--- part 4. Chapter 48.4: No Pain, No Gain.
Then they ran.
Ten kilometers. Outside the palace walls, along the city's training road, within twenty minutes.
The city was waking as they went. Merchants setting up stalls paused to stare. Palace guards at the outer gate came sharply to attention as the procession passed — one emperor, five heroes, twelve companions, one queen-to-be, and fifteen young warriors, all in training clothes, all running in formation behind the most recognizable set of crimson eyes in the empire.
People stopped. Pointed. Someone dropped a basket of produce.
"Is that — is that *Emperor Hexia* out running with —"
"*Matriarch Ethene* is *jogging?*"
"Is that Warchief Kragwargen? He's *running?* He always *rides —*"
"Who are all the girls?"
"That's *Queen Kiara!* She's going to be a queen and she's doing *burpees?*"
It became, within approximately four minutes, a spectacle. Citizens lined the training road. Children sprinted alongside for as long as their legs would carry them before peeling away. Someone started cheering. Someone else joined in.
Sirenia, who had been managing at roughly seventy percent of Hexia's pace, glanced sideways at Lhoralaine beside her and said, "Are we... entertainment?"
"We are absolutely entertainment," Lhoralaine confirmed.
"This is either very good for the empire's morale or very bad for our dignity."
"Why not both?"
Three kilometers in, the casualties began — not injuries, but the first emergence of the suffering that Hexia had known from the first moment was coming. Sirenia's breathing had shifted from controlled to effortful. Durgan was making a sound with each stride that was technically breathing but edged toward philosophy. Durgan's legs were shorter than everyone else's, which meant he was taking roughly twice as many steps to cover the same ground and conducting an ongoing internal negotiation about whether any of this was legal.
Hexia was at the front. Running.
Not demonstrating.
Not monitoring.
Just running, at the pace he had set, making it available for anyone who could match it.
Kiara was matching it.
Nobody fully understood why — not even Kiara, entirely, though if pressed she might have described something about her jaw setting when she watched Hexia's back and her feet making a private decision that her lungs had not been consulted about. She was breathing hard. She was working hard. Her legs burned in ways she was cataloguing for future grievances. But she kept pace.
Seven kilometers in, Hexia glanced sideways at her — a fractional turn of his head.
"You're running with your shoulders," he said. Not critical. Observational. "Relax them."
"I'm — *running,*" Kiara managed.
"You're running and carrying your shoulders around your ears. Put them down."
She tried. They came down approximately two inches and then crept back.
"*Kiara.*"
They came down. She kept them down through force of will. Her pace actually improved by a measurable fraction — something about not fighting her own upper body releasing energy downward where it was needed.
She noted this. Filed it. Did not say anything about it.
She was not giving him the satisfaction.
(She would quietly practice this for the rest of the week until it became automatic, and eventually she would teach it to her fifteen warriors, and she would present it as something she had figured out herself, and Hexia would know, and say nothing, and that would be the agreement.)
Nine kilometers in, Durgan arrived at a philosophical crisis.
"I have a question," he announced, to no one in particular, because talking required breath he did not strictly have.
"Save it," Durin said, beside him.
"It's important."
"Save it."
"It's *philosophically important.*"
"Durgan."
"*Is dying faster than this running?*"
"I genuinely cannot tell you if what you're doing right now is dying or running. They look the same."
"That's not *helpful*, Durin."
"Neither is talking."
They finished the ten kilometers.
The students arrived back at the training yard in stages — Hexia and Kiara first, then the heroes in a loose cluster, then the companions in their various states of dishevelment, then the older of Kiara's warriors, then the younger ones, and finally Durgan, who crossed the yard entrance making a sound that no medical text had yet classified.
He stopped.
He stood absolutely still for three seconds.
Then he sat down on the ground.
"I have fought monsters," he announced to the sky. "*Actual* monsters. With teeth. I faced a siege. I've blown myself up *four times.* And nothing — *nothing* — has prepared me for *this.*"
"It's a ten-kilometer run," Durin observed, not sitting down, because Durin had decided long ago that sitting down was a choice that sent the wrong message.
"It's a ten-kilometer *personal assault.*"
"Durgan—"
"He *smiled* at the end. Did you see it? Did you *see* him? He smiled. That's not a *person*, Durin. That's a *force of nature in a training outfit.*"
Durin looked at Hexia, who was standing at the center of the yard distributing water from ceramic jugs with Lhoralaine, and whose expression was, yes, carrying something that might, in extremely favorable lighting, be interpreted as faint amusement.
"He's always been a force of nature," Durin said. "You're only just noticing because you're suffering."
"Suffering clarifies things!"
"Then use it. That's why he's making us suffer."
Durgan considered this. Then he looked down at the ground, where the Kiara-shaped imprint from yesterday's duel was still visible beside him.
"That's annoyingly wise," he said.
"I know. I hate it too." Durin agreed though there's no heat it it.
---To be continued in part 5...