Vac sat in his room racking his head over her words and the task ahead of him. So he sat and pondered the issue.
‘Alright, I'll assume she didn't mean to get rid of my fear and anxiety, since that doesn't really make sense. So what else did she mean? Maybe understanding its root cause? Or something else? Well, let me think about it for a moment. There isn't really a logical root cause to fear and anxiety. It's irrational. So maybe that itself is my answer? I need to remain rational, and that will ease the fear and anxiety and make it less impactful.’
When Vac tried to use the trick with that in mind however, he still failed.
‘Figures. Even if I'm on the right track, I guess it won't work unless I internalize it.’
Unsure of how to progress, he decided he needed a change of pace. And so he sought out his granny. She was busy reading Vesta’s collection of books. It pales in comparison to what he'd seen when with Medea, but it was more than enough to satisfy his granny. There were some old books that even Medea hadn't possessed.
He knocked on the open door to alert her to his arrival and said, “Hey, Granny. Are you up for a spar?”
She smiled and closed the book while casually getting up and stretching out her body.
“Why not? It's been a while, after all. Show me how much you've grown, Vac.”
They decided to have it on the rooftops, since it was the most spacious place available. The rules they'd decided on were simply based on whomever got the first solid hit. It was a fairly spacious area. While there was some variance in the heights of the buildings, it was not so much that they couldn't traverse from one to the other easily enough. There were some damp spots here and there. They started at opposite ends of the twenty foot square rooftop of the building they were staying at, Morta taking the same solid stance that she'd used for a long time, while Vac shifted around on the balls of his feet as he worked out his plans.
‘Alright, I can do this. Granny is still a better fighter than me. She used to beat me ten out of ten times after all. But I've gotten stronger. All I need is to pull off that one win. Now let's see, what was it Medea said? The three key elements to winning are to throw your opponent off their rhythm, to have a flexible yet stable base strategy, and to always have a trick up your sleeve. Let's see if I can do that. I've been tinkering with this plan for a while now.’
Vac began by using the die to throw a few stones at Morta and charging forward with a gust of wind. A seemingly straightforward attack. Morta calmly blew out a burst of air to knock away the thrown stones as Vac closed in. As Vac knew, her style was based around counterattacks and exploiting gaps in defenses with quick strikes, while keeping herself safe with solid footwork. An elegant and precise style, which made her one of the best warriors in their people's history in her heyday. And that was what he had to shatter.
As Vac closed in, instead of attacking, he shifted the earth he stood on just as she launched a counterattack that would have addressed what was his head-on feint attack. The swift gust of wind released by her casual swipe at the air hit the earth he had just shifted, allowing him to avoid her, just as he spun around to her back. Her response was instantaneous, as she released a gale sweep with a flick of the wrist that would've knocked him down had he tried to attack. But that was never his plan. He instead shook the earth at her feet to knock her off balance, and then released a blast of wind that she dodged by jumping up and away. He then quickly took a container of water and manipulated its contents towards where he expected her to land. However, she simply released a gust of wind to move mid-air, away from the spot.
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‘I figured she'd do that. But it's still in place.’
Vac took off running around across the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, seemingly at random while throwing attacks from a distance. He zigged and zagged, sliding up and down walls and rooftops as necessary. As he figured, she chose to chase him because she knew it would be too draining to maintain a defensive wind barrier against his constant attacks. Moreover, she knew any attempt she could make at long range would be foiled by Vac manipulating the earth at his feet to dodge by effectively sliding around at high speeds. He'd been practicing this one for a while.
He ran around until she seemed sufficiently drained and vaguely irritated. Though Morta followed along and chased him, they were both aware her stamina wasn’t what it used to be. And then he returned back to their initial location, still moving at random to obfuscate that fact. He had left something back at their initial location he needed in his plan.
Back on that starting rooftop, he then left a subtle opening in his next attack, a simple forward charge, almost the same as his opening move. Morta took the opening as he expected. She crushed a small rock to dust and manipulated it with precise wind manipulation to block his sight, released a small electric shock as she closed in, and to end the fight moved behind him to deliver the final strike. As he'd expected.
Vac still was able to ‘see’ her moments through the earth, a nice trick he'd learnt from Medea, and so as soon as she moved behind him he launched a small rock at her from below. Caught off guard, she hesitated less than a millisecond before recovering, pivoting as she dodged it. Vac capitalized on her shock and threw a punch that she was still unsurprisingly able to block. But the real attack came from behind her, as he manipulated the water puddle he'd left there early on to strike her in the back. It was an underhand blow, but it was the first one he had managed to land on his grandma.
As she rubbed her back in surprise, Vac leapt in in celebration and yelled, “Hell yeah, I told you I would get a win off of you eventually! Take that, Granny.”
She ruffled his hair affectionately and said, “You've grown, Vac. Well done.”
Vac smiled as he nodded and said, “Of course. I'm just getting started.”
As he bathed in the satisfaction of victory, her smile turned sly as she said, “So, her name was Medea, wasn't it.”
“Um, what does that have to do with anything?”
Vac felt strangely embarrassed and awkward when it came to talking about Medea with his grandma, for a reason he didn't quite understand or want to acknowledge.
She continued with the same expression on her face, “Well she was your… training partner, wasn't she? Seems like your time together was more than productive. She did a good job with you. Indeed, I'm very pleased you met her, I was worried it'd never happen.”
“Uh, you were worried what wouldn't happen?”
“I wonder.”
“Oh, c'mon Granny!”
Alexander cautiously observed the so-called walls of the City of Nine Dragons. Although he preferred its other name, the City of Darkness. Unlike with Sicily, the Romans hadn't taken the time to infiltrate this city using false identities, and so he had to figure out a way to enter unseen on his own. It wouldn't have been too difficult, if he didn't have to also bring in certain things with him for the plan he'd been assigned to carry out. The rare few allies they had inside weren't willing to take much of a risk to help him.
And so he was forced to carefully scout out the walls for quite a while. But his effort paid off, as he successfully figured out a way in.
‘It will be carried out tomorrow. If all goes perfectly to plan, there should be nothing leading back to me or Rome. And even if that much fails, we'll still make important progress. As long as I succeed in the assassination that is.’