Accounts of former colonel Ashlan Weard;

‘The girl learns fast… Just yesterday she had a shaky grasp on edge alignment, today the precision of those cuts and slashes…’

• “I’m doing it right when it makes those whoosh sounds right?”
• “Generally… yes…”

‘What is aerodynamics? Is it magic? Hm… I should ask her later…’

… 

‘Day by day she grows stronger, faster, sharper… with her ability to quickly master techniques at the current pace it won’t be long until she passes me. I could only lead her by the nose because of the difference in experience and now as that gap closes in it will be ever more challenging for me… Besides, my tricks aren’t going to work on her forever… just recently she read what I was planning. Quite the surprise.’

…

‘There is something strange about her… Some different side of her that’s savage and primal. It always gives me the chills, like I am just another sacrifice to a starved beast. Thankfully it only surfaces on occasions. It is frightening how fast she can change between these two… personas at a whim to the point I wonder… Which one of them is the real Alicia? The girl on the surface or the monster beneath? I pray that I won’t have to find out… But if… she turns against us… How long can I hold her back? This body of mine, although not decrepit yet is a far cry from my prime… No even then I would need to be lucky to win…

One thing I have noticed is that it is more likely to reveal itself when she’s pushed hard. Is it some kind of defense mechanism against an observed threat? Maybe I should go a little easy on her… I can’t imagine what she would be like if she loses her presence of mind…’

…

‘Her stamina is inconceivably high… It would be more precise to say she doesn’t get tired and I haven’t seen her eating very often either… I only remember that she is a young girl when seeing how her face twists at the bitter nuts she’s eating…
If that… tragedy hadn’t struck… I probably would have had a daughter around her age by now…

…

• ‘Man these elven trail mix tastes like soap, and I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks like that…’

• ‘…don’t like…’
• ‘I should treat you to a molten chocolate cake… Though baking is less of my thing than cooking…’

Digging into Alicia’s memories Alice savored the remnants of the taste left behind as a memory. This only served as an unsatisfying tease for the real deal.

• ‘Want!’
• ‘Well first I need to find sugar… Wonder if there's sugarcane around here, maybe I could extract the sugar from honey… Cocoa from jungles and rainforests? It’ll have to wait for now…’

‘If I want to stay alive I need to keep moving, footwork is a bit awkward, strafing is easy but stepping backwards needs some getting used to… On the topic of movement there’s forms of it but basically it boils down to constant movement and telegraph or as the old guy puts it a ‘Tell’.  Constant movement is ‘normal’ something like circling your opponent, closing or making distance. Essentially filler movement leading up to something. ‘Tells’ on the other hand is the preceding action before an attack, taking and switching stance. If it's an overhead swing for example raising the sword up is the tell.

Better you can hide your ‘tells’ more likely it is that your attack is going to surprise the opponent and land a hit. If you can hide your tell within your constant movement then it’s even better as the other party doesn’t expect it. In addition ‘tells’ can ‘morph’ - As Ashlan calls it - into a different attack. Or less technically, multiple techniques can share the same or similar tell making it a guesswork on which attack is coming. Like thrust turning into a slash and the ‘tell’ of overhead strikes actually being pommel strikes.

Unfortunately you can only learn these through experience… Bitter experiences to be more exact. Ones that include me being the testing dummy for these. I suppose it's better to learn it through being beaten up by wood than steel. Furthermore there’s the role of hips, twisting your hips following your in a swing generates more force and speed while turning against your swing drags it down, since parrying is very timing sensitive, having your attack be delayed or travel faster than expected can throw them off.

And there’s also unpredictability & conditioning, Couching, Chambering, Parries, Deflections and Ripostes. I didn’t know shanking someone with a long knife was this complicated… Better cry now than later. Sword fighting is basically getting the blade from point A to point B fast or more bluntly; how to quickly stab someone without getting stabbed…

Apparently yelling is a real thing and not something they made up for action movies. Keya…? kya…? kaya…? Whatever it's called.¹Kiai It makes you emotionally invested into your attack and core something, fixes breathing or something didn’t really stick to me.

• “Is milady familiar with magic?”

‘I couldn’t make him just call me by my name… well milady is a little better than the ‘mistress’, that he used to call me… I’ll take my small victories wherever I can.’

• “To a degree, yes.”
• “Excellent, today I thought we should move onto ‘Sunder’. Utilizing wind magic we can improve the reach and potency of our slashes. To demonstrate:”

Following up his words he unsheathed his weapon made of some metal Alicia hadn’t seen before. Some sockets for ornaments empty or twisted out of shape. Despite the visible wear & tear and bends around the basket hilt and guard, straight blade of alabaster, polished well enough to be like a mirror, was in pristine condition. Raising up his sword and aimed at a nearby tree well out of his weapon’s range, instantly the wind seemed to change its direction, gathering around him… no around his weapon.

• “Khuut! Rae En Shaar!”²“Wind(s)! rend asunder!”

Just as the tip of the blade reached its apex, taking half a step forward Ashlan brought it down in a 45 degree slash striking into nothing. It would seem that he missed, however the trunk of the tree bearing a huge gash one thirds of the way deep - following the trajectory of his slash - from the violent squall of wind that smashed against it tells a different story.

Whistling internally and no stranger to magic Alicia quickly analysed the information she gathered from seeing the strange occurrence;

‘My guy I don’t think that was the wind… Wind doesn’t cut into something like that otherwise we would have tons of fan and air conditioning related injuries. So what is that…? While technically wind or specifically molecules of air for this matter can cut if they somehow ‘magically’ arranged themselves perfectly and uniformly like that of a sword achieving that requires some serious precision and the moment that “wind” comes in contact with open air it should disperse turning into a breeze. …Then it is wind, just not normal wind that behaves as it should… I’ll call it magic wind or something like that.

I guess answered my own question there… Magically tricking wind into acting like a blade. I should ask the maestro about its range… shouldn’t be too far despite being called ‘ranged’ since even wind is subject to air resistance…’

• “How far does that hit?”

Not expecting Alicia to recover as quickly as she did from the spectacle and ask him a question he was flustered to say at least. Afterall it was one of his flashier and prized techniques.

• “Ahem, That depends on your efforts, the more energy you can pour into your slash the more stronger and further it will go… General rule of thumb is that it’s effective at midrange. Further the wind has to travel the less impactful it becomes and if they’re close what’s stopping you from using your sword?

There’s a flaw with this technique in that it’s ineffective with thrusts as the wind doesn’t cut like a sword would. In an environment you can’t swing it will be difficult to carry out…”

• “Why is that?”
• “It becomes less of a thrust of a blade and more of a blast of wind… that doesn’t mean it has no place in combat especially if you can the posture of your opponent.”
• “Can’t you just make the wind spiral in a way that it will drill rather than cutting?”
• “What… do you mean…?”

Implication of the fault of his long employed technique could be fixed, improved was enticing and frightening one.

Holding her wooden sparring sword from a side stance; hilt pulled all the way back near her shoulder she assumed a variant of posta bicorno guard³Two horn guard, similar to German Ochs. more suitable for thrusting.

• “That wind cuts because of magic causing the air to mimic your actions but a simple thrust isn’t enough. If straight forward wind doesn’t cut it then let’s make it not so straight forwards by having it spin. Think two arrowheads or two tips of a blade spinning in a helix with a fixed distance from each other.”

As she spoke she gently revolved the blade in a counterclockwise turn and emulated the technique, gathering flows of wind around her blade. Though their cyclonic spin was inherently different from the parent technique.

• “Reason it turns into a blast is that the wind when coming in contact with the target disperses over the surface. With those tips envisioned as the point paving the path for the wind pressure behind it to follow by having them spin in a circular motion, when it meets resistance it will try to retain its momentum and inertia to keep spinning. What happens when such a thing meets resistance? Well it will be a more fancy wind blast but with enough torque and force…

You did it a step forward… Was it the right leg or the left first? Ah that doesn’t matter for this.”

Briefly interrupting herself, Alicia took a step forward at the same time of her thrust. The twisting winds dancing around each other as if in orbit were let loose, aimed at the center of the wound bore through creating a small hole, shooting chips and fragments of wood on the other side.

• “Now there’s probably a more efficient way of fine tuning this technique, like how large the diameter of the helix should be? How many leading points are optimal⁴I somehow misspelled this as optimate which I expected google docs to correct to optimal when I pressed space. Apparently not as it is a correct spelling of a very real word. Optimate is a member of the patrician order in ancient Rome. Synonymous to a noble or aristocrat. Quite the accidental discovery. for piercing? How many revolutions per minute should it have and so on. Though it's something I just thought up I didn’t expect it to be that effective… Drilling with wind huh… Main point is: faster it spins and faster it “flies”, greater its power. Keeping it steady and straight is a bit of a challenge. In the end it's still wind similar to abrasion sandblasting, if against a well protected enemy most it could do is shine their armor.”

Epiphany. Alicia didn’t blindly pursue the art but actively looked for ways to improve it and in this example, created a derivative technique from something she saw moments ago. Creating one’s own technique was one of the hallmarks of mastery, before he knew it she was already on his own level, possibly even far ahead of him.

• “Outstanding… well done… Perhaps there’s hope for our craft yet…”

Although surely a content statement there was some hidden grief underneath.

• “Why do you say that?”
• “…Would you be willing to hear this old fool’s story?”
• “Of course.”
• “There’s something I would like to show you. We can talk on our way there.”

Walking to some indeterminate place through a secluded path Alicia followed the old master.

• “At my youth… There was a kingdom… Our kingdom. After rising through the ranks quickly, I was the youngest colonel there was in our history. I would’ve been a general if I didn’t get into trouble as much as I did. If I had been more composed and level headed.”

‘It’s hard to imagine this person with slow and sure actions who doesn’t react too much to anything being that active.’

“Youngblood driven by unusual wanderlust I left my duties behind and travelled the world as an adventurer. I challenged many who called themselves “The best” with the blade. There was an overall disdain for other races amongst our people. I wasn’t an exception… but by my journey leading me through kingdoms of men, I came to understand the misconceptions, the faults in our view. That we’re different but still individually… right.”

‘Smiling…? Now that’s something rare to see… Nostalgia is nice every now and then…’

“However not many of us saw the same… We called ourselves Highborne… a title of reckless pride. Even my home… bore the name The High Kingdom… Better than any other.

At this point the already simmering racial tensions were escalating to a boiling point. I was called back… There was conflict looming on the horizon… When I came home, I was hailed a hero… A hero who struck down the enemies of our kind beyond our borders… Appalling mockery of my beliefs…”

Clenched fists trembling with emotions. He carried on.

“Our royalty - our king - would have never made the situation go out of control like that… true enough aristocracy had amassed much support campaigned for the supremacy of our kin. ‘The lesser should serve their betters!’ Denunciation, Enslavement, Despoiling. It was only a matter of time before war broke out. I could only persuade a small portion of people against their ideal… Soon enough they took notice of my activities. Their symbol of supremacy itself was advocating for peace and understanding… A thorn on their side… I was stripped of my rank and banished out along with many others. Mostly who didn’t share their view but also their political enemies. We became refugees, with all the other races at our necks we were outcasts without a home. Some turned to other kingdoms… I fear their life wasn’t as easy as they would’ve hoped for. I watched our armies clash against that of men… Our soldiers were a match for 10 or so men. However humans outnumbered us by 20 then 30 and soon enough by the hundreds…

• “Didn’t your kingdom have any allies?”
• “Allies… huh… There were the dwarves who had… cordial relations with us… They made their choice to not take side… I think they even helped the humans by supplying them weapons and armor…”
• “Why?”
• “They are mountain dwellers living in mines and deep underground tunnels… In that kind of place… food is a rare sight. They couldn’t support themselves just by plant roots and tasteless tubers. So they imported food from other races in return they gave ores, weapons and armor. No different treatment to us. Though in their eyes we were competitors. We didn’t buy their more valued products of weapons and armor, only the less valued raw materials. And using those materials we’ve made our own more arms… Better arms than they did…”
• “So… if the kingdom fell, they had more to gain than to lose.”
• “I believe that was what their thought was and even if they would’ve helped I know imperious nobles would have never accepted it… I cannot blame them… they owe us nothing you know… I watched as citizens turned into slaves… Their ears cut short… to tame our magic.

Eventually we turned to this forest… Velauhart…⁵Heart of green woods. known for its wild and brutal monsters… But even so it meant more chance of survival than outside… establishing the… place called Verdun… meaning shelter in our tongue. Ironic how us labelled pig sympathizers are the only remnants of their culture and history…

Have you counted how many of us there were in the village?”

Alicia didn’t have the exact numbers, but estimating:

• “Around a thousand?”
• “What If I told you we arrived here by ten thousands?”

‘Something tells me this story doesn't have a happy ending…’

• “You asked me why the art of our bladework was declining… You and I are the exception… but do you think an average person wielding a sword can beat something like a Manticore?”

Poisonous spouts, utilizing flames through magic, strong body with powerful claws and mace like tail. It had too many advantages over someone…

• “No…”
• “By outnumbering them could we earn a pyrrhic victory… Training someone with the blade only for them to be helplessly slaughtered… We had to change our ways… picked up something that was once thought cowardly to use, bows until we made that transition fully…”

Arriving atop of a hill overlooking a beautiful grove full of life and young trees he stopped and sat on top of a conveniently placed boulder…

• “This part of the forest was laid barren after fire claimed it…”

‘I would say the place recovered well but…’

• “There’s something to it…”
• “Underneath each of those trees lies one us… and that is only counting ones we could recover… many bodies were lost to the bowels of the beasts. Sometimes… we would only recover half chewed limbs and organs thrown aside we couldn’t identify all of them…”

Closing his eyes as if trying to swallow a bitter pill…

• “Few from my regimen who defected with me… They were the closest thing to family I had…”
• “My condolences…”
• “Go on ahead of me… I’ll return soon… After I’m back I will introduce you to my friend later… You’ll need your own weapon…”

‘Tale of pride and fall hm… …I had a close call with that boar too… And I had god’s gift… what if I didn’t…? No It’s enough that I had the chance to live again at all… Being confident to take action is good but too much and it will kill you…’⁶Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

Auratic

Anyway shit was getting too PG-13 I had to dial it up a bit. As for trivia Çerbanogs (Killer rabbit/hares) name is a reference to Rabbit of Caerbannog from monty python. Why Çerbanog? because I thought it sounded similar to the Chernobog. I just like that word. It means "The black god" how cool is that? I don't know if I'll properly feature Chernobog... I have too much on my place already. I have another chapter in the works, I'll try it have it out by this weekend. Chronologically this chapter includes the events happening between chapter 28 and 29. But released now to keep things in flow. This is me trying to juggle 4-5 concepts and failing to do so. I was wondering if I should add Slice of Life tag. My brain is bit overheating right now. Remember I try to read all the comments even if I don't respond to them. Also can I have a pocket physicist to help me? I'm too smooth brained for physics and math. Why did I do this to myself?