Chapter 31: A Surprise Visit
Stahl leapt across the courtyard of the Aschefell estate, swords bearing down with precision while her brother went on the defensive. Amboss gripped his hammer tightly and swung it forward from below, meeting his sister’s force with a mighty clash of steel, successfully repelling her lunge.
As Stahl’s paws had barely touched the ground, her brother was already swinging the bone-crushing tool at the younger she-wolf’s ribs. Aster managed to easily catch it with his shield without losing his balance.
Supporting another fighter from a distance was the focus of Aster’s final week in the wolf’s lair. He had actually gotten the hang of it pretty quickly, but a badly angled assist could still knock him down for a moment.
Stahl had solely remained on the offensive the past two days, leaving Aster to catch every attack launched his way from a good distance behind him. At first the she-wolf was worried she was pushing the human too far, but Aster surpassed even her own expectations with the results by the second day. Aster had grown in more ways than one in those five weeks, but the time for only training was coming to an end.
Stahl rushed again, and this time Amboss took a slight step forward and raised his arms, bracing himself for a heavy cleave downwards with the full brunt of his weight. Aster hated to block these particular hammer strikes, they made his bones vibrate with the jarring bluntness when it collided down on his shield, but he had gotten a lot better at spreading around the backlash from his skill.
How quickly, and when he should adjust his arms, footing, or stance, and how accurately he could brace himself could be the difference between life or death in a real battle for anyone he was supposed to be guarding. Aster wasn’t even sure if he was comfortable accepting that level of trust or such a heavy weight, but he never stopped giving it his all to protect the she-wolf.
Aster dropped a shield right in front of the hammer, stopping Amboss from ever being able to finish his downward swing, a technique he had picked up with Stahl’s instruction to stop a heavy blow before it even had time to begin. Stahl didn’t plan on wasting the opening, and closed in. Before she could secure the win, however, a certain young fox interrupted all of them by weakly jabbing Aster in the ribs with a short training staff.
"Mom wanted to talk to dad... Hey, does this mean you just lost?" Rust motioned down at the staff landing a hit, and before either Aster or Stahl could get a word out, the booming sound of Amboss’s laughter echoed across the courtyard.
"Damn right it does! Failure to notice an opponent sneaking up on your defense is a valid loss! Nice support Rust!" The two opposing warriors wanted to argue, but there was really no way to dispute that without taking the victory away from the fox, so they just smiled at each other and shrugged it off while Amboss and Rust went off to talk with Rouge, who was patiently waiting beneath a nearby tree for her wolf.