Legend of Ransera

There were those blademasters among the Silver Sentinels and Golden Legion who said that Finn, while driven, would never be a blademaster himself because he had started so late and because his foundational studies hadn't been Solunarian. Perhaps they were right, but he remained driven.

Most days, he drilled at the Citadel, often letting little Syrena watch. He was trying to spend as much time with her as possible, and his brother Ciarán would bring her up from the village to watch. Other times, he would go down to the village afterward to observe the little oddity.

Today, however, he was in the Luxium with Vespera and her troops. He smiled when she elected to spar with him herself. But he set his pact weapons aside, electing instead to practice with a pair of gladii. Weapons were slowly being added to his reaver's arsenal, but he was playing the field, seeing which ones felt more right than others before investing his soul into them. Achieving mastery of that Rune was important to him so he could finally bond with the soul cairn that had been entrusted to him. If he never mastered it, he supposed he would have to give it back to the deceased's family or another worthy reaver.

The smile faded into a more serious mien, though. This was serious business.

"Ready," he affirmed, even as he feinted with his right hand, following up with a sweep from the left.

So far, so good. The balance was nice. He thought that if he had two different sword types as she had, it might become easier to anticipate him, whereas with identical short swords, one gladius or the other might prove dominant in any given exchange, or change mid-exchange.

Finn lacked the finesse with weapons that he had with instruments of music, perhaps, but he was adaptable enough to improvise and he was getting better at disarming. It was only when the adrenaline hit him full force that he tended to try to put an opponent down immediately rather than draw things out.

He had allowed mind-healers to help him with his trauma, but it wasn't erased. He wanted the mental scars to remind him of lessons learned, the better not to have to learn them again.

Though, in general, Finn was prone to follow rules, especially here where he was still concerned he would make some faux pas, all unknowing, and reflect poorly upon his husband, Vespera had told him early on that they weren't having some honorable duel, but training to fight and to win. It reminded him of something he remembered hearing Elric Hansom tell Arvalyn during a rehearsal at the Golden Peacock where Finn had been hired to provide musical accompaniment. Something along the lines of there being no such thing as a rehearsal, that everything had to be treated as real, that everything was real.

He wasn't sure he agreed, but then, he spent far too much time rehearsing conversations in his head before he had them, and other such things.

But here and now, he tried something that Vespera hadn't seen before, at least from him: When the khopesh responded as he assumed it was, he let go of his gladius. He let her pin turn into a disarm, and then he hitched the blade right out of the air, and then the gladius was no longer out of play, but attacking from a new angle, its twin adapting as well.

There was a trick to it, not only taking the hilt, but letting the slipspace translocation reorient the blade so it was in an entirely different alignment. He took an aggressive step forward that might stomp her foot, or throw off her footing, except it was another bit of trickery, an attempt to disarm her of her falcata—a sort of hitch but instead of grabbing, he was stomping. His instructors in the arcane often said that there were hard limits, soft limits, and sometimes the only limits were one's imagination.