21st Trial, Ymiden, Arc 718
South Etzos
9th break
Continued from hereSouth Etzos
9th break
He kept them in small groups, for he didn't want to burn his muscles out too fast. He knew that he could push himself and manage groups of a dozen or more, for most of a break, with pauses for breath and water in between. But that wasn't the point of the exercise. In fact, the "exercise" was more of an augmentation, if anything. It was the hobbling and exhaustion of his muscles; a way to instill a tremble of weakness into them, a tiredness to simulate how the fight may go, or may even begin.
Kasoria pinched his upper back muscles together. Two tight packs of cords and tendons met and everything from them to his fingers strained and clenched and heaved-
-as he lifted his chin up and over the top of the beam sitting atop his door-frame. He'd carved gouges in it arcs ago, for wide grips and narrow grips. Now he was doing the former, stretching his chest and back even more with his hands further apart. Sweat dripped and poured down him as he mentally counted and physically lowered himself back down.
All the way. Until your arms are slack. Otherwise it's sodding well cheating.
Tantos' voice, of course. The ever-present growl and grunt and bark across the sands of the training grounds. Pushing his recruits until they collapsed, and then pushing them just a touch harder when they recovered. Kasoria and all the other cadets thought it sadism, but he'd been wrong. Because once all the strains and stress and agony was over, Tantos invited them to do again what they'd started with, seasons before, when they'd first walked into the Academy.
They barely even sweated. Breezed through runs and calisthenics and drills without strain, sometimes without even thinking.
"That's the point," the old Blackguard had said, crunching an apple as his class listened. "Youse can always get better. But the gettin' there... that shite ain't easy."
"F... Four."
Kasoria managed to gasp out the word as his arms went slack and straight above his head. It bowed and slumped, but his grip did not fail. He breathed in once, twice, three times... and a fourth... enough time to beat down his pulse and numb the pain from Screaming to simply Growling. Then he pressed his muscles together again, lifting with his back, not his arms. They were just the hinges and the grips, his strength came from his chest and his back and up he went again-
-until his chin was raised over the bar, and once it was-
He let go. Fell not far at all, but further than some because he wasn't the largest of men. He hit the ground and bent his knees, left hand snapping down flat on the ground to steady himself-
Now for the second part.
-right hand going for a a throwing dagger from the brace strapped to his thigh. He rose and turned, using the simple movement of the former to draw the dagger from its sheath, gripped by it's small, balanced hilt. As he turned, his vision whirled but he still put up his arm-
-drew back the blade so it was next to his ear when-
-he stopping turning, and the practice dummy was in front of him, mute and faceless and scarred and standing with arms spread as if scorning his mere metal-
Now!
With a grunt and a blur of movement, he flung his arm out towards it. Let go of the knife when it and his hand and his arm eclipsed the dummy-
-blade twirling so fast for a trill that it was almost like a silver disc in the morning air-
THUNK
-before smacking into the torso of the target with a thick, bass sound that made the little killer grin. Hidden by strands of slick hair, his face was one of dark satisfaction. He'd only missed once and struck a limb twice; the other two times had been on target. One trial he knew his practice would mount, and his skill would increase. Then he could target the throat, the eyes, the heart, between the ribs... but for now, getting the damn thing into the trunk of his target was good enough. Especially when they'd likely be coated with something that would draw either quick slumber or quicker death from it.
Ain't done yet, he reminded himself, eyeing the handful of blades sticking out of the abused dummy. His right hand absently patted the brace on his thigh... and found straight, hard metal there. Five thrown. Five to go. Plenty to go.
Kasoria turned his back on the dummy, and reached up for the beam.
