[Antinous Training Grounds] On Your Feet!

by **Isana Lin** on May 13th, 2014, 11:20 am

61st of Spring, 514 AV

White lightening flickered through the trees behind her, the beat of hooves beneath her throwing up clouds of dust that drifted in the moonlight. Bare horseflesh chafed at her thighs and the mail of the knight to which she clung was slick with her sweat. Her backside was a mess of bruises where Cawdor's Desertbred rose and fell beneath her but the pain was buried beneath an even more primal emotion. Fear pulsed through Isana's veins as surely as blood, eyes closed tight against the lightening and face pressed to Cawdor's back.

The Wing been riding for what felt like an eternity, saddles and spears alike abandoned in the hasty retreat that had driven them from their camp. Fleeing an opponent that made even Sylir's Knights quiver. A small part of Isana's mind was wishing that she was somewhere, anywhere else. Even her bed in Mithryn would have been preferable to this midnight ride and the horrible, awful, sensation of being hunted. Most of her mind; however, was simply too busy screaming in animalistic fear to assemble a more coherent thought than that of escape.

They would make it. Safety was visible on the horizon, the glow of the watchmen's torches suspended high above the ground as Syliras' garrison made their patrol. Syliras was home. Syliras was safe. The walls would hold them, nurture them. Guard them against the terrors of the-

Lightening struck again, no more than forty feet behind the fleeing Wing. Despite the flash, the bolt was eerily silent, kissing the leaves as lightly as a spring breeze. Even through her tightly closed eyes, Isana could see the face it burnt into her eyelids. A long, narrow face with ugly patches of black strewn across dark skin, beady, hate-filled eyes staring out of a head bearing a jaw twisted from its skull, hanging loose like a poorly-fitted sail. Staring at them. Staring at her. It had been so for the duration of their ride. It followed the knights but its gaze never flickered, never faltered, never failed to meet her own. She shook her head, clearing the haze of light. The twisted face lingered on for a moment longer, hanging beneath over her eyes like the flickering of a madman's lantern.

Tentatively she raised one hand from its place around Cawdor's armour to tap on his chest, her twelve-summer old limbs tiny against the mass of the knight.
"It's coming!" Her voice was tiny, weak and ineffectual against the pounding of the horse's hooves and the rattling chain. She may as well have been whispering for all that Cawdor would hear her. "Simon!" She screamed that time, vocal cords protesting the strain.

Somehow he heard her and the slight man twisted in his saddle, leather curiously silent beneath him. Simon was a knight of the Green Company, one of the men who patrolled Mithryn's fields and one of the closest things Isana had to a -

Eyes as black as pitch stared at her from beneath the leather helmet. Not merely the pupil, the entirety of the man's eyes were as dark as the night sky. At least the night had stars to illuminate it. There was no hint of light in those black orbs. No hint of mercy. Isana froze in place, arms still locked around the monstrosity that had been her mentor, a cry for help shrivelling in her throat. Slowly, almost delicately, he removed one gauntleted hand from the reins and pushed her from the horse.

Into the embrace of her waiting hunter.

A ragged scream tore from her lips as she slammed into the dirt.

by **Isana Lin** on May 13th, 2014, 12:47 pm

Isana woke to the smell of smoke. Dark stone hung above her head, just another brick in the vast man-made cave that was Stormhold Castle. It had only been a few days since she arrived in the city and it already felt like a stylised prison with its dark rooms and lurking shadows. Stone walls, stone floor, stone heart. Her bedlinen lay strewn about her, sheets crumpled in corners where she had thrown them in the grip of the nightmare. The nightmare. Her eyes flickered through the room, searching for a hint of a pale, mouthless face, some hint that the terrifying figure that haunted her dream was more than a fabrication of her ill-disciplined subconsciousness.

She scowled, the smell of smoke finally working its way into her sleep-addled mind. A moment later she saw the tongue of flaming curling at the corner of her room, bathing the apartment in an angry red glow. Isana sprang to her feet, exhaustion falling before the rush of adrenaline. A bedsheet's corner sat slumped over the still-glowing embers in the hearth, a solitary tongue of flame licking its way up the dry cotton. After a moment spent struggling with a length of sheet wrapped around her ankles she managed to tug the sheet free of the hearth and hurriedly jumped atop the burning corner in a movement that sent a bolt of pain up her leg. The flame guttered and died, and the knight released a breath she had been holding since she the smoke dragged her from her dreams.

The sheet was still usable. Barely. The flame had limited itself to one corner, and the blanket was singed far worse than it was burnt. It was still a shadow of an excuse for bedlinen, but making do was far preferable to making the trip to replace it - if only to save her the stares.

"Is everything alright in there?" A trio of knocks beat a staccato against the timber of her door. If she squinted, Isana could make out a pair of booted feet beneath the boards. Did no-one sleep at regular hours in this accursed place? Another knock. "We smelt smoke."

"I'm fine." She pried the door open a crack, revealing two men in the characteristic plate of the Syliran knights, torches sputtering in their hands. Night watchmen. It said something about the order's commitment to security that they maintained interior patrols within their own twice-walled castle.

The lead knight, a tall man who looked to be a handful of years Isana's senior gave her a look that somehow managed to imply doubt without so much as a raised eyebrow, green eyes flicking past her to survey the tattered bed behind her. After what felt like an eternity of standing there in her bedclothes, he stepped back from the door, apparently satisfied that she was not about to set fire to the citadel. "If you insist, Sera."

"I do." The pair shared a long look before they tramped from her door with a cacophony of grinding mail that, had she still been sleeping, would have dragged her into the land of the living with her hands over her ears.

Two days in Syliras and she had already managed to convince the locals that the garrison's newest knight was a raving lunatic from the woods. Outstanding. She groaned and began gathering her sheets.

Fifteen chimes later Isana stood before a neatly made mattress, burnt sheet tucked against a wall. The light armour of the knights wrapped around her, encasing her in mail like the embrace of a long-lost sibling, stiletto strung at her hip. True, the armour was hot. True, it was confining. But she felt safer, protected. Powerful. She exhaled, tugging the straps around her shoulder tight. The nightmare had reared its head often enough that she knew that there would be no more sleep that night. Dira take her the day she chose to spend time in bed.

She scooped her spear from the wall, stepped into the flickering light of the corridor, and began the short climb to the training grounds.

by **Isana Lin** on May 13th, 2014, 10:17 pm

It took her half a bell to find her way to the training grounds. It had been years since she lasted visited Syliras in any lasting capacity, and the first time she had seen the grounds since her knighting. The city corridors may as well have been a maze for all that she remembered of them. Syna was still a faint hint of light on the horizon, and the only meaningful illumination came from torches speared into the roof around the handful of duellists that had not been dissuaded by the early hour.

The rooftop training ground was hardly deserted, but it was as close as anywhere in the crowded city could get to it. Isana hustled past duelling patrons and squires, the dull thud of wood on metal drifting through the night air. Isana did not mind the sound. It was familiar, the earthy clatter of the sparring ring dragging her further from the faces in her dreams with each muffled blow. Beyond and behind them, Isana could make out the flickering torches that lined the streets, orange-red pinpricks of light in the dark city.

Isana wove her way between partners, angling for a section of the grounds not bathed by someone else's light. She gave the small grove a wide berth, not fully trusting herself to wander there again so soon after waking. Wandering the forests after dark, even the tiny cluster of trees lurking atop the grounds, was simply not something that any sane individual did. Instead, she made her way to a field dominated by the presence of a handful of boulders, scattered among a patina of debris - unstable rock and rubble pulled from the mines that was useless to the forges. It cracked and grated softly beneath the leather of her boots.

To call the boulders large would have been an understatement. The largest were easily taller than her, rocky edges worn smooth by hundreds of armoured hands. Discovering exactly how the order had managed to lift them to the rooftop training ground had been a research task a frustrated weaponmaster had thrown her once when she, as a young squire, had refused to leave him to his task. The larger rocks had been lifted from the streets with cranes carefully assembled atop the training grounds, with the majority of the smaller boulders cautiously manhandled through the interior of the citadel. That had been over a century ago, and the stones had had plenty of time to settle into the roof, as evidenced by the slowly-creeping sea of detritus pooling at the base of the boulder closest to her.

Isana propped the spear up against the boulder and began.

She inhaled, a series of slow, deep breathes that drove the dust of the castle's interior from her lungs. Inhale and exhale. It was easy to forget how stale the air grew within the walls. The ventilation system ringing the structure was enough to keep her alive, but it wasn't enough to make her feel alive. She narrowed her focus to just the breathing, the rise and fall of her chest and the beating of her heart within her ribs. Still, the image of Cawdor's monstrous face lingered at the end of each faltering breath. She wrestled with it, shifting her focus to the dirt beneath her feet, to the thin band of light on the horizon, to anything that was not her own mind, the struggle shattering any remnants of internal peace. Still, the face remained.

She gritted her teeth and forced herself into action, moving to the next boulder in a slow jog, mail clinking with each step. No warm-up, not right now. Despite her efforts to calm down, her heart was already beating hard in her chest. The ground crunched beneath her and she nearly stumbled on a piece of rock jutting up beneath her feet. She ran on, resisting the urge to break into a sprint, to outrun that sickly-white face and eyes that stared through her. One steady pace after another. Thud. One boot hit the dirt. The ground was a checkerboard of slate, dirt, and rocks and it took most of her attention just to keep her feet from catching. She let the task consume her, one foot after the next. That was all the world was. All she was. A haze of focus and movement and shifting armour. Next foot. She reached the boulder that marked the end of the area, jogged around it and returned.

Again. She slipped into a run.

by **Joris Mevelk** on May 13th, 2014, 11:57 pm

Normally amidst the cavernous stone walls and corridors of Stormhold Citadel, Joris would feel a bit of claustrophobia mixed with a silent warning in the back of his mind born of his years on Sunberth streets. He looked for daggers where there were likely none, feeling exposed rather than protected in his armored robes. It was a constant thing, paranoia born from living day to day in his youth with the knowledge that one wrong turn and he would likely be dead. Syliras was different; he had often needed to tell himself over and over again though still the thoughts lingered in his mind.

Fortunately, the Training Grounds were a far bit different in that everyone already had their weapon’s out and were working with them in the open. That was somehow a bit more comforting to the Mage Knight than not being able to see his opponents, or the weapons they might very well hold. Perhaps it was part of what came of being a mage as well, it was easier for him to assess threats if they were out in the open. Fortunately, none of his brothers or sisters in the Order were anything he would classify as enemies. He trusted most, if not all, with his life.

His steps took him through the Grounds, weaving and pacing around melee’s, squires training with their patrons and endless drills. Joris looked rather not the image of a knight, his dark hair messy like he had just gotten out of bed and contrasting with his well-trimmed goatee. The armored robes adorning him looked rather bulky and added a bit of extra bulk to his figure, upon the collar of the uniform a single silver sword pin gleamed. His gauntlets had been stored away, his hands adorned with strange ink symbols spiraling down them and up his arms beneath the sleeves of his robe.

The Mage Knight was looking for a good spot to practice a bit of projection, preferably somewhere without too many people nearby that might accidently get too close to his projected limbs. The tall man’s dark eyes searched around, hidden mirth within the orbs as he searched for a suitable location. His gaze fell upon a boulder a short distance away before noting another Knight, a Sera, was using the area nearby to run laps. He clucked his tongue slightly at this, displeased but not one to disrupt training for his fellows. He sighed and set his sights elsewhere.

He finally located a post of sorts; a training post not far from where the boulder had been that possessed a few gouges dug into the surface and had apparently often seen use. Joris walked up to the post itself and laid a hand upon it, the wood coarse and the little gouges where blades had fallen upon it more pronounced. The tall man pondered it for a moment, before finally nodding and producing his dagger from within the folds of his armored robes. He pulled it out and also undid the sash of his robe, wrapping it around the post and tying it off before placing the dagger neatly on the post’s side. This simulated an armed opponent nicely enough to the Mage Knight’s eyes.

Joris counted his steps back away from the post, stopping at about seven meters or so away from the post before turning and pointing at it with his arm. He stuck his tongue in his cheek, calculating the distance between it and him, pondering if there might be a lag in command and reaction once he performed a detachment upon his Astral body. It seemed well within his range, not at the edge or limits where the lag would become a terrible issue for the tall man. The bigger issue would be the handling of the dagger itself, since his control over weapons with his Projected limbs was hardly perfect.

Satisfied, Joris stuffed his hands into the pockets of the armored robe and focused deep within himself for some form of change. He grasped at the strands of his Djed, tugging at the wellspring of his being and pouring it into the action he wished to preform by focusing it upon his arms. Using the Djed to fuel the detachment, Joris willed his Astral body begin to unravel from his physical one around his arms. He started slowly, beginning first with the joints and then radiating it outwards to the extremities. The Glyphs he had drawn previously assisted, giving him focus as he worked.

His face was a mask of concentration, a few solid chimes passing before the process of detachment was completed. There was a faster method to do it, but the tall man had no desire to tear at his very soul to get some extra speed on his detachments. His arms went limp within his pockets, losing all ability to move around without the Astral to provide them with signals. His ethereal limbs rose out from his physical arms, the part of his Astral stretching out from him. An auristics user would see two long ghostly arms extending from his shoulders, stretching out from him at his direction.

The Mage Knight fed his Djed into the casting, expending it to keep the casting stable though the mere act of keeping his projected limbs out drained this energy automatically. Further strain and distance only would further increase the drain upon his Djed, factors that every projectionist needed to bear closely in mind when they were casting. Joris focused entirely upon this effort of his, extending and stretching his Astral hands closer to the training post.

His right projected limb lashed out almost immediately upon the post, a somewhat forceful projected punch launched at it. At the same time the Mage Knight snaked his left one to the place where the dagger was, ghostly fingers wrapping around the dagger and lifting it from its place. The added weight being near the maximum capacity he could lift increased the strain upon this limb, but he could manage it. The dagger was brought out and then into the post’s side, no apparent skill in how it moved and struck its targets. It also looked as though it was being moved by nothing at all, the appearance of telekinesis. The weapon was simply used to stab and as best as Joris could manage, his right hand being used to punch and lash at the post. Distraction mixed with execution, a dangerous and potent combination.

by **Isana Lin** on May 14th, 2014, 4:05 am

Cobbles flew beneath her in a haze, each step sending another lance of pain up the inside of her leg, another scream from her muscles to stop this foolishness. To yield. To let the nightmare catch her once again.

Isana sucked another gulp of air through gritted teeth and pushed harder. Her mail rose and fell with each step, throwing her weight about like a pendulum aboard a shifting ship. Her tabard scrambled at her legs, resisting each staggering step forward. The leather gardbrace at her shoulder had slipped loose of a strap and slapped into the mail beneath with each jarring movement of her torso. Yet, her gaze did not waver from the ground.

Each step was cautious, plotted. Each footfall carefully placed atop the crumbling slate. It was a dizzying number of things to keep track of - pauldron and mail, pace and pain. Judge the next step, fall, catch, another stumbling lunge forward. In the midst of the complexity, between the mess of conflicting signals screaming at her to push on or crumble to the ground, she found a measure of peace. The hectic, scrambling screaming somehow cancelled itself out and Isana could focus the entirety of her being on the next step. And the next. And the next. Despite the pain, she delighted in the sensation. In the sea of signals, there was no room for the nightmare. In the focus, she found a measure of freedom. Another step.

Rock crunched beneath her.

Another.

She rounded the boulder, gauntlets raking the surface of the stone, tracing another faint line alongside hundreds.

Another.

Isana's breath caught. A knife hovered before her, seemingly suspended in the naked air. It was surreal, it defied all-

Her foot caught on a half-rotten length of timber, and the knight's world flipped. She stumbled into the dirt with a hollow clang, armoured knees and hands scraping at stones. She lay there for a long moment, chest heaving, desperately trying to cram oxygen back into her aching body. A nearby patron lowered his pollax and signalled his squire to help. Isana rocked to her feet and waved the boy away, fronting a scowl that dared him to try and help her. The squire wavered for a moment and then thought better of it, returning to his duel with a half-hearted shrug. She gave her pauldron strap a coarse tug, pulling it back into something resembling the correct position and cursing her lapse in focus.

Now stationary, she could get a better view of the knife. For a brief moment, she thought it to have been in illusion of position and the early morning light but it truly was hovering, suspended in the empty air. As she watched, it slashed at a sashed dummy. It was a clumsy swipe, more akin to a drunk's haymaker than a carefully placed blade. Had it been carried out by a visible opponent she would have dismissed it as unprofessional and foolish, the sort of attack that left the attacker's ribs waiting for a well-placed blow from an opponent's knee. Yet, when the attacker had no visible body to expose to their foe the point seemed moot.

Gray eyes scanned the courtyard, searching for the source of the levitating weapon. Ghosts were not uncommon, but she had never heard of one using the order's training grounds. She glanced around at the other knights, but none of them seemed to have noticed the dummy's invisible adversary - too focused on duels of their own. It was only when she stepped - limped, strictly speaking - around the boulder that she saw the stick-like man staring at the dummy as though it had insulted his mother, dog, and deity.

He stood a half-foot taller than her, but the robes hung over him made him look a good deal taller. As she watched, the knife slashed at the dummy again, the man's eyes tracking its movement like a hunter watching a rabbit. There could be no doubt, than. A mage. Not unheard of in the order, but uncommon enough that Isana had only personally dealt with a sparse handful. She knew of magic, certainly, but she knew it in the same way she knew of the Gods. It was a distant, mystical thing practised by strange men in foreign lands. In short, magic was something that happened to someone else. The polished silver sword on his collar, a mirror of her own, identified him as a full knight of the order.

At that moment, Isana hardly cared who he was. Her leg ached where she had fallen on it, and every breath she took heaved her further from the wonderful clarity that had filled her mind on the run. She collected her spear and made her way over, brushing a thin coat of dust from the green tabard in an effort to return the image of the Windoak emblazoned there to something resembling white.

"Tell me Ser." The knife skittered across the dummy with a faint schink. "Do you make a habit of startling people, or was today an exception for you?" She watched the hovering blade out of the corner of her eye. You could anticipate a normal opponent's movement by the way he moved his feet, the way he twisted his body as he tensed for a swing. To see the knife floating about without that sort of warning was distinctly unnerving.

by **Joris Mevelk** on May 14th, 2014, 9:38 pm

A slash over an imaginary neck here, a stab there, the movements were not perfect but then again they did not have to be in order to properly function. They were there to be functional, not exactly pretty as combat in general was not a pretty thing at the end of the day. When Joris fought in reality, he fought to kill and usually opted to ask questions after the person trying to do him in was dead. Not exactly the most knightly of things but perhaps that was a little bit of the Sunberth in him, the dark haired man hated killing but it was sometimes necessary sadly enough.

His Projected fist smashed into the side of the dummy, the thing wobbling slight as he did so and as the dagger was planted where the eye would normally be. Signals were sent along the Astral paths, his non-weapon wielding arm whipping around again and smacking into the dummy again. He could feel the casting euphoria settle upon him, a smirk settling upon his face as Djed was poured into the casting. His limbs being Projected outwards drained a steady stream of his vital energy from him, a constant thing that remained present at most all times.

His attention and concentration was ripped from his casting, the dagger falling from his ethereal fingers as a voice came from the side. His eyes fell upon a shorter woman, a sister in the order if her attire and the single sword pin were to be believed. Her words were designed to bite and perhaps get a rise out of him, and he was a little frustrated by the distraction but he opted to let it slide. He moved his right Projected arm to pick up the dagger again and move it closer toward him, his free left arm moving to hover beside him intangibly as well. This done he turned fully to face her and smirked.

“Only on my good days, Sera. On my bad days I tend to get dark curses and oaths muttered, completely baseless of course. It’s like they’ve never seen a Projectionist work.” He offered by way of response.

He willed his ethereal fingers to drop the dagger, which fell to the ground easily enough and started to reattach his Astral limbs to his body. The two arms were raveled up back in place slowly, starting with the extremities and moving inwards towards the joints. The process was the lengthier of the two but it was also the safest one available to him, the other likely leading to pain and discomfort. The process took well over a chime but once it was done the tall man withdrew his hands from his pockets, flexing his fingers and rolling his wrists as synchronization and feeling returned.

This task completed he extended his right hand to the woman, seeing no reason to not be at the very least a little cordial to a fellow Knight. Sure, she might have interrupted the session but Joris was not the type to let things like that build up or fester. Best to forgive and forget sometimes, it was not like he could not just try again at a later date. The tall man noted her armor was of the lighter variety, different from his own which was heavier by comparison most certainly.

“Ser Joris Mevelk, Mage Knight of Blue Company, 2nd Regiment, Gold Quadran. What lovely Sera do I have the pleasure and honor to address?” The tall man introduced as he normally did to a fellow Knight.

by **Isana Lin** on May 15th, 2014, 9:56 am

Isana did not return the mage's grin as the blade clattered to the ground. What sort of use was a magic that failed at the first hint of distraction? Nonetheless, she remembered the shock of seeing the blade hovering before the dummy. A dagger blade was a small thing, easy to miss in the chaos of a melee. As she watched, the weapon made its way back towards the pair. Suddenly, his comment did not seem so flippant. Despite herself, her fingers gripped the spear a little tighter.

"Curses? I cannot begin to imagine why. It surely would not have anything to do with a tendency to play with knives, would it?" The dagger settled to the ground, gently this time, more like a trained hawk then a tool of steel. The mage did not rise to the bait this time, his attention obviously elsewhere. She considered picking up the dagger but decided against it. There was no guarantee it would not choose the moment she leant forward to spring into the air again.

After a long moment the mage extended his hand. One Ser Joris Mevelk of the Second Regiment. She blanched at his use of rank. Introducing oneself to a college by rank struck her as an arrogant gesture. They all wore insignia and even the newest, wet-behind-the-ears squire knew enough to identify the sword pin they both wore. Did he take her for a complete fool? Nonetheless, she extended a gauntleted hand with a curt nod.

"Isana Lin. Green Company of the Fourth Regiment." Her quadron and wing were still undecided, officially speaking. Her posting to the city had been a personal request and the particulars of the assignment were still being worked out somewhere within the administrative leviathan that was the Order's personnel company. But there was no need for Joris to know that.

She yielded to curiosity and scooped the dagger from the ground, turning it over in her hand. No flame burst from it, no icy cold blade. She raised an eyebrow as she weighed it and found nothing unusual. After a moment, she extended the weapon to Joris, hilt first. "I expected it to be lighter." She admitted. "It is an interesting parlour trick, Ser Joris, but I hope that you are capable of something more impressive on the battlefield." Her tone was as level as a still lake, eyes carefully watching the scraggly knight's reaction. "If we wanted to flail at our foes, I imagine there are at least a half dozen men at the Stallion who would be happy to fill that tactical niche.

Of course-" She paused, the timing too precise to be an entirely natural afterthought. "I imagine the technique is even less effective against an armoured opponent." There was a hint of amusement deep in those grey eyes, daring him to contradict her.

by **Joris Mevelk** on May 16th, 2014, 12:35 am

Joris knew the reputation users of Djed possessed, they were mysterious and possibly crazy the lot of them in the minds of most. The Mage Knight himself had grown up being taught that, though now he liked to think he knew better thanks to his patron’s teachings. Most mages could be a tad eccentric, Sahova had shown him that much from his little experience there, but most were not likely to flip out and murder someone. However explaining that little tidbit to others was often a rather difficult thing to do, as mages were also apparently liars and those who played with powers that made them seem unapproachable.

Her offering of address was less formal than his own but got the job done, he was unfamiliar with where exactly she was stationed but such was the way of things. Joris shrugged it off, that was unimportant as what was important was that both were knights within the order. Where they were stationed hardly mattered to him, though some postings did have more exciting stories to share than others in his experience. The tall man clasped his arms behind his back as she went on, ignoring her earlier jab at his magic as best he was able.

His lips turned down into a frown, indignation rising in his mind as his abilities were dismissed as a mere parlor trick. Dark eyes narrowed ever so at the slight against him, the equivalent of another knight having been told their skill with their favored weapon was a fancy trick and nothing more. He held back the sneer that was bubbling through just barely, though he did bristle visibly so it was obvious her comment had managed to get under his skin. Not exactly an easy task, but if there was one thing Joris took utmost pride in it was his magic.

“I’m certain, were flailing all it could do perhaps you might be right. Though ignorant minds often make false parallels so I won’t fault you.” The Mage Knight shot back, his lips curving upwards but his eyes remaining the same as he stared at her.

The words she spoke sounded rather like a challenge and that most certainly took Joris aback a little bit, was she trying to get a rise out of him? Well it was most certainly working and the Mage Knight so very much wanted to show her just how very wrong she was on that account. He met her gaze with one of his own, though rather than amusement there was a hidden challenge lying just underneath the surface. Two could play at this game and the slight upon his abilities was still firmly remembered.

“In that case you would be dead wrong, Sera Isana. Armor or no armor you’d fine my abilities to be far more effective than that pretty little twig you so cling to. I could give you a demonstration if you so desire, though I wonder if you could handle such a thing.” Joris said, his words almost mockingly teasing as he held out his hand for the dagger to be returned to him.

The tall man simply watched her reaction, his expression having settled to a more composed one though his eyes still held that hidden challenge within them. He partially wanted her to rise to his bait, not exactly fond of picking fights but they were in the Training Grounds. If there was any place to settle disputes that arose it would be this place indeed. Of course, he could not dismiss that Isana was a fellow knight so she was likely to be capable if nothing else which would provide him with a challenge dummy’s could not match.

by **Isana Lin** on May 16th, 2014, 8:10 am

Isana barely contained a smirk as her barbs hit home. She didn't enjoy insulting people, but she still felt a measure of pride when her words had the desired effect. It was no different from the attitude most knights held towards killing. The act itself was brutal, without doubt, but they still took a certain grim pride in the techniques, the tools, and the training required to do it well. Any fool could swing a sword, but the order's weapon-masters could make it dance, and in so doing turn an instrument of death into a thing of hypnotising beauty. So it was with her.

Jorvis cared for his craft. That much was obvious from the way he bristled, responding with an insult of his own. Unprofessional, certainly, but far from the worst she'd heard. Good. We need people like that. Someone who doubted the strength of their own ability was a liability rather than an asset.

"Hardly a twig, Ser." She rolled the spear between her fingers to emphasise the point. "You know, some would say that the best weapon is one you do not have to use. A heavy spear, a sword - both are visible. Intimidating, if you care for the word. People know them, understand their purpose. The presence of a sword may end a fight without ever being drawn. Your magic-" She handled the word cautiously, as though it was some unstable compound that might burst into flame upon contact with the air. "- does not appear to possess that capability. Unless, of course, you make a habit of walking the streets with a halo of knives."

She smiled that time, handing Jervis his dagger. Isana was in no rush to fight the man. Not immediately after insulting him. Whatever the tactical significance of his abilities, picking a fight with a mage without preparation was a foolish decision at the best of times. Doing so after riling one up boarded on suicidal. Instead, she raised her spear to point at the the dummy. "And I daresay you're right. One dive into the dirt on your account is enough for me for today. However, I would like to see that demonstration." She cocked an eyebrow, unable to resist one more jab. "Assuming you are feeling up to it."

by **Archailist** on August 12th, 2014, 11:20 am

Isana :

Joris :

Notes :

Was I a little too nuts in my grading?
If you've got concerns, just call me.

Open [Antinous Training Grounds] On Your Feet!