Flashback [The Training Yards] Sausage Making

[Razkar]

65th of Fall, 508AV

When they came, they came like Myri's own fury.

Doors were kicked open with thunder cracks of boots on wood, accompanied seconds later by shouting, yelling, snarled orders and threats. The young Myrian's eyes snapped open, facing the still-dark window, sun not even risen over the jungle. He knew it would be tough here, but-

"Up! Up you pointless petching dogs!"

Rough hands ripped away his thin blanket and before his mouth and waking mind could frame a word strong hands gripped him by the hair and threw him to the stone floor. His knees and elbows scraped the floor, making him wince. All around him the rest of the recruits were tumbling out of their beds, ferocious instructors barking like attack dogs at them.

Like the one glaring down at him now, braided hair littered with bones and teeth, precise rows of scars carved onto her cheeks.

"The petch you looking at, boy?! I say you could look at me?!"

"N-No, mistress!"

A leather boot to the stomach is her next response, knocking the breath from him. But he didn't buckle. Already that delicious defiance was starting to boil in him, happy to have a focus for its hatred. Anger the likes of which he hadn't felt in his life had been his companion for weeks now, burning and festering since...

Since...

"Are you deaf, dog?! Up!"

"Yes, mistress!"

He bounded to his feet, stomach still stinging, but ram rod straight next to his bunk in a blink. The other recruits follow suit at varying speeds, the slower ones brutally kicked or slapped into position. There's four instructors, all female, scowling and prowling and stalking up and down the line of fresh meat like tigers. The tallest glares down the line from one end to the other and barks with a voice like an ax on wood.

"Out the door! Five laps around the city walls! MOVE!"

The new blood at the Garrison pounds out of the door into the predawn mist, and Razkar of the Shorn Skulls is with them.

[Razkar]

Razkar doubted if anyone but Myrians could have made it. Five laps around Taloba was pushing ten miles, and most of it was brush, rock, stone and other surfaces not designed for what they were wearing.

Which was to say, nothing.

"Faster! Faster, you scum!"

There was a thwock of wood on flesh and a lagging recruit got another blow to the back of the thighs. Razkar didn't turn, just listened, seat running down his body, his face, his arms and legs. The recruit gasped and grunted but kept moving. To stop was to invite even worse agony, something Razkar was fast learning the instructors here lived to inflict.

"Sprint!"

At that bark the two dozen or so young Myrians bolted from their jog, pounding their legs across bare rock and cut grass, instructors keeping pace. After a few hundred yards, there's another order: "Run!"

And so it had been for well over an hour. Jogging, running, sprinting, all spaced out and random, torturing the recruits limbs and legs. Stitches and aches had already claimed Razkar's lower body, his legs by that point numb attachments that he was barely in control of. The sun had risen, a baleful eye of flame that roasted the new flesh.

No-one dared stop, or slow. They rounded the final corner and the main gate, lined with skulls, bones and that massive snake body staked above it all, loomed large maybe a third of a mile away.

"Sprint!" The tallest instructor bellowed. "And by Myri, I swear the last one through will suffer!"

It was all the recruits needed to hear. As one group they pelted towards the gateway, legs pistoning, ripping and pulling their peers out of their way as they hurtled towards some semblance of peace. The larger of the group tried their hardest, Razkar amazed to find he was pulling behind, he was not the fastest-

-but not slowest, either.

The recruits zipped one after another past the two brooding guardians of the gate. They were so used to it by now they didn't even blink, nor avert their gaze. But even as Razkar came to a halt, bent over and gulping down lungfuls of air, on the verge of throwing up, he heard and saw something else.

Someone still running. And falling behind.

A Myrian about his size, but broader, slower, unused to this kind of grueling punishment. He'd kept up this far, but this final sprint was the straw that would break his back. A hundred meters and still jogging, he tripped, fell... a cloud of dust rose from his tangle of limbs, and he could not rise...

The instructors fell on him like animals.

Many recruits did not watch. They averted their eyes and did their best to block the wet, sick sounds of wood on flesh, screams and snarls. Razkar did not. Panting, sweating, but eyes still impassive as ever, he watched. He learned the price of failure.

A few chimes later, the instructors with their bloody batons dragged the last one through the gate. The oldest chuckled darkly.

"Or maybe we won't wait for him to get through." She threw up her arm and pointed out two recruits. "You and you! Drag him back to the barracks. Fat petch can think on his failures. The rest of you, the training grounds. Move!"

Shaken and exhausted but with fear and adrenaline spurring them onwards, the recruits obey, marching through the streets of Taloba under the eyes of empty skulls and towering pyramids.

[Razkar]

The Training Grounds weren't just one pit like a coliseum; they were a dozen interconnected arenas and courtyards that covered a chunk of Taloba. The Goddess-Queen had decreed many years ago that the Myrians would reclaim all of Falyndar for their people and purge the weaker races; the only way to accomplish this would be through war and slaughter.

Thus, training for those two things were the Myrians' first concern.

The instructors herd the still-sweating recruits into one of the arenas, this one flat and covered in red dirt. Herliz, the head instructor, sneered at the young, exhausted faces as she prowled in front of them. Her baton jerked downwards.

"This ground," she barked, voice carrying high and loud over the empty air, blocking out the screams and roars of other training classes, "was once white sand. Pure as silk. And now? Now it is red... red with the blood of generations of Myrians who have fought and trained and bled for their people on this sand. This is what we do. This is who we are. We are the Taloba Army, and you petching, mewling stains will be dragged to our level of excellence-"

She cracked the baton against her naked thigh, and neither her expression nor her leather-like skin seems to register the blow.

"-or you will be cast out. Branded a fool and a weakling for all our kind to see... and sent back to your clan in disgrace."

She paused, letting the horror of what she was saying sink in. To be thought unworthy in the eyes of ones family, in the eyes of the Goddess... Razkar knew that most Myrians would rather open their own throats than fall so far from the light of their Goddess. But he kept his face impassive, listening.

"This is your first day. It will be hard, but not the hardest. Long, but not the longest." Herliz stopped and jerked up a recruit's face with her baton, stick pressed under the young woman's chin and her eyes boring into her own tired orbs. "Bloody... but not the bloodiest. Not by far."

Double doors lined with ancient skulls open and two instructors pushed out a cart loaded down with wooden training tools. At least, they were, at some point. Even from here, Razkar could see the wooden axes and swords had actually been whittled to a sharpness, a keenness that was disturbingly close to a metal blade. A low, throaty chuckle snaps him out of his thoughts, and he looks up at its source...

... to see Herliz grinning at him.

"Pain teaches. Pain helps you remember. So does blood. Chose your weapons!"

The recruits did as they were told, stepping forwards and rummaging through the mass of training weapons. Razkar discarded the club as too unwieldy... then the hand ax, for the moment... ah...

A gladius, like his father's.

He lifted it in bis hands, tossed it from left to right, spins it, felt the weight and heft and balance. An old weapon, but a good one, almost as balanced as the real thing. He tapped the end ot it-

Goddess. Almost exactly like the real thing.

"Pairs!" Herliz barked, and without even knowing how it happened, the recruits found themselves into two rows, facing each other, weapons already raised. Herliz smiled, revealing sharp white teeth. "Begin! And the loser will get half rations tonight!"

Razkar snapped his gaze to the grim-faced woman opposite him whose name he did not even know, face set and determined as she gripped a war club in her hand. With a snarl she charged forwards-

-Razkar lunged to meet her.

[Razkar]

She wanted to prove herself. She wanted the honor of marching with the Taloba Army. And she wanted to eat tonight.

Her first swipe against Razkar's side was simple and obvious, and his block was the same. Both had fought before, against rivals clans and lesser races when their Goddess-Queen had demanded it. Both were fast and accurate, used to pain. They were too evenly-matched.

The woman snarled and swung a backhanded blow at Razkar's ribcage. He jumped back, heavy end of the club grazing his chest, struck out wildly at her shoulder with his gladius and she danced away from him.

Agile, this one.

The two circled each other on the sand, weapons raised, looking for an opening, some chink, some gap...

Razkar realized that he had to make one. The gods were watching (and, in this case, very corporeal and armed with big sticks).

He darted forwards and swing for her head. She ducked under it almost dismissively, giving him a brutal chop to the ribs. He grunted and was almost knocked to one side, something under his skin bruised, angered that first blood went to her. Out the corner of his eyes he could see an instructor nod in approval, along with give a very familiar smirk.

One he had seen before that screamed "men are such weaklings".

Petch that.

He lunged back forwards, thrusting out to her chest, not caring if he ripped open her breasts as long as he scored a hit. But she was too quick, yet again, twisting out the way and knocking his gladius out the way, coming in closer for-

Good.

-Razkar to bring his left knee crashing up between her legs.

She let out a howl of pain and bent over on her feet, war club falling from her fingers. Razkar didn't wast time savoring the blow, just raised his gladius again and brought the flat on his blade crashing down on the back of her head. The blow poleaxed her, knocking her flat on her stomach, groaning and cursing in the same breath, fingers reaching pitifully for her club-

-until Razkar kicked her in the side, and she gave up the ghost.

"Good!"

That same instructor who spurred him on now looking on with a fierce, sadistic smile on her face. She steps over the prostate woman and turns up her nose in disgust.

"She should know better. Ruthless, brutal, unprincipled..." he lists off the words like she's describing a vintage wine, and gives Razkar one final nod. "We'll make you worthy yet, dog..."

Continued here

[Schism]

You earn your keep… Razkar Skill(s): Running +3 Weapon: Gladius +1 Unarmed Combat +1 Lore(s): Good Morning, Dog You Don’t Need To Be First Exactly Why We Cannot Fail The Myrian Agenda: Reclaim Falyndar Balance is Key Fight For Equality or Better Note(s): Post two, paragraph 4: seat should be sweat if you want to fix that I like a lot of the imagery in here. You can probably have taken it further at some parts, and I’d encourage it for future threads.  When referencing the army, don’t be afraid to generalize Myrians. It’s not overuse when the race sees themselves, in all ages and sexes, to be in service to their people and Queen. Everyone who can goes through this approval process. It’s coming of age, ultimately. Nice sense of culture. Keep it up. A very nice introduction to what I hope becomes a series. Consider a few of the lores some impressive memories to reference as well, more than knowledge bits. We’ll shape Razkar up yet, in all ways.