you hear me?”
Sarai’s voice echoes in his head. Aim true.
Soren goes for the heart. His own falls out in his hands as his father drops to the ground, and Soren succumbs to his knees.
He hopes Sarai and Claudia can forgive him, someday.
154 notes
·
View notes
If Sarai were alive, would Callum have been a better warrior?
All else being equal, yes. People make a big deal of Callum’s “innate inferiority” at fighting like you’re just born being able to understand battle tactics and swinging a sword, but his main drawback came from his anxiety at feeling out of place as a prince, and from people in the castle generally being uninterested or indifferent in his development. Both those issues go away if Sarai is alive; he not only fits in better with his mother at his side, but through Sarai, he has someone who is patient and invested in Callum getting better and stronger. So in the end he’d wind up being a pretty talented warrior under Sarai’s tutelage.
But I say “all else being equal” because it’s not certain that this is what Sarai would have wanted for Callum. Canonically, Sarai had married Harrow not just because she loved him but also because she wanted to give Callum a better life. And she knows better than most that the life of a warrior is a hard one. So she may not be super on board with the idea of Callum being on the front lines, or being stationed at the Breach. It might even build a rift between her and Harrow if she starts suspecting that Callum’s eagerness to become a warrior comes from his connection to Harrow as it did in canon (seriously, how is this not an AU?).
All in all, if she discovered Callum’s talent for magic, I could totally see her encouraging him to pursue that instead (as long as it was primal magic), just to make sure he has an easier life than what Sarai had. The kind of life she would wish for him.
53 notes
·
View notes
even if the timeskip didn’t give anything ‘else’ concretely to the main cast (and i do think it did, tbh, but that’s a post for another day), i do think it being a year plus is important thematically. the show emphasizes over and over again that real change takes time and that it isn’t a short or simple fix
If it had only been six months, tension between elves and humans at the Sunfire camp and with Zubeia at Katolis would’ve been muted because well, of course, it’s only been six months since the war “Ended.” To the audience, two years feels like a lot, partially because we went through the hiatus in real time + one, and because we’re not used to TV shows, well, doing significant time jumps.
But to the characters, two years is both a lifetime and no time at all. The steps towards steady peace are slow. The steps towards healing from the wounds of the past is stagnated and uncertain, if possible at all, or flat out refused.
It’s been two years, and Callum is still struggling with Rayla’s absence and his position as Viren’s successor. It’s been two years of Ezran being king and trying to build peace, and his first major attempt backfires horribly in his face, and he feels over his head. It’s been two years and the humans and Sunfire elves are co-existing, but without cultural understanding, because just living in the same space together isn’t enough. Just agreeing to not kill or attack humans or elves, the war just being over, is not enough.
It takes more than that.
Two years of peace is nothing in the face of hundreds of years of cold war and outright conflict.
Peace will be the work of their lifetimes.
239 notes
·
View notes