Chapter 68. Theory Needs to Be Tested Somewhere That Matters
While the two of them settled into their usual bickering rhythm, Clara arrived, took one look at the scene, and, with the quiet efficiency of someone who had learned early on that observation was always more useful than participation, produced her own journal and began sketching rough diagrams of the footwork she’d apparently caught the tail end of.
"Interesting," she said, mostly to herself, pencil moving quickly across the page. "The transition between Ember and Tide shares almost no common footwork."
"That’s a significant cognitive load to switch between mid-combat."
"It gets easier with practice," William said. "Theoretically."
"You’ve practiced this for approximately six hours."
"Give or take."
Clara glanced up at him with an expression that fell somewhere between professional skepticism and grudging respect. "That’s a genuinely absurd learning curve."
"I’ve been told I pick things up quickly."
Ellie wandered in partway through the demonstration, drawn by the commotion, and took one look at William standing in stone stance mid-explanation before turning to Kaela with open confusion. "What did I miss?"
"He learned six sword stances overnight and didn’t tell any of us."
"That seems like something he should have led with."
"That’s what I said!"
"I was going to bring it up during the actual lesson," William said, for what felt like the fifth time in as many minutes, "before I got ambushed by an audience."
"You weren’t ambushed; you demonstrated Ember completely unprompted the second Kaela asked," Lia said, not looking up from her notes. "Nobody forced you to do the full sequence with sword configuration changes included."
"That part might have been slightly unnecessary."
"Slightly," Clara agreed, still sketching.
Ellie, who had apparently decided that arriving twenty minutes late to a demonstration was perfectly acceptable as long as she arrived with enough enthusiasm to make up for it, dropped her bag by the fence with a cheerful grunt.
She settled in beside Kaela, her eyes bright with the same undisguised fascination as the others.
William stood in the center of the courtyard, surrounded by his three students who were looking at him like he was some kind of legendary hero from the old texts rather than a man who had simply spent six hours reading until his eyes bled.
He basked in it; he couldn’t deny it. There was a heady, dangerous rush in that kind of admiration, a validation of the sheer power he was beginning to wield.
For a fleeting moment, he felt less like an instructor and more like a force of nature.
Then, a dry, cutting voice sliced through the atmosphere like a blade through silk.
"Well," Catherine said, stepping from the shadows of the corridor at the edge of the training ground.
Her arms were crossed tight over her chest, one eyebrow arched in an expression of pure, unimpressed amusement. "This is certainly quite the spectacle."
William turned, his shoulders squaring instinctively. He was still mid-demonstration, the residual energy of the stone stance still humming in his muscles, and his posture screamed loudly of a man who knew he had just done something impressive.
Catherine saw it immediately. Her mouth twitched with the effort of restraining a laugh.
"Instructor Wade," she drawled, her eyes scanning him from head to toe. "Are you demonstrating new techniques to your students, or are you simply putting on a show?"
"I’m demonstrating new techniques, Catherine," William replied, his voice taking on that defensive edge that only she could provoke.
"No," she countered instantly. "You’re preening."
"I am not preening."
"You are absolutely, undeniably preening." Catherine began walking toward them, her amusement deepening with every step. "I could see the ego radiating off you from the main gate."
"It was practically visible in the air." There was genuine warmth beneath the teasing, the easy, comfortable affection of someone who knew every one of his flaws and found them entertaining. "It’s very endearing, honestly."
"But you do realize you look exactly like Kaela does after she wins a spar she was already destined to win anyway? All that... puffed up satisfaction."
"That’s a low blow, Catherine." William sighed. "A deeply personal, uncalled-for low blow."
"Accurate observations usually are, William." She reached the group, and as she drew closer, William noticed her gaze linger.
Her eyes swept over Aetherion, still resting in its massive, imposing stone configuration in his grip. For a split second, the teasing faded, replaced by something thoughtful, something almost wistful, a flicker of recognition of the raw power he held before she blinked it away and set her expression back to one of casual challenge.
"Regardless... if you’re all finished being impressed with each other, I believe there was an actual training session scheduled for this morning."
"Unless we’re planning to spend the entire day admiring your posture."
’Ouch,’ William thought, feeling the sting of being called out in front of his pupils. ’She always knows exactly how to deflate me.’
"Right." William straightened abruptly, clearing his throat with enough force to startle himself.
He attempted with spectacular failure to shed the last of his lingering self-satisfaction and reassemble his professional persona. "Warmups, everyone! Now!"
"Let’s move before I have to start charging admission."
"Finally," Lia muttered, though she didn’t move immediately.
She was still hunched over her notebook, her pen moving in desperate, frantic strokes as if she were trying to capture the very soul of his movements before they evaporated. "Just... one more paragraph on the pivot point of the tide stance..."
...
The idea, which William finally articulated clearly, came together during the warmup drills that morning as he observed Lia working through her redirect technique with noticeably more confidence now that she had a formal stance to anchor it, Clara’s overload recovery improving steadily with each repetition, and Kaela channeling her aggression into something more deliberate than pure raw force.
"I want to take this into the field," he said once the warm-up had run its course and everyone had gathered for a break. "A real dungeon... Tier one, nothing dangerous, but real monsters instead of drills and wooden practice swords."
"See how everything holds up under actual pressure."
The reaction was immediate and enthusiastic from most of the group, Kaela in particular looking like she might actually vibrate out of her own skin with excitement, but Catherine, standing at the edge of the gathering, went noticeably still.
"A dungeon..." she repeated, voice carefully even.
William caught the flicker of something tightening across her features, the echo of a summoned reaver still clearly close enough to the surface to color her reaction, and he kept his own tone deliberately light, giving her room to work through it without drawing unwanted attention from the students.
"Tier one," he said again. "Same classification as before we tested Aetherion, before the incident."
"Standard academy safety protocols, well within regulation for supervised student training."
"The last time we went to a tier one dungeon, a tier five abyssal reaver came through a summoning circle."
"That was an isolated incident... Nothing about tier one dungeons themselves is inherently unsafe, and honestly, keeping everyone away from real field conditions out of fear of a repeat isn’t going to actually protect anyone in the long run."
"These techniques need to be tested somewhere that actually matters, or they’re just theory."
"You’re asking me to trust that lightning won’t strike the same place twice."
"I’m asking you to trust that four trained fighters, one very overqualified instructor, and an assistant instructor with a knack for spotting trouble are more than capable of handling anything a tier one dungeon is realistically going to throw at us."
"What happened with the reaver was an active sabotage, not a statistical inevitability."
Catherine’s eyes flicked briefly toward Kaela, who was practically bouncing with barely restrained enthusiasm at the mere mention of a real dungeon, then toward Lia, whose usually composed expression carried its own quiet, hopeful anticipation.
Something in her posture eased, just slightly, weighing the visible eagerness of her students against her own private fear.
Catherine’s jaw tightened, some internal calculation working itself out behind her sharp green eyes, and after a long moment she exhaled slowly, some of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders.
"Fine," she said. "But I’m coming along..."
"Not just as administrative oversight but... I want eyes on this personally."
"I wouldn’t have it any other way," William said, and meant it, though something in the back of his mind couldn’t quite shake the memory of her hand trembling around a wooden practice sword just days earlier.