“I’m not worried that you’ll break me,” the white-haired Fae said as he retrieved a pair of small, crystalline objects from another nearby rack. “Place this in the center of your chest,” he said, demonstrating with his own as the crystal appeared to adhere easily in place. “I’ve already applied settings to your training shield.”
Zayd easily caught the crystal that Wing Leader Tael tossed his way. Much like other pieces of Fae technology, once Zayd got a close look at it, he noticed a very faint amount of iridescent energy stored within the crystal that resembled the energy he’d seen on the hull of the Spear of Destiny during his disastrous attack on the ship. “So this will stop me from getting hurt?”
“Oh no,” Tael said with a slightly cruel smile. “It’ll stop you from being injured. Pain is a teacher, we wouldn’t want to deprive you of his lessons. It will also restrict or hinder your movements if you should have been injured and it will track the amount of injury you should have sustained. It cannot allow you to fully master the mentality of defying death, the mind will always remember that the pain is fake and the injuries aren’t real, but it will still force you to fight with diminished capacity.”
“Fancy,” Zayd said. He wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the concepts of the training shield, in fact, humanity had other methods of achieving similar results for the training of their elite mech pilots. Unfortunately for Zayd, those methods involved passing false neurological signals along cybernetic implants that he’d never been able to use and they were reserved for the most elite of enhanced pilots and soldiers. “Ready?”
“Come, show me the strength of your club!”
As much as Zayd wanted to give in to the heat of his blood and charge the white-haired Fae, the simulated terrain of the training room was far too complicated for that. Instead, he dropped into a lower stance and began a circular approach to close the distance. Everything about Zayd became slightly bent, as he curled his right forearm to his shoulder with the head of the maul held close like a spring ready to unwind.
“Too timid!” Tael yelled as the white-haired Fae leaped forward, the point of his slender blade leading the way. The complex terrain did nothing to slow the man down. The toes of his feet barely touched the ground as he shot across the open space to thrust directly at Zayd’s chest!
Zayd sharpened his gaze, waiting for exactly the right moment to rotate his hips and turn his body, keeping the haft of the maul between himself and Tael’s slender blade. Sparks flew as the two energetic weapons made contact but Zayd barely noticed as he struck out with the head of the maul, thrusting as though it was a spear toward the other man’s face.
Tael’s turquoise eyes widened slightly but the Fae warrior was far too nimble to fall for Zayd’s trap and he spun rapidly away to gain distance before rushing back in again. This time, rather than a thrust, he used both superior speed and reach to cut at Zayd’s knees and feet. While Zayd managed to evade the first two cuts, the third slid along the side of his knee in a slash that would have been debilitating were it not for the shield protecting him.
Pain flared in his leg and the shield surrounding his knee became stiff and nearly immobile, throwing the younger fighter off balance. Still, Zayd wasn’t one to give up a hit for nothing! His hands slid along the haft of the maul as he brought it crashing down on the Fae warrior’s extended hand, knocking the sword from his grasp and treating Tael to his own surge of pain as the shield system judged the impact sufficient to break his hand!
Both men pulled back from each other, each one looking for the next opening and opportunity to move. Zayd stood protectively over Tael’s fallen weapon, resting the foot of his ‘injured’ leg on the blade and pinning it in place on the ground. He was sure that some honorable hero in a holo-drama would kick the weapon back to his opponent but Zayd wasn’t about to give up the advantage he’d earned for a ‘fair’ fight.
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Tael, for his part, accepted Zayd’s insistence on keeping his advantage. While he could have walked over to the nearby racks and picked up a replacement weapon to continue the match, that would defeat the purpose. He’d fallen to disadvantage because he’d underestimated the human’s speed and he deserved the painful lesson he got from that. Now, it was time for him to deliver a painful lesson of his own.
Slowly, Tael stalked his way towards Zayd, circling to the human’s right side to deprive him of the most powerful swings in his arsenal even though the young man had made it clear that he mastered more parts of the maul than just swinging the heavy head and hoping for a powerful impact. Once he felt that he had reached a reasonable distance he pushed off a nearby tree root like it was a sprinter’s block and shot toward Zayd like an arrow loosed from a bow.
Zayd had been waiting for the move and if it wasn’t for the searing pain and stiff movement from his ‘injured’ knee, he’d have spun on the spot to deliver a punishing blow. As he currently was, he took the next best option, letting go of the maul with one hand to swing in a wide upward arc with the other hand gripping the very end of the haft.
While the angle of the attack surprised Tael slightly, in the end, it didn’t make any difference. Springing off the ground he lept over Zayd’s swing, tumbling feet over head and spinning through the air to land directly behind the young human. The Wing Leader’s arms shot out, his wiry forearms wrapping around Zayd’s neck and pulling him into a tight lock as he leaped backward to pull the young man off balance. An instant later, the shield flashed, indicating an injury that could have been fatal had Tael applied more force to the human’s neck.
“You have a few tricks,” Tael said, releasing the young human and helping him stand up straight. “You’re not just a brute with a club,” he added with a smile. “Your instincts are good, your tactics aren’t bad, but your reflexes are poor and you need more practice studying your opponent if you’re going to land a hit with that thing.”
“It’s been a long time since I had a real fight,” Zayd readily confessed. “I’m looking forward to getting a few more in,” Zayd added, finally getting his breathing back under control after the brief but intense fight.
“Good!” Tael said with a smile. “Put the hammer away. I want to assess more of your fundamentals and I don’t want to wear you out when you’re so fresh out of surgery. We’ll spend two days on basics before we get back to the big toys,” he explained. “There are some movements you’ll need to learn to fight effectively in Combat Armor and we need to build that foundation before we put you in a suit. Work hard to prove Lady Nimue’s faith in you isn’t misplaced and I’ll fight beside you every step of the way.”
“What about Dark Energy?” Zayd asked once he’d returned his maul to the rack. “Priestess Eirian said that I’d need to learn to use it with weapons and armor.”
“I’ve got another tool for that,” the white-haired fae said patiently. “You don’t need my instruction to practice moving your energy through a device, you just need a device to practice with. I’ll give you a lesson when we’re done today and you can take the tool back to your own quarters to practice on your own time. Save your time with me for actual combat skills,” he explained.
“I guess that’s reasonable,” Zayd said, tossing the question of Dark Energy to the back of his mind and putting all of his attention on Wing Leader Tael. “Where do we start then?”
“Come back tomorrow, the recorders captured our match, I’ll take a look through the recording and see where it looks like the biggest gaps that we need to address are,” Tael said, briefly displaying a holographic projection of their fight, accompanied by several annotations that Zayd wasn’t able to read.
“You have a fighting style that tucks your weapon in close to your body before you unleash your strikes but you’re going to struggle to adapt that to wearing a suit of combat armor unless we can retrain a few of your habits,” the Fae warrior continued. “There are other things as well, we’ll discuss them when we meet tomorrow. I know we don’t have much time, Champion, but I promise, within ten days, you’ll be ready for your first field exercise!”