Two days after Fuyuko's sparring session with the champion trainees, Bellona waited with anticipation as her 'prey' came to where she and Xarlug waited. Helena had agreed to this little training bout on behalf of her trainees and had passed on directions to Amrydor and Yugo to head here at dawn.

"Oh bloody hells, of course it's her." Yugo's curse was sweet music to her ears. This was far from the first time they'd met as the temples and monasteries regularly cross-trained with each other.

While Bellona had never been in charge of their training at an organizational level, she had been in charge of specific training sessions that included the pair. What made them especially fun to 'torture' was that they could both take just about any regimen she threw at them, even if neither had yet to best her in a spar.

"Hello boys," she said with a grin, "it's good to see you again. But it seems someone has been getting in trouble with girls again already." Her gaze landed on Amrydor, whom she noted had caught up to her in height.

Amrydor returned her look with a steady gaze of his own as he replied, "We've worked that out and there will be no problems there, Champ- er, Lady Bellona." Despite his bravado, Bellona was pretty certain that she caught a hint of a blush on his cheeks. The youth had grown both tall and wide of shoulder, drawing the eye of more than a few other girls his age or older.

"Hmm, we'll see. Amrydor, Yugo, I want to introduce you to Xarlug, who will be helping me with your training this morning. Xarlug, please meet Trainee Amrydor and Trainee 'Yugo', or so he is called."

Bellona had heard that Yugo often had authorized absences, now she knew why. It had been obvious enough that he'd been a noble's son going incognito for whatever reason, she just hadn't expected him to turn out to be Prince Gou.

Said prince looked pained as he said, "Can we please not play with names? I am quite happy to leave things as they have been."

Amrydor grinned at his friend and said, "I'm just amused that Fuyuko called you out on it so fast. It took me years to figure it out, and I had to stalk you first."

"Alright you two," Bellona said, "enough of that. Xarlug, you get to start with Amrydor here since it seems he's finally picked a favored weapon and it's a polearm. I'll see if Yugo here has learned anything since I last ran a training session for this lot."

She'd always had an edge on both boys, being three years older than Yugo to begin with and having the advantage of the faster maturation of orcs. Amrydor's height and weight had him most often training with people older than him, but it also meant that Bellona had even more years of experience on him.

As it was a training session rather than a straight spar, after each contact and clash they separated, and critiques and suggestions were given. Bellona was satisfied that Yugo's growth had mostly kept pace with her own, leaving them with about the same gap in power and skill as before. However, she was also not taking advantage of her elemental skill set, yet. This was about combat techniques and needed to stay focused on weapons and footwork.

After about an hour, she called their first break. All of them could use it, even in the slower pace of a training session there was still plenty of exertion. It would be far too soon if this was a stamina-building exercise, but alertness and energy were needed for learning.

Bellona was pleased with how both of these young men were shaping up, but she wasn't going to let them off the hook yet. Once everyone had their wind back, it was time to switch partners. She'd been keeping an eye on Xarlug and Amrydor, and while Xarlug had the overall advantage, their training session had been closer to equals as each had techniques to teach the other.

Now it was time to find out how well Amrydor faired against axe and shield.

As it turned out, fairly well. While his war scythe wasn't as good at thrusting as other polearms, the curved blade could also maneuver around shields easier and attempt to hook them out of the way, and the young man had the strength and agility to keep her from knocking the longer weapon out of the way readily.

A polearm's greatest weakness was its slow speed. If you fully commit to a swing and miss, it's very hard to recover quickly. Amrydor chose not to commit his full strength to a swing, content to probe and attempt to work his way past her defenses rather than trying to overpower her.

For most people, she'd find the approach timid. But she knew him, and he'd always been a patient fighter. Now that she knew the nature of that strangely serene battle aura, Bellona couldn't help but think of it as the patience of death. All things come to it in time.

Well, almost all things. People like Gil and Satsuki defied that expectation. Nor would the boy's patience be enough to overcome Bellona's defenses. "You're strong, but not strong enough to avoid committing to your strikes." As she spoke, Bellona demonstrated her point by slapping the war scythe with her shield at the same time it came sweeping in. Without having committed his strength to the attack, she was able to knock it away and give herself the opening to move in and strike with her axe.

He adjusted in time to block with the haft of his weapon, which was certainly better than nothing, but Bellona shook her head as they reset for another exchange and said, "That works here, but we're both using wooden weapons. Try that in battle with live steel and you are likely to have the haft broken in one or two strikes."

Amrydor frowned and then sighed, "I know. There's something else I'm missing, maybe some fine adjustment to the shape or such, or maybe it's a technique I haven't figured out. It feels right overall, but there's a lot of refinement left."

Hmm. Bellona checked an idea with Mordecai and then said, "If you delve, Mordecai can ensure that there's a series of variants for you to try. Most of them will be normal dungeon constructs like these are, but by the time you are really pushing yourselves he believes that he can have your ideal customization figured out."

"Oh? Huh, that sounds nice. But, um, I'm supposed to be training with Fuyuko."

She snorted at that. "The girl can meet you at any of the rest points and train with you there. There are shortcuts for a reason and she knows how to travel the warrens. You're here primarily to get training, so that's your first duty."

"No." His denial was flat and hard, which surprised Bellona. "My first duty is to protect and help others, always. I believe that there is no one else here who can help Fuyuko in this specific issue as well as I can, though I am willing to be proven wrong."

A moment later, Amrydor seemed to recognize the tone which he'd spoken to her in, and he cleared his throat before he said, "Er, but, um, your recommendation lets me do both, so, um, thank you Lady Bellona."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Bellona started laughing and Amrydor's look of consternation did not help her stop, but she recovered before too long and gave him a grin. "Oh, I've always liked you, but that was perfect for a future champion. Absolutely and unabashedly sincere in its delivery. Also, we had already drawn Mordecai's focus this way, so he heard your comment."

She took a moment to organize what she'd just been told. "He'd like you to know that you are almost correct. He can not reproduce your exact aspect of death, though with a bit of work he can put more energy into a general-purpose aura aspected with the concept of death. Fuyuko's training would indeed go better with you. However, Cliodhna probably can produce a very similar aura to yours, if she so chooses."

Amrydor shivered and asked, "Just who is she, anyway? I felt weirdly helpless in front of her, but it didn't feel scary until after she'd left."

Bellona shook her head and said, "Not my place to talk about that one more, and no, I don't know what connection she might have to you. Now, back to training! Head over to the fence there, Mordecai created a selection of variants for you to try out."

When Bellona was satisfied with the progress of their training she called for a pause and gathered everyone together to discuss the training so far and exchange thoughts and observations. They'd been doing this sort of training long enough to know how to give feedback of their own, especially for each other, and were not afraid to ask questions either.

After that, it was time for a bit of fun. Well, fun for her at least. "Alright," Bellona said as she cracked her neck and stretched, "here's the deal. If you two make a good enough showing, you get to have dessert with your lunch. Do decently, you at least get good food. But if I am too unimpressed, I'm going to feed you stale bread and dry cheese."

The pair eyed her suspiciously before glancing at each other.

"You know," Yugo said, "I've heard some rumors about her cooking, but I haven't had a chance to find out the truth."

"Well," Xarlug interjected, "I don't know about your rumors, but I can verify she makes the best food I've ever had." He headed to the outside of the ring and added with a smile, "But I admit I might be biased. She wooed me with her cooking."

Funny, that's not exactly how Bellona remembered it going down. She gave him some side eye but the unrepentant man just winked at her. Fine, she'd deal with him later. "This is going to be a full spar, so I want to see everything you've got. Two on one, and I am fully expecting to come out on top."

Young men were easily riled sometimes, and it made her happy to see the spark light up in their eyes. This was going to be interesting.

When the spar started, Amrydor took the lead attack and used the long reach of his weapon to engage her shield in an attempt to create an opening for Yugo, who was trying to come in at her side. But this was a full spar and almost all powers were on the table. Instead of wood contacting wood and briefly sticking from the impact, the tip of his war scythe met her angled shield and a briefly conjured coating of polished stone with an even thinner layer of slick ice.

His tip slid off to the side, guided by her maneuver to twist toward Yugo.

Both of them disengaged without hitting each other and paused as they tried to understand what just happened before they attempted another attack.

Bellona kept her elemental manipulations subtle at first, but after several minutes Yugo tried to hit her with his lightning breath attack. Instead of dodging it, Bellona created an arc of metal that coated her her shield and then went across the back of her shoulders to guide up the haft of her axe. Combined with her own elemental control of lightning, she was able to guide most of the blast through that arc and aim the wild energy toward Amrydor.

Most of it. She could feel a few spots where tendrils had made their way beneath the padding under her armor, but the pain was minor and ignorable for now.

The maneuver had caused the tight blast to disperse into a wider but less intense blast, so while Amrydor was able to avoid most of it, he still caught the edge of it. He swore as his leg briefly went numb and unresponsive, but retained enough composure to force himself into a roll that sent him away from her and let him come up on one knee while his leg recovered function.

Yugo smiled widely and said, "So I heard correctly, you are Marked. I hadn't heard what clan, but I'm guessing something elemental. Metal and lightning at least, hmm, Amry, expect any element until we figure out her set."

"Oh, I'll tell you my set," Bellona said sweetly. That made Yugo visibly nervous and she took delight in telling him, "Everything."

"Frozen hells," Yugo responded as she launched her attack. The earth under her feet had shifted to give her an ideal surface for her leap and the wind helped launch her toward him, whirling as fire blazed over her shield and axe.

He dodged, but she hadn't been expecting to land the blow directly. Her attack carried through into the ground which then exploded into a burst of fire and stone shrapnel that he could not entirely avoid. The speed of the spar picked up from there, but Bellona still had the clear advantage. For one thing, she could judiciously add stone to the edge of her axe when she had a clean hit on armor, increasing the force of the impact as stone gave less than wood.

Using metal on an attack would have been closer to a live steel spar than she was comfortable getting into with these two.

They were good, and as the back and forth increased in intensity she could feel their wills and spirit focus and sharpen to the point that the wood in their hands was more dangerous than sharp steel in the hands of an inexperienced warrior.

But she'd had plenty of practice against that thrice-be-damned Mordecai and all of his blasted tricks, in addition to the wide variety of inhabitants she'd been both training and training with. Yugo's strikes were fast and his hands would often blur during his attacks, but she could still read his attacks while tracking Amrydor.

Meanwhile, Amrydor had started to develop a technique with his war scythe. The blade began drifting oddly and it wasn't always where it seemed to be, but it wasn't quite enough to keep Bellona from dodging or deflecting the attacks.

The spar ended after Yugo attempted a new trick that didn't quite go right. She saw him swallow hard just as he leapt at her, and lightning blasted out of his elbows right when he struck out at her in a double-handed attack. The burst of speed and power made his strike land solidly against her shield instead of letting her deflect it as she normally would.

All of his wooden claws shattered against her shield, and even with her reinforcement of earth and metal, Bellona's shield cracked in half from the impact.

But instead of trying to follow up his attack, Yugo leapt back with an oath and began ripping off the metal parts of the armor on his arms. Bellona could smell scorched hair and skin and could guess what had happened.

"END!" she called out as she dropped her axe and shield and rushed over to help. The metal of his armor had channeled too much of the lightning without proper control and overheated, burning him even through the hide padding.

After they'd gotten the metal off, Bellona cooled down his burns before applying a healing prayer to make sure the burns were reduced to superficial skin damage. She deliberately did not quite heal him all the way.

"Idiot, trying a stunt like that without practice. I'm not sure I should let Fuyuko near you two, the girl gets enough bad ideas on her own." When she was done cussing Yugo out, Bellona sighed and shook her head. "Well, you earned dessert at least, but there is another price. You are going to practice that trick all afternoon, just without the armor."

At Amrydor's snicker, she whirled toward him. "Oh, don't think you are getting let off either boy. I couldn't entirely make out what you were doing, and I suspect you aren't sure either, but I figured out one thing: it's tied to your aura. So you are going to maintain your full battle aura while you drill with the war scythe variants."

A battle aura was mostly about projecting one's spirit and will into the area around you. While most did not have a distinct aspect or sensation the way that Amrydor's did, they all took energy to maintain. It was going to be exhausting to maintain for that long.

"Now come on, we're going to eat first. You're going to need a lot of food to power through this. Oh, and Yugo, I've got some elemental salts you might want to try. Just don't try any of them other than the one I hand you. If you don't have a handle on the elemental energies they can be bad for you, and you don't have the control to handle more than a light dash of lightning salts."

She certainly didn't have any 'death' salts. Ice/cold salts seemed the closest, but not quite right, so she wasn't going to give Amrydor any of them for now.