Lein
Location: Training Yard
Interactions: @Raineh Daze @Conscripts @Crimson Paladin @Rune_Alchemist
Lein had expected some kind of impressive trick. Perhaps swordplay so sophisticated it may rend through dragon scale, or extraordinary footwork to make up for the lost limb. He did not expect common sense to simply bend under 'the soul'. Lein even had a couple seconds to just process what Rui was even talking about for a proper translation. Even as Steffen asked for the very same movement to be repeated over, as the scamp paladin whined about destroying the yard, Lein found himself watching with intense curiosity.
"Nothing special? Rui, I've shot a bow hundred thousand times and more, and I've never shot an arrow of mere air - and certainly not from a sword!" Lein had, in fact, seen this sort of...trickery? Mastery, as Rui would call it. Weapons with scales and weights far beyond what mere muscle should allow. Lein had always cautioned himself, however, that his distant memories of the Hundi duels had been riddled with inventions of the nascent mind, back when he still fantasized about standing atop the podiums and performing his own wild demonstrations. Dragons roaring plumes of orange-black fire into a glittering night sky, the vast sea murmuring his name in the folds of its waves; always with the re-inventions of his circumstance. Lein had steadily grown to accept that he knew very little of what was possible, each step outside of his sequestered lands a showing him the great divide of his own fantasies and capabilities.
Rui's mastery of the sword was yet another surpassing of his expectations. But underneath his veneer of enthusiasm, Lein yet questioned why this confirmation did not alight a sense of wonder within him. It was the same kind of buzz, the same twitch reflexes in his phantom limb that desired, as it ever did every so often, to will itself to move, to inhabit the prosthetic that had replaced it. Yet it felt caustic, lingering with a bitterness. Lein tracked the leporine swordswoman's movements hungrily, dissecting every movement in her limbs as much as he could allow. No comparable experience with a sword, yes, but the tension of her muscles, flow of balance, pacing as she drew her sword, up and - swing. Simple, she says. Hmm. Lein had planned to use Fleuri's duel as a distraction to shift some cargo hidden in the yard. He did not expect to have drawn in by this new fascination.
"Everyone's been through hell and back last night, apparently. Nothing like a nightmare of getting your teeth kicked in by the First Knights to make people scramble for an extra swing or two." Lein replied, then taking a moment off watching Rui's movements, meeting Cecil's greeting with the usual fanged smile. "Guess you're also in the same camp. Who's the one to have gutted you? Must've been some real high kicker to have drawn you out here."