Geyrt Iriel, paragon of Elvendom, committed lifelong to his protection and furthered interests, unwavering in her diligence to her duties, had fallen asleep standing up. She started when Ulric opened the door, a full body flinch, and he saw her turn her head, as if examining the empty hall for threats, to wipe a thin smear of drool from her chin. And now, his Shadow refused to meet his eyes despite his attempts to catch them with his accusatory glare. After a few moments of determined optical blaming, Ulric turned to make an exit of the Scholarium. The dark visage of his guardian, now slightly reddened from bashful self-recrimination, followed demurely. It had been a late night for everyone, Ulric admitted to himself. But still. HE hadn't gotten to sleep through Gother's lecture and that was all that mattered.

Unlike the prior day of instruction, the full length of Gother's mental punishment would preclude an extended break between morning lessons and afternoon training with Idra. Ulric was determined not to be late for that so he skipped lunch to head directly up to the eleventh floor, the housing and drill site for the royal guard of Iriel. As before, the pavilion was empty save Idra'se, Bald'rt's right hand man and the leader cum instructor for the most elite of Iriel'en soldiery. The bitter Winter cold did not touch him, not even in his light exercise garb. Frost laden the limbs might be but Idra would wear only the blacks of his Warrior’s garb.

Barely had Ulric greeted the weathered warrior though before other members of the guard appeared carrying racks of practice weapons, wooden dummies, and various other training implements. Most were dressed in blacks with an overlayer similar to Geyrt’s stiff wool robes. In a short few minutes the pavilion was sorted. Ulric would have helped by grabbing something but the near mechanical harmony of the two score men and women moving things to proper position by rote would only have been disrupted by his effort.

Idra, content with the completion of the drill area set up turned to Ulric with a hearty greeting.

"Welcome back Glade Chief! Have you thrown off the worst of the after-effects of Festival? I would have you ready to make betterment today, especially now that I've seen how you move during combat. Your base speed is good and your power exceptional but there is great room for improvement in the precision of your movements. I will credit your Undan ready though, it was as firm as I could expect from so little training and you appeared comfortable in its initiation of combat. The Morion should have paid better attention to his Zellusin instructors, they will doubtless be shamed at how easily he was taken."

The Elf spoke of the killing as a fisherman speaks of the weather. The clouds were out but no rain, fish on. Ulric felt a little pride at this warrior's praise, he had a feeling it didn't come often. He was also even more convinced that he needed to be here.

"Thanks, Idra'se. I didn't think I was going to be providing the entertainment when I accepted the party invite but Morion didn't leave me much choice. Nobody gets to breathe my air and then use it to be that stupid." Ulric said firmly.

Idra laughed at that claim and several of the warriors in attendance joined in. Even Geyrt smirked in amusement. They had all been present for the fight and word had spread of the provocations. Many of these attending Elves had made coin on the resulting "duel".

Ulric, in his heart of hearts, considered it cold-blooded murder. Even if Elven society had not had in place the social infrastructure for settling disputes through personal combat, Ulric knew that he would have spent whatever effort was necessary to see to it Sam'sav Morion reached room temperature that night. He hadn't had to; things had worked out as well as could be circumstances considered, but he knew what he'd done and had long since left behind regrets about what he was becoming in this world.

A second life didn't mean redoing what you'd already done, it meant transforming into what you wanted to be. What he wanted to be was a person who could rid themselves of nuisances like Lordling Morion as they arose. He had a home to protect, allies whose reputations he considered valuable, and a status of his own to carve into the world. You don't get to do all that by being a doormat for ambitious psychos. And, as much as he'd changed already, it wasn't enough. Not yet. Not by a long shot.

That buffoon of a merchant's son had been a freebie: arrogant, pampered, lacking in fighting experience, and devoid of self-preservation instincts. He was in the vast minority, even his own sire had presented a far more dangerous front. By far, most of the Elves Ulric had met, especially the ones wearing their simple finery had all moved like tigers. Even if Iriel's war stance had skewed that proportion observable in Irielhos, they were all of them raised on a world of far greater savagery, more habitually violent, than the time in which he had lived on Earth. Ulric was struggling against years of societal conditioning but finding his natural inclination was lining up more intuitively with the rules here on Varda than in the Before.

Ulric couldn't pretend that he wasn't concerned about a potential assassin hired to even scores between him and the Morion household, not when they had the means the Iriels had described. Men like that held power far beyond the more transparent aspects of their public businesses or they didn't get to that level of wealth and influence. They had ways of disposing of competition or frowning on interference in their affairs that were frequently terminal. Even amongst the movers and shakers of his old world, with all the codes of law, world governments, geneva conventions, watch dog organizations and so on and so forth, the men of fantastic wealth routinely had prying journalists killed and competitors "discouraged". Frequently the discouragement came by serial muggings or suspicious warehouse fires. Power was power, no matter its source

Since Ulric didn't and wouldn't have contacts and connections or sheer economic means to combat the resources of an Elven merchant consortium, he was going to have to cultivate a more old school kind of deterrence. Something more of the salt the ashes and fields when he leaves variety. If he could gain enough raw strength, he could force any hostile parties to let bygones be bygones or risk personal destruction. Imminent threat of bodily harm should do the trick for being left the hell alone or having more games like the one at Festival being played around him. That meant putting his every effort into learning combat arts from the people who seemed to have truly mastered them.

Amusement aside, Idra gestured Ulric to a place within the formation of warriors and Ulric obligingly stepped to stand next to a lightly armored form. When he saw the warrior's face it turned out to be Sinna, Hal'et's sister. She nodded her greetings and made a hand gesture with which Ulric wasn't immediately familiar but had observed. He returned her gesture with a brief wave. Barely had he even set his feet in place but Idra had begun.

It was stance work, of course. They were run through the drill of called steps from their combat system, their Thousand Steps Dance, to a cadence beat by Idra'se's practice sword against the heartwood pavilion floor. By the metronome's half beats did the formation move from one position to the next, Ulric being significantly slower and far less precise than the rest. He swallowed his mild embarrassment though, this is just how it is for the FNG, the fucking new guy.

After a half hour he was getting the hang of it, meeting Idra's command of Undan and Fyir, the southpaw and orthodox ready positions; Branch-side, Branch-back, Branch-forward, the side backwards, and forwards lunging steps respectively; Twinned Roots-low, Twinned Roots-high, the squared feet, braced positions, and then the whole thing mirrored from the Fyir ready where the rooted leg was reversed. Then came the half steps for everything they'd already done. Then came the crossing steps one leg in front of the other, then one leg behind, and then the same crossing steps in reverse. One thousand steps indeed.

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Ulric was just starting to think he was getting the hang of it until Idra began to beat staccatos against the floor. The tempo elevated. The steps were called in rapid fire, quarter beats, double time, in groups of four, with a half-second delay between each set. This new exercise was a complete disaster. Ulric could barely get his feet planted at the old cadence, he lacked the fluidity, the muscle memory to assume the exacting positions with speed. To make the transitions at this new pace was a distant dream. He was soon out of synch with the group, and his legs burned with the effort. The veteran warriors of the royal guard made the exercise look effortless but Ulric was pleased to note the flare of nostrils struggling for deep breaths and the light panting of exertion from his comrades in suffering. Their rigor didn't detract from their utter precision. They hit every stance, made every transition with complete grace and the fluidity of years of Idra'se's adamantine discipline.

This tortuous exercise continued for half an hour, the end of which found the entire formation standing upon jellied legs, with the exception of a few exceptional individuals, who must have had steel in their thighs instead of meat. Ulric noted that Geyrt had not been a part of the formation and that the exclusion grieved. Her eyes longed to join them in this and Ulric both understood the sentiment and was amazed that anybody could miss this kind of pain. It was far worse than the mandatory military training from his old world. By kilometers. His Shadow had instead stood at rigid attention observing Ulric's every move, noting every imperfection for later correction, in between scanning the surroundings for hostile moths or whatever might earn her ire. The pressure of her silent judgment had not made the goings on any more fun, at all.

When at last Idra commanded "Rest" he was taken at his word. About a quarter of the elves in formation dropped to sit, legs splayed out. A few beat fists upon thighs and calves, loosening knotted flesh. Ulric's legs were simply numb. He'd pushed himself hard in the glade, had run, climbed, and jumped to his heart's content, at full tilt. He'd never had a sadist standing a few meters away squeezing the energy from his very bones until they had none left to give. He didn't drop to a sit, he just dropped and hoped the floor stayed where it was to catch him. Deep breaths pulled air into his lungs while his heart beat a rapid, regular rhythm to try to restore the oxygen to his muscles.

Geyrt strode over, at last able to rejoin his side and freed from the painful exclusion from her onetime comrades. As the numbness in his body gave way to the lactic acid burn of depleted muscles, she began to enunciate clearly Ulric's failings. They were many. Sitting in the shade of her stern beauty, Ulric listened to her clinical explanations, delivered in a matter-of-fact tone, and tried to commit to memory her corrections. He would fail this task today and in many of the days to come, but still, he listened. This was necessary pain.

Several of the other warriors, both those sitting on the floor and those who had remained standing, traded looks and grins as the verbal surgery of his Shadow carved away the layers of Ulric's mistakes. Sinna observed drily that "those who stood closest to the suns felt most keenly their burn", which got more than a few chuckles and a half smile from Idra. After ten minutes of this, with no end in sight, he was saved when Idra paired off the formation into sparring sessions. Geyrt subsided and Idra'se took her place.

Evidently, Idra was no more pleased with Ulric's performance than had been his Shadow. Ulric he drew off to the side to receive more focused attention. Where Geyrt emphasized the specific misplacements of feet, and the misalignments of the body, Idra'se was coming at things from a more global perspective. He started things off on a good note.

"Ulric Glade Chief you move similarly to a newborn. There is a lack of familiarity with your own limbs, an absence of balance. In normal circumstances, when you are doing things with which you are familiar this does not become apparent, the body knows what it should do and you are able to leverage your power. When you do anything that is not familiar, you have the grace of a drunken Svartalfin." Summarized Bald'rt's personal guard.

This fact had not escaped Ulric's own notice. If he could go slowly and visualize what he wanted to do he could normally do it fairly competently. If, like during the staccato drill, he was forced to hurry it felt like his body belonged to a stranger. A clumsy one. He listened as Doctor Idra began to prescribe his own medicine.

"It is clear that you have spent at least some time practicing what I have shown you, there are many small improvements and you do different things wrongly than you did before. This is a good thing, it is growth. Daily I want you to begin an exercise for balance. Much of your problems stem from your lack of body awareness, which makes you work harder than you need to correct for this failure. The small misalignments, the positions of your spine, and how you carry your weight, these and a thousand other consequences stem from a failure to balance properly and the inability of your mind to judge your own position. This exercise you will do from now on, and do it with your eyes closed."

Idra combined words with deeds and closed his eyes before beginning a set of steps as if on a balance beam. His feet stayed along an invisible path, toes never landing but in an exact linear distance from their previous position, the floor might as well have been chalked for cutting. The Elf went ten steps forwards along the line in various lunges, squats, a couple of quickstep hops, a cartwheel, a back handspring, and then a low spinning sweep pivoting on one leg with the other held horizontally a handsbreadth above the floor before returning, mirroring the motions as he returned to where he had begun.

"You will be able to repeat this routine in its entirety will you not?" Idra asked with complete innocence as if it were nothing to memorize a gymnastic floor routine in a single viewing.

Geyrt interjected before Ulric could speak, cementing this newest addition of pain into his life.

"I will see he completes it on rising and before returning to his sheets Idra'se."

Left with no choice, Ulric accepted this most recent stone to his burden with a resigned "Yes sir, Idra'se sir."

Satisfied that he had started a foundation from which to begin correcting Ulric's flaws, Idra then spent the next hour correcting Ulric's posture in the regular stances. Hips pushed into alignment, elbows tucked here, arms raised to there, a foot nudged to point slightly outwards, and so on. Like a sculptor, the Master used a tap here, a tap there, to achieve the perfection of his mind's eye. Ulric did his best to be like the marble beneath the Master's hand, unmoving beyond the touch of the hammer. Eventually, Idra released Ulric to his Shadow's mercy, Hah!, who continued the instruction through each and every step of their gods be damned Dance. With exhaustion murmuring under the skin of his legs it turned into a battle of will against himself and Ulric was much gladdened when the practice was called to a halt.

For the first time since he could remember he was utterly physically tapped out. Not even the miraculous gift of the Watcher could withstand the Iriel'en elite's doctrine for military preparedness. It was, at least, a relief to Ulric to see many of the veteran warriors of the pavilion looking as wrung out as he felt.

Idra called the group back into formation, thanked them for their dedication, and then released them to their duties. The tired men and women cheered for their freedom and clapped one another on the back. It would seem he wasn't alone in his thinking that Idra had given them something a little special today. Elven elite warriors wooped and carried on in the manner that soldiers encouraged one another after getting smoked by their drill instructor. Through it all, Ulric noted the regret in his Shadow's expression. Truly, losing this camaraderie was a biting edge to her father's punishment.

"Is there anything I can do about this Geyrt? Can't I order you to train to maintain your edge as my bodyguard or something?" Ulric said without preamble as they left the pavilion, hoping for a way to give her back at least this much.

Besides, his misery would absolutely love some company right now.

She glanced at him as if surprised that he had picked up on her distress before a sudden shake of her midnight braid put the kibosh on that.

"Thank you, Ulric, for the offer." She said allowing some of the regret into her voice.

"It would not be appropriate, not any longer. I may correct your deficiencies and may act as a trainer for yourself, that is within the scope of my duties." Geyrt lamented gently. "But to join the group would count me among them and that I may not do, not without impinging on the honor of Idra'se and the guardsmen. I am not one of them, not a Warrior of my kin nor a Hunter." Finished the Iriel'en paragon.

It struck Ulric then as a tremendous irony that, if not for her being so utterly committed to her vendetta, if not for a single lapse in judgment under duress, she would have been chief amongst those partaking in the defense of the Elven homeland. According to those who knew her best, it was almost without question that Geyrt Iriel would perish if and when war came; she was like a stilletto, driving too deeply into her enemies before breaking off. While her abilities were doubtless great, she was still too young, too lacking in the raw power that her sire brought to bear, but with all of his storied aggression. Hence the judgment the Elf had levied.

Bald'rt's sense of both humor and justice could run a little on the sharp side, Ulric was both her punishment and her protection. Given what he was coming to know of the woman's disposition though, he found himself siding even more with the Elven King's decision. It was very likely the only way the Elder Iriel could avoid either ordering her death himself or allowing it to occur in the natural course of the coming war.

Too heavy man, Ulric thought. He was tired, mentally and physically, and the day was not over. Still to come were the arcane lessons with Geyrt's mothers. Today would be the Crimson Sphinx, Shor. Ulric was not looking forward to it, for once. The woman purely unnerved him with her unreadable expression.

"I need a pick me up Geyrt. We've got an hour or so before we need to be at the mage training right? Let's grab some food." Ulric suggested.

His Shadow was in complete agreement, for once.