TRAINING

When the night fell, Aelia was ready to start her solo training. Like all guardians, she had some smaller training orbs stored inside her bedroom, that didn’t require her to make a formal request to her support team - as it would have been the case if she had wanted to use the larger orbs she regularly used against Lex.

These tiny orbs were mostly inoffensive, unless they were theoretically used by a highly trained guardian, who could send them flying at enough speed to cause damage. However, to this date, no guardian had managed to do anything close to that.

In general, for training orbs to be dangerous in any way, they had to travel a straight line to accelerate quickly and gain enough momentum to cause an impact. At most they could slightly curve their trajectory, at the cost of some serious speed reduction. Moving them this way also required guardians to put their full concentration into accelerating in a single direction, so using a single orb to attack with speed and consistency, required years of hard training. Lord Ataoro was known to be a master at this art, since his concentration was outstanding, allowing him to quickly rotate and strike with his swords, at roughly the same speed as a human could wield them. However, Aelia had never understood how terrifying this could be until she saw Lord Ataoro standing with the floating swords right before her.

On the other hand, Lord Amaer, was known to have extremely fine control over the subtle movements of the orbs, allowing him to make very dexterous feats with them, while Lady Akais shined at the overwhelming number of parallel thoughts she could hold at the same time.

Aelia didn’t have a single specialty she could feel proud of, so practicing with the orbs was in a way, disheartening. But this time, she had a strong motivation that made her surpass the fear of mediocrity or failure. In part, it was the chance Fennel had mentioned during their afternoon meeting, of gaining the possibility to leave the palace and discover the city. But her true, biggest source of determination, was the desire to give something back to him, and amend her mistake that had put both Fennel and Inai in such a tight situation.

Aelia started trying out some basic drills. At first, she started with the basics, that consisted on making each orb slowly hover in circles around her, one at a time. She managed to easily maintain four orbs circling her, but the fifth one was shaky and couldn’t keep up at the same speed as the rest.

Aelia repeated this drill over and over without any improvement.

Next, Aelia tried controlling a single orb and walking while she did, in order to improve her control over her body. However, as soon as she moved, her concentration scattered, and weakened her control of the orb. It was as if right in the moment she instructed her body to start moving, the orbs became a secondary process that didn’t deserve her energy. On the other hand, when she kept her body still, she could see from her own eyes, but her full concentration was assigned to her other minds that controlled the orbs, making her react very sluggishly to any attacks thrown at her body.

Aelia kept on training, using up all of her patience, without any improvement, no matter what drill she practiced.

As she began to lose her cool, she noticed that her fifth thought simply couldn’t hold itself in that state, and it made her drop the orb to the floor multiple times, making a glass-like bouncing sound. At times she managed to reconnect with the orb, making quick shifts in its direction, as her fifth parallel mind tried to find a direction to push.

Aelia was unaware about all the noise she was making, since her concentration was fully dedicated to her practice. This was the case until someone knocked on her door.

“Aelia, I’m trying to sleep. Please stop whatever you’re doing.” Could be heard from the other side.

“Lady Akais! I’m really sorry.” Said Aelia towards the door. “I didn’t notice.”

“I know things are tough for you right now. But staying up this late won’t help you in the long run.” She recommended. ”Or at the very least, please keep it down.”

“I will!”

Aelia gathered the marbles, and looked at the place the fifth one had landed. It was very subtle, but the impact of the tiny orb she couldn’t control, had left a small dent on the floor. This gave Aelia an idea.

***

During the next day, everything advanced just as planned. Aelia’s support team was working on the defense Miss Elia was planning for the audience, and she had her regular training with Lex. The royal knight wasn’t being too demanding, as a way to help out the guardian not to seem weak, and Aelia wasn’t training too hard, as she had her mind on her own personal training sessions.

Once again, Aelia and Fennel met in the haven.

“Did you manage to make any progress last night Aelia?” Asked Fennel, starting their meeting.

“Not at all. My fifth thought is stagnant, and as soon as I move my body, I lose a great deal of control of the orbs.” She said preoccupied, but without losing her calm.

“I see.” Said Fennel, starting to get worried. “At least you could train on your own. Right?”

“I did. It was frustrating, but it wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be.” She said. “By the way, could you tell me about your plan to fight Lex?”

Fennel looked at Aelia, curious about her pushing this topic, since she hadn’t made any progress.

“Alright.” He started. “Lex gave me a small hint yesterday. His fighting style for this particular level of training, revolves around him using a long lance. This is for a reason, that allows him to fight comfortably against four orbs, but not five.”

Aelia was listening carefully.

“What type of movements can you do with a long lance?” He asked Aelia.

“Mostly thrusts, and wide swings I believe.”

“That’s right. And since Lex is a ridiculously dexterous fighter, he can easily hit your orbs away, as soon as they get inside his range.” Continued Fennel. “Now, to understand why he can fight against four orbs, but not against five, let’s make a hypothetical exercise.”

Aelia was fascinated by this conversation, and Fennel was completely inspired.

“If you sent a single orb to attack him, what do you think would happen?” Asked Fennel.

“He would probably either block with the handle of the lance, or bat it away into the distance.”

“Since you can only do straight attacks from a distance. He probably would do just that.” Replied Fennel. ”What if you sent two orbs at the same time, from different directions.”

Aelia didn’t find this question challenging at all, and responded quickly.

“He would most likely hit one away, and evade the other.”

“And if you sent three at the same time?”

This time it was less obvious.

“Hmm… He would probably make a wide swing to bat two of them out of the way, and evade the third one with a jump.”

“And what about four?”

Aelia was starting to see the pattern.

“He would evade one and barely push the other three away with a single wide strike.”

“Do you get it now?” Questioned Fennel with a smile.

“He can only hit up to three orbs in a single strike, if they’re approaching him from different directions.”

“That’s exactly right. Three points make a plane, just like his wide strikes do. So if the orbs are surrounding him, he can take out up to three of them off with a single hit, and evade one.” Observed Fennel. “And if they’re not well distributed, he will likely evade more than one with a single evasive jump.”

“That means that I can use a fifth orb to catch his evasion.” She exclaimed in understanding.

Fennel and Aelia looked at each other with some sort of hope, but Fennel quickly grounded them both.

“That is in the scenario where you can control five orbs at once.” He stated, as Aelia’s smile faded away.

“And it would also only work in a scenario where Sir Lex actually leaves an opening, where I could throw five orbs at him at once.” Reflected Aelia, understanding that the royal knight usually kept a huge amount of pressure during every fight, forcing her to leave at least one orb fully dedicated to defend her.

Aelia began to think deeply, entrancing herself into her minds. There seemed to be an idea, she didn’t know how to articulate.

“Are you alright Aelia?” Asked Fennel wondering what was going on inside her head.

“Let me get something straight. As long as I get a single hit on Lex, I win. Right?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Then, I think I can actually do it.” Declared Aelia with slight hesitation. “But I really need some combat training.”

“Do you think you can control your fifth thought before the audience?”

“Not at all.”

Fennel seemed confused, but Aelia’s expression seemed to convey she was really onto something.

“Alright. What do you need?” Asked Fennel, lightening up.

“Can you get me a sparring partner other than Lex?” Requested Aelia, as she stood up from the floor of the haven.

“I’ll do my best.”