1st Day of Spring, 514 AV
Antinous Training Grounds
8th Bell
Antinous Training Grounds
8th Bell
The clash of blades.
The short, choppy steps.
The gasping for breath.
The duel.
It was exhilarating, it was enjoyable, and it was finally becoming second nature to him.
Cool blue eyes stared down the familiar greens of his patron's, the squire shifting around her, sword and shield at the ready. The ringing of their steel was not an unfamiliar sound, but the precision with which their lashing blades met was something new, and Dinah welcomed this change with open arms.
"Orion, are you just going to stand there, or are you going to do something?"
"Sera, you certainly talk a lot," he quipped back, a challenge to their early spars. He'd managed to find plenty of time to talk when he was first learning the blade, and she'd called him out for blabbing by putting him on his rear again and again. It was time that he return the favor.
The squire flexed his grip on his longsword, raised and lowered his shield a few times, and then tensed to strike. He wasn't the foolish man he'd been a year ago. She'd seen him looking at a sword that was way too big for him, and sent him running up and down stairs answering questions. That was the start of a year of training, of brutal exercises that brought him to this point.
Shifting his left foot forward, Orion lowered the tip of his blade, thrusting towards Dinah's midsection. Before his attack was finished, he'd already begun to withdraw his blade and begin rushing forward with his shoulder lowered and his shield pressed up against his body to give him a ram with which to strike.
Dinah smacked his blade aside with her own, knocking her squire's blade up and high, exposing him for a counter attack - or she would have, if he wasn't following up with a second attack of his own. The Captain Knight jerked her shield into place to meet his rush. The resulting collision sent her stumbling backwards, barely maintained balance nearly failing her at an inopportune time. He's gotten strong, she thought to herself, correcting her stance to continue their dance of steel.
Orion chose to press his attack, refusing to give Dinah even a moment to give the upper hand. She was more skilled than he was, so pressing the advantage was his only option. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Orion slid them towards Dinah, raising his sword to deliver an overhead slash, causing Dinah to reflexively raise her shield to block. Rotating his shoulder, the squire's arm dropped to the side. The sweeping slash cut across the side of his patron's shield, jerking it across her body. Muscles tensing, the squire let his attack follow through until his bicep was touching his chest. With Dinah recovering from the first attack, he exploded through with a second, backhand slash, once again targeting her shield.
The biting steel drove her shield away from her body, exposing her center to his onslaught. The key to the style that Dinah had trained her squire in was constant movement, thinking two or three strikes ahead, predicting enemy movements and choosing the next attack based on it. It required a keen eye, a cerebral thinker, and sometimes a bit of luck. His arm continued it's path, the momentum caring his sword off to the right of his body. Retracing the steps of his first strike, the ball of his shoulder rotated in it's socket until the longsword was high in the sky.
It only remained there for a moment before it came crashing down on Dinah.
The two weapons met in a flash of sparks as the redhead shifted her blade to meet his strike. Edge scraped against edge as Orion tried to push down her sword and open her for another strike.
"Come on, Dinah, are you just going to stand there?" Orion taunted, grinning across at the redhead. "Or are you going to do something?"
Dinah responded by mustering the strength to push his blade up and reward Orion with a swift kick to the midsection. With a flourish of her sword, Dinah was advancing on her squire. "I think it's time we stopped talking. And that's Sera Lorene to you, Orion."
Smirking, Orion readied his shield for his inevitable defeat. It had been a good show, but it was time for them to get down to business, and that business was bad for the blue eyed squire.