@Pele Alarion Abrazimir Dimaethor
Sparring with Pele Alarion, Training Grounds
Abrazimir took the knives when
Pele emerged with them, running his thumb over the squares imprinted on each handle. Following her example, he tucked the knives along his belt as they moved to the beginning of the obstacle course, their humour as light as their footsteps.
Abrazimir prayed he would give a good reckoning of himself, as this sort of exercise was not exactly typical of a knight’s training regiment. He hadn’t done anything like this since he was a young man.
”Good luck,” he beckoned to the
Captain and soon, she was off, with
Abrazimir keeping a slow, modest count in his head.
One-by-the-Anduin, two-by-the-Anduin, three-by-the-Anduin… His eyes watched
Pele move through the course, first on the over-unders, sliding under and over each beam, before ascending up a tall wall, where she balanced herself before striking the first target.
One. She dipped down the opposite side and
Abrazimir had to move along the course’s perimeter to keep an eye on her, seeing her quickly scramble across the monkey bars, though she failed her first attempt and doubled back for a second. She reached a ladder that took her up, pausing midway to reveal the presence of a second target, which she struck dead on.
Two.
The third and final target was revealed only after she came down the other side of the wall and ladder, over a slender beam and a crawl under a netting. Her recovery was precise, rolling through the mud and up onto a knee, striking the last target.
Three. ”Nice.” Abrazimir exclaimed, clapping his hands until
Pele returned after completing the final dash to the finish and returning to his side.
”Fifty eight.” He informed her, the amount of slow seconds he counted. The collapse from the monkey bars is what hurt her time the most, costing her several precious seconds to redo the obstacle. She had one bulleyes by the looks of it and two fringe hits on the other.
That was the scores to beat.
”This old head hasn’t been hit that many times to already forget the target placements.” He tapped the side of his forehead with a grin.
”Alright,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and going to the starting line. He took several huffs of air, then shot
Pele a thumbs up to indicate his start. And then he was off.
Like her, he started off strong. With full vigour, he manuevered through the horizontal beams, over the first, under he second, over the third, under the fourth, and over the fifth with almost a haughty surmount. His face though was contorted with sheer determination, jaw clenched, as he leapt up the vertical wall, using only his arm strength to vault himself up and getting one leg over, to sit straddling the top of the wall sideways. He grabbed a knife from his belt as he leaned up, but his fingertips were wet from all the beams and surfaces he had grabbed. As he drew the knife up to throw, it slipped out of his fingers and fell down the side of the wall into the mud.
Abrazimir cursed and leapt down, grabbing the knife and then having to pull himself back up the wall, this time letting out a growl of exertion as he committed all his strength to quickly get back up. He didn’t hesitate this time, throwing the knife almost recklessly and hitting the fringe of the target. He didn’t stick around to watch, dropping down the other side and onto the monkey bars. He strained his arms painfully as he gripped hard and swung himself from each bar to the next, completing it one go, though his land was hard and mud splashed up all around his boots, up to his hips and even striking the underside of his jaw. But still, he didn’t pause or halt.
He should have wiped his hands or something.
Because it was going to happen again. Not on the ladder though, as he made it halfway and grabbed his second knife to fling, striking the target midway between it’s center and edge.
Better, but not great. Up over the wall he went and down the other side, where the balance beam proved to be his most dreadful bane, as he slipped midway on it and fell, sideways, into the mud.
With almost perfect symmetry this time, one half of him completely caked and the other…still looking fresh and clean. He returned and this time, at the cost of some seconds, he crossed over cautiously, though he crawled through the mud with the desperation of a worm fleeing a flash flood. He came up to his full halt, drew out his final knife…and struck the final target dead on, before racing to the final beam.
He crossed, felt his boot slip, but he managed to do an eccentric dance, flailing for a hot second, to recatch his balance before he righted himself and walked, calmly and proudly, as if none of the slipping and sliding and embarrassing arm flailing had ever occurred. His timing would be about four or five seconds longer than hers.
But his aim was better. ”I dropped my first knife, but I didn’t know if we could still grab them and try again or not. But I hit all three. And I think my third is better than your third, though your second is better than mine. The difference in how much remains to be seen.” Abrazimir wiggled his eyebrows playfully, feeling it might come down to the wire on it.
There was a system for adding or subtracting time from the final score based on how close one was to the center. A bulleyes dropped five seconds from the final timing, while a complete miss added five seconds to the total. The stages between the edge and the center increased in degree, subtracting two, three, or four seconds, depending on closeness. For
Pele, she hit the first on the lower third of the target, which shaved two seconds off for her, a bullseye on the second, which shaved five seconds for her, but a edge target on the last, which was only a mere second. That brought her score down to fifty. For
Abrazimir, the first target was a fringe hit, so only a single second off. The second was better, halfway between edge and center, so three seconds off, followed by his own bullseye, which was another five. That brought him down from sixty-two to…
”Fifty for you…fifty-one for me,” Abrazimir calculated, which caused him to pound his fists together as he realized he lost by a mere two seconds!
”So close, oh no…!” He lamented with a laugh, rubbing his face, which inadvertently spread mud all over his features.
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