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[b][color=FFD700]Centurion Bolea, Luka Matthias, 3rd Cohort
June 21st
New Rome, Coliseum[/color][/b][/indent]
Happiness. Pride. Joy.

Would only the words actually fit into the shapes they were meant to be, supposed to be. He’d volunteered for the spars, like anyone ought who enjoyed the blade in hand, the shield, the focus. There was something good about it, even if the trophy was altogether meaningless, something good about the process, about the mere act. Sparring was training, and training was good…even if the training against one-another lent itself to a different idea of fighting than ever could be found fighting a monster, a creature, a real foe who really wanted you dead.

He’d sparred against Mercator of the Second, a Messenger. 

It hadn’t gone well. They had set him in with sword and shield against two swords, something…something Luka had grown unused to. He’d grown accustomed to the bow or dart, accustomed to the pelting as he closed that distance. He’d grown fat. He’d grown lazy. The wind set about as he had tried to close that distance, thundering in, before the Messenger began his own methods.

It hadn’t gone well. There was something fascinating about Mercator’s method, his dancing about, his portals, his sight. Luka should have closed quicker, or instead of trying to break the Messenger’s ankles with the rim of his shield done something…something else. Anything else. Mercator was of Janus, [i]foresight[/i], and the plan itself was that problem. He felt stupid for not considering it more before. Luka’d thought it was something more vague, more nebulous, more of a feeling than a true prediction. He should have given Mercator more issues, things to choose, or perhaps have eschewed the whole of the swordplay entirely. Perhaps the real answer would have been using his shield as a great big club and tried to break the air out of his lungs. 

It hadn’t gone well. Perhaps the real answer wasn’t the real answer because it all depended on things that could never be measured. Maybe Mercator had gotten lucky this time, or Luka would get lucky next time, and all the changes in tactics wasn’t the deciding factor at all. Was there a tactic to the Messenger’s method? He could see it initially, true, but the second fight he witnessed with Mercator against the Praetor, it all fell apart.

Well, that was it. There was something there, but it fell apart under the pressure. It needed growth or help or some other thing. Luka knew he should’ve been happy for the Messenger, that he did something and did it well, knew he should feel some bit of pride that another Legionary was doing well for themselves, that they had some potential to be more and better, and he knew that he should feel some sense of duty to needing to make that Messenger realize their potential, and yet…and yet that seemed to all fall away. It seemed to fall away into a sense that [i]Luka[/i] could have done better, that he [i]should[/i] have done better, that there was a right and need for him to have done better. He shook it away. It wasn’t right for a Centurion to feel so entitled, to rest so easily on an idea of laurels, not even the laurels themselves. It wasn’t right for a son of Heroes to feel he is that simply by blood. No, that’s not how it all worked. 

His hand wrapped around that [i]vitis[/i], feeling the ironwood and lead heft. There was still the Reenactment of Carthage to get on to and Luka wouldn’t miss that.