Solo Novice and Shattered Dummies

[Belugnir]

55th of Winter, 516 AV, on a beach within shouting distance away from Port Silence, just behind noon:

He had grown up in a city filled with men who scorned sorcery, a city that taught him to fear everything that this island he was now trapped on represented, to hate even the small bit of magic that his adoptive parents had passed onto him. Yet Sunberth had also taught him to adapt in order to survive. And right now, he was no longer surrounded by narrow-minded drunkards who dreaded that which they couldn't understand. Sunberth was a month of perilous sail away, and he was to live among sorcerers and their ilk for as long as a chance to depart the island without risking his life arrives... He was already prepared to accept the fact that such a chance might not present itself to begin with. And so Ein would adapt, he would take up the sorcery he was taught as a child again, for here, on an island ruled by warlocks, their monstrous creations, and gods know what else, a display of magic power would easily be a means of attaining respect, and not being looked upon as a potential lab rat, and of course, a convenient means of defending himself.


He had brought with him half a dozen wooden beams, about eight and some feet long each, their upper halves wrapped with thick rope, to the beach. Those were some building materials he conveniently 'found' in an old, somewhat rundown storage shack in the port that he didn't imagine any of the talking tin cans will be missing, else they wouldn't have let a decade of dust settle across the things. He'd taken a tidbit of time to set the beams up, making them into six sturdy dummies, set up into a zigzag formation across the thickest patch of sand he found, about four feet between each of them, with just under six feet sticking out of the ground. He'd chosen this beach within spiting distance of the port for one simple reason, safety, as he hardly imagined any of those colossal black birds and hell knows what else to come here looking for food in the form of a succulent, twenty two year old human. And above that, any self-important prick of a wizard who might go about mocking him for his soon to be poor display of skill with sorcery was less likely to happen by here than three feet outside the fortress walls.

Before he'd begin with the dummies, however, Ein sat himself down for a while. It had been years since he had last used Flux, and he never achieved anything remotely impressive within the discipline to begin with. So he sat and did his best to recall the simple meditation through which he first came to be able to use the sorcery. Minutes later he was able to faintly grasp the flow of Djed throughout his body, and, concentrating as to not to lose the vague trails of energy from mind's sight, attempted to stand up and move.

[Belugnir]

He had pleasantly surprised himself when he swiftly breathed out, threw a generous kick in the height of his own chest, continued the momentum of his own body for a sharp step forward and a punch in the height of a straight-up man's belly, then came to a stop, straightened his own stance, and found that he'd retained awareness of the Djed flow within his body. It took him five bloody months to achieve just that when he first started. A simple, force-bearing movement within which he had just to keep awareness of his Flux. For the next quarter hour, Ein proceeded to reflect upon this single principle, constantly expanding his rough movements of battling an imaginary opponent, focusing on his breath, so that it remains in accordance with his movements, each delivered hit was meant to be in sync with an exhale, all the while retaining the awareness of his Djed flow, naturally, he struggled a great deal to keep it up.

''It's about movement. Fluency.'', the old knight's scarce instructions scratched at the back of his head. If he was to ever use this sorcery effectively, he would first have to be able to maintain any resemblance of control and awareness over it within actual combat... and combat on its own was already more than enough draining for the body and mind alike, let alone while one was meant to be ready for fortifying their every movement with sorcery. 'course mages were feared, Einar was only now beginning to relate to the sorcerers, as he began to grasp the gaping distances between the very mental capability of a mage worth his salt as compared to some self-important merchant from the street. And as his thoughts wandered, so did his concentration begin to slip away, the awareness faded, then followed the synergy of movement and breath, and after a moment he was left leaning over his own thighs, breathing heavily with a desperate desire to wipe his sweaty face. Another moment, and he fell arse first into the sand to rest. ''Stupid'', he thought to himself after a blank minute. ''Since when did I become a thinker?'' Then, following the spirit of that question, he hopped back onto his feet, this time attaining the awareness of his Djed much sooner, discovering, along the way, that a natural, standing pose was seemingly a much better choice for doing so rather than being seated down. From there he proceeded to approach a single dummy and begin closely circling around it, all the while delivering a flurry of fist strikes, palm shoves and hand chops to the thing with as much momentum and speed as he could maintain while keeping his breath in accordance with the attacks and the slowly progressing footwork, needless to say, it wasn't the most impressive display of either accuracy or speed. Again, he never used a tidbit of Flux to empower his movements, he simply attempted to retain focus of his Djed flow while involved in a combat-like scenario, so that his intent wouldn't fail him when he actually had a mind for using the magic. And besides, this was a fine means of attaining self control. Hell, he knew how inviting it can be to thoughtlessly focus Flux into a punch when some prick of a drunkard tried robbing him out of his blood-earned silver, and how easy it'd be to break his own arm along with the bastards' face if he were to give in to that invitation.

In several intervals did he repeat the exercise of handing hell over to a training dummy while maintaining the focus of Djed and his own movements and breathing, with about a minute of rest between the sessions. Then, finally, after having warmed up his awareness enough to be comfortably confident for the attempt, he focused a portion of his flux into the general area consisting of his right arm, though trying his best to limit the energy provided as much as he could, as to avoid ruining both the dummy and his own bones, and proceeded to deliver five successive hits to the wooden beam. The dull pain throughout his hand and forearm hardly increased compared to that he received from previously hitting the thing, but then again, no visible signs of a flux user's attack were left on the dummy either. He'd limited the energy he used too much, and his hit was just barely any stronger thus. In a swift bit of frustrated euphoria, the next shove of his hand had far less restriction, and was followed by a sharp cracking sound, a small dusty cloud of sand rising upwards, a large tilt in the dummy's straight position, and one unbearable whoreson of a pain that shot through his arm from fingertips to the elbow.

[Belugnir]

After several minutes of clutching his hurting limb with his left hand and cursing the name of every god and goddess he could remember, Ein was all too happy to conclude that he hadn't broken anything. There was no swelling or anything of the sort to be spotted on his arm, just some lightly lacerated skin on his palm, but fair blue sky above, his forearm was hurting as if someone drew a knife through it. And yes, he could compare because he knew all too well what a knife stuck in one's forearm felt like. The pain did dull and numb down after a brief while, though it came as an amazing reminder of just how much he needed to work on restraint, rather than work on being able to maul through some whoreson in heavy plate while using naught but his bare hands. Any idiot could be daring enough to shove their foot into a rich, influential man’s arse on the streets, oh, but getting away with the deed was the real issue. Using Flux hardly seemed any different by comparison. Either way, now he knew what his rough limit was – just barely cracking through a thick piece of wood without much effort or any major damage to himself, what he wasn’t aware of, however, was that his current ability of converting his Djed into excessive force capped at just that, so his instincts went with the idea of trying to limit the output.

Ein went and cleaned his sore palm, washing it in saltwater. It stung like a greedy whore, but wasn’t anything to cry over or restrain one’s self for. He went back to training, now deciding to simply focus on using the Flux to enhance his movements with as much restriction in power as possible while pummeling his second practice target, he meant to test his own endurance with upkeeping the sorcery in doing so. The practice attacks of Einar’s right hand gave their place over to the shoves of his elbow tossed into a series of hits delivered to the wooden beam. It was about dynamics… horse’s sore balls, anything that had to do with combat had to do with dynamics. The moment you stop and hesitate you’re dead. This was barely any different from learning to fight with a new weapon.

As easy as it was to understand and ponder over, actually executing the understanding of Flux was all but an easy task. Normally he could’ve gone on pummeling the dummies for at least a quarter hour and then some if his breathing and his movements were all he’d have to worry about, hell, the synergy of those two had become something natural during his years spent as a mercenary. Adding the control over Flux to that pair, however, sliced his output’s duration down to barely over a minute in which he could keep at his regular pace while vaguely controlling the flow of Djed through his body to only slightly amplify his movements. Another thing he was dissatisfied to find out was that he could, by no means, alternate the flow swiftly, nowhere near enough to, for example, empower two successive punches if they came from separate arms. Collecting the energy within a single limb would take him several seconds every time, and that time requirement only grew with the fact that he had to keep part of his mind occupied with the movements of his own body and the pale restriction of said energy that he was enforcing for his own safety, said that time requirement would certainly grow even more if he also had to keep track of some whoreson who would potentially be trying to spear him between the ribs in an actual fight. It took another hour of exercise sessions separated by brief pauses for rest before Ein had exhausted the majority of both his physical and mental endurance. At this point he could just barely still grasp the flow of Djed within himself, and could possibly control it for another minute or two before he’d be spent, meanwhile his limbs stung as if he’d just taken a swim through boiled water, and his knuckles slowly started turning all sorts of dark and blue. Along the way he’d also managed to take apart another training dummy, and get halfway through with the third one, which only had some tears in the rope layer and several small dents to its wooden surface. He was somewhat satisfied with himself after the exercise, considering it a possibility that he just might be able to, for example, tear through a brick wall with his bare hands if he had time to concentrate and some five or six minutes to complete the deed.

Either way, the day was slowly dying away, and it was time for him to go, return the three intact wooden beams to where he found them, hide the other three away under the sand, go back to the citadel, and, possibly, pick up some pain-dulling salve from the market.

[Languish]

Your grades have been summoned
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Belungir Einar

■ Meditation +2
■ Unarmed Combat +3
■ Endurance +3
■ Flux +2
■ Medicine +1

Lores

Lore of Sahova: Ruled by Wizards and Monsters
Lore of Sunberth: Teaches Necessary Survival
Lore of Sahova: The Citadel is Safe from Predators
Lore of Flux: Retaining Awareness by Watching Djed Wisps
Lore of Flux: It's All About Fluency in Movement
Lore of Meditation: Maintaining Focus While Fighting
Lore of Unarmed Combat: Beware of Self-Injury Through Attacks
Lore of Flux: Finding a Balance Between Self-Restraint and Power
Lore of Medicine: Broken Bones Cause Swelling

Additional Information

Injuries: Belugnir's hands will remain bruised for the duration of about 30 days, with the color fading and pain decreasing as time goes on. No lasting scars will occur, but his knuckles may be calloused and rougher than previously.

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Comments:

I absolutely love Ein's narration style (well, and yours of course ). I get a lot of insight about his personality without ever hearing dialogue or seeing any action, just by the way he describes the world around him. An excellent example of the "show, don't tell" rule.

It's a little confusing in your second post as to whether we're in a flashback, or we're just hearing snippets from Ein's past as he practices. It might be clearer if you could use {i]italics{/i] (use brackets in place of the curly ones). You could also signify it by simply breaking paragraphs up with a few dashes or some such notation.

Please make sure you pay your seasonal expenses from Winter 516 before you get too far into Spring.

Don't forget to delete your post in the grading queue. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me about your grade.

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