By Monday morning the shine had mostly worn off the whole adventurer-trainee gig.

  Alex lay in bed trying to work out knots in his calves, and neck and, well, pretty much everywhere.

  “This must be what it feels like to get old,” he said to the chorus of groans in the room.

  Even Jay didn’t try to convince him it was ‘all for the best’. He was sitting on the floor doing some sort of bending stretch to get some movement into his sore back.

  Alex wasn’t sure he was going to be able to walk all the way to the cafeteria before breakfast was over at this rate. He may have to go straight to Reach’s class to get tenderized all over again.

  The weekend had gone by so fast. He couldn’t believe it was Monday already. Just a handful more hours here and they’d get dumped back to Earth where the only monsters were tuition, professors, and his mother’s “how are the classes going?” texts.

  “Well, I guess we should go grab some food,” said Jay, standing up and headed towards the door. He stood there with one hand on the doorknob and looked back at them. Alex didn’t respond, just kept kneading his neck. Danny groaned.

  “Okay, I can see you two potatoes need a little more time. I’ll go see if the girls are ready yet.”

  The Alpha Base weapons yard was damp and cool and a thin mist still hung low over the packed dirt. It had rained overnight and with the clouds still hanging in the sky, it looked like it was going to be a cooler day for a change.

  In the yard, target dummies stood in rigid rows, some battered and on their last legs, some fresh. Weapon racks lined the half wall at the back of the yard. Around them the village had engaged the day and was now in full swing. Alex looked around at the houses in this area and realized that he had still only walked through a small part of the large village. He wondered how many people there actually were here. More than 300 for sure.

  He turned to the sound of a loudly cleared throat. Standing in the center of the yard was Sir WIlliam the Bold, wearing his half-plate and holding a sword casually slung over one shoulder. He was easily the single most enthusiastic LARP fail in two worlds.

  “Good morning, squires!” Sir William announced, throwing his arms wide like a theatre kid discovering stage lights. “And good morrow to those whose spirits lag! Today, we continue the noble art of not dying, when someone swings steel at your head.”

  Mel made a strangled noise beside Alex. “Does he… wake up like this?” Alex tried not to look at her. He had thought the same thing about her every morning this weekend. He said nothing.

  “Yes,” Sarah said quietly, tying her hair back. “He gave a speech in the mess at breakfast this morning. Everything you wanted to know about poulaines.”

  “Pointed shoes.” Jay murmured. “Fourteenth century.”

  “Of course you know,” Mel said.

  “I didn’t until breakfast this morning,” said Jay, rolling his eyes.

  Alex rotated his wrists, trying to get some life back into his hands. He had spent the past two days practicing with a sword, but today he had a new weapon. His staff was about 6 feet long, a little shorter than he was tall. It looked like simple hardwood, but he knew it was significantly more than that.

  Sir William spotted it instantly.

  “Aha! Mercer!” he called, striding over, capelet swishing. “At last, a proper arcane implement!”

  He plucked the staff from Alex’s hands, spun it around in a slow way that looked like he had only practiced with this weapon alone in front of a mirror holding a broomstick. After his demonstration he held it up to the class.

  “Behold! A simple quarterstaff — the weapon of monks, peasants, travelers, and yes, battle-mages of yore! It is not merely a stick. It is leverage. It is reach. It is… poetry. One who is proficient with this weapon can easily hold off multiple master swordsmen.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow at that. He didn’t realize a staff was so useful. Sir William handed the weapon back to him with too much ceremony.

  “Remember, Master Mercer,” he said, eyes earnest behind the dramatics, “the staff keeps foes where you want them. The sword…” He tapped Alex’s scabbard, where he had his hand and a half sword belted on. “…is for when you fail to keep them there. Train both. As a mage it will behoove you to have multiple layers of weapons to fall back on.”

  “So… staff for show, sword for ‘oh no’,” Alex said before he could stop himself.

  Sir William actually beamed. “EXACTLY.”

  “Brandon?” Sir William called. “Did you also receive a staff for your caster role?”

  Brandon shook his head and held up his arms, “No sir. I have these bracelets to use my ‘magic’. I’ll be training with sword and dagger usually.”

  “Right, good.” Sir William nodded. “Well, everyone will receive specialized training with their chosen weapons, but in this class you will learn the basics of ALL weapons. In battle you have to be prepared to use what is at hand if you want to survive and win.” He nodded for good measure and looked them up and down, long enough that some of them started to fidget.

  “Okay everyone – grab a staff from the rack and LINE UP!” he barked, the museum curator gone, the Basic Weapons Trainer engaged. “Fall into your teams and face off!”

  The twelve trainees fell into two loose lines.

  Alex took the center spot to match up with Victor, but of course Connor switched at the last minute to face him. Jay, Mel, Danny, Rae and Sarah fanned out to either side of him, enough room between them so they could swing their weapons without hitting the wrong person.

  Jay stood, relaxed, eyes already tracking Sir William’s demo. Rae bounced on the balls of her feet, two wickedly long, thin daggers tucked behind her back as she watched. Danny yawned and squinted at the sun peaking through the clouds like it was personally attacking him. Mel and Sarah were talking softly at the end of the line and kept glancing down at their ankles – checking stance width apparently.

  Across from them, Connor took center and Madi, Emily, Brandon, Victor and Ethan each picked an opponent. Connor looked like a recruitment ad. He rested his staff against his shoulder with the other hand on his hip. Emily stood at the end of the line, copying Sir William’s stance and grip exactly. The other three were talking quietly to themselves.

  Alex clocked them all in a moment.

  Sir William clapped once. “Today we build on sword day. Yesterday was all about cutting and thrusting. Today is about controlling a fight. The staff is for shaping the battlefield. Keeping foes at reach, redirecting strikes, protecting allies. You will learn: high guard, low guard, thrust, sweep, rotational block, and, if you prove worthy, the Passing Strike.”

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  Danny whispered, “Passing Strike was the name of my high school band.”

  “Shhh,” Sarah said, but she was grinning.

  They started with basic grips. Staff across the body, hands loose, dominant hand back, off-hand forward. Sir William moved down the line correcting elbows. “Look at your HUDs people. You should see the body outline. Put yourselves within it!”

  When he got to Alex he nudged his left hand down the shaft. “Spread your base. You are tall, which means you will have extra reach. Use that. The staff is an axis, not a pointer.”

  Alex tried the first drill – thrust, recover, sweep right, sweep left, reset. He got through about three reps before his back hand crept up again and the ANIP tattled.

  “Oh my god,” Alex whispered. “It did not just rhyme at me.”

  “It so did,” Rae said, not stopping her own drill. “Who programmed the jokes? Mine told me ‘hips before tips.’ What does that even mean?”

  Mel snorted loud enough that Sir William looked over.

  “Eyes on Glory, Mistress Mel!” he called. “The staff will not learn to wield itself!”

  “Sadly,” Mel said under her breath, “because I would let it. I don’t like this weapon.”

  They moved into walking thrusts. Step, thrust, retract, guard. Step, thrust, retract, guard. Sir William paced between the lines chanting cadence:

  “Step, strike, recover, guard! A knight who does not recover is a ghost, and a ghost can defend no one!”

  Alex missed his timing on the third step because his right calf tweaked, still sore from the previous day’s runs. His staff tip dipped and caught the ground. The outline in his vision, the semi-transparent blue human overlay, flared orange at the wrists.

  He stopped. Rubbing the wrist that twisted on the move he took a moment to look around at everyone else.

  At first, the training outline only covered whoever he looked at, but a quick scroll through the menu found the option to turn it on for everyone. One by one, the others lit up in his HUD. Eleven wireframe ghosts moving through the same drill in different levels of correctness.

  Jay’s outline was clean. Almost perfectly aligned to his demo ghost, although he had a slight lag in the left shoulder because he kept dropping his head as he moved forward.

  Sarah was even better. Basically perfect. At least for these beginner techniques. Of course she had some training already although Alex didn’t know exactly what kind.

  Rae wielded her staff explosively. Too explosive. Her sweeps went past the recommended arc and the ANIP painted her in an amber warning glow.

  Danny’s form was a little lazy, but weirdly efficient. He looked like he was doing 80% of the motion but with only 40% of the effort. Clearly he didn’t think much of the staff.

  Mel was in the same boat. She was giving it her all, but her form wobbled everywhere.

  Then he looked over to Connor’s line.

  Connor’s outline was… annoyingly good. Easily as good as Jay and maybe as good as Sarah. His arcs were perfect ellipses. His stance was wide but mobile – and he was going through the motions at top speed already.

  Madison and Emily weren’t too bad either. Brandon seemed to have the form down, but was going really slowly through the motions. And Ethan… Well, he seemed to be taking the ghost overlay as a mere suggestion as he flicked and flared his staff around himself.

  Alex realized something while watching them all. They were all practicing the same sequence on repeat. They were learning the forms and only beginners, for sure. But he thought back to the sparring match with Connor the day before and realized that because they were beginners, when they sparred, everyone was going to just use the beginning forms they learned 90% of the time. Whoever picked up the form faster was going to win the day's sparring matches every time.

  Step 1 → Step 2 → Step 3 → Guard.

  Exactly as shown.

  Exactly as expected.

  Exactly as Alex himself had been doing. Except that he was slower than Jay or Connor or Sarah. He didn’t have an athletic background or experience in any of this. He knew he would get there, the ANIP was already helping a ton in that department. But he was still going to be a step or two behind some of the others for a while.

  He couldn’t compete at that level right now. He would bust his ass to get there eventually. Overtake the others even. But for now he needed a different strategy if he didn’t want to end up face down in the dirt with bruised ribs every day. It’s not like Connor showed any interest in NOT sparring with Alex every day.

  If he wanted to win some of the matches, he was going to have to do something different. Maybe that meant learning new skills, or getting in extra practice on his own time, but it also meant using his brain during a fight just as much as his arms and feet.

  He watched the others practice for a few more minutes and then laughed. It was actually like learning boss patterns in a video game. Any Souls like game seemed impossible when you first started, but death after death taught you to memorize the Bosses set of moves. Once you knew that, you could anticipate and manipulate. It doesn’t matter how hard the boss hits, or how fast they are if you know the pattern and make sure you aren’t in the path of the attack.

  He decided to try something and got back into his stance.

  On the next rep, instead of going thrust → sweep right → sweep left, he went thrust → low sweep → pivot → rising butt strike. Out of order. Improvised.

  The ANIP paused – like it actually needed a second – then pushed a new message.

  “Oh,” Alex breathed. “There it is.”

  He hadn’t performed the moves perfectly, but as long as he didn’t suck at them it would be unexpected by anyone he sparred with today.

  He flipped through the training menu in his HUD and pulled up a list of moves. He scrolled through and found he was able to select individual moves from the list to form a custom routine. Handy. He thought about the move sequence that everyone was busy practicing and found a couple of alternatives that would work well against it.

  This wasn’t going to work long term. He was going to have to work hard and practice with his weapons, but it might be unexpected enough to get a knockdown today.

  “Okay Connor, let’s see what you’ve got.” Alex crouched low and practiced the new moves.

  ***

  Let it be known that war, like theatre, is best understood through preparation, posture, and proper costuming.

  Too many modern treatises reduce combat to numbers, angles, and efficiency, as though victory were a ledger to be balanced rather than a story to be told. This is nonsense. A blade is not merely steel. It is lineage. It is intention. It is the echo of every hand that has ever raised it in anger, fear, or righteous defense.

  In compiling this work, I have drawn from every credible source available to me: the masters of Earth’s long and glorious past—Talhoffer, Fiore, Meyer, Musashi (translated thrice, argued twice)—as well as the living traditions that I have thus far wrestled from this new world, whose knights, mercenaries, and monsters alike have much to teach us.

  One must understand footwork before flourish, reach before romance, and leverage before legend. Yet one must never forget that legend is what survives when technique is forgotten and there is much to be learned from those stories as well.

  As I have often told my new trainees: every swing tells a story. The tragedy is not in losing a fight, but in fighting without knowing what tale you are trying to tell.

  This volume, then, is not merely an encyclopedia of the sum of all premodern martial warfare. It is a remembrance. A stitching together of disciplines, centuries, and philosophies, so that no student need ever stand on a battlefield without knowing that they are part of something ancient and grand, and profoundly worth doing well.

  The Living Codex of Steel, Honor, and Proper Stance,

  Volume I: Foundations, Footwork, and the Moral Weight of a Cape

  Sir William the Bold; Bill Blachley