Hearts In Our Hands

A/N: Hello. This is an RP. I am Eleanor. Call me Wallace, Stem, or whatever you want. Zeph is Pancho. Wolfe is Fingers.  Feedback is greatly appreciated.

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Eleanor looked around the field. There was shouting, the sounds of metal on metal and the thud of arrow tip on material all around her. Her heart was pumping, her hair was getting in the way and she was nervous as possible.

“At your six Eleanor. Take it down!” Eleanor swung around, and after only looking for her target for less than a second, she took her shot. It missed. Not woefully, but if the target had been a real person, she would most likely be dead. Her mum appeared next to her. “Come on Eleanor, I know you can do better than this. You have to have a steady hand and not rush the shot. Only take it if you know you are going to get a hit. Your arrows mean your life in situations like this.”

Eleanor looked down at her feet. She was better than this. Granted, not much, that’s why she was training, but she would have at least hit the target most of the time. Her mum was right, in a fight, you rarely got more than one chance to save your life. Of course, the world was a much more dangerous place with the war going on. Freedom versus the money and power grabbers. Wasn’t that always the way.

She wasn’t training to fight in any war though. She was training so she could protect herself. She knew all too well what dangerous things were out in the world and if she was ever going to be really independent, she would to have to fight them. Her sixteenth birthday was on the horizon, and that was when she was finally going to get out of this place.

In effect, her bow was her freedom. She had always shown more aptitude towards it than most, and she had chosen it as her weapon. For her, it had been a tough choice between her bow and her magic. In fact, it had been such a hard choice that she had asked to be taught both. This meant two things. One, she was going to be less than useless up close to harm’s way. Two, she had to work more than most people. If you were to study magic or combat weaponry, normally you would do it at the same time as archery. That meant that she had to study magic at night.

There was a class of three people that attended magic at night. It was widely regarded as the hardest to master, so most people didn’t really give it a chance. Most people went straight for the big and shiny swords and axes. Eleanor wasn’t most people. Even though it took place at night, she still loved magic. It filled her with such awe that magic could make anything happen. Not only that, but it visually looked amazing. Again, she wasn’t the best at magic, but she wasn’t the worst. In the class of three, she was exactly second best.

The other thing about magic was it brought her and her two best friends together every second night. When they started taking magic, they really didn’t know each other too well, but with the minimal numbers they had had to practice every second night, they had quickly grown close. They were pretty well dispersed between looks. Eleanor had long blonde hair and was average height. One of her friends was tall with black hair, the other short with grey. Wolfe and Zeph respectively, both of them guys.

“Look, you can be done for the day. Next class, come back with a new focus and mindset.” Eleanor looked over to where Wolfe was training with a broadsword. He caught her eye and started talking to his teacher.

-/-

Wolfe’s instructor had always had a knack for boring him with small details. This time it was “turn your shoulders more”. Last week it had been “Reaction is key” and before that “Focus, focus, focus.” These lessons were not really aimed at him personally, but rather to the rest of the class.

Out of eight young men, Wolfe was the most skilled with a greatsword. He was naturally gifted in speed and in strength which gave him the edge against the mediocre stock. The class was made up of young, bloodthirsty boys who all had dreams of fighting in the war, however, this was never his motivation. Growing up in the North, Wolfe knew the importance of being able to protect himself.