Five months had passed since Mary had arrived at her new home. The first few weeks had been harder than she had let anyone know.
It had gotten better when she started meeting with the Baroness more often. She had asked her for help when she finally acknowledged she hadn't made any progress in finding her affinity. While she still had no clue what her affinity was, as even the Baroness ran out of ideas three weeks prior, they didn't manage to get any progress in all that time. They really tried everything, and while Mary was capable to cast most spells Diane showed her, it came down to the things she already learnt by herself. Her affinity encompassed everything they tried except space, time and healing magic. It even included magic with mana itself, something really strange which’s effects she wasn't able to properly grasp yet.
Together with Diane she had improved her manacontrol by a fair margin, though she had been told she was only going to get better with constant training.
While quite time consuming, the time she spent with her mom was time well spent, as they started to really built up their relationship.
Finding out her affinity had only been a small part of their activities though, they spent most of their time together with Diane casting all types of spells and Mary showing her how the used runes actually looked. It had been quite the challenge to find a way to save their research, as books were wholly inadequate to save anything three dimensional. Their solution was simple enough even though only temporary, they used small wards to save each shape, ten wards being connected a manacrystal.
She had also found out what the Baron was doing with all the time he had on his hands. Apparently, he wanted to set up some sort of trading operation overseas. She didn't really understand why it needed that much time and planning. Though sometimes he did come and join them with the runes, the older mage knowing way more runes than both she and her mom.
Her other lessons suffered quite a bit, as she was spending quite some time with magic studies, that was a given. She still made satisfactory progress in all of them though.
Her ranger training was one of the best parts of her new life, the peace and calm she felt when in between trees was just unbeatable. She was progressing quite nicely there, if you didn't count archery. While she was very agile and had a good hand to eye coordination, something she needed for sword fighting, shooting with a bow just wasn't hers. Though everything else came naturally, any arrow she shot just seemed to miss her intended target, even at closest range. That didn't cause any distress for her though, as she hadn't been all that interested in archery to begin with.
The rest went quite well though, by now she was able to sneak up upon most people in a forest, at least if they didn't start employing magical means of detection. She already found a way around two of those, surrounding herself with a shroud of her mana, while quite demanding, most such arlarmwards were only set up as a thin sphere around the user and as such she only needed to keep it up for a few seconds.
Some of the wards, just completely covered the surroundings in mana, and required astonishing manacontrol to keep up, but were a sure way to detect anything in the vicinity. There was a way to avoid it though, even if only for a short amount of time.
You could, shroud yourself in mana as well, denser than needed for the warning shroud though, and move around undetected. At least if the caster wasn't alert, if he was he would need very little time to detect there was a small moving area he couldn't detect anything in, a dead giveaway there was something amiss. The second type of ward had a big downside though, as it was impossible to enchant, as there were no runes used to create it.
The last type was nearly impossible to break through though, at least if you wanted to do so undetected. It was a combination of the prior two and a little else, so the manacloud was encompassed by a normal alarmward and surrounded by a weak shield. It was actually possible to enchant it onto something, as the shield could be used to keep the mana inside, though enchantments like this were really difficult to create. More so than the spell, as the amount of factors that had to be thought of was nothing short of astonishing. Furthermore keeping the enchantment running permanently was really expensive, so only the richest of people could effectively have them.
There existed a great variety of alarmwards, but they all roughly followed these three schematics. Nolan told her normal people were unable to actually get through all of those undetected, as they were impossible to detect normally. Some exceptionally skilled or especially trained would be able to get through the first, as actual magic was used and as such it was detectable.
The other two were harder, nearly impossible to detect, as the mana concentration in the air increased only slightly, and detecting something like that was, even with especially built items, near impossible. As a possibility to reliably detect mana didn't exist, as no one knew what mana even was.
All that didn't apply for her though, seeing she was able to feel mana, even if she had no idea why or what it was. There were of course enchantments that countered these wards, if you knew they were there, but it was highly illegal to actually make and sell them, if not issued by the empire.
As she had less time to train now, her rangertest had been postponed by a month. At first she had worried she might not be allowed to do it, seeing she couldn't use a bow, but luckily, there was a different test for the bow. It would now take place exactly a month after the festival of founding, were she would have to attend as her father's daughter. It would be the first time she would meet any of the other nobles, these that her father didn't deem worthy of being present to their ceremony. She thought it would be an interesting experience, although she had to promise to not be as blunt as she was to him and his friends.
While that would have been hard a few months ago, by now the lessons Elaine imparted her with stated to take hold, and she even had to admit there was some use to them. It wouldn't be good for the empire, or any country to be honest, if nobles, some of which had actual private armies would start killing each other after being offended.
Her lessons in sword fighting were progressing depressively slow though, while she was making constant progress, she was still nowhere near her teacher and wouldn't be for years. A really frustrating experience though she was told she was actually improving faster than many others. She threw herself at the training once again after that, as that meant there were others progressing faster than her! Unacceptable!
If she thought back on how her training started, she had to admit she progressed quite nicely in the past months. While she had been taught basic footwork by her first teacher, she hadn't seen a sword in the first week of training with her second teacher, as he insisted on her learning how to properly stand and use her feet while fighting.
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Though she had doubted his decision at the start, there was way more to learn about standing properly than she ever imagined. And it actually helped her with some other stuff as well.
Afterwards, they had concentrated on how to properly hold her sword, and what she would mainly do with it, as even though all longswords were looking very alike, depending on different factors in the process of production, like the length of grip, the cross section of the blade, the form of the tip, the type of crossguard as well as six other factors, longswords had a variety of different uses.
They chose a double edged longsword equally made for cutting and thrusting. So the actual training started two weeks after she first chose her fighting style. They didn't use a real sword though, as that would be dangerous a stupid, and fell back to wooden training swords that still hurt like hell if you were hit, but weren't life threatening.
Unlike most noble children in the capital, her father hired a teacher that taught her how to fight and not how to duel. Iolaos didn't mind using dirty tricks to win a fight, and found great fun teaching her tons of those. So unlike the spoiled nobles of the capital, she actually learnt how to fight and not some sport without any danger.
There was way more theory to swordfighting than she had anticipated. As of now she had spent about a third of her lessons without actually fighting,while disappointing at first, she quickly saw the benefit she got out of these conversations.
He always told about the different ways she would have to deal with certain situations, after having her try to develop her own way to deal with a problem.
She learnt how to properly align her sword for the best efficiency of cutting and with which part of the blade she had to do the cut. She had learnt that the third quarter of a longsword was actually the best part to cut with, as anything further up the blade weighted too little to do a proper cut, and anything further down gained too little speed by leverage to cut successfully. It was fascinating really, there was so much to learn and ways to deal with a situation she would never think about.
He also warned her of common mistakes made while fighting, if you fought an opponent with half decent armour, you didn't cut, you tried to disarm your opponent and incapacitate him.
There was one big bummer to sword fighting though, she probably wouldn't get to fight big monsters with a sword, at least the non humanoid ones. A sword just didn't have enough reach to properly harm the really big monsters.
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Iolaos was really impressed with the noble child he started teaching a few months ago.
It had been quite the surprise when he was approached by a noble to teach his daughter. It hadn't been the first time, as he had taught a noble child once before.
He had been hired by the boys father to teach him how to fight. He had build up quite the reputation before that, so he wasn't that surprised it happened, though he thought the request would come from somewhere outside of the capital, as the nobles within prefered dueling.
He had to admit, the boy had been a natural, taking in his teachings like few students before. Iolaos taught the boy all the dirty tricks, making him a formidable fighter. Two years after he started, a scandal rocketed the capital, a noble had nearly killed another one in a duel.
As he had shortly afterwards been called to the nobles mansion, he had a darkfeeling o what had happened.
The assumption turned out right, his student had completely dismantled his opponent, just as he was taught. When he answered the noble in question he taught his son how to fight, the noble was confused. As it turned out, the noble had no idea a fighter was completely different from a duelist. They went at a fight with a different mindset, while one fought to win, the other fought to survive. There was never a question who would win such a fight.
Said noble would probably have killed him soon afterwards, but luckily a few of his former pupil, who had already been promising officers in the imperial legions, had saved his life.
Though they couldn't do anything about what said noble did other than that. He never saw a noble after that.
He had been content to never see a noble again, and that worked for a few years, at least until he was contacted by the people of a noble to teach his daughter how to fight.
Remembering the last time that had happened he told the messenger he had no interest whatsoever to teach another noble.
A day later, the same messenger had returned and invited him to visit Baron Falconbridge to discuss his employment. Once again he said there was no employment to talk about and had ushered the messenger out of his door.
When he came back from one of his lessons on the next day, he had been surprised to see someone waiting for him in his house. When he attacked the fellow, his sword just bounced off the clothes he wore, like some kind of plate armor. That did convince him to put down his sword really fast as someone with such armor was noone he wanted to have trouble with. He still remembered the ensuring conversation.
“So you are Iolaos the swordsman?”
“Yes my lord.”
“I want you to teach my daughter how to fight, I already sent several requests with a messenger, but he returned empty handed everytime, care to tell me why you don't want to work for me?”
“I don't teach nobles my lord, I am a fighting instructor, no duelist and I already had a runin with nobility before.”
“I know, I know, the incident with Marquis Goatnell’s son, a very unfortunate misunderstanding.” The noble grew cold after that.
“I know of that, I came here because you are the most talented fighting instructor, my daughter is no feeble noble, she wants to learn how to fight and not duel! I can assure you, I am way more recouceful that the Marquis, don't try to mess with me! I said you will teach her how to fight, one way or the other!”
“It would be an honor to instruct your daughter, when do I start?”
He had been really surprised the Baron had come himself, but also terrified, as the other man excluded nothing, something very few people managed. He was one of the few people that bothered to learn how to do that, as it gave him a good warning what a person he was dealing with. He had heard rumors of course, but they didn't do the former Grand Duke any justice.
The next day he reluctantly arrived at a noble mansion once again.
Luckily the girl turned out to be a good student, while at first he had been doubtful she had the determination to see it through as she was only four years old. That doubt was soon replaced by elation, as he saw her enthusiasm didn't whane even after a week of getting her footwork up to a basic level. She wasn't anything special related towards his training, no naturally talented fighter like most.
Something special was there though, as she, like the Baron had no emissions of mana whatsoever, meaning she achieved the manacontrol of a mage with decades of experience with four years of age. Because of that he added another part to her training, namely he taught her how to multitask while fighting, so she could cast spells while fighting.
He also told the Baron to talk to his daughter about concealing her mana, something no child should show she could do.
He always favored the determined students, as they were more likely to achieve their goals, as they learnt how to deal with failure, and a natural disposition brought you only so far, you had to actually train if you wanted to be among the best.
So all in all teaching the girl was easy, while she lacked natural talent in sword fighting, she was agile and strong for her stature, as well as having superb control over her body and being one of the most intelligent children he ever met.
He initially estimated he would take about three to four years to properly teach her, but even though their training somewhat lessened in the last months, he was sure they would manage in three. Afterwards she would need some real experience that didn't come from sparring to improve furter.