Choosing Violence (Part 2)

They turned to see Conrad, sipping a steaming drink. He had a walking staff in his free hand.

“What are you getting, Light Bringer?” he asked.

They both stood up quickly. Idris faster than Eana, his excitement palpable.

“Training,” Idris said, then added a moment later, “If… you still want to.”

Conrad regarded him over his drink letting Idris stew in his own thoughts for a moment before he winked and nodded, “Course. Hands ready, Healer,” he said.

Eana held out her hands and Conrad tossed her the staff, “You’re going to need something to use as a weapon. I’m assuming, Idris, that the hammer there is going to be your weapon of choice.”

Idris hefted the tool. Eana felt stupid for not figuring out that him lugging it all this way had to mean something but at the same time she was glad he hadn’t tried to use it during the fight with Tomme. Things might have turned out even worse.

“That’s a good start. Not a proper warhammer but it’s made well enough if you can crush rocks with it,” Conrad said, “Let’s get someplace with some space to work and not so many people.”

He led them toward the edge of town. The somewhat crowded downtown area around the inn gave way to more sparse buildings and, after a few minutes they arrived at the adventurer’s camp.

Eana felt eager tension radiating off of Idris. She had been to the camp numerous times to accompany Gendra healing broken bones, poison, or myriad other injuries sustained fighting the creatures of Chaos and the Hive Dungeon. But Idris had only ever interacted with the adventurers in passing or at the Inn.

The camp itself was unimpressive considering the nearly two years it had been around. The adventurers had quickly filled up all available lodging in the town soon after the first of them had begun arriving. And so the rest of them found space where they could, with most of them eventually settling together in what had previously been a mostly open space past the southeast edge of town, just on their side of the bridge toward Confluence.

Tents for the most part with some semi-permanent sheds and small houses were scattered haphazardly around the main road into and out of town, with the only uniformity coming from the unobstructed road itself. Adventurers in various states of dress and wakefulness glanced up at them as they went by or gave respectful acknowledgement to Conrad.

It wasn’t much to look at, but looking at how Idris took it in, it might as well have been a masterfully laid out military camp full of professional soldiers. And in that world he was walking through with their general.

Conrad led them to a clearing among trees and tents with a couple of practice dummies set up on springy stands staked deep in the ground. Without preamble he motioned at the vaguely human shaped things and said, “Show me what you’ve got.”

The siblings stared at him. Eana, for her part, suddenly felt extremely awkward holding the staff.

“What?” Idris asked.

“The dummies. Hit them,” Conrad said, sipping his tea, “Consider it a warmup.”

Idris glanced at her and shrugged. He walked up to the nearest dummy and started swinging. His blows were hard but the dummy didn’t show any visible damage. It just swayed slightly with each swing, coming back for more.

Eana stepped up and, taking her cues from Idris, held the staff a bit more like it had a heavy end like Idris’s hammer and started swinging. After only a minute or so she felt tired. Her joints and hands hurt from the vibrations and the rebound of the staff on the dummy and the motions were so unfamiliar to her.

Idris though? He didn’t look like he had even begun to break a sweat. He swung faster, harder, and was using a weapon with a ten pound weight for a head.

“I guess this is pretty easy compared to a day in the mines,” Eana said, unable to keep her struggle for breath out of her voice.

Idris huffed out a fake laugh, “I literally,” he said in between swings, “do this all day.” He kept swinging, occasionally changing the angle of his strikes but there was a tension to his posture and none of the fancy spinning she sometimes caught him practicing at when he thought nobody was watching.

She wondered how much this meant to him, and how much he felt Conrad’s eyes on his back. She looked over at the veteran adventurer, still watching them over his tea.

He noticed her watching him and called out, “You warm now, Healer?” Eana nodded and hoped that the rest of their training for today wouldn’t be as embarrassing as putting her stamina on display. He called out to Idris, “That’ll do, Light Bringer.”

Idris stopped hammering away at the dummy and turned, barely breathing any harder than normal.

Eana tried to capture that feeling of complete rightness that the thought of becoming a warrior had given her only half an hour earlier, but looking at herself next to Idris the idea had never seemed more ridiculous.

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“You’ve got a strong swing, and your stamina is clearly not lacking,” Conrad said, “But your form is the form of a man breaking rocks.”

The two siblings glanced at each other, unsure what to make of the comment.

“Learning to fight has several components - the two most visible being technique and skills. Let me show you what I mean.” He held out a hand for Idris’s hammer then walked up to the training dummy.

“Your stance is narrow, you’re not expecting any movement from your target and so you’ve no need to worry about unbalancing,” he took a few swings at the dummy much as Idris had.

“It’s powerful, you get hard blows, but it’s not as powerful as it could be or as balanced. If you widen your stance,” he did and shifted himself back an extra step from the dummy, “you can move more easily and maintain the kind of distance that lets you strike hard without overbalancing or becoming over exposed.”

He started swinging through simple angles, but rather than just crossways and down he would step into strikes and back out, swiping up with backswings and allowing the momentum of the hammer to assist in his movements. And he didn’t just stand still - he stepped around, simulating motion as if he and his opponent were circling. First left, then right, now circling, now darting in and behind.

Eana’s jaw dropped as she watched him move. It was fluid, graceful, almost the movement of a dancer. Idris was just as impressed as she was, having already set his feet in a posture imitating something of what he saw in Conrad.

Conrad slowed his motion and eased into a relaxed posture, hammer head on the ground in front of him as he rested his hands on the haft. “Technique then,” he said, “is the precise way and how of our movements and strikes. Strength matters, as does stamina and speed, but it all needs technique to make it effective.

“Next is skills. This morning you learned that normal human speed and strength is nothing when matched against somebody with skills. And the hardest hitting skills on Order’s path won’t save a warrior who doesn’t have the technique to put them to use. You way overmatch Tomme in strength but that made you cocky. Tomme used Adrenaline Rush to ensure you couldn’t touch him, but his attacks were unempowered - they were pure technique.”

He paused a moment and let them contemplate the lesson, though Eana was getting the distinct impression that this training was fast becoming all about Idris, and to Conrad she wasn’t anything more than a reluctant add on.

“So,” Idris said, looking thoughtful, “I’m out of balance?”

“In more ways than one,” Conrad chuckled, “And we can’t completely fix your technique. Not today. But we can plant a seed.”

He motioned for them to move back to the dummies and demonstrated a few swinging angles and striking positions, nothing ground breaking but just watching Conrad perform a few simple motions gave her a ton to work on when he set them to it.

Not that he was bothering to correct her form.

He made countless small adjustments to Idris’s posture, counted cadence as he swung, forced him to slow, then speed up, then pause, then begin again from a different stance or angle.

Eana followed along as best she could but the most she got when she dared ask was a quick “Like this” as Conrad demonstrated before again focusing on Idris, or a thumbs up or gesture to keep going.

After a half hour or so of this, neglect or not, Eana was tired in muscles she was sure she had never used before. Even Idris had begun to sweat some time before but showed no signs of the strain Eana was feeling.

To her amazement, a small prompt had opened up. Subconsciously she had minimized it, preferring instead to focus on the “lesson.” Now, with a moment to breathe, she took it in.

(Training) Experience Points Earned

Total: 25XP

That was a nice bonus. She hadn’t expected to earn anything just swinging away at a practice dummy.

“You’re going to need to keep at this. Practice the basic motions we did here today with movement. Get fluid there and we’ll have a foundation to build on before we get into the next phase of your training.”

The way Conrad was talking it was as if Idris was already one of the Seekers and Eana could see the effect it was having on her brother. He stood straighter, held his chin a little higher. He looked hopeful in ways she had never seen in him after reassuring speeches from their father about how he’d get to spend his future.

A small voice inside Eana told her to ask Conrad about her future. Did she have potential outside of just healing which, to be honest, hadn’t been the path to respect and love she had expected. And maybe there was even a place for her in a band like the Seekers. Healers were rare and definitely useful in a fight… she just needed training so it wouldn’t turn out like it did when she tried to heal the adventurers in Breakthrough.

She stretched out a hand, tentatively, for a question. He would answer. It’s not like he was being rude. He was just more interested in her brother, that was all. Totally normal for an adventurer to take an interest in somebody with Idris’s stats and practically ignore a Healer…

He didn’t notice her. And then, the moment passed.

She could come back to it. It’s not like he would say anything different other than to tell her to get stronger and less tired or something.

Probably.

“We’ve fiddled with technique, so it’s time for what you’re really here for,” Conrad was saying, “Skills.”

He smiled but a moment later looked perplexed at the expression on Idris’s face.

He continued forward anyway, “What do you know about skill progression along Order’s path? Even for general skills or Mining or even your Light Mage class.”

Idris looked embarrassed as he replied, “Not a lot. I can see a few skills available to me when I check my progression but dad always told me not to invest in anything. I think maybe to keep me from doing it on my own he didn’t tell me much about any of it.”

“Really?” Eana asked, surprised. Gendra had explained progression along paths to her almost immediately and had helped her acquire a number of general skills that would assist her as a healer, as well as given her the insight to discover skills in her class. Assess was essential to her work in healing but was only a general skill.

“Yeah,” Idris said.

Conrad only nodded, “It’s also possible that he just doesn’t know much better. It’s nothing against your dad, folks out here are just isolated. I haven’t seen a single tier two class or even mastery of the tier one’s that some have managed to get. It’s like your hammer. You can look at it and know it’s a shaft and a metal head, but that doesn’t tell you how to focus your efforts into skills to know how to actually make a replacement if you had to. You get stuck.”

“Stunted,” Idris said, bitterly.

“Right,” Conrad said, “Even folks with a class or,” he gestured at Eana, “a well meaning mentor can end up stunted when measured against an adventuring band like the Seekers.”

He beamed magnanimously, “That’s where I come in. I keep the Seekers pretty well rounded, but I’ve never seen somebody more born to class as a Warrior than you so that’s where we’ll start you. In time when you’re ready to advance tiers, you can make your own more reasoned decisions.”

Idris’s mouth dropped open, “Advance tiers?”