War of Dawn

Chapter 5: Tools of the Trade

Date: 1003 After Dawn, June 12th

A month has passed since Hilda was recruited into the Scions and Ryouma's wasted no time in fulfilling his promise of making a warrior out of her. His first goal has been to get her in fighting shape and used to handling her new sword. Every day, she's subject to thousands of repetitions of various slashes and thrusts, drills for attack, movement and defense, sparring, jogging, weight lifting... the list goes on.

Hilda's regimen starts at five in the morning and goes on until nine thirty in the evening – with only a scant few moments of pause to eat lunch and dinner – before heading to bed at ten o'clock, when curfew starts for those not on any assignment. Trying to sleep with every single part of her body aching wasn't easy at first but Hilda soon discovered that pain becomes less of a problem when she's tired enough. Thankfully, Ryouma had explained, Scions recover much faster than regular humans – she often wakes up feeling perfectly fine.

She's picking things up decently fast and already has an "okay-ish" – as Ryouma himself assessed – grasp on the basics of swordfighting. What makes it easier for amateurs like her to start out is that the Scions do not subscribe to any particular fighting school. Most of the training is meant to give the fighter a good enough feel of the weapon, and how to best manipulate its form, so that they can create their own style. Flexibility is key.

Ryouma told her on their first training session: "Widen the blade when parrying, shift its weight to maximize impact or speed, alter its length to suit the conditions of combat... Proper manipulation of the Alterium is part of what will pave the way towards learning to fight as a Scion. While most martial arts are built around a weapon's immutable characteristics, we make the weapons bend to our needs."

Once, Ryouma even made a quip that teaching a trained fighter isn't that much simpler than training an amateur. There are plenty of habits that need to be unlearned. If anything, this made Hilda feel a bit better while she struggled with the basics. And she is somewhat proud of herself that she's been able to pick up as much as she did in this short while.

Still, there's always that niggling thought that things would be far simpler for the Corps had Orlen given them a proper warrior. Hilda doesn't know how far someone like her will actually make it in this but, if anything, she's going to put in the effort to make Ryouma's work with her not a complete waste of time.

Another day comes, with Hilda dragging herself off bed at four thirty in the morning and making her way to the small closet in her room to pick up her clothes for the day. She has never been an early morning person, as one could tell from her heavy frown and squinting eyes, but she is, slowly, getting used to it.

The living quarters themselves take up the majority of the second floor of Valarheim keep, each of the two wings set with a large central hub that connects to the crossroads at the first floor. The central hubs are the main communal areas for the Scions and designed to accommodate a large amount of people. All about the area, you can see several crackling fireplaces, large and small wooden tables, comfortable chairs and couches, stained glass windows that rise to the ceiling, fine red and gold tapestries laid about the ground, shelves filled with books written in many different languages and three glass chandeliers to light up the area.

From these hubs, several small, candle-lit corridors lead to thousands of small rooms in all directions. These are as basic as they come, at least for the Novitiates: a single bed, a small closet, a pair of racks for weapons and armor and a lone mirror at the closet's door. The simplicity of the furniture certainly contrasts with the overall elegance of the Keep itself – then again, these are the rooms of the rank and file.