Closed [Antinous Training Grounds] A Quarrel Among Friends (Ellen)

[Cromley Stronghammer]

4th of Fall, 513AV Cromley awoke this morning for his usual routine. Waking up, getting breakfast with his fellow squires and heading to the training grounds to spend most of his day. On his way to the training grounds he was feeling especially anxious to fight today. He wasn't entirely sure why but he had a feeling something fun was going to occur. As he laid eyes on the training grounds he eyed a very familiar and beautiful face there. It was his childhood friend Ellen, whom he has not seen in quite some time due to them often having differing duties. As he walks over to his childhood friend he notices she is handling her longsword as deftly as usual, however she seems to be protecting her left side with her arm. He calls out to her "Oi Ellen. How goes training? What is wrong with your arm?" He then notices some of the other squires in the courtyard looking at her strangely, almost with a mocking look. You then hear from one squire nearby "Did you hear? I heard she got hurt pretty bad in that fight yesterday." "Really?" says another squire. "Yeah it was a pretty close fight but somewhere in the middle she got hit a lot harder than normal. She's been guarding her side all morning." Upon hearing this Cromley is almost alarmed for concern for his friend. However he hasn't known a girl to be able to take a hit as hard as Ellen can so he isn't too concerned. After all a girl like her should be able to power through an injury as minor as that fairly easily. As he continues to approach her training dummy it becomes apparent that she did not hear him the first time and he begins thinking of ways to approach her. After all she seems to be slightly more irritable and focused than usual so he approaches with caution. Cromley says to her "Oi there Ellen. How are you feeling this morning? I heard you had a pretty rough yesterday with your sparring partner and all." As he says this though he immediately starts thinking of their past together and the fact that she was as tough as all their friends so he immediately continues with "Oh but you must be fine. I mean he'd have to be close to the strength of a knight to hurt the great Ellen Ansgot so badly. Anyway you must be itching to get in some practice on against a real person so how about we spar a bit? I mean I need to practice with this new shield. It is still a bit unwieldy and I'm sure you'd love the chance to try and kick my arse." As soon as he says it he feels suddenly slightly nervous. After all he doesn't want to hurt his friend but at the same time he also doesn't want to get beaten by her. After all he'd be laughed at by his other squire friends. So Cromley walks over to the rack of weapons and picks out a tower shield and a practice mace and awaits his fate.

[Ellen Ansgot]

The fight from the day before had been a fairly intense one. Ellen had taken a rather hard blow to her left ribs, and it had left her working even more on her shield techniques. After a blow like that, she would do everything in her power to avoid taking another blow so painful. This couldn't allow her to stop training though, so back to the training grounds she went. It wasn't a bad thing that she had been hurt, it gave her experience, perhaps not in the most favorable of ways though. While she was training, a familiar voice called out to her. It was the unmistakeable accent of her old childhood friend. They had been pages together around the same time, and spent much of their childhood time together. The adventures they had been on as children had been quite memorable, with Cromley always getting into trouble, and Ellen having to find a way to help him out of it. Many times, Cromley was far more successful than Ellen, and landed both of them some extra chores. It was always worth it though. Cromley and Ellen balanced each other out. Ellen was the level headed, cautious one, while Cromley kept her having fun. "Hah. Hardly, it was mostly my luck in that fight. You will have to pity me a bit today, my left isn't in the best of conditions." Thinking about the other day made her wince just a bit in memory of the blow to her ribs. It was a good spar, but she easily took the worst of the beating, while her opponent took a few falls. Such is to be expected though, as her partner was much more experienced in fighting than she. Ellen knew Cromley would take it a bit easy on her, and trusted him not to take advantage of her weak side too much. Perhaps she would exploit his kindness herself, earning a few free blows. As she watched her new opponent and old friend grab a mace and a rather large shield, she began to contemplate her options. The shield would be a problem for both sides of the fight. It was heavy, large, and not the easiest to move, making mobility an issue, though it did cover quite a large area, so Ellen would have to carefully aim her swings. She was still not quite so comfortable with her longsword, though it was a tad easier to use now. She still had trouble swinging the weapon, it's arcs were far too wide for her liking. However, it would only get easier with practice. Ellen observed her friends stance, preparing to make her moves. She felt a bit more comfortable being aggressive towards Cromley, knowing that it was always a friendly fight, and that neither of the duo would try to cause the other too much pain. The mace would be a problem though, it's blunt blows could most likely knock Ellen off her feet if she didn't play this fight correctly. The overall strategy would be to avoid the mace and find a way around the shield. Ellen took a few steps forward, and began a flurry of swings. The idea was to tire her opponent with a battering, though with her side, she would most likely tire herself out first. She was watching, making sure to wait for the inevitable mace swing. Trying to dodge it would be her best option, as she probably couldn't stand the full blow of Cromley's mace swing.

[Cromley Stronghammer]

As Cromley went to grab a mace and tower shield from the selection of weapons he remembered all the times that Ellen has saved his skin when they were younger and he decided he’d go a little easier on her out of gratitude. As he took his position he thought “Alright so she is injured after all. I better not go too hard on her. After all I don’t want her laid up for too long. Better to avoid her left side or at the very least go easy on her.” Cromley then raised his shield and took position to defend against her inevitable flurry. A longsword wielder of course would have the advantage while he was wielding the hulking shield he had chosen. After all it was exceedingly difficult to move so every blow that he took to his shield arm would be infinitely more taxing on his stamina then if he were using a smaller shield. Cromley decided he must be extra vigilant just to avoid wasting too much energy on deflecting Ellen’s blows. “I better be careful or she will overwhelm me so fast I won’t know what hit me,” Cromley thought. “Better just sidestep those blows I can and wait for even a small opening. Maybe then I can sweep her legs and gain the upper hand.” As Ellen’s sword collided with his shield he realized he was not going to have to be nearly as tender with her as he anticipated. The force of the blow was still quite strong, therefore it took quite a bit out of Cromley. Her second blow however was much slower and he was able to sidestep it fairly easily. As Cromley looked at Ellen it was apparent by her expression that the deflection had rattled her a bit as well. Therefore Cromley decided it was better to be a bit aggressive with her in order to throw her off balance. When Ellen’s third blow collided with her shield he reacted by stepping forward and pushing off with his shield arm a bit and took a swipe at Ellen’s left leg. Immediately Cromley regretted what he had done. Will he cause her an injury he did not intend. Cromley felt as he swung he felt that he put sufficient force behind it to make it seem like Cromley wasn’t trying to baby Ellen. However as soon as he swung his mace he began to doubt himself and began wondering if he had gone a bit too far.

[Ellen Ansgot]

With every swing she took, a bit of anxiety rushed through Ellen's body while she thought about the possibility of a swift counterattack, and the damage it could cause to her stamina. Two days of constant fighting were not easy, especially after the emotional side of it. It was not something Ellen planned on happening, but all of it happened so quickly. She would let nothing of the sort happen again, especially not so soon. An emotional attack was not something she would need to be on guard against by someone like Cromley. She knew that he wouldn't have anything of the sort within a mile of his thoughts. It was battle though, and practicing such things as protecting ones mind while fighting were important. Within the course of one or two sword blows, Ellen had cleared her mind of all the crazy attention demanding emotions and distractions, and began to think only of her fight. The day before had been quite a long one, with some very unexpected results in the fighting. Ellen was drained from it, and the last thing she wanted to be doing was fighting right now. However, this did not make her completely blind as to what her opponent was attempting to do. While she was dreadfully exhausted, the intensity and risk of being hit worried Ellen, therefore she would not allow herself to take such a silly blow. In certain ways, fighting like this had it's advantages. She was somehow more alert to analyzing an opponents forms and identifying moves. The counterattack was signaled quite obviously when Cromley pushed Ellen's sword backwards, and himself forward. The mace came around towards her left side in a wide arc that was simply aimed, but quickly loosing control as her aggressor tried to weaken the force of his attack. The swing was also quite familiar to her, as she used a similar tactic a few times the previous day. Taking advantage of this misplay, Ellen moved quickly to back step the swing that was headed to her own legs. As the heavy weapon was hard to stop from a committed swing, she watched Cromley for any sign of overthrow. If he couldn't stop the follow through swing from his mace, Ellen would swiftly jump into action with an attempt to disarm him. Though if Cromley managed to regain his composure, Ellen would be ready to dodge the next attack.

[Cromley Stronghammer]

As Cromley swung his mace at Ellen's legs, he glanced up at her eyes and saw that she saw the attack coming a mile away. As such it was not so surprising when she quickly back-stepped the attack. However this did leave Cromley in a precarious position. Having to lessen the force of the blow had thrown off his stability on his weapon hand so even though he stopped the swing just short of overextending it did leave a small opening. From the looks of Ellen though, and the fact that she did not take the opening told Cromley that it must not have been as obvious as he had thought. As he repositioned for another strike he noticed that Ellen was not attacking but waiting for him to move. This was very odd to Cromley, because in his experience most people that he would fight against would fight very aggressively and try to take advantage of the fact that he cannot move very quickly so fighting against the very defensive style of Ellen was a major change. As they circled each other Cromley deduced from the fact that she was being hyper-vigilant and yet her movements were somewhat sluggish compared to usual, that she was definitely exhausted but not injured to the extent that he suspected. Good at least I know not to hold back as much. Now it was simply a matter of being able to outsmart Ellen. He knew with his massive shield that he could not move nearly as fast as Ellen can with her smaller weaponry so this would be a matter of aggressiveness and strength. She is much faster than I thought she would be. Maybe brute force though will be enough to overpower her though and throw her off balance. Cromley then began circling around Ellen with his shield facing her the whole time. During this though he began to think about ways to possibly throw Ellen off her game. "You're looking a little tired there Ellen," said Cromley teasingly. "I hope I'm not going to be too much for little Miss Ansgot." Haha I hope she doesn't lose her cool. That'll make this fight too easy. I think an overhead strike at the shoulder would be appropriate here. After all, although she is not injured seriously I don't want to worsen her side wound. Besides an overhead strike while shielded is very hard to counteract. She will either have to sidestep my blow and catch me on my open side, which would be difficult considering our orientation to each other or she takes the easy sidestep to my left and not be able to strike through my guard. Either way it'll be difficult for her to react. Alright that settles it. As Cromley swiftly stepped forward, shield raised as if to shove Ellen, his confidence welled up inside of him. He knew Ellen would have a difficult decision to make he only hoped she picked wrong so he could at least get a hit on her and gain the upperhand in this fight. After all he needs all the advantages he can get.