Ysera grinned with false confidence as she stepped out onto the reed matt, twirling her staff in a slow and graceful figure-eight motion in front of her. The smile on her face grew more sincere as the staff increased in speed and intensity, spinning dramatically before her until it was little more than a blur, while the air around the weapon whistled in appreciation at the martial display.
*Whack *
The staff’s momentum was abruptly interrupted when her mother’s own staff suddenly intercepted it, sending the weapon spiraling wildly through the air and clattering uselessly on the floor on the other side of the room.
“Hey...” Ysera started to complain, but Odira was already upon her, the butt of her staff colliding with Ysera’s shin with a loud crack. “Ou...” she couldn’t even get the expression of pain out before her mother quickly moved in beside her, slipping one leg behind her daughter’s knee and sending her roughly to the ground. It look a few seconds for Ysera to catch her breath. “I wasn’t ready,” she complained, shooting her mother an icy glare. “That wasn’t fair.”
“When you are out on the matt, you are ready. There are no second chances in a real fight,” Odira replied coldly, standing over her daughter and reaching a hand down to help her up. “Besides, that display of yours was too showy and it wasted far too much energy.”
Ysera reached her hand up, but instead of grabbing the proffered hand, she instead batted it aside and kicked out with one leg at her mother’s shin. Odira pulled back, but not quickly enough to avoid the blow which connected soundly with the top of her foot - though she did remain on her feet, much to Ysera’s annoyance. Ysera then launched herself to her feet with an explosive kick flip and dove in the direction of her discarded staff, expecting to tuck and roll and come up with the weapon at the ready. It would have looked so sweet if she had been able to pull it off, but her mother was far too fast for such theatrics. Odira’s staff flashed upward in a blur and connected soundly with Ysera’s thigh while she was in midair, the sudden strike throwing the girl off balance sending her catapulting face first onto the hard reed matt.
Ysera tumbled to a stop and groaned in pain, rubbing at the tender spot where her cheek had abraded itself on the ground, wincing as she made contact with the raw skin that was already beginning to bleed. She grimaced in pain and annoyance at the realization that she was going to have an ugly scab on her cheek for sure.
Aqima, sitting cross-legged on a small table on the sidelines, giggled audibly at her plight, and Ysera shot her twin an icy glare. “Let’s see you do better,” Ysera hissed as she rose unsteadily to her feet; her shins crying out in agony at the exertion. Their practice sticks were covered in soft leather to cushion the blows, but even this in addition to the practice leathers they wore on her thighs, shins, and forearms, Odira’s strikes were sure to leave welts and bruises.
Aqima shrugged nonchalantly at her sister’s challenge and slid gracefully off of the table, grabbing a wooden bokken and a sparring dagger as she did so. She gave the practice blades a couple of swings and nodded in approval at their feel before assuming her fighting stance; elbow tucked in and blade raised to eye level, with the wooden dagger in her off hand, held in a reverse grip to protect her flank.
As soon as she settled into the stance, her mother was already charging into action hoping to catch her daughter off guard. Odira and her staff were one in the same, powerful and fast and precise, and Aqima was taken aback by the ferocity of the attacks but she managed to hold her ground, blocking most of the blistering strikes with her bokken, but catching a few of the blows on a leather protected forearm.
Then Ysera suddenly sprang back into the fight coming at her mother from her flank, with a mischievous grin on her face. Odira returned the smile and assumed a defensive posture as the twins attacked with unabashed intensity. Two on one they were certain to best Odira...for once, or so it seemed to Ysera. She swung her staff swung in wide powerful arcs, striking with alternating ends of the weapon, one end hitting high, the other coming in low immediately after. Odira was forced to furiously parry these attacks while still somehow finding time to fend off Aqima’s controlled sword swings coming at her from her rear.
Odira knew that she could not allow the two girls to maintain such advantageous positioning on her, and so she started darting, ducking and weaving; timing her movements in such a manner in an effort to force the two girls closer together. Odira was in the zone, her footwork was throwing the girls off balance as they tried to close in and find an opening. With her intricate and deliberate movements, Odira would cause the girls to get in one another’s way, and the two girls narrowly avoided interfering with each other’s strikes time and time again as they lost position and were forced to fight where Odira placed them.
The girls pressed their attack for a good while until Aqima overextended herself in a lunge while trying to take advantage of a nonexistent opening. Odira punished the girl with a stinging rap on the back of her sword hand, which caused her to yelp in pain as the bokken clattered to the ground. Two more rapid strikes with each end of the staff left the girl lying on the ground and clutching at her throbbing brow as a trickle of blood ran between her fingers. Ysera tried to use Odira’s attention on her sister to press her attack, but she found that she could still not penetrate her mother’s defense. Even preoccupied as she was with taking Aqima out of the fight, Odira’s staff still always seemed to find its way into the path of her strikes.
Without Aqima to divert her attention, Odira was free to focus entirely on Ysera, redoubling her attacks and forcing her daughter to back away and work entirely on her defense. The two staffs clattered against each other with explosive staccato percussiveness; the wooden weapons drumming out a warrior’s tune as they collided. Sweat was running down Ysera’s face and her staff was a blur, narrowly blocking the fast and powerful attacks of her mother, who was grinning slightly in anticipation of her victory. At least she was grinning, right up until a small wooden training dagger bounced off of her forehead and momentarily distracted her.
Aqima grinned in triumph from her position on the ground. “Get her,” she cried encouragingly to her twin. The momentary disruption provided the opening that Ysera needed, as she slid her staff along the length of her mother’s, striking the backside of one hand and forcing Odira’s grip to weaken momentarily. Then, with a rapid circling motion, her mother’s staff was wrenched free of her hands and arced lazily across the room.
Ysera grinned in anticipation and swung around with the other end of her staff, hoping to make a powerful body blow against her mother’s exposed side; but instead of moving to absorb or lessen the impact of the strike, her mother instead raised a hand to stop it. Ysera tried to lessen up on the power of her swing, but she was already committed. Her mother’s delicate hand bones would be no match for the thick, wooden staff, and so Ysera looked away to avoid witnessing the devastation the strike would cause. There was a loud crack as the weapon made contact with the Odira’s outstretched hand, and Ysera winced at the sound. But when she returned her attention to the scene she found that she was holding half of a staff in her hand – the other half had spun across the room and bounced off of the stone wall of the training room - and her mother was staring at her with an eerily calm expression.
Ysera recovered quickly from her surprise, and lunged at her mother like a fencer, plunging the broken staff straight towards her mother’s chest hoping that the unorthodox move might catch Odira off guard. It didn’t. Instead, her mother quickly moved her open palm to intersect the approaching end of the staff and stopped it dead in its tracks. Ysera stumbled forward as her momentum was prematurely abated, but she soon regained her footing and looked quizzically at her mother, who still had that eerily calm expression on her face. Before Ysera could do anything, Odira gave the end of the broken staff a quick push and the inch thick section of solid wood exploded in a hail of splinters; sending Ysera stumbling backwards and falling ignobly on her backside a dozen feet away.
When the girls had recovered from their beating, they began barraging their mother with questions. “How in the Holy did you not break every bone in your hand?” Aqima asked incredulously, examining her mother’s palm which showed not even the slightest discoloration from where it had severed the thick wooden staff in two.
“You shattered my staff and you hardly even moved a muscle,” Ysera marveled, staring wide-eyed up at her mother like she was some sort of mythical creature.
Odira looked down at her daughters warmly. “Come girls, sit.” The girls obeyed without question, sitting cross-legged on the matt and staring up at their mother with rapt attention. “That was the Song of Stone. We train so that we can hear its music; so that we can dance to its primal beat. It is the heartbeat of the world, the harmony of iron and steel. When you learn its song, there is no force in the world that can stop you. You will become as the mountain: immovable and unbreakable and powerful. This is why we train. Your minds and bodies are the instruments with which to play the melody, and when you master its tune, you will become unstoppable.”
Odira then flashed her two daughters a rare warm smile and continued, “Now, if you are done with your rest, we must rehearse some more. The Song is difficult and long, and you must learn its every note.”