The sixth person to step forward was a young man, near eighteen, with a scraggly blonde beard and sideburns that he was too proud of. A three-meter-long pike rested in the crook of his elbow, its head wrapped in cloth for reasons beyond me. Why wouldn’t he face a clearly superior foe with his full strength?

  The man said nothing and stepped forward. When he was in front of Tammy, he gave a brief bow, set his feet, and leveled the weapon in her direction. Tammy smiled at the man, returned a shallow bow and rushed the kid. Why she didn’t ask for his specialty or style? I don’t know.

  Tammy tried to circle the young man, but the jabs he sent towards her sides kept her honest and coming straight at him. He did well to keep her at bay, but wasn’t able to land anything before she slipped into his guard, grabbed the haft of the pike, and yanked him forwards. He stumbled, dropped his pike, but recovered well. Two cloth covered daggers seamlessly fell into his hands from his sleeves. Tammy was right in his face. Rather than guard, the young man let out a series of furious slashes towards Tammy’s midsection, content to eat a punch if it gutted her.

  He never got the chance. When Tammy’s punch connected, he dropped like a bag of bricks. As soon as he landed, he snored. People around me chuckled, but a glare from Tammy as she gently hoisted the young man’s head into her lap quickly shut them up.

  “He is not snoring.” She said pointedly. “He’s trying to swallow his tongue.”

  Tammy quietly chanted something to herself and lowered both her hands to either side of his head. She held her hands there for a second until the chant finished and his eyes fluttered open dreamily.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living junior brother.” The young man smiled up at her as she spoke, eyes still half clouded with sleep. Then he realized where he was, blushed so hard his entire face went red, and scrambled out of her lap.

  “Thank you, senior sister, but I believe it’s time for the next person, right?” The man pleaded before he scampered to the back of the line.

  Tammy chuckled at his back and stood.

  “He’s right. Smallbard, you’re up.” Several people in line gasped and when I turned to look behind me at some of them, I saw half the stewards crowded around our section of the training yard.

  The woman who stepped forward was brutally beautiful. Long brown hair tied up into a loose ponytail disappeared beneath her once beautiful armor. She wore half plate armor once intricately carved with pictures of a library. That carving now long hidden. Dents and scratches had built up across the well-maintained steel and destroyed the beautiful scene.

  Her gauntleted hands draped across the haft of a two-handed maul held on the back of her shoulders. Unlike my hammer, the maul’s head was diamond shaped, unadorned, and the size of a small melon. Each side came to a rounded edge. Made from a light orange wood, the handle of her maul featured remnants of its own worn away carving.

  “Ellen Smallbard. I specialize in two-handed blunt weapons, and I dabble in summoning magic. I’d describe my style as offensive.” Tammy flashed Ellen a familiar smile and beckoned her forward.

  Ellen was a tornado. Her maul never stopped moving, never stopped spinning. Tammy put on a masterclass in evasion. Strikes that would have rent flesh and broken bone missed and turned into backhanded blows with the haft; or Ellen would step in to punch or knee the trainer.

  The pair whirled around each other. Ellen’s maul left a streak of grey that danced around the white streaks of Tammy’s robes. Tammy occasionally stepped forward to deliver a blow whenever Ellen over-committed to an attack, but each time she did so Ellen moved, so her armor took the brunt of the attack and tried to counter.

  Eventually, after three minutes of non-stop combat, Ellen slumped over, exhausted. The maul, which she’d driven into the sand, was the only thing keeping her upright. I knew that once Ellen gained the stats that came with leveling, she’d be able to fight longer without tiring and become a veritable monster.

  “That was good. Your father would be proud.”

  Ellen’s rapid breaths paused, and she winced.

  “Thank you.”

  The next four spars dragged on as people finally described their styles as defensive and Tammy took her time testing that claim. As I waited for my evaluation to begin, my focus drifted to the other lines.

  Regis swayed around a barrage of pila. The woman across from him had a cluster of them hanging off either hip and as she threw the weapons, mana projections appeared to the left and right. The sheer volume of projectiles she threw would have been enough to overwhelm anyone similarly armored to Regis had the plane been level, but the Trainer effortlessly swayed around the projectiles. As her ammo and mana supply dwindled, the woman pulled a small kite shield from her back and a final short spear from her quiver.

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  Out of ammo, Regis launched a pair of thrown darts at the girl to test how she reacted. She dodged out of the way of one and used her shield to parry one in a sloppy punch. I expected the ranged trainer to continue throwing darts at her until one landed and maimed the girl, but he called a halt to the spar and motioned the next person forward.

  Tammy dispatched the person in front of her with a push kick that spent him sprawling out of the marked sparring circle and called the person in front of me forwards.

  My attention drifted again as the boy played turtle with Tammy to the mana trainer, seated in front of a well-dressed man with a trio of golems. Rather than spar, the woman called out actions from his golems to perform, then would gaze into the middle distance. Presumably to see the mana flows, as the man moved his golems to comply with the orders.

  When the boy in front of me went down to exhaustion, it was finally my turn. I felt a flutter of nerves begin in my gut. Growing up, I’d only ever trained against people who specialized in my parent style or fellow practitioners. Now that I’d left the forest, I yearned to test myself against other styles and incorporate what I learned into my own.

  I watched Tammy size me up as I stepped forward. In moments, she categorized everything from my gear to my build. I felt my hackles rise as ocean blue eyes met my own. Her eyes were not that of a predator’s, but a great bison prepared to charge. Briefly I had to remind myself that this woman was a teacher, and even though we were about to maim each other, she was to be given her due respect.

  “Bran. Hammer and shield, defensive.” My heart pounded in my chest and my stomach tried to rise to my throat, but I suppressed that and forced myself to hum the Song of Decay.

  Its steady rhythm forced me to breathe in calm patterns as I raced across the sand to close the distance before she could, shield up and ready to take any strike she might launch to get away. She thought I was going to bull rush her because right at the last moment; she halted all the momentum in her own charge and lazily stepped out of the way. If I’d bull rushing her, I’d have stormed past her. I pulled up short and tried to punish the dodge by driving the spike of my hammer into the side of her knee. Hoping the cripple her before the fight truly began.

  Tammy’s eyebrows jumped up as she followed the blow, and with a subtle twist of her knee, she was out of the way of my hammer. With rapid steps back, she was out of my range entirely. I followed shield up and hammer ready. Rather than dodge, she slowed down and lanced out with a jab towards my face that I parried with my shield boss. The impact shook my arm, and a rang out with a sound like metal on metal. Hidden behind the motion of the parry, I snapped out a kick at the knee I’d just tried to cripple.

  Tammy’s punch met with the steel boss of my shield, and my kick met with a steel wall. She neither buckled nor moved at my kick and threw a hook intended to get past my guard, which I punched away with the rim of my shield.

  That exchange was a prelude to almost three minutes of similar combat. Tammy tried to leave my space, and I stuck to her like a bur. I blocked what I couldn’t sway out of the way of and lashed out with hammer, shield, and foot whenever I saw an opening I could exploit. My entire style was based around outlasting my opponents, and so far, I was the only one panting.

  Tammy grabbed onto the rim of my shield and casually tried to pull it off my arm. Rather than fight the momentum, I went with it and tried to drive my hammer into her liver. With ease, she swayed out of the way so my hammer missed by a whisper and took a step back. I followed, but rather than dive back into her space as I had been; I kept at the edge of her reach, close enough to strike should I want to but far enough that I’d have warning if she came back at me.

  Exhaustion raked at me. Sunlight beat down on me and the dry wind sapped away what little relief my sweat brought. Sixty pounds of armor now felt like an anchor. My left arm shook from tammy’s repeated blows to my shield, a small muscle in my shoulder refused to stop twitching. My breaths still came in the steady rhythm of the Song of Decay, but now they echoed around my helmet in time to the pounding of my heart.

  Across from me, Tammy stood unperturbed. Not a single speck of sand or dust had marred her pristine white robes since the start of the spars.

  I’d made a good showing of myself, I thought, but she so outclassed me both in Tier and in martial skill that the little Decay was inevitable. Tammy had shown herself more merciful than the trainers back home, so I hoped one last showcase of skill would keep me from the worst of it.

  The next punch Tammy threw, I met with a punch of my own. Metal plated rim met her knuckles and dented. The impact resounded around the sparring circle like the toll of a bell and made my entire arm go numb. A wave of pins and needles washed up my arm and back down again. At the same time, I stomped down on her rear foot.

  Her foot pinned; I brought my shield down and drove my entire weight through it into her chest. She resisted briefly before allowing herself to fall. I allowed the momentum to carry me with her and as I fell, switched my grip so the spike of my hammer was ready, raised it and tried to drive it into the center of her chest before we had even hit the ground.

  Her eyes snapped to my hammer as soon as my grip switched and with deliberate slowness, as if to showcase how much I was outclassed, she slipped out of the pin and off to the side with perfect balance. The spike drilled into the sand, and I tried to wrench it free, but I was stuck firm. After a single tug, I dropped the hammer and tried to roll away from where I was.

  All I felt was something hard and sharp, like a hammer blow, drill into the back of my skull and the world went black.

  ~***~

  I woke up in the dirt of the training yard. A large pebble dug into my hip and someone I’d never seen before hovered above me. The woman’s motherly face blossomed into a smile reserved for unruly grandchildren when she saw I was awake.

  “Good! You’re awake! Tammy can be heavy-handed at times, gave you a concussion, but I took care of that! Find me if there’s any pain after five hours.” I was about to thank her, but she shushed me before I could even open my mouth. “None of that now. Your group’s still here. Why don’t you go join them? I’m sure I’ll have more patients soon.”

  I stood gingerly, expecting pain, if not from the concussion, then from the healing. When I stood with zero pain, I was more than a little conflicted, but couldn’t help from smiling. I’d had magical healing more times than I can count and some pain always lingered. With delicate fingers, I probed the back of my head for the trademark cuts and entry wounds that marked healing in the forest, but found none.

  Undoubtedly, it was a boon to receive painless healing, but it felt wrong. Sparring was practice for the natural cycle of violence, and as such, required consequence. Out in the Emerald Ocean, if you lost a fight, no beast or rival cultist was going to grant you mercy and as such, all spars followed a lesser cycle. We fought until one of us became crippled or maimed. Only then would the [Healers] from the Order of New Growth see to you.

  They used barbed vines to dig into the wound and impart the strength and Renewal of the Weeping Forest in their patients. The pain was how you paid your debt to Stagnation, and without that pain it felt like I had cheated the Cycle.

  A concussion and painless healing was too light a punishment for losing a spar, but I wasn’t at home and wasn’t in a position of strength to force the Guild to follow the proper cycle, so I dropped it; and made to do as the [Healer] had suggested.

  I chose a spot next to Ellen, the woman with the important name and potential. She stood at the edge of the group, her eyes locked onto the magi. When I followed her gaze, I saw that over half of them had yet to be tested and seated in front of the trainer, the current trainee was doing nothing.

  “Do you know what they’re doing?” I asked.

  The Smallbard looked at me out of the corner of her eyes, and after a moment of consideration, spoke.

  “[Mages] always take forever to test, have to measure their mana flows before they can spar.”

  I wanted to continue the conversation but I could tell she was too focused on the [Mages] to engage in any genuine conversation. I left her be. Content to wait for instructions from Tammy on what was next, I sat down to meditate. It was hard to concentrate, still focused on the healing, but I managed and after twenty minutes, Tammy called us away to head in for lunch.