Oliver Hudcalon

It was fair to say, the next morning wasn’t the best one for me. When I woke up, all of my muscles were sore with exhaustion from yesterday, so I began crying. At that point, it was hard to determine whether it was my intention or not. I just felt like crying. Needless to say, that woke my parents up.

Well, not much changed from the usual. I got fed, they had their breakfast and my mom started the lessons with Evelyn without losing much time. However, the stare with my father just afterwards got weird quickly.

I was exhausted, my muscles were sore, and my motivation levels were down to the ground. I had this almost telepathic understanding with my father, so he caught on to my pained and slightly embarrassed look quickly.

“Come on, buddy. Up, up, up!” he said as he picked me up. “We’ll take things lighter today. Remember, however you might be feeling, discipline and consistency is key to improve on everything, and anything,” a proud smile crept to his face. I could also feel my weak face muscles trying to lift my lips up.

He took me to our backyard again, and gave me my sword.

“Yesterday was, how you say it, was a bit of a fluke,” he began. “We sprung straight up to action without adorning you with any sort of knowledge.”

Curling my lips downwards, I nodded.

“Then, let’s start. First is movement,” he assumed a similar position to the plow stance from yesterday. Then he took a half step forwards.

“This is called advancing,” he took the same step backwards. “And this is a retreat.” I nodded at him to continue.

“The key factor is to not change your leading foot. If you’ve noticed, before I took my step, my left foot was in front. It still is,” I took a look at his feet, then nodded again.

“You don’t cross your legs while advancing or retreating. Other than that, generally you don’t want to take your other foot from the ground before the first one landed,” he demonstrated. He moved his left foot forwards, then the moment it landed followed the movement by his right foot. It seemed simple enough, so I gave a try myself.

“Impressive,” my father let out. “Good job,” he continued. “Now to passing steps. Don’t mind the fancy name, it’s very similar to a regular step. Just keep your lead foot fixed, then cross the other. Mind it, this changes your lead foot.”

That was another simple one, so I managed it just fine.

“Good, now to leaps,” my father said without missing a beat. “It is very similar to advancing, but instead of taking a half step forward with your leading foot, you spring off of your rear foot,” he leaped forwards. I inspected him leaping a few times, and got it right.

“Well, the basic part is over. Hard part is to hard-engrave these moves to your brain, so you can comfortably apply them without thinking about what you're doing,” he continued. Then he suddenly began instructing,”Advance, advance, retreat, backward-”

I could only stare blankly for a few seconds.

“What’re you thinking? Come on, buddy. Advance, advance, retreat, backwards, forward-” I tried my best to follow his instruction. It was way too hard compared to how simple it seemed. We went on for about ten to fifteen minutes before we finally stopped.

“Wow, you really are a fast learner,” he let out in amazement again. I was pretty sure it was just because his instructions were so clear, but I let it slide.

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“Well, let’s sit down for now,” he crossed his leg to sit. From that point, we continued with theory based lessons. He started with guards and stances.

Stances were basically poses that allowed making certain moves easier and quicker. Exactly how the wrath and the plow stances from yesterday allowed head level slashes and powerful thrusts respectively. Guarding was a similar thing, it basically meant to stay in a position that allowed you to take both defensive and offensive actions. A stance was a move to do, while guarding was a state to be in. Then we continued with attacks and parries.

“Imagine dividing your frontal space into four parts,” he said as he made a big cross with his hand. “Upper right, upper left, lower right, lower left,” he continued as he showed each space respectively. “Each parry move protects one of these four spaces. I give them numbers to keep in mind. So your first parry would be protecting your upper right, second parry upper left, third lower right and fourth lower left,” he got up and showed the four simple parry positions.

“Well, we code the attack in a similar way. First parry refers to your opponent protecting his upper right, so an attack to the first zone would mean an attack to your opponent's upper right. Which could come from your second or third zones,” he got in front of the dummy to demonstrate.

“Let’s see your parries, Oliver,” he said as he gestured to me to get up. I got up, picked up my sword, and did the four simple parry moves.

“Good, though you can spread your legs a bit more,” he corrected me.

“Well, let’s start then. One, three, four, two, one, one…” I stumbled only for a second this time, then started doing parries as commanded.

“That opened you nice enough, to think you didn’t want to do anything physical today,” my father said with a small laugh. Now that he said that, I really felt more rejuvenated than before.

“Don’t take this to hearth Oliver, but that’s enough entertainment for now,” he suddenly wore a serious expression. My face turned curious from shocked in a split second.

“I started directly with sword lessons, but that’s not how we teach swordsmanship in the Hudcalon family. We’re unarmed combatants before we’re swordsmen. Starting from tomorrow I’ll teach you the essence of our techniques. For now, you’re dismissed.”

Although the sudden dismissal had left me lingering for a minute, soon I realised my dismissal wasn’t sudden at all. It was already mid-afternoon.

After the adrenaline and excitement of my exercises washed off me, hunger and exhaustion hit me like a truck. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before my mother finished her own exercise with my sister and came to pick me up. I got fed and was sent to bed. Tomorrow’s dreams were a threat to my good night’s sleep, but my infant body was more than capable of falling asleep.

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“Oliver, since you haven’t grown enough to go outside yet, you don’t know but the Hudcalon swordsmen and their swordsmanship is actually quite famous. Wanna learn why?” I didn’t even remember clearly how I ended up in the garden with my father again, but I wasn’t complaining. And as it turned out, he knew me and my curiosity very well as I found myself nodding helplessly. He smirked like a merchant who found an easy customer.

“Apart from our unique way of using mana augmentations, we use a flexible system unlike other families who prefer a set of strict instructions dubbed as techniques. It’s easier to raise soldiers that way, sure, but this is the only way to raise true swordsmen,” my father exclaimed as he drew his sword.

Following my gaze and realising how ridiculous his ‘proud’ pose might seem like, he corrected himself and cleared his throat. I didn’t mind though, it was clear how much pride he took in his family’s teachings.

“Well, it’s not like it doesn’t have its cons. It’s a method that depends heavily on both the person learning and teaching, and their synergy with each other. But after the last two days I spent with you buddy, I have no doubts that we’ll succeed.” In response, I mimicked his ‘proud’ pose, to which I was rewarded with a shuffle in my hair.

“Make fun all you want little man, you’ll soon understand what I meant, and how lucky you’re to be my boy.”

We quickly started my training with unarmed stances. I immediately understood what he meant by having flexible teaching ways. Instead of teaching me three direct stances as neutral, offensive and defensive stances, he began by explaining what made what stance neutral, offensive or defensive. How keeping your hands down allowed for movements that gave time for arms to reach a higher speed, hence making any stance that kept arms up an offensive one. In a similar sense, keeping hands up covered more of the body, turning the stance into a defensive one.

In my old life, I’d always wished for a mentor who taught like this—someone who showed the why, not just the how. But there was something deeper here too: Tristan wasn’t just teaching me as a student. He was teaching me as his son.