Chapter 16
Gavin
Idropped by the barracks to recover the remainder of my personal stuff there. Zhara and the others were also at the base, as we would head out in the next hour. She wanted to seize the opportunity to also check on her youngest brother, Tharek.
As part of their regular school curriculum, every young resident of Veredia had to partake in combat training.
This particularly applied to the Titans who were too young to join the Sentinels or the Tuureans.
As our own training conflicted with their schedule, Zhara rarely had the opportunity to see him in action.
I found my mate and Rhadames standing on the sideline as a group of thirty juveniles sparred in pairs. My gaze naturally zeroed in on Tharek. He wasn’t hard to spot as he inherited his Xelixian father’s bulkier build. In comparison, Veredians and Korletheans tended to be lither.
I stopped next to Zhara and absent-mindedly caressed her back as I studied the ongoing battles.
She smiled and leaned against me. Farius, the Korlethean trainer, walked the perimeter.
He intervened where needed to make adjustments or give additional guidance.
At a glance, the young trainees’ ages ranged between eleven and sixteen.
After a moment of observing them, I quickly grew aggravated.
Some of those pairings were bad. I couldn’t even be upset at their trainer because I understood why he made those choices.
They still remained bad. Watching Tharek pissed me off the most. His opponent tripped him at least four times using the same move that he failed to parry.
Farius approached him a couple of times to give him advice on how to adjust his counterattack.
I glanced at my mate and Rhadames to see if they would raise any red flags, but they stoically stood there.
With each failure, Tharek grew increasingly flustered, which only caused him to make more mistakes. I couldn’t tell if a lack of self-control or self-consciousness at having his siblings witness his poor performance caused him to lose his focus.
When Tharek stumbled once more, I grunted in annoyance and marched over to Farius.
“Some of these pairings do not work,” I told him in a firm voice, but low enough not to be overheard by the juveniles.
To my relief, he didn’t challenge me or act offended by my interference. Then again, he had expressed great admiration for me during the first days of my training before that fated mission.
“What would you suggest?” he asked.
I gave him a quick rundown of my issues and how I would see it working better. He nodded his approval.
“But I also want to pull out two of them and pair their respective partners together instead,” I said.
He nodded and waved his hand in a way that told me to proceed.
I walked straight into the midst of the trainees, tapped on a few shoulders to make them switch partners. To some of them, I gave a few additional instructions on how to better their technique, though those were minor. Then I pulled Tharek and a young Korlethean male.
“What’s your name?” I asked the Korlethean.
“Cosimo,” he replied nervously.
“Cosimo, have you completed all fifteen sparring modules, as required before training with a real person?” I asked sternly.
He shifted uneasily on his feet, then shook his head.
“I asked you a question!” I snapped.
He shuddered and straightened. “No, Sir. I haven’t.”
“It shows. Get to it.”
I gestured with my head to get a move on. He didn’t have to be told twice. I turned towards Tharek, who immediately took a defiant expression.
“I completed all the modules,” he said, sounding defensive.
“I didn’t ask,” I replied, unimpressed. “But you will no longer train with the rest of them.”
“WHAT?!” Tharek exclaimed, outraged, drawing many looks our way.
“It’s a waste of time. You’re stagnating and repeatedly getting spanked,” I replied in a factual manner.
“That’s not true!” he replied, his hands fisting with anger.
“Yes, it is true,” I retorted firmly. “He flattened you five times the same way, and you couldn’t counter it.”
“That’s why I’m training! So that I can learn how to parry it!” Tharek exclaimed in a self-evident manner.
I waved at the other juveniles sparring.
“No amount of this training will make you better,” I said.
“Gavin!” Zhara exclaimed, approaching us with a shocked expression. “Tharek can absolutely improve!”
I glared at her. “Stay out of it.”
“But—”
Rhadames placed his hand on Zhara’s shoulder and shook his head at her.
“Zhara!” he whispered disapprovingly.
She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, clearly wanting to argue. Whatever look she saw on my face convinced her to leave it alone. I was pissed, but we would deal with that later.
“You don’t get to dictate what I do!” Tharek hissed.
“Yes, I do,” I snarled. “If you ever hope to join the Vigil, you’ll clamp down on that attitude and listen.”
“My brother will—”
“Your brother will heed his First Officer,” I snapped.
Tharek flinched. Even at his young age, he understood that arguing with that statement would imply that Vahleryon could be manipulated by family and emotions. What kind of General would that make him?
“The fact is that you’re fighting wrong,” I said firmly.
“I aced all the modules,” Tharek argued, visibly offended.
“Yes, I saw. No one questions your efforts and dedication,” I conceded. “But the modules you trained on are wrong for you.”
He blinked, taken aback by that comment.
“What do you mean?” he asked hesitantly.
I waved at him, then pointed at the other trainees.
“You are not like them. They’re lithe and scrawny. You’re thick and bulky. Therefore, your center of gravity and weight distribution is vastly different,” I explained. “You will never succeed with the current training you’re receiving.”
Tharek frowned and nervously licked his lips while giving me an assessing look.
“So what do I do, then?”
“Finally, a good question,” I replied with a hefty dose of sarcasm. “Come.”
Without waiting for his response, I marched a short distance away towards one of the holographic training areas at the back.
I issued a vocal command to generate a dummy, then grabbed a battle staff from the weapons rack nearby.
I handed it to him. Zhara and Rhadames had followed us, but I pretended not to see them.
“I want you to swing as hard as you can to try to shatter that dummy,” I ordered.
He gave me a stiff nod and proceeded to swing. I forced myself to keep a neutral expression. Had we been back on Braxia, Grappa Krygor would have shamed him to oblivion and back. For him, that swing qualified as pathetic at best. And yet, any other species would look at this and call it impressive.
He looked at me proudly only to be deflated by the look on my face.
“Was that the hardest you could hit?” I asked.
“Yes,” Tharek replied, once more sounding defensive.
I shook my head and took the staff from him. “That’s too weak. You need to be able to do this.”
I gently pushed him aside and then swung at the dummy. It exploded in countless pieces, the force of the impact radiating the length of my arm. I loved that type of pain. It made me feel powerful.
Tharek and his siblings gasped in shock. Then he glared at me with an air of betrayal.
“That’s not fair! You’re bigger and stronger. So of course you can smash it like that,” he exclaimed.
I huffed dismissively. “That doesn’t matter. With the right technique, you can do it, too.”
“There’s no way!” he said, as if he was doubting my intelligence.
I gave him a stern look, and he scrunched his face. In that instant, he heavily resembled Vahl, just a younger version, with the same dark purple eyes.
“Then what’s the right technique?” he grumbled.
“Another good question. There might be hope for you yet,” I mocked, making him grimace even more. “Observe.”
I showed him how I shifted my weight and transferred the power from my legs to my hips, core, shoulder, and then arm.
He struggled with the hip rotation to create the perfect whip effect to accelerate his upper body.
He needed to silence the acquired instincts of his previous training so that he could embrace the new one.
And then he got it.
“Whoa!” Tharek exclaimed, when the rotation didn’t make him partially lose his balance.
“Better isn’t it?” I asked. “Do it again.”
He nodded and repeated the movement, gaining more assurance with each attempt.
“See? Now you recover faster because you’re more stable. You also stopped opening yourself up to be struck on your flank,” I explained before handing him back the staff. “Let’s try that dummy again.”
With a vocal command, I made a new dummy appear.
Tharek stared at it and then at me with a nervous expression.
He approached it, licked his lips, and squared his shoulders.
Even before he began swinging, I knew he’d fail.
He was too much in his head. His strike was weaker than the previous one.
He looked at me with a crestfallen expression.
“Why are you looking at me? Did your swing feel like what you just practiced?” I asked, unimpressed.
He shook his head.
“I asked you a question,” I snarled.
“No. It didn’t,” he replied, chastised.
“Then swing until you do it the right way. You know how.”
He gave me a stiff nod and swiped his staff at the dummy again. The next three swings were just as pathetic. And then, on the fourth, something clicked. The dummy didn’t shatter like it had done with me, but it snapped in half, with a few fragments breaking off here and there.
Tharek shouted in victory and jumped up and down with excitement under the cheers of his siblings. He turned back to me, puffing out his chest with a massive grin. I snorted and nodded with approval.
“Well done. But you can do even better… if you listen,” I said with a stern look.
“I will,” he replied, subdued.