The taste of dirt has never bothered me all that much. In a way it was somewhat pleasant, the grit it leaves between your teeth however is rather unfortunate. Adding blood into the mixture surprisingly forms little globs and patches of it in your mouth.
Spitting out such an occurrence of flavors, I dig my fingers into the ground beneath me and push off. Teacher Limrik had said I wasn't allowed to simply stand, as combat practice was meant to hone relevant abilities and habits that would make both fighting and sneaking more effective. Besides, Alfos wasn't one to let a foe regain themselves.
Deciding to take one of the more mobile options, I push both of my feet off the ground and tuck into a roll. Hearing a whistling behind me, I quickly strike out with a palm to the ground and change trajectory before hearing a thunk hit the spot my center-mass had just occupied.
Sticking out a leg and catching the ground with my heel, I allow my inertia to carry my crouched form forward into a full-bodied sprint as another projectile narrowly misses my left shoulder.
I take a moment to note that it came diagonally from the right side of my body and try to think my way out of this situation.
The edge of the sparring ring is around ten paces away, I'll maybe get to six before Alfos manages to hit me in a straight line.
I'm going to have to turn towards him eventually, and preferably on my own terms, so the first move is to jump away from an easy trajectory.
Doing so, I manage to dodge another small disc, little metal blades my opponent and fellow Champion can fling with but a touch and some concentration. Far more useful than the nubby little horns I have.
The next moment sends me skipping at a sharp left as three more of the blades are thrown vertically at my torso as I land. I take the moment to spin and risk a glance at my current sparring partner.
A human, though lacking many of the traces of pink normally affluent throughout their skin. Sickeningly pale, with hues of green and yellow to cover the undertone of his skin in it's stead. His eyes, a jade-green, are furrowed and intense as he charges towards me. His hair is tied and woven into an armored headband, the crude iron of the piece blending into his slate-grey lockes.
He wears leather armor with small strips of metal inlaid to it, readying his body for the weight of heavier variations to his equipment as he gets older. His gauntlets specifically look rather gruesome at the moment, covered in thin layers of the 'Slip-disks' as he has taken to calling them. Underneath are scaled arms and hands, his true first trait which allows him to channel a small amount of wind and force to launch the small projectiles about has hard as one could throw a stone.
A foot clad in thicker iron plate slams into the ground as the boy launches himself at me, attempting to take control of the flow of combat while I have a stall in momentum. I widen my eyes slightly to give him the impression he's caught me fully off-guard.
While there was little chance he consciously registered the action, somewhere in the back of his brain it would register. If there was one thing I could always rely on in all our spars, it's that Alfos gets overconfident when his opponent shows an opening.
His left arm cuts forward in a sloppy jab, and two more of the disks are hurled at me in near-perfect lines.
Which, of course, is the second weakness I need to exploit.
Planting my own feet and fully coming to a halt, I bend out of the way of the first disk and barely get grazed by the second across my inner thigh. A tinge of pain, but nothing compared to the torment I endure every night, or even the direct hits Alfos himself has managed to land in our previous spars.
Alfos is still slightly angled from being directly in front of me, so I make the snap decision to try and end things here, and use my next move to aim towards his left, a small step.
The boy's eyes narrow as he senses a trick, but things are going to quickly for things to fully process. My next move is to make a large bound to his right as he turns to attempt to throw another set of Slip-disks with his dominant hand, his right, the one with significantly more disks missing than the other gauntlet. That's the third weakness I can use against him, habit.
He releases the blades less than a metre away from me, too close to accurately aim, but to far to hit instantly. The perfect opportunity, or at least as good of one as I'll get in this spar.
Cutting through his trajectory, we're now a mere pace apart. I risk going for the dagger at my belt, several nicks on both the leather around my hip and hand attesting to the result of my previous attempts at a further distance.
Luckily, I have just enough time to bring the blade up to parry a disk headed for my gut, though another lodged itself in my arm for the trouble, the boy having hooked his left arm and delivering a punch beside his ribs from the side opposite to me.
Stepping forward, as Alfos finishes turning yet before he can fully find his footing, I stab forward with the dagger towards his over-stretched shoulder, trying to dig into the soft meat and tendons within his armpit.
His gauntlet from his right side blocks it easily, but he had to cross his arm over while the other had still been recovering, leaving him slightly hunched and with an exposed back.
Being a head shorter than him, there isn't much of a way I can press the advantage I'm momentarily granted, so I just put my full weight into kicking into the back of his leg, just above the fold of his knee.
He drops, though not fully, and I use his calf to launch myself up and drive his knee down. At the apex of my height, I whip around my right hip to deliver a copper-plated knee to the back of Alfos's head.
The band he wears is heavily armored in the front, but for practical reasons requires a small strip to be made of mostly cloth and leather wrap. Of course, this is tied into a knot, which Alfos happens to prefer at the base of his skull. It's hard to say whether the extra material kept him safer as it should, or only served to dig deeper into his nervous system as my blow lands.
I hear a choked "Fu-ack!" from my opponent and swing my knee back before planting my other foot in his ribs to push off and away.
Falling back to the-
Alfos' hand is in one place, then a blur, and then he's grabbing my ankle. He squeezes, hard. His head turns and his eyes lock with mine just as my free foot touches it's toes to the ground. They're bloodshot and blank. Almost like when they starve the kennel wolves before letting them loose to fight to the death for mating rights.
Well, here we go again.
My side hits the ground with enough force to drive the air from my lungs and smash my head into the dirt hard enough that my idiotic 'horn' feels as though it's going to press itself through my skull. I hear a rather loud cracking sound and my shoulder becomes far to angular to be normal.
My body is dragged across the ground, several rocks and some of the more rough plants scratching at my skin. I use the eye that isn't feeling like it's about to pop to see that yes, Alfos is very angry. His face is doing that thing where his eyes open really wide and he's showing his nubby little teeth, and red finally flushes to the surface of his skin.
A part of me is feeling scared of the coming beating admittedly, but he isn't growing scales on his face so it shouldn't be that bad. I shouldn't lose a limb, at the least.
He's screaming something about shit and maime, the rest is hard to hear through the ringing pounding throughout my head. His free hand grabs farther up my leg as the other pulls me down, the nailed fingertips of his gauntlets digging through the rough leather padding of my pants to scratch at my skin.
His eyes remain locked with mine, consumed by rage.
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I cough, spewing a glob of cerulean blood into his face.
The fury intensifies. A few shimmering scales force their way through the skin of his cheeks and forehead.
The fingers wrapped around my angle tightens into a vice. I hear a pop and my foot goes limp. Icy-flames roar up my legs and causes the rest of my injuries to finally register as pinpricks of discomfort. Then that pain too becomes nothing compared to the CRACK that follows as he slams his free hand into my kneecap.
I spend the next several minutes getting pummeled, thrown, kicked, clawed, sliced with my own dagger, getting one of my hands flayed open on his gauntlet, having a few fingers getting caught in then forcefully removed from his mouth, and at some point towards the end he did something called a 'suplex' that he learned a few weeks ago, which was especially painful due to the jarring sensation it shot through my entire spine.
When the Teachers overseeing the match finally had enough of the one-sided affair, or more presumably came to the conclusion that my 'Tithe of Pain for Failure' had been met in lieu of Alfos' rage not subsiding, he was pulled off of my curled and partially mangled form. This time he only had a few strips of my flesh caught in his armor as he was pulled away, which was distantly appreciated by my muddled psyche.
A shadow overcasts me moments later and though I turn my head's towards the sky I can't seem to get my eyes to open as more than slits.
A deep, gravelly voice rumbles above me, Teacher Og-Thar then. The shadow did seem rather large. Teacher Limrik is likely attending to Alfos. The Orcish voice is harsh and gutteral, even though I know this tone to be one of the softer ones the woman could use.
"A good try. A good kick. A poor plan. When met with a great force, you must whittle it down and turn the tides, or strike a dire blow at the start to make the fight your own. The latter is an option you do not have, which you have learned before.
You did not wait for him to tire, thus his rage burned freely. You did not strike to kill. Next time lead him on a chase like the fox does the wolf. When he can no longer chase, attack so he may not run.
Also, stab his heart, not his armpit. You over-reached and took to long to regain your footing. Then kick him in the head. The healers shall not allow his spirit to leave his body, and they will tend to him. He has far less mercy than you. Do not waver to return brutality to an enemy, especially after multiple encounters. A crueler enemy will use your empathy or caution against you, and will be sure to reap revenge if you fail to slay them.
Several of his blades were aimed to cut your throat or blind you. He did not have to defend himself in the same way. Three of your fingers litter the sparring field. Were you not blessed by your God with such powerful natural recovery, you would have died within the first moments of his rampage."
I am nudged by a foot half the size of my torso, which finally elicits a strained groan through my throat.
"Take pride that you lasted longer than before, and you had fewer bones broken. You grow strong quickly, and adapt even faster. In time Alfos' size and strength will mean less. Then your skill and mind will demand of him the price of his arrogance. It is a lesson I learned myself, after pushing a weaker member of my tribe to far after many years."
The ringing had died down enough that I could hear the slight 'shlink' of her armor as she moved, likely finally waving over the healers after her assessment of the fight and subsequent lecture on my deficiencies. Teacher Og-Thar had always been straight-forward in her speech, a by-product of her original language and culture. The first time she greeted me, she very bluntly said that I would squish under her foot just from the weight of her armor.
However, she also never lies, which is why her threats of doing so should she find us unwilling to train still give me a creeping sensation of being prey to an apex predator.
The sounds of several pairs of boots approaching finally allows some of the tension to leave my muscles.
Another woman's voice, this one far softer yet just as aged says "Og-Thar, once I have this young man patched up, the two of us shall have words regarding the safety of these...exercises."
The shadow above me turns slightly, "As many times before. The boy is not dying. He has learned. My duty is done, and yours begins. He will face worse."
As Healer Mervida reaches my side, I hear several huffs and grunts as she lowers herself down to kneel. The staff she uses to hobble along lightly touches my side as a stream of light begins emanating from the gemstone embedded in it's tip. A soft, yet vivid hue of light blue.
With it comes a wave of relief followed by a surge of pain as my flesh and several dozen shards of bone begin pulling themselves back into proper alignment. Another moment of respite before an unbearable itching covers the entirety of my body while the holes, gashes, and bruises across my skin begin to stitch themselves back together.
Finally, my body begins to fully relax and I roll myself to my back. A long breath leaves me as I stare into the sky. The healing wasn't perfect; that would eliminate the muscle growth and flexibility my body gains from exercise, but it's enough that I'll be able to make it through the rest of the day.
"The child requires more mana to heal than most adults, and he's damaged half as badly as most would be given the thrashing he just endured. Before long it will likely take a team of dedicated Healers to keep him in top shape. If the others develop the same resistances and natural energy sinks as he does, we may have to find new recruits!"
"The human... maybe, with the right traits. The others will be...softer. The gnome will never be as tough as this one's gotten to. The other elf will be like most elves; more than a human but lesser than a dwarf. The half-giant will always be resilient, but the mana of life will always go to her easily. You worry to much for an old woman, the young must defend themselves from the wolves and thunder when the mother is out hunting, th-"
As Healer Mervida interrupts Teacher Og-Thar, I finally pull myself of of the haze of pain enough to look over to them.
"-is so the pups will learn to be independent for their adulthood. Yes, I understand the tribal metaphors and importance of training. These children are barely seven! Sometimes you heathens here utterly amaze me with the sheer level of apathy and savagery. If this had happened in Kalitara-!" The woman's lightly armored tunic shook from the force of the Orcish hand landing on it. Her cataract-ridden eyes widen and her pearly white teeth clench as that hand squeezes slightly.
The Orcish woman had lifted her in a moment, her staff dropping and landing across my body. It was heavier than it seemed.
Og-thar's face is hard to see from the ground, but the way her jaw is grinding is a cultural signifier that she was controlling he anger...for now. The eyes of all orcs start out as black, with their characteristic berserker rage causing their iris' to flush a bright crimson. As orcs age, their eyes and corresponding change lighten.
From here, I can see the faint glow of vivid pink magic emanating from the Orcish woman's gaze.
Her hair, loosely braided and held back by a string, seems to bristly slightly. Each follicle takes on a metallic sheen and the tip of each hair seems to emanate danger. In a moment, the slight amount of leniency is gone, her voice becoming a pit of gravel and rusted blades fighting for dominance.
"You are not in the land of humans, training heros. You are in the land of monsters, training soldiers. Know your place, and theirs. I shall tolerate your weakness as I have been ordered, but you are only here to do as you are told. Your orders are to repair the Champions while they train. Not to care for them. Not to insult...heathens, as you said, thousands of miles away from anyone that could stop us from taking off your head after you run out of limbs and a voice to beg for mercy with.
We did not offer to allow you here, your kingdom gave you to us. Like cattle. To save their own skin from the responsibility placed on these children's shoulders. A cow that spurns the yolk is good only for the butcher. Am I being...articulate enough, Healer?"
What little blood is left in the old woman quickly drains from her face as she visibly starts shaking by the end of Teacher Og-thar's speech, for lack of a better word.
The few drops of blood that have sullied the white and gold cloth of Healer Mervida's robe tell me Og-Thar grabbed with her claws, a painful experience as I can personally attest.
"Y-yes, yes very clear. I-I'm s-sorry for my rudeness."
The way the human visibly sags as she is released is almost as disturbing as the slight 'slifft' sound that comes from her shoulder as the pale-green hand the size of her head is pulled away.
Teacher Og-Thar looks down at me, the burning pink just barely beginning to fade from her eyes. "Get up. There is still much to do. Today's training is not over. Death does not wait to sharpen it's blade, nor should you."
The crimson drips landing on me are as much a motivator as the sight of her boot resting beside my head.
......
"It was a good kick!" A high-pitched voice calls out, shortly followed by a thud as the owner of said-voice is hit in the face with a hunk of porridge.
"I tripped!" Yells Alfos, hands slamming onto the table we are all placed at in the dining hall.
"He made you trip." A soft, yet bass-undertoned voice speaks.
It's dinner time, our second and heavier meal of the day. As usual, the various adults that make up the different groups of our Teacher's are at their own tables having quieter conversations than the "Kids table".
I've only managed to land a good blow on Alfos once before, and Leida, the Half-Giant of our group had opened up the nightly conversation by congratulating Alfos on another win.
This had prompted Garbik to shove his giant gnomish nose into the air and congratulate me on loosening some of "The Stinky Human's" teeth, in his words. A few minutes of back and forth later, and here we are.
"He did not! I was already falling when he struck! And it was a cheap shot!"
"Like how you kept throwing your little disks at his back? Or how about the time you took sand from the kennels and kept in in your pocket? Ooh, what about when y-"
At this point Alfos is going over the table trying to wring Garbik's neck, and Leida's oversized arm is the only thing that keeps him from clearing the distance.
"We are a team. If we allow even spars to cause in-fighting then we will fall apart when the time comes to rely on each other."
As usual, the giantess' voice is slow and even, belying the much larger frame she has in comparison to the rest of us.
Alfos' freezes, and a strangled breath escapes him as he sits back down. His eyes remain fixed on Garbik for a moment, before turning to me.
Ophelia, who had been quiet so far, bristles slightly from beside me.
"And what do you think, welp? Did you get a lucky shot?"
I meet his gaze and bring another spoonful of the gristly porridge to my mouth, momentarily comparing it to the dirt of the training field.
Placing the wooden utensil back in my bowl, I tilt my head slightly.
"I wasn't flailing wildly. You have multiple bad habits while fighting. I took advantage of them. I'd like to know how you managed to grab me without looking though, it was a neat trick. Also, Garbik is shorter than me. He's the welp."
Silence abounds at the table for a moment before Garbik unceremoniously breaks the tension with a shrill bout of laughter. The gnomish boy is even slapping his knee for some reason.
Leida, ever the serious one in her own way, looks between Alfos and I with a worried expression though the barest of smiles tugs at her lips.
Ophelia has taken my hand and is gently squeezing it, a way of easing her anxiety as much as it is to comfort me.
Alfos' face is going through a gamut of emotions; Shock, rage, annoyance, confusion, and finally resignation.
"Fel, I honestly don't understand you," he says.
At this point Garbik manages to somewhat control himself, and manages to speak through a series of wheezes and snorts, "I think he's pretty simple. He's just less prideful than you." The boy brings a napkin to his bulbous nose and blows, studiously ignoring the look Alfos is sending his way.
"I wouldn't say that, you haven't tried to cover up his 'art'," says Ophelia, taking her usual spot in the group as 'damage-control' along with Leida, "he almost yelled at me for it."
She says this with a joking tone, but it still causes me to hunch my shoulders in shame.
"Right...if the eldritch shit-"Language!"- he has scrawled on the walls is art then you should see the masterpieces I leave in the chamber pot."