Book 2 Chapter 53

Willow moved through the forms Mister Matias had instructed her in. He wasn’t here now, of course, due to how busy he frequently was. However she still made a point of coming to the training yard every day to do them and watch the other recruits. Besides, they had weights here that she could strap on to make the movements more difficult to do so it was a little more interesting for her.

Initially Instructor Lope had tried to dissuade her from using them, but after observing for a bit and seeing no detriment to her form he simply shrugged and let her do what she wanted. He also came by periodically and corrected her stance if she’d started to drift in one way or another, but that was rare and had little to do with the extra weight and more due to how bored she was with the exercise.

Mister Matias had been quite thorough in his initial instruction after all.

It had been more difficult than she’d thought it’d be to get the movements and stances exactly right, but she supposed without the help of her spiritual sense it was harder to get the full picture of what the old guardsman was doing when he’d taught her.

Now, after a few weeks of this, she was getting bored of the repetitive movements, but at least she could execute them close to flawlessly. Even Mister Matias had been impressed at her progress though she still didn’t fully know how these poses and movements would correlate to actual fighting.

She was also curious about why the forms taught to the recruits seemed to differ from her own in a couple of key ways, but assumed it was a benefit of personal tutelage.

Sometimes she was allowed to join the other recruits in their physical exercises, but apparently due to how far along in her core training she was it was determined that the meager gains she’d get from the exercise wasn’t worth the hit to morale the other recruits would experience.

Which frankly didn’t seem fair to her. She wanted to run around too! It wasn’t her fault that the teenage recruits were so slow and weak.

Still, she was occasionally brought in as a punishment if the older kids were viewed as slacking off, and they had to watch a child five years their junior lap them several times in their runs around the training field.

Willow was just happy she got to run!

Instructor Lope called out to the group and they stopped their training, and formed into ranks in front of him. Willow did the same even though she expected to be told to go back to her spot and continue her forms.

“Today we’ll be doing some light sparring so grab your weapons and break off into pairs. On the quick now or you’ll be back on laps!” The gruff man called out.

He pointed a finger at Willow. “Master Matias has instructed me to allow you to participate if you want.”

The girl’s face lit up in a grin. Though what he said afterwards diminished it somewhat.

“However, you are to be limited to only shields for the foreseeable future.”

Willow cocked her head in thought on why that would be the case, but nodded and ran over to the racks of wooden weapons and shields on the side without argument. Even though some were scaled down slightly for the growing recruits, they were all still comically oversized for the young girl.

Still, she had her instructions and grabbed one of the smaller shields that she could hold with one hand, even if it was still unwieldy for her.

She was then paired up with a boy who seemed dissatisfied that a far younger child would be his sparring partner. Sure she’d proven to be more physically capable than a lot of them, but he could likely tell by the way she was shifting her shield around that she wasn’t used to actual fighting yet.

Yet he didn’t vocalize any complaint, and when the instructor called out for them to begin he still returned the duelist's bow she gave him so Willow supposed he wasn’t all bad.

The following sparring session proved just how far she had to go in her martial training. Despite being stronger and faster than the teenage recruit, she couldn’t even block the majority of her opponents attacks with her oversized shield. Which frustrated her greatly since she knew she’d be able to do better if she wasn’t suppressing her senses.

After several bouts the boy’s initial anger and dissatisfaction at being paired up with Willow seemed to go away and was replaced by clear confusion.

“Why aren’t you using the forms? At first I thought you were mocking me, especially with those weights you have on, but you really are just clueless aren’t you?”

Had she forgotten to take those off before sparring? Whoops.

Still she didn’t like to be called clueless. “I know some stuff! I am new to fighting, though.”

He snorted. “That’s abundantly clear. What kind of backwards training have you had that made you so strong without teaching the fundamentals? Or did you just luck out and get a strong spirit from your family?”

Willow didn’t like what he was insinuating even if it was surprisingly accurate. She had been quite lucky to find Harmony and Change when she did, but she’d worked very hard for the strength she’d gotten.

She shook her head. “My strength is from doing core training and how do I use the forms to fight?”

Mister Matias had taught them to her, and had even explained that they would help ‘engrave the paths of combat into her body’. However, she had yet to really understand what that meant despite repeating them over and over again.

“Stop chatting and get back to sparring, you two!” Instructor Lope barked at them before the older boy had time to explain what he’d meant.

And yet, now that she was thinking about the forms, she saw what the recruit had been trying to tell her.

The way he moved was familiar. They matched the movements that the recruits went through each day as they trained, similar to the forms she was taught, but with several key differences that she was now understanding the purpose of.

The guardsmen fought with swords. It was the standard weapon for a variety of reasons, but the most important one was that every recruit would be given a sword tool spirit at the completion of their training. So that was the weapon they were all taught to fight with.

So what weapon was she being taught to use?

She tried to fall into her own forms, but quickly felt something off with the majority of them whenever she tried to incorporate the shield in her off hand. Her forms often had her lashing out with her right arm, but didn’t seem to do any kind of guarding with her left. Which felt quite strange for a style that she’d been told was quite defensive.

She had been told to use only a shield, as well, so it had to be an important element.

And then it clicked.

After being knocked down for what felt like the dozenth time, once Willow got up this time around she swapped the shield to her dominant hand.

They had swords.

She had a Reflection.

Willow was being taught how to use a shield as her primary weapon.

In that bout she finally got a hit on the older recruit. She still lost shortly after, of course, since one epiphany didn’t suddenly turn her into a skilled combatant.

But it was an important step.