Meager Power

I spent the rest of the evening simmering, and the woman sharing my watch seemed to pick up on my mood, not really pushing further for conversation. Thankfully, it wasn't long before our watch was relieved, with Thenishale stalking over from his sleeping spot. He raised his eyebrow when he looked at me, proving I was unable to couch my expression, but I just shook my head and moved to my normal sleeping spot without any other words. I quickly found my way into the comforting embrace of my bedding, but found that it felt painfully empty and cold after the warmth I'd experienced this morning. I scoffed at myself. Not going to get attached. They were going to be going their own way, eventually. I had to admit the burgeoning attraction I felt for the sekiss, but it was just that, attraction.

I was pissed off, tired, and more importantly, overly emotional. Asking to spend the night amongst Kelessta's coils would be stupid, regardless of acceptance or denial. My head needed to be put straight, pronto. I shuffled around in my bedding, hoping to get a more comfortable position going, but for quite a while, it was fruitless. I'm not sure how long I laid there, attempting to sleep. I'm certain that I was awake for the next watch change, but beyond that, I wasn't sure.

I must have finally fallen asleep, though, given the next thing that hit me was the crack of dawn and the smell of more food being made. My head ached slightly, proving that whatever sleep I did manage to glean, wasn't enough, but the pain was minor enough to simply push through. I groaned and started my morning slowly, seeing that the only ones awake were Rachel, Evelyn, and Basrith. The champion sat quietly by the entrance to the Sanctuary, but did hear me getting up, and as such sent a slight nod my way once we met our eyes together.

I stretched and approached the pot of porridge being made over a small fire. Going by its looks, it must be leftover from our meal yesterday. I imagined that was a regular approach to food amongst travelers like this, just making big amounts of food that make it easy to reheat on the road. Being in a location like this, with safety, running water, and light, was probably a godsend. Goddessend? Yeah, no, not gonna push that one. What to do with the morning? I wasn't feeling my morning exercises yet, and Basrith and Evelyn seemed to be deep in conversation, so I didn't want to break that up. Instead, I sauntered over to Rachel, who gave me a sidelong glance at my approach, but didn't respond after I sat down near her.

"Rachel," I started, unsure how to begin. I waffled for a few moments, and decided to just go for it. "I'm kinda cooked, I think."

She turned to look at me, her brown eyes communicating a world of irritation and a mountain of other emotions I didn't know her well enough to place. She blinked several times, but didn't respond for several moments. Eventually, though, she let out a sigh and pursed her lips. "Allison."

"That's me," I responded with half of a smile.

"I will allow you to complain to me as long as you never, ever use that terminology ever again. Leave it behind with Earth, please."

My half smile became a full one. "What, not with the lingo of the youth?" She just stared at me until I relented. "Fine. But thank you, I guess."

She rolled her eyes, but motioned for me to continue.

"My emotions are flip-flopping around at a frankly ridiculous rate. I dunno if it's stress, or this new body, or the shock wearing off, or whatever, but I'm feeling almost ridiculous. I've cried myself to sleep several times in the last month, I was giddy during several fights, I was so angry I couldn't sleep last night. How the hell are you so composed?"

Rachel took in my words, her eyebrow raising halfway through my confession, but took on a thoughtful look when I finished. She took a couple minutes to answer, long enough that I was getting antsy. I heard the others waking up back in the Sanctuary, moving around, but finally her eyes found mine and she started answering. "I do not know."

I shot an eyebrow up. "That long to say you don't know?"

"I had to be sure," she said. "I admit to having these emotions like I normally do, but it has been excitement and fear in the normal amounts, I think. I have missed home, I have mourned that loss, and certainly worked through my sorrow, but not to the level you describe. It could be that you are simply more of an emotional person than me, or any number of other things. I have no therapy training, and I have been told that I am a bit cold sometimes, so it is also likely that your emotions are normal and mine are simply more muted than yours."

I sat back, pondering that. It felt plausible, sure, but not fully correct. I wasn't always so volatile. What was up? Did it have to do with the conversion of my soul, or whatever? I'd thought that my resilience was a reason I'd been picked for this role, but that was proving to be less and less possible with each passing day. The last month had been a wacky, wild ride through highs and lows. Normally, I'd be able to stuff it down, but I realized that I hadn't really been able to deaden those feelings since the first few jaunts into the labyrinth.

"...maybe? I'm not so certain." I looked away from her, back into the natural beauty of the mountain range. "It feels like something else is going on. I'm usually more in control of myself, more even-tempered."

"A magic thing, maybe?" She shrugged.

"Maybe. I dunno." I looked back, and in my periphery, I saw Arla looking at me and approaching with two long sticks in her hands. "I think my chat time is up, though. Wish me luck?"

Rachel's gaze swept around and saw the approaching adventurer, who acknowledged the champion with a nod. "So it seems. Quite honestly, you should count yourself lucky. I imagine training like this would be difficult to come by."

"Damn right," Arla said, catching the last bit of our conversation. She tossed a stick over to me and thankfully, I managed to catch it. I leaned on it as I sat up, but quickly found myself falling on my ass mid-rise. "Don't use your weapon like that. Learn to stand quickly under your own power."

I scowled at her, but went to push myself up with my free hand. The action earned that hand a swat with her stick. "What did I just say? Don't use your weapon like that."

"The fuck? How am I supposed to get up then?"

"Think about it. Put yourself back into the mud from the other night. There's all sorts of things that can foul your grip if you put your weight on your hand to rise."

I scowled at her while Rachel actually looked thoughtful. "Maybe a quick demonstration might do, then, teacher?"

Arla's grin transformed into a smirk as she quickly sat in place, faster than I could track. I motioned for her to continue. She leaned back, and with a flash of momentum from her muscles, she launched herself forward and up to a standing position in a matter of less than two seconds.

I whistled. "Alright, impressive, but no way I've got that kind of core strength." I attempted the same maneuver, but instead of following her up, I fell back on my ass. I did better than I thought I would have, though, so it was hard to do that much complaining.

"Gosh," she said, and I knew that smirk was going to go nowhere, "sounds like we ought to do something about that." Without waiting for my response, she fell to her knees and scooted forward until they sandwiched my feet to the floor. "Sit-ups."

"Really? Just exercises? I thought we were gonna spar."

"You want me to knock you on your ass again?" Arla laughed. "Well, tough luck. Yesterday was about getting your measure. I'm not gonna be able to do much training when it comes to your fighting style, but I can get your body in the shape it needs to be to move better. Your core strength sucks. Your legs can move well, but your upper body needs better coordination and muscle." She reached out and jabbed a finger to my chest, pushing me flat to the ground. I let her, because as much as I wanted to say otherwise, I knew she was correct. My running and shadow fighting in the morning was doing no favors for my upper body strength. I'd never paid that much attention to it, and my skills and spells seemed to make up for it fine enough.

But, no, not fine enough. I'd found my resources whittled down to nothing several times now, and Arla had beaten my ass without a single one, just skill and power alone. I put my hands behind my head to Arla's approval and began to do sit-ups with her standing there. By that, of course, I mean sit-up, followed by a pathetic push to do another. Damn, I knew I was bad, but this far? I could tell the adventurer leader was disappointed by the showing already, and I scowled, half at her expression and half at my own failure. She let me struggle for a few moments more, before she got off my feet.

"Alright. Now we know where we're starting there, too. Your goal with those is to be able to do ten without stopping or slowing. Next up, we're going to work on your upper arms."

I shuffled through workouts with her, moving out to the terrace for more room, for an indeterminate amount of time. Her own indefatigable manner was infuriating, but in an envious way, not an angry one. For every little thing I did, she did it twice, and she did them twice as fast. I saw now why I couldn't hold a candle to her, combat wise. Dumb animals were one thing, but clever, trained individuals? I had nothing on that. If someone told me that a well-trained teenager could drop me right now, I'd believe them, full stop.

It was humbling, but it was honestly helpful, too. My thoughts managed to drift away toward my conversation with Rachel, with my emotions. I lacked certainty. I felt lost. So I could use this training regiment, use the goal I'd chosen last night, to lock in and push my mentality forward. Concrete goals were important, both for mentality and for progress.

When Arla was finally done with me, I realized the sun had progressed further into the sky than expected. Sweat poured from me, and I realized that I was still clad in my sleeping clothes. She stood above my form, supine after a rigorous set of jumps that she'd pushed me through, and held out a hand to me. I stared at it, breathing hard.

"You just gonna lay there?" She asked.

"Maybe."

She huffed and nudged my side with a boot. "No, you're not. You just wore yourself out like an idiot. You have to eat."

"Fuck you mean?" I asked, finally reaching up and taking her hand. She hauled me up easily, steadying me on my feet when I swayed slightly.

"Which part?" She asked, as if she didn't know.

"The idiot part. You're the one that led the damn session."

"Ohhhh," she intoned, playacting at ignorance. "Well, you went way longer than you should have, and you're gonna be real sore tomorrow," she said.

My expression turned dour, and I fought unsuccessfully to keep a scowl from my face. "You're an asshole," I accused. She just hummed in response and led me over inside the Sanctuary. Obviously, breakfast had finished some time before, but Basrith, seemingly expecting this outcome, had kept a decent amount of food ready for us. I sat down with a bowl shoved into my arms and tucked into the porridge. It still wasn't the best thing I'd tasted, but as soon as it hit my tongue, I realized I was absolutely ravenous.

As I shoveled food into my maw, a slow clapping hit my ears, and I turned to glance at Evelyn as she watched me eat, eyes over her book. "I'm surprised you kept up with it. I asked miss Arla to put me through some training at the beginning of our relationship, and failed to do so."

It took me a minute to get to the point where I could speak normally, but managed to swallow down my meal. "I mean, I've been fighting for my life for a month now. I've got some endurance."

"But no muscle," my tormentor chuckled. I just stuck my tongue out at her before continuing the meal, and the conversation. I turned back to the noblewoman. "What use would someone like you have for that kind of training?"

"I'm unused to being this far away from home, especially without some sort of ride as escort, dear." She looked over my shoulder at her husband, who seemed to be scribbling some things in his notebook as he studied some part of the Sanctuary that I'd obviously ignored. "I wanted to not do too poorly in these environs."

"Hm," I responded. Clearly there was a good reason she was out here, not just to follow the professor. She didn't strike me as someone who did things haphazardly, those eyes were a little too piercing and observant. I had no illusions that she was trying to think of ways to use Rachel and me, but I had confidence that I could make it a two-way street, just after I could get my rampant emotions under control. It still bothered me, having not come to any sort of conclusion, and I didn't want to ask any of the group. Sure, I liked all of them, and had to trust them to some degree, but that was a little too vulnerable for me right now. At the moment, I would simply take advantage of Arla's training, and be ready to head out when our time was up.

After the meal was finished, I took the time to clean up and set about to meditate out on the terrace. It wasn't normally my thing, but I did have a small amount of experience doing so back home. I could never get fully into the kind of trance that some people described, but I did have a pleasant little 'mind palace' that I could go to. After sitting on the hard ground, I closed my eyes and sent myself there. I, in my mind's eye, found myself sitting pleasantly on the back porch of an old house. Perhaps built sometime in the '50s or '60s, it was almost modern, but still had that mid-century look that appealed to me from the times we had a house during my younger years. It was brick on three of the four sides, with the last side being made of a kind of material that I didn't actually know but could tell was not as solid as the rest of the house. It was an extension, added onto the building, at some point.

The Backyard, as it was, encompassed perhaps a quarter of an acre of land. Short grass pounded into the ground by frequent footsteps from humans and animals made for a quaint little space where I could simply sit and ponder. It was always nighttime, a full moon overhead, but there was enough light to see where I was going, should I venture forth from the back porch. I honestly wasn't sure if there was anything in the house, due to never having the inclination to go. I imagine my imagination would fill it in, but I simply didn't care, like most times.

In the middle of the backyard was a busted trampoline, half of the hooks completely destroyed, and it sat next to a small, deteriorating wooden shed. Vestiges of places I've lived, pieces of realities I'd left. It might seem depressing to some, but to me, this was a quintessential part of my life. After mom... died, we didn't really have any reason to stick around. Never enough time to fit into schools, make enough friends. I had online buddies, and actually moved near one at one point, but I spent a lot of my time exploring in suburbia. So, with that in mind, things like shitty sheds and broken playground items were home, things that rarely changed, despite the state or town.

Here, in my Backyard, I considered my month here in Avare so far. Fighting monsters, getting stronger, meeting people... it was all very new. It honestly should affect me emotionally, but it still seemed too much. I imagined my hand touching the odd surface of the broken trampoline, feeling the grass and dirt beneath my feet. I tried to ground myself. Maybe it was okay for me to get a little worked up about stuff, but unless I could get ahold of my head, it wouldn't be safe. Breaking down in strangers' arms, talking about killing people, it was all a little much. I'd need to spend more time centering myself.

The rest of the week passed much like that day - minor work keeping watch, training in the mornings, and keeping track of the world around us. Rachel even eventually managed to get Thenishale to help her with her swordplay, and many mornings had us matching up in odd pairings. It was nice, honestly, getting to know these adventurers and gaining power.

It couldn't last forever, as nothing really could in the end. On the 8th day after the group had arrived, early afternoon, I just had to look up and see a dark shape heading our way. I pointed it out to Basrith, the nearest adventurer, who scowled at the information. He shouted out to his fellows as he spotted the shadow. "Wyvern, incoming!"