Sleep had come easily enough, but it didn’t last very long. Whether than was from advancing to E or my emotions and mind being revved to full throttle like the mana engine of an airship, I didn’t know. Eventually, I had gotten up and sat at the breakfast nook and stared out the window at the gardens. A small breeze would set the blooms dancing every now and then.
This was where I was sitting when a louder than normal knock rattled my door.
Who… who knocks like that this early?!
“Rise and shine, cucciolo!” came a boisterous voice.
“Orsa?!”
Orsa flung the door open and backed in pulling a cart towards the breakfast nook. “Oh good, you’re awake. But you’re dressed.” She frowned when saying that last bit. It was my first time seeing her out of her armor. She was wearing worn black leather boots and brown trousers that looked painted on with how tightly they clung to her thighs. Her hair was up in a messy bun rather than the large braid she normally kept it in, and she was wearing a white sleeveless tunic, showing off the corded muscle of her well defined arms. The tunic seemed almost too small, though, as the curves of her chest seemed to be rebelling against their containment. She was built like a fortress.
I gave her a lopsided smirk. “Yes, Orsa. I’m awake. And dressed. No show for you this morning, I’m afraid.”
“And you’re in good spirits!”
“I…” I let out an explosive exhale. “Yeah, I feel a bit lighter. My emotions are still a mess, but I don’t feel like I’m floundering as badly. Still weak, sure, but… just one step, and then another.”
Orsa’s expression softened as she listened to me. She placed her hand on my shoulder. She was taller than me, but not quite as tall as Ippolita, but that difference was magnified by me sitting. She leaned down and touched her brow to the crown of my head.
“Losing those we love, friends, family… partners. It is not easy. But they loved us, too. They would want us to move forward. One step. And then another,” she says quietly. Her warm breath was a gentle caress that held a promise of tenderness I would have never expected from her. She leaned back upright, and gently punched my shoulder.
“Now, for today’s first step forward, breakfast. It’ll be your first time eating food meant for F note mages. So, go slow.”
I nodded, and fixed a plate of the sausage, fruits, and cheese she'd brought. She set down a flagon of quickbrew for both of us then sat across from me.
“So, not that I’m complaining,” I said after swallowing a piece of hard cheese. “But how come you’re bringing me breakfast this morning? You’ve never done that before.”
A dangerous gleam entered her eyes and a smile spread across her face as she said, “Because cucciolo, starting today your mornings are mine. I’ll be training you in multiple styles of combat. No magic, except mental acuity. We’re going to need to accelerate your learning as much as possible.”
I tried to hide my shock and the tiniest bit of fear. This sounded like it was going to be much more intense than any training I had done before. Orsa’s smile widened and turned almost manic.
“Oh yes, cucciolo. I’ll have you perfectly trained by the time the ball comes around.”
Wait, what?
“For self defense right?”
Orsa’s face returned to her more usual self satisfied smirk as she popped a mulberry into her mouth. I narrowed my eyes.
Orsa finished eating long before I did. She wasn’t kidding about needing to take it slow. Each bite of food felt like swallowing a heavy weighted ball of steel. I had to wait for the mana to disperse into my body every few bites, otherwise I felt like I was going to throw the food back up. I was a goose being fattened up for the festival, and she was the butcher eagerly waiting to put me on the chopping block. At least that was what it felt like.
“Okay, Orsa. I can’t eat another bite. I’m at my limit.”
“We’ll be finding some of your other limits today, too, cucciolo,” she said and winked at me. “Put some of the leftover food in your storage ring. You will want a snack before lunch.”
The thought of more food was truly nauseating, but I trusted her on the topic of training. She was built like a direbear, all corded muscle cut from marble. I picked up an apple, the rest of the berries, and the last large chunk of the hard cheese and stored them in my ring. We had eaten all of the sausage, and I suspected that was what caused the overfull sensation I was still dealing with, but it was so damn good.
We both stood and she led me outside to the practice yard. Fiametta was already leading a company of the royal guards in a kata. That was a new word I learned earlier this week. Or rather last week.
Almost two damn days in meditation.
A kata was a new word for the royal guard as well. Evidently they used to just call it drilling, or more specifically drilling the guard forms for their weapon. Kata, though, was what some wandering mercenaries had called it a couple dozen years ago. She had heard it from another mercenary, who got it from another, and so on. Essentially it was the same as what they had been doing but with a split focus on both guards and strikes in order to improve one’s technique through muscle memory.
Orsa led me over to an empty ring a good distance from the rest of the royal guards. Privacy would be good. I already knew I was the weakest one out here, and so did everyone else, but it didn’t mean I wanted them to see me get my ass kicked repeatedly.
“Have you had much training in grappling or hand to hand fighting?” she asked.
“Eh, some, but not really. My trainer at the Adventurer’s guild skipped most of it when he learned I have a storage ring with multiple backup weapons. We did go over how to grapple in a sword fight, but it wasn’t a focus.”
“Then it is good that we are starting there.”
“What?”
“I am bigger than you. Fiametta is bigger than you. Most of the women-at-arms under the nobles as well as the internal and external guard forces will be bigger than you. However, on the ground, we may as well be the same size. More importantly, I’m going to teach you how to leverage your smaller size against enemies bigger than you.”
“Okay,” I said, tilting my head slightly as I appraised her size again. Orsa was taller than me. This close to her, I had to tilt my head slightly—a sensation I was growing comfortable with between her and the Principessa. She could probably rest her chin comfortably on the top of my head, so that meant between 6’5 and 6’7? She did have a point though. Most of the guards I’d seen were around Fiametta’s height, who was shorter than Orsa, but still taller than me and just as built as I was.
Which actually means more strength since they have denser and higher purity of mana than me.
“Go ahead and start channeling your Mental Acuity Enhancer tattoo. We’re going to start with some basic takedowns.”
I had been circulating my mana since we got to the practice yard. An old habit I’d picked up from Adventuring was to keep the flow of mana going anytime you thought you might have to use it. While mana reacted immediately, at higher levels of cultivation, there was a noticeable difference in activation between mages that had primed their circulation and mages that were starting cold. It was commonly accepted knowledge that it was better to form the habit early before it mattered than later when it made a difference.
With my mana already circulating, all it took was the conscious intent of activating the tattoo, and some of my internal mana adopted the resonance of the spellform. I had to stop myself from manually shaping the Strength and Speed Enhancement spellform as I tended to use the two in concert; Orsa had wanted us to be our natural states. It was a very weird sensation having my mind accelerated but not my body. Information flowed a couple of orders of magnitude quicker than normal; my ability to react to stimuli far outstripped my body’s ability to follow the thought or intention.
“The first kind of takedown is where your head will be on the inside of the body, or up against their chest,” she said and stepped closer to me. “I’ll go slow and explain what I’m doing.”
“So first,” she said as she bent over, her head next to mine, hand gripping on the back of my neck, “when you’re in a grapple, or from a similar starting position, you move down and put your ear up against their chest.” She did exactly as she said, yanked one of my arms to make me step forward, moved one leg around the leg I stepped with, and slid her head down my chest as she grabbed the leg she was straddling.
“Next, make sure your hips are positioned below their’s, and lift their leg into you as you drive your body forward.” She pulled my leg up and I could already feel myself becoming unstable.
“There’s a few different ways to finish the takedown from here, for now we’ll just cover using your shoulders and body weight, to disrupt their balance and push them to the ground. So, from here I have your leg pulled close, my shoulders are pressing into you, and if I turn my hips, and angle my shoulders more…”
And I was on the ground. Orsa was still standing, looking down at me with a self satisfied smirk. “Easy, right?”
“You certainly made it look easy,” I said. She held out her hand, and I grabbed it. She pulled me up with too much force, and I stumbled into her. Her other arm snaked around behind my back.
“Steady there, cucciolo. I’ll be putting you on the ground many, many more times before we’re done.”
I squinted at her.
We’ll see.
“Now, why don’t you try what I just did. I’ll tell you the steps, and you try them.”
What followed was multiple unsuccessful and a few successful attempts from me to copy her takedown. I noticed that my success largely depended on how well I was able to force her weight onto her back foot and then push her further off balance after that transition.
“The second kind of takedown is with your head on the outside, or when you have your head against their back or outer part of their arm. Pull their arm forward and down across in front of you, step into their posture, crouch down to grab their leg right behind their knee, and position your shoulders into their hips. From here, the process is similar to the first.” As she was explaining, she had been moving her body to match her own instructions, then with less rotation of her hips from the first take down and a larger emphasis on the drive of her shoulders into my hips, she put me on the ground. She helped me back up, normally this time.
“Now, you try,” she said.
This one turned out to be harder for me, but I managed to successfully get her to the ground enough times for her to be satisfied.
“Did you notice anything about this second takedown?”
“Maybe. I can’t tell if it’s because I was struggling or maybe because we are going through them kind of slowly, but aren’t I more vulnerable with this ‘outside’ takedown?”
She grinned at me. “So you did notice. Good boy. Yes against a competent grappler, you could find yourself reversed because of the positioning of your head and shoulders. I have one more to show you before I’ll have you practice all of them while I put up some resistance.”
“There’s multiple ways to bring them to the ground with this one as it focuses on capturing one of their arms. The first one,” she said as she struck out, grabbed one of my arms and pulled it to her by dropping her weight as she settled into a crouch, “You’ll pull their arm forward, block them from stepping backwards by bracing one hand against the back of their knee while you step into them, lean your weight forward into them, and then trap the back of their foot with your lead leg. To finish, you drive your head and shoulders forward,” she said, putting me on the ground. “Letting your full weight bring them down,” she finished her sentence as she straddled my leg on her knees. She stood back up and brought me up with her.
“Now, before I have you practice this one, let me show you a couple more ways to finish it since it’s a little more dynamic than the other two.”
She showed me the two other finishes she had in mind, and then had me practice them for the third type of takedown. This one was noticeably different from the other two in that it required more momentum to execute. We practiced them like this at a slow speed for now, but in a moment when we’d be going at full speed—or my full speed—-I could tell I would need to be more explosive with this moveset in order to succeed with the takedown.
“Good. Now, I want us to be able to get as much practice in with these as possible, so we’ll be going full speed, but still unenhanced. We could probably move to you being fully enhanced after a couple of days, but for now full natural speed. And remember, I’ll be resisting you.” She said the last part with her characteristic smirk and crouched a bit.
I crouched too and started approaching her slowly. When I was close enough to reach out and touch her, I exploded forward and attempted the first takedown type. I moved my hand forward to feint at grabbing one of her arms. She reacted and moved it out of my way, opening up a path to my real target, her leading leg. I lowered my hips, clenched my arms around her thigh, pulling it into me. I twisted my hips, and pivoted to make her shift her balance, and then I drove my shoulder into her hips.
However, as I was releasing the takedown, her other leg wrapped around my waist and her arm shot out, grabbing and pulling me down with her. She used the momentum of my fall to roll us over and she straddled me, her legs bracketing my hips like a vice. Her face was inches from mine as the maneuver finished. I felt myself getting swallowed by her impossibly deep red eyes, like pools of blood. My blood. I could smell her. Cinnamon, spices, sweat, and leather. My breathing was heavy from all the previous exertion; her scent was intoxicating.
“Orsa,” I said quietly, and my voice broke the spell over us. She blinked rapidly, clearly just as much lost in the moment as I was, and her pupils went back to their normal size.
“I said I’d be resisting you,” she said smiling. Her fangs had extended at some point. She leaned back, got up, then helped me up. I could see there was barely disguised hunger in her eyes now. Like a starving animal smelling meat for the first time in weeks. Orsa was beautiful, gorgeous even, but whatever she thought we shared just now… I wasn’t ready to nurture it. I wasn’t an idiot. Ippolita, Fiametta, and now Orsa, they’ve been obvious with their interest. And maybe there was a future with one of them. But I still saw Stephanie when I closed my eyes. It was still her heat I craved at night. It would be wrong to use them for fleeting comfort.
“I need a couple of minutes. And some water.” I said and turned away; I caught a flash of surprise and even embarrassment on her face. I walked to one of the benches just outside the sparring ring we’d been grappling in, sat down, summoned my water skin and took a long sip. My thoughts were all over the place.
I’m sorry.