The Ancients

Lesson 1: Testing skills

Sean took a seat on one of the benches near the combat mat and watched both of us intently. Cait lunged forward in my short daze and I narrowly dodged her attack. "You need to pay more attention Amber or this is going to end very quickly with your arse o-" I swung my leg around her ankles while she was lecturing me and watched as she fell backwards and her back smacked the floor. 

"Sorry, you were saying..." I smirked down at her sitting on the floor and noticed out of the corner of my eye Sean bent over laughing. Cait smiled and hauled herself back up off the floor with her back to me, I immediately take a step back trying to predict her next move from there and it seemed to work. As soon as my foot moved off the mat to take a step back Cait swung her fist around and missed my face by a few millimetres. 

I had no time to dodge the next attack as her other fist followed and I blocked it with my forearm, suddenly remembering the fight with Jason a few days ago. Cait must have taken advantage of my lack of attention as I felt my feet get swept away and the cool material of the mat come into contact with my face and Cait's body pinning me to the floor. 

"Like I said, pay attention or your arse is going to be on the floor" She stood up and offered me a hand up which I gratefully took. "Your fighting skills are good when your focusing, we just need to improve some of your technique. Your block was good but as you saw I could easily take you down by your feet." I took in everything that she had to say and watched as she made her way back over to the storage room. 

I walked over to Sean who was still on the bench and sat next to him and rubbed my arm, a lot of force went into the block and now the pain was starting o kick in a little. "Hey you did great, not a lot of people can floor Cait that quickly" I smiled at him and he ruffled my hair a bit. My smile faded as my thoughts wondered to what would happen after Domur. Sean must have taken notice in my change of mood as he gently grabbed my hand and looked me deep in the eyes "Hey, everything is going to be okay. For now, you need to get back to training" 

Cait came back holding two leather sheaths, again one black and one tan. Instead of throwing it towards me, she walked up to me and held out the black one for me to take and buckle around my waist under the breastplate. "Now that I have seen the extent of your fighting skills, I want to see how you manage to wield a sword. The one you have there is a wooden replica of an ancient Norse blade and has been designed to balance just like the real thing."

Once again I took my stance at one end of the combat mat, feeling butterflies in my chest as Cait drew her simple Celtic short sword and letting it swing by her right side. I followed suit and drew my short sword from its sheath and studied how well the handle felt in my grip but the nervous feeling remained. "Cait I have never used a sword before" She twirled her wooden blade effortlessly between her fingers.

"You will get a feel for it after some practice, after all, it's in our blood!" With that last part, she lunged towards me sword first, while I tripped over my own feet trying to side step out of the path of the blade. As soon as my back crashed onto the floor the same wooden sword came hurtling towards my chest and in seconds I had the flat edge of my blade planted in my hand and blocking Cait from attacking my chest.

She kept pushing down further and further towards my body while I struggled to think of a way out of the situation. My eyes landed on her stomach which was open to attack and so I looked back at her face and kicked up both of my feet into her breastplate covering her torso. She stumbled back onto the floor a few feet away from me as I lept off the floor to gain the advantage. With Cait still on the mat, I swung my blade down towards her chest and swept it towards the right as she tried to use her sword to block my attack. 

The wood of her training sword could be heard bouncing on the floor of the arena as I held my blade an inch from her neck and her eyes locked on mine in shock. I took a step back and put my sword back in its sheath around my waist and gave her a hand up of off the floor. "Well for someone who has apparently never used a sword before, you did fucking good!" We both smiled at each other as Sean walked over towards us and placed his hand on my shoulder. 

"You did great Amber. Hey Cait do you want to come hang out with us at lunch?" He looked over and her face brightened up at the suggestion then faded away just as quickly as it came. She began to unbuckle the belt to the sheath around her waist and untying her breastplate. "I would love to join you guys but I need to pack up all of this and-"

"I can help you pack up, after all, it shouldn't take too long to put away a few swords and breastplates." She grinned slightly and I began removing my pieces of training armour and following Cait towards the storage room. As we entered the large room I noticed that it was split into different sections of varying sizes with an assortment of different training armours, weapons and targets. We walked past large cabinets with labels of different ancestry lines such as Barbarian, Medieval and Roman before we came up to a smaller shelf labelled Celtic. 

Cait hung up her breastplate with a few others and places the training sword in a small chest on the floor. "Come on it's towards the back where we need to put your stuff" I nodded and followed her further into the seemingly endless room. We passed a cabinet labelled 'Nordic Viking' and Cait carried on walking which confused me "Hey isn't this the one?" I stopped by the other hung up items and waited for her response.

"No, if you read the label that's not the right one. Yours is this one over here" and with that, she pointed over to a single shelf that had one full set of male training armour and the remainders of a female set with a few scattered pieces of weapons. I walked over and read the old label above the armour and traced my fingers over the letters to remove the dust. 'Nordic Icelandic'. I placed my items back where they belonged and walked back out of the storage room with Cait.

"Why was the shelf so small compared to all the others? It only had two sets of training equipment." She shrugged her shoulders and thought about it for a second. "I suppose it's because most of the Ancients were of that descendant and they were all executed. Why do you think I was so excited when you said that you were Icelandic. No offence but you're a dying bloodline." I took that comment to heart and began thinking. I could be the last in history.

"Hey, you two ready to go?" I perked up at Sean's voice and both me and Cait nodded as we left the Gymnasium to the cafe.