Timestamp: 35th of Summer, 522 A.V.
The machete made her powerful. It strengthened her wrists tremendously too. Taz was always aware of her wrist alignment as she drilled with Gracelin, until knowing the orientation of her blade was second nature. She knew without looking whether she was going to land a blow on a cutting/killing edge or smack someone with the flat of her weapon. They didn’t often chop flesh with the machetes, but knowing Tazrae could with a mere slight adjustment of her wrist was invaluable. The orientation of the machete – via how she held her wrists – meant everything to the battle.
As they continued their sparring, Gracelin eventually added in more elegant footwork rather than standing stationary just moving through the four-step process. She added in simple things at first, having one person advancing as the other was retreating until they got good at this and it became second nature. Then, she upped the elegance even more, putting them on rough ground with obstacles all around that were tripping hazards and things that made the footing uneven. The hazards mostly consisted of stones, driftwood, hastily dug pits, and scrap lumber that was laying around from various projects going on around Garden Beach. Taz had to constantly watch where she was going to avoid literal pitfalls, and yet keep her eye and mind in the fight as she did so.
Buraga wandered by in those first few times, calling advice to the ladies as they battled. Then he himself dug some holes and added posts and pilons, small elevated bridges and walkways that he made the girls spar across or among. Taz found such things impossibly hard and felt her progress was slowing, but Gracelin was patient and constantly explained and reiterated that she was training her brain to do multiple things at once. That retraining was hard and wouldn’t come overnight. It would instead come gradually until she fought through the obstacles like they were second nature, even though they were changing constantly. Taz learned to stop watching the ground with her eyes so much and to feel it with her feet as she swung the machete at Gracelin and used it to block Gracelin’s own attacks.
As expected, it gradually happened. Taz got used to feeling the earth with her feet, trusting them to keep her steady, and moving in a way that tripping was a lot harder than it had been when she wasn’t conscious of how she had to plant her feet or what footwork pose her stance had to be in next to uphold her fighting position. Her mind slowly over time and over the endless drills this summer, changed and retrained, as Gracelin said it would. And as the footwork got better, Buraga and Gracelin both added in lateral movement driving Tazrae’s drills into the increasingly more complex movements. She had steps added, other factors considered, and distracts thrown at her mid-spar all designed to break her concentration and focus.
It was almost as if the pair had set her up for a crash course in entries, attacks, and defenses. That lead her into learning more tactical exercises like strike and block drills. Buraga especially taught her to look for openings and use more unique and unexpected entry strikes to gain the element of surprise in her fighting. Part of this involved the use of the circular strike that Gracelin had first taught her to keep her machete traveling around her body. Once she learned to keep her machete moving, without telegraphing what she was about to do to her opponent, then she could integrate blocking and striking together to turn the tide changing defense to offense on the part of her enemy.