OOC:
Quote
Originally posted by Frodo101:
OOC: Sorry for being such a jerk to everyone. Forget all that I said about the Sunrunners and forget everything I said in that last post. I just got kind of pissed off there. Sorry.
Alright, you're forgiven. Just don't do it again. /OOC
IC:
Once again Shek Sunrunner fell into the strange world of dreams as he finished turning the veloci-dial to read HYPERSPACE. Once again he fell back into his past.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Instructor Mos, eldest swordmaster at the Sarpi War Academy, grinned maliciously as the ten trainees walked into his morning class. There were seven Ell'achi, one Ravinothi, a Sha'achi, and a Xe'achi. This could be an interesting session, he thought to himself.
Mos was the Trance teacher. He always had been, and he'd been around so long that some people joked that he always would be. But no one ever joked in his class. He was excellent at his job, but he was cruel to anyone who didn't catch on, believing they hadn't been paying proper attention. Often he was right, but sometimes he wasn't, and in those latter cases people hated him. But it didn't matter, because everyone knew they could find no one who could instruct the Dur'achi battle trances better than Mos.
Lelos Somm had already learned the cruelty of Mos. The teacher believed the Ravinothi hadn't been paying attention, so he took him out to the practice floor and ordered the other trainees to watch. To Somm's horror, Mos brought out two of the real combat glaives used by the elite swordmasters to destroy practice targets. So the instructor had given Somm one of the real blades and took the other for himself.
"Now, Somm, assume the Armada over the Waters trance," Mos had said. It was the trance they were supposed to have learned that day. Somm had been paying attention, and fell into the hyper-alert state of the trance, but he'd been no match for the instructor, who had decades of experience over his student. By the time they'd returned to the lecture, Somm had seven gashes. Mos only had a small scratch on his hand.
The lesson had been clear to all of them: never challenge the teachers unless you know you can win. But Somm had taken an additional lesson that no one else there thought of: become so well-trained and so good that one day, one day, I'll defeat Mos and have my revenge for this injustice.
The first few years at the Academy were much like that. Training for actual battles came in the third year with Instructor Jed, a battle-scarred man with only one eye and eight fingers. He pushed Shek and Jal harder than Dess had ever pushed them, and even Lelos Somm, from the brutal jungles of Ravinoth, was exhausted at the end of a training session with Swordmaster Jed. They learned strategy and tactics from the Swordmasters Wehekk and Regel, the two generals of Sarpi who had defended Ellif from a naval invasion twenty two years ago, wiping out the pirate force of thousands and taking only two losses on their side. Shek and Jal caught on quickly, but Somm seemed to see everything instantly, even faster than they. But there was no real resentment there, for Somm would show them what he'd figured out about the strategy, and sometimes the three of them would even find errors in the battles that the Swordmasters had never seen. Regel and Wehekk were extremely impressed when they came forward one day and showed the two generals.
"Someday, the three of you will be legendary warriors of Dur'ach, such as the bards sing of," Regel had said. Wehekk had just nodded, but the gleam in his eyes showed his own pride in having such students.
Eventually, though, the fourth year came, and that meant the Long Wandering with Instructor Dess. He hardly recognized Shek and Jal, and he'd never seen Somm. Only three warriors were sent out for the Wandering, and since they were the three best, they had been sent by Mos to go train out in the open with Dess.
He took them to the coast of Ellif. There they trained against him, fighting with real steel against him, and though they never defeated himhe was a trained swordmaster, just like the other instructorsthey steadily got better. Sometimes Shek wondered why they were waiting there. It didn't make much sense, just waiting on the sand. He said as much one time.
"We await a coming of the Darweshi Pirates."
That shocked the three. They couldn't believe they could turn back a host of them, let alone a single ship full of the corsairs, but Dess told them with absolute certainty that they could if they kept up their training. So they kept dueling with him for months on end, until finally the tell-tale red sails of a Darweshi vessel could be seen.
The Darweshi had always plagued the coasts of Dur'ach, at least, all the history said so, and the truly ancient scrolls in the Archives in Shannok spoke of Darweshi assaults from as many as five thousand years ago, when the pirates used reed canoes and triremes. They Darweshi came to take slaves and whatever other resources they could, and eventually the Dur'achi had decided to fight back. Thus the Sarpi War Academy had been founded by the few surviving warriors who had been the first to have turned back a Darweshi attack. Slowly they discovered the arts of the Trances, and steadily the armies of Dur'ach, mostly based in Ellif, had become something the Darweshi were reluctant to face.
The battle lasted well into the night. There must have been fifty of the raiders, each wielding the heavy curved swords that marked a Darweshi Pirate, and sometimes even Dess was hard pressed to hold them back. Somm had learned the Trances with a fervor unseen of before in Sarpi, though, and he moved with such deadly grace that by the time the battle ended, twelve corpses rested around him, and Shek was reasonably certain that the blood staining the Ravinothi's tunic was Darweshi. He himself had suffered a few cuts, but they soon healed. Jal also had been injured, but he soon recovered as well. Dess didn't have a mark on him.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Shek woke up. Why do I keep thinking about Sarpi and Jal and Lelos? What is going on Sorul?
After refueling once again, he set the ship back to hurtling through the void of hyperspace towards Chak. He then got up to eat a large meal, for a Dur'achi traditionally has a huge appetite, and then he returned to his seat. Slowly, he dozed off again.
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All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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