Interestingly

“Well here I come beautiful” Gartha says as she rushes at you with a large swing of the club.

You see her large swing coming at you and you try and think of all the action movies you saw. Ok duck under it and try and make a swing under her arm so she can’t block it you think. You duck and begin to move under her swing when she quickly changes the direction of her swing and slams it down onto you knocking you to the ground.

Gartha laughs as you stand up and brush the dirt off of you. “You’re gonna get a lot more dirt on you before this is all over you” Gartha says humorously.

You take this moment to aggressively swing at her. You catch her off guard and almost make contact with her armor before you feel her club slam into your shoulder causing you to drop the longsword in pain. Gartha stops and picks up the longsword. She puts it in your hand and roughly puts your hands into a surprisingly stable position on the hilt.

“Try that hit again”

She doesn’t need to tell you twice, you try to strike quicker than before lashing out, you keep an eye on her club and see it moving to strike your stomach and you decide to note go for the strike but instead move the momentum of the strike into a swing to knock the club away. As you connect with the club knocking it out of the way; Gartha is shocked by this and you notice an opening so you continue the swing into a strike at her neck. You feel the sword connect against her pauldrons and it barely bounces off.

Gartha steps back and puts out her hand beckoning for the sword. You hand it to her and she puts it at the end of your row of weapons, “It’s not for you” she says dismissively.

“What!? What do you mean, I did all that shit with the blocking and what” you say irritated, you just did something incredible there and you want her to appreciate it.

“You aren’t built for it” Gartha states matter of factly “What you did there was good, but it had nothing to do with the longsword. That was all your natural battle skill but you couldn’t capitalize on it like you needed to with the longsword” Gartha continues as she moves a few mover weapons out of the line “We are learning here, and it’s showing me more of your natural ability”.

“Lets try this” Gartha says as she throws you a scimitar with a spike covered hilt cover. When you grasp the hilt, Gartha approaches and runs her hand over the spikes covering your hand. “These can be just as deadly as the blade, try using them in an unexpected way.

Gartha squares off against you, this time she is wielding the longsword you were just using. Before you have a chance she charges in with a flurry of the three strikes you are able to move the scimitar fast enough to block 2 of the strikes but the third breaks through your guard and strikes into your side lightly piercing your skin before Gartha pulls the blade back, as she does you notice an opening for the spikes and you use the hilt to punch her in the face, still you aren’t fast enough and she pushes you away before you can connect.

“Good” Gartha says almost imperceptibly.

You charge at her trying to flurry at her with more speed, She is quick and blocks every strike, even having time to strike you once before you pull away.

“You’re not fast enough,” Gartha says as she holds her hand out again. Reluctantly you hand over the scimitar.

“Why don’t you just train me to be faster?” You suggest a little annoyed.

“You have skill” Gartha begins exasperated, like she shouldn’t have to explain this “I believe you are skilled in a weapon already, I don't have time to train you fully in another. You are clearly skilled in some sort of small weapon, but it’s not the scimitar, we’ll try a dagger but if that isn’t right either I’ll just have to try hand to hand i guess”

“What? Is bare hand fighting even an option” you ask nervously.

“Not in reality but there were a few heroes of legend who supposedly did it successfully in wars and they lived…” Gartha trails off.

Gartha throws a dagger at the ground in front of you. You pull it out of the ground and roll it over in your hands, it is a long thin dagger. “That dagger is for piercing, make use of that and don’t try to defend with it”. Gartha suggests as she rushes you with the club she originally had.

And once again you are unsuccessful you can’t get a hit in but with the light weapon you are able to dodge out of the way of all her swings with the club. “Ugh fine you’re gonna try to attack me bare handed now” Gartha says clearly exasperated by you fighting bare handed. “Whatever deity is f’ing testing me with this student, stop” Gartha exclaims to the sky.

Gartha doesn’t charge you this time she just gets into her stance and waits for you. You plan to just dodge her attacks but you can’t really do that if she is reacting to your attacks. You run at her and begin to… punch her, she uses the club to knock your hands away. She isn’t even attacking just blocking your hands. You angrily continue trying to hit her to no avail. You begin to feel the same sense of power inside you, maybe the strength will help you hit you think as you breathe and begin to focus the power into your next punch.

You punch with all of your might preparing to bear the **** of her club, you begin to feel a tingling pain across your arm. As you punch you see Gartha swing towards you arm and you brace for the pain and the **** but you don’t feel anything, until you feel your fist collide with Gartha’s face. You suddenly realize your arm is covered in blue crystals that just scratched up Gartha’s face. Gartha rubs the blood off of her face “huh”.