Vir climbed up onto a post and extended a leg onto an adjacent one, falling into a stretch. The posts served as platforms to practice stretches while also improving their balance.
Riyan was big on efficiency like that.
The reason they’d sprinted over was because their draconian instructor was only too happy to assign them penalties if they failed to meet his absurdly high standards. Even a delay of a second or two was enough to earn them extra chores or an extra hour of training. Vir noticed that Riyan never once restricted their diet. In fact, they’d been eating like kings ever since they’d arrived, and Vir’s scrawny body was already beginning to flesh out… slightly.
From a variety of fruits and vegetables he’d never even seen, to various lentils, spices, and exotic brown rices—he’d never eaten this well in his life, and so he’d hoped for a bit more growth. But it was not to be. Perhaps eating less than his fill for most of his life had already ruined his body. He prayed to his dead father it wasn’t true.
It was, of course, always himself and Maiya who did the cooking. Vir didn’t mind. He enjoyed experimenting with the expensive spices and ingredients with his one and only friend. It was one of the few pastimes available to them.
“The Kalari arts demand supreme flexibility,” Riyan lectured as he circled his training-absorbed students. “Your command over your own body may very well mean the difference between life and death in a fight. A hair’s breadth may be all that separates a successful dodge from a deadly wound. Between a severed throat and safety.”
“Ah ah aaaaaah!” Maiya shrieked before falling off her post, faceplanting on the sand. Vir pitied her at first, but now he could only shake his head. If there was one thing Maiya would never surpass him at, it was balance and dexterity. Vir was a natural. Maiya… was not.
His friend sat back up, looking depressed, her face dimpled and red with grains of sand.
“Up! Again,” Riyan commanded. Maiya was back on top of her balancing post in a flash.
“Now, bend over backward and put your hands on the posts behind you.”
“That’s impossible!” Maiya said.
Vir’s brow furrowed. It did sound hard. Really hard. Of course, that only made him want to try it even more.
He gave it a go. The most difficult part was assuming the position in the first place. He’d be able to maintain the stretch once he was in it.
Craning his neck backward, he located the two posts Riyan wanted him to touch. They looked a lot farther than he’d initially thought.
After attempting to reach out a few times, the only way he’d make this work was with an explosive movement. He’d have to crouch and leap as if he were jumping… only he’d be jumping horizontally. It was an incredibly awkward movement, and if he missed his posts, or if he put too much or too little power into his legs, he’d fall onto the sand below.
Vir stared at the posts, burning their position into his mind. Then he took a deep breath and went for it. He bent over backward and, as he began to fall, he crouched. Then he lunged forth…
And touched the posts. His right hand slipped off, threatening to destabilize him, but Vir clenched his abs and forced his body rigid. That bought him a precious extra second to get his palm back onto the post.
He’d done it! Barely. And as he’d suspected, maintaining the position wasn’t nearly as hard as actually getting into it.
“Good. Few can succeed with this exercise on their first attempt,” Riyan said, giving him a rare compliment. “Without its foundation, a building crumbles. So it is with your training. Build your foundations strong, and they will serve you well. Now, girl, it is your turn. The boy will hold the position for two minutes, but you hesitated. You watched your friend instead of taking initiative. You will hold it for four.”
Vir’s best friend ground her teeth in frustration. She kept quiet. They both knew the consequences of talking back to Riyan.
Maiya wallowed in indecision for several more seconds before biting her lip and going for it.
Maybe now that she’s seen me do—nooope!
The moment she lunged, it was obvious she wouldn’t make it. Sure enough, both her aim and her power proved insufficient, and she ended up doing a half-backflip, faceplanting right into the sand. Again.
Vir sighed. Poor Maiya.
She got it on her third attempt. By that time, Vir had already finished his two minutes and was resting. She actually held the position for four whole minutes.
Their instructor led them through a series of further stretches when she was done, correcting their forms when they deviated.
“Now that I have shown you these exercises, I expect you to practice them after each training session. And when you have mastered this set, we shall progress to the next. Now, we break for meditation.”
“Again!” Maiya said. “What do we gain from that? It has nothing to do with fighting! Right Vir?”
Vir didn’t hear her. He’d already adopted the cross-legged sitting position and sunk deep into meditation, turning his Prana Vision inward to monitor the pathetically tiny amount of inky black prana that trickled through his body.
For some reason, watching the prana course through his body soothed him. And he was now confident that it was prana. It behaved exactly the same as the stuff that was in Maiya and Riyan.
Just that his affinity was nowhere to be found in nature, nor did anyone seem to even know of its existence. But he had all the proof he needed, right here in his own body. No other explanation made sense, and simple explanations tended to be right.
“Good,” Riyan boomed, startling Vir. “You have taken your first step, boy. Continue practicing your meditation and you will grow as a warrior.”
Their teacher then dismissed them until the afternoon session.
“If you are wanting for things to do, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with our surroundings. Awareness of one’s surroundings is a useful skill that everyone should know. Sadly, precious few ever bother to learn it.”
“Can’t we just use a map?” Maiya asked.
Riyan smiled, as if hoping she’d ask that question. “I have no maps to give you. Consider it training. What will you do when you find yourself in a new place, lacking a map? Will you complain about how the gods are unfair to you? Or will you use your mind,” he said, tapping his head, “to build a mental one?”
Vir, emboldened by his recent string of successes, asked Riyan a question that had been on his mind lately. “What would you say my Balar Rank is, Riyan?”
The Ghost of Godshollow snorted. “Zero.”
Then he turned and left, leaving the deflated Vir alone with his friend.
“Well, you should’ve expected that,” Maiya said, offering her hand to Vir, which he took.
“I just figured we’d both improved so much lately. It was worth asking,” he said, rising to his feet. “Let’s go get cleaned up.”
Along with cooking with Maiya, Riyan’s hygienic facilities were the only other luxury afforded to them.
Well, that and waking up to his furred friend’s face every day. Neel followed them, his tail wagging with excitement.
Vir’s cabin didn’t have a bath. In fact, the only family in the entire village that did was Maiya’s. It wasn’t so much a matter of heating the water—Magic Heat could do that, and while not cheap, wasn’t beyond the means of some villagers—it was more a matter of keeping the water clean and sanitary without having to flush it out every time.
C Grade Water magic orbs could conjure water from thin air, but not a single person in the village could use C Grade magic. Besides which, those orbs cost one hundred times what D Grades did. Rainwater catches and the village well were the only proper sources of water. Unless one ventured into the Godshollow to find a watering hole. No one ever did.