On one hand, she couldn’t just name things what they were. It would put people off using her new method, it would make her invention of a comprehensive close-combat system seem mundane by comparison to its predecessors and the existing martial arts it would inevitably draw upon.

On the other hand, she couldn’t justify giving into mystical naming schemes fully. Even if Zelsys naturally tended towards naming techniques in a somewhat theatrical manner, she couldn’t embrace ridiculously impractical naming conventions, lest she risk falling into the pit of purple prose - like the name of Halxian’s basic breathing method.

The solution was to simply do some of both. Every technique would have an attention-catching name, and one to actually describe its purpose.

The first, most important technique to draw new adepts in, would of course be Fog-breathing. She noted it in her tablet, and wrote it down for good measure.

SHIFTING WINDS OF ETERNAL SPRING

Variable Foundational Breathing Method

When trying to think of a name for the entirety of her new martial art, her thoughts wandered to Old Ikesian, as she knew that playing to Ikesian culture was likely to improve the disposition of laymen and would-be practitioners towards her methods. 

Thus she pulled out the book Makhus had given her after he had translated the elder’s messages for her, and took to reading.

It was part dictionary, part linguistics handbook, with a large note warning that Old Ikesian had a tendency towards awkwardly compositing individual words and that these composites often meant different things than their components, referring to them as “homuncuwords”. As it turned out by the book’s definition, a homunculus could also refer to a short-lived meat golem stitched together from different bodies and animated with elemental lightning.

Something-arts. New Arts? No, too basic.

Then she reached a word she was familiar with, and the name of her future martial art was born. 

Sturm, in Old Ikesian, could translate to storm, but also assault, gale, and similar terms implying relentless offense. There was a footnote at the bottom of the page, referring to the fact that the word was shared with Kargarian alongside quite a few others with minor differences of meaning, suggesting a relation between the two languages.

This alone wouldn’t suffice to differentiate and would be too tacked-on to be convincing, so she found the word for art, as well as, out of curiosity, looked up the word for lightning.

“Sturmblitz Kunst.”

Yes, that would work.

Now to gather the prerequisite texts and plunder them for their best parts so that she might combine them with her own practical experience…

...An ordeal which took her the better part of the day, even with help. 

As it turned out, despite its extensive index and sensical ordering of contents, the sect’s public library was still a pain to navigate due to the thoroughly unintuitive naming schemes for many texts. Even with a neat list from Ozmir it was a struggle.

Zel had even asked if he himself had any knowledge to share pertaining to martial arts, but he just laughed and said he was a self-taught hack that had never bothered to learn how to teach.

That remark alone made her feel kinship with him.

Even if she was confident in her own ability to teach from intuition, trying to build a system that could be taught by someone else would be a challenge possibly greater than defeating Ubul.

In fact, Zelsys didn’t expect to “finish” her system any time soon, and was fully prepared to spend years or possibly decades teaching before she reached anything nearing a “final draft”. 

After all, a comprehensive martial art could possibly demand generations of practitioners to fully come into its own.

All she had to do was to always teach by example; she just had to make sure she was there to steer it correctly and that she never, ever, not even for a moment, allowed herself to stagnate.

Easy.

Saturday.

Zel had to admit she looked forward to once again wearing something that actively went out of its way to fit her and didn’t get utterly, hopelessly filthy from just a few hours of light exercise. It was an especially noticeable issue with footwear, to the point that she’d taken to just exercising barefoot using minimal footwraps.

Over the last days she’d grown to quietly resent mundane clothing, and to understand the true value of Fog-infused garments, deciding that she would personally fund at least one set of such garments for Zef, Sig, and Makhus as well, if need be. This was the best time to do that, since the old tailor would likely leave alongside the caravan.

When they arrived at his tent he was already waiting for them, probably having heard the distinct sound of the motorbike’s engine. The air within was thick with free-floating strands of Fog and the stench of alchemicals.

Two wooden boxes already sat up on the counter, wrought of blackened wood, bolted shut and locked with locks without holes. Smooth, flowing glyphs were drawn on each of their sides in silver chalk.

Their ultra-utilitarian construction contrasted with everything else in the tent, suggesting that they were meant to be used for one thing and not much else. Tags hung from them affixed to a bolt each, depicting only simplistic pictograms of boots and pants respectively.

More importantly than the boxes, though, the space behind the counter next to the ancient essentech sewing machine was a mess. Several boxes of metal parts were stacked atop one another to one side, pieces from two types of leathers were stacked all over the place. One was dark blue, nearly gray, reminiscent of sharkskin, whatever the hell a shark was. Zel recalled it to be some type of carnivorous fish. Regardless of her fragmentary memory, the other type of leather was doubtlessly scalebark, with scales far larger than any normal snake’s displaying single strikes of black surrounded by yellows and reds.

As for the craftsman himself, he stood leaning on the counter beaming with self-satisfaction. Self-satisfaction and an immense fatigue that he hid masterfully, almost well enough for Zel to not notice.

Akaso

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