Twenty minutes after dinner I was out in the small courtyard of the Widow’s Mark, fully equipped in all my armor, as well as my hammer and shield. The yard was unkempt, myriad grasses and wild herbs vied for nutrients against each other. The decayed husks of those who lost that contest fertilizing the winners. In contrast to the wild battle of the yard; extremely well-cared for raised planter boxes held Widow’s cultivated herbs. The biggest surprise was the young oak sapling, only a few months old, nestled into a corner of the fencing.

  The Willow’s Wrath was already a taxing martial style, and I wore my armor to further build the endurance required to perform it. Starting in the center of the yard, I dropped into rest position, as low as I could be to the ground while retaining full flexibility in my hips. Slightly higher than the stance taught in Beginner’s Shield Art.

  The reason I was out here tonight to begin with was to try incorporating some of what I’d learned into my style. To accommodate that, I sank lower into the rest position until I reached where the Trainer put me. The new position was uncomfortable in armor and would hinder some of the later forms. I started with the defensive forms, all of which used small stutter steps to move and intense hip flexibility to dodge out of the way of attacks.

  By the time I’d worked through each of the defensive forms, sweat glistened across my brow and dampened the leather on the inside of my helmet while my breath echoed throughout the confines of my armor. The phantom soreness from training in my skill compiled with my exertion now and my legs screamed at me with each movement. I took a quick break from the forms to work through a series of stretches before I returned to work through The Willow’s Wrath’s one offensive form. It contained only seven pre-planned moves, each designed to target weak points in a person’s body like the liver, knees, head, genitals, and throat. Each move reliant on an excellent sense of timing and control.

  Iona built The Willow’s Wrath and adapted it to the hammer and shield, basing it on The Willow’s Grace; a style that focused on rushing into an opponent’s space, wearing them down with your rapier, and dodging away.

  The Willow’s Grace was the original martial style of the Order of the Black Hand, but when I first began my training with them Iona decided a rapier would waste the advantage my size gave me and developed the Willow’s Wrath.

  The System had accepted the offshoot style as different enough from its parent to be its own skill. Yet, like its parent, The Willow’s Wrath focused on a charge into your opponent’s space and staying there. The founding ideal was to plant yourself like a willow, wear down your opponent while you swayed around their attacks, before you eventually lashed out and delivered a killing blow when your opponent faltered or made a mistake.

  Since its invention, the Willow’s Wrath has surged in popularity with the main military force of the Cult. Despite that, the Order of the Black Hand has remained dedicated to the Willow’s Grace style. Wrath ended up only being given to a small group of the larger trainees.

  ~***~

  I followed the same routine I had set the day before when I woke. Three skill sessions with Beginner’s Shield Art before I went for breakfast. We spent the first session the same as the day before. Briefly, the Trainer forced me to hold the ‘beginner’s stance’ and then transitioned into working on the basic footwork. Things differed in the second session. After being forced to hold the ‘beginner’s stance’ for fifteen minutes, the Trainer stood before me and push kicked. It kicked with no more force than your average teenager and did nothing more than startle because of my stance.

  The Trainer kept its foot on the ground for barely a second before it snapped another kick, harder this time. I took the strikes full on my shield as the Trainer kicked it repeatedly. Each time I successfully held the block, the kick got stronger until each strike staggered me. The Trainer didn’t relent and while I remained in the same ‘beginner’s stance’ it had shown me I no longer had the strength to block its kicks and each attacked forced me to deflect.

  That got the Trainer to change its behavior. Once I deflected the kicks, it circled me. Its body moved with the languid grace of a panther and it maneuvered to get behind me and my shield. It never attacked with anything but a kick. Its foot never stayed on the ground for longer than a second. Eventually, the blows came on so hard that each deflection rattled my entire arm and pain lanced up my arm into my shoulder. As soon as I couldn’t hold the Trainer at bay, my first instinct was to rush into its space and attack. I held back, however; this was Beginner’s Shield Art and not The Willow’s Wrath.

  Grass barely bent under the Trainer’s feet as it prowled around me. The faux wind, which until this point had been a constant, died around me. Its ire was a physical wall it could not penetrate. I tried to remain in the stance it’d shown me and move fluidly to follow it, but the position was foreign to me and when it feigned a charge or stuck with extra force, I would stumble out of position.

  My mistakes did not have the Trainer stop its assault and correct me, instead a switch of mana whipped across the top of my shoulders until I had regained a proper stance.

  By the time the Trainer finished with kicks, more than an hour had passed. My arm was entirely numb. Two of my fingers were crushed masses, caught between the shield’s central handle and splinters of my shield’s boards. Its last attack had been strong enough that it sent me back ten yards to land on my back and would have been enough to shatter my ribcage had it landed fully.

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  Generously, the Trainer helped me back to my feet, after my shield had dematerialized, to lead me through a series of new shoulder and wrist stretches until the session ended. That final diamond bead echoed out from the hour glass like the chime of a bell. Wisps of mana bled off into the surroundings of my soul space before the System booted me back into the material world.

  Once awake, I gingerly tested out my arm. Fully expecting to be unable to move it after the punishment the Trainer had just put it though, but aside from a tinge of pain in my shoulder, and in the crushed fingers, I felt okay. The ache not much worse than a solid punch to the arm. It hurt, sure, but not enough to impact the rest of my day.

  I took a short break after that session to join the people I could hear in the common room for breakfast. The raucous crowd filled the room with an almost alive atmosphere that ebbed and flowed with the coming and goings of the [Waiters] and [Waitresses]. Widow was a flurry of activity behind the counter as she handled drinks for fifty some people. We spoke little that meal, but she spent a few minutes with me after I’d paid and was about to head back into my room.

  Back upstairs, I switched to the daily stretches I’d grown up with and added the stretches the Trainer had taught me to help with my shoulders and wrists.

  In a minor act of defiance, against what the [Paladins] would have required. I decided that rather than train in Widow’s back yard again, I would stroll around the city to sight-see. In one of my favorite books growing up, cities had been called “… uncaring machines for the commerce of the elite …”, and as I strolled through the city, I tried to fit that quote with what I saw.

  Idle steps brought me off the main street and down a narrow alleyway, the stones of the towering apartment building rough against the callouses of my hand. Gable roofs stretched across the thin space to lean against their neighbors. Men and women clustered together to watch as children played amongst the puddles and crates. [Merchants] called out to their neighbors from open first-floor windows, their goods hidden and privy only to locals.

  People stared as I passed down their streets. Their gazes were not unkind, yet filled with a strange sense of anticipation. I followed alleyways and streets at random, never with a goal or destination in mind. Several times, I came across small markets set up in the space between neighborhoods. Wooden stalls and carts organized themselves into a grid more orderly than the streets they catered to. Men, women, and the occasional child called out to passersby from beneath colorfully dyed awnings and intricately carved signs.

  ‘Mama Fawn’s Bracelets’ one sign read, ‘Uncle Tyron’s Candles’ another man shouted. Some [Merchants] left their goods on display and trusted the quality would draw customers, others called out and advertised, other, pushier [Merchants] sent street kids out amongst the crowd to press items into palms and force sales.

  Curiously, I watched a woman drag an urchin back to a stall by their ear, a crumpled talisman in her other hand, to scold the seller who sent the kids amongst the patrons. I stopped to listen briefly as she threatened to tell the council about his behavior; but ultimately left the market to stroll down a thin street with mana lamps altered to glow red and purple.

  The street was barely wide enough to fit a standard wagon and twisted upon itself, so you never caught sight of what was at the end of the road while you traveled. Ten feet after another turn that blocked the view of what lay beyond, I stepped into an enclosed plaza.

  Surrounded by wall-to-wall apartment complexes, the plaza contained two buildings, a fountain, and a wooden stage. Made entirely from marble, the right-most building was a massive open-air space sheltered beneath a roof supported by a forest of composite columns. At the rear of the roof rested a small building. Every square inch of the limited wall space covered in intricate carvings painted in a riot of red, gold, and orange.

  Like a moth to a flame, the building drew me. There were no clear paths in the plaza, but time had worn down the cobblestones to reveal a desire path that led straight to the temple. As I neared, I could see the myriad art pieces that filled the open-air space. The first statue a person saw upon entering past the columns was a masked woman. With rubies for eyes, one of her arms carved to rest gently above her heart, the other held down towards the ground. The woman reached a hand out to all those who would enter her temple.

  Behind the woman, art pieces, both amateurish and masterful, were displayed in neat rows. People milled about amongst the art works; some simply enjoyed the art while others stopped at pieces to mourn. Briefly I walked amongst the displayed pieces, but there was a sense of wrongness to my presence in this place. On some primal level I could not grasp, I knew I was an outsider and left before I could give offense.

  Past the well maintained and darkly stained wooden stage, and past fountain carved to look like a set of twins embracing one another, was another temple. The only other building in the plaza. Made from marble, the first story of the temple’s facade contained three pointed arches, each with a door inside. Above that first story was another two made from plaster and painted a deep wine red. Each story contained a series of arches. On the second floor, the arches held alcoves that housed statues of a full-figured woman in a flowing gown and various dramatic poses. The third held arched windows of stained glass that displayed what looked liked climatic scenes from a play.

  Through the propped open doors I could see that the interior was an amphitheatre carved into the ground and that a single staircase guarded by a trio of [Clerics] restricted access to the other floors. Part of me wanted to enter and see if I could find out who these goddesses were, but like with the other temple, I knew I was an outsider and unwelcomed in these Divinities’ houses of worship.

  ~***~

  I could hear the mumble of the lunch crowd before I stepped back into the Widow’s Mark. The inn’s namesake stood behind the bar in conversation with one of her [Waitresses] and a well-fed woman. I waved to her as I passed. Back in my room, I did a brief set of shoulder exercises to relax the still sore muscle before I settled down on my bed and slipped back into my skill for some more training.

  The session began the same way as it always did and after fifteen minutes; the Trainer transitioned back into attacking me. It started with slow and weak punches, but each successive strike came faster and harder. I blocked the strikes for as long as I could, but eventually the Trainer drove me back and forced me to deflect the blows. Subtle shifts of the angle I held the shield at and slaps with the rim rang out against crystal fists. This round of training was harder than the previous had been because I had to get my shield back into position within a second and a half to deflect the next blow.

  I had to work incredibly hard not to fall into the habits taught to me by the Willow’s Wrath. At this point in my life it was pure muscle memory to get closer and circle the enemy, to look for an opening, and with the Trainer close enough to punch me every instinct I had told me to drive in close, strike at knee or hip, then try to circle behind it.

  I abstained from that impulse and used only the footwork taught to me in this skill to move around and keep up with the Trainer. By the time the skill ended, the Trainer had stopped attacking three times to help stretch out my arm, and I had another notification waiting for me in the material world.

  Congratulations! Through your effort you have advanced your skill “Beginner’s Shield Art” to (4/10)!

  I was so pleased with my quick progression that it made the pulsating pain in my shoulder and wrist, as my soul’s image of my body clashed with the physical reality of it worth it. I learned from Rebecca that her beginner skills had taken months to progress through because she’d had no background or outside teachers when she’d begun, so the fact I’d gained three levels in three days was immensely satisfying. My ego was tempered knowing that I’d been training with the shield since I was six and anything less than what I was doing was an abject failure.