HereComesTheSnow — Roleplayer Guild

Gerard Segremors

@jdh97

He was going to collapse the moment he reached his bed.

Gerard had, in truth, no real idea of how long he'd spent drilling. It was one of those purely repetitive tasks that made one lost to time, minutes feeling like hours whilst hours passed seemingly in minutes. Intellectually, he knew it couldn't truly have been that long; an entire hour of moving around as though in combat whilst wearing his full kit was intense enough, even disregarding added factors such as the battle the night before, would be taxing as all hell.

And yet with Reon's rising sun only growing stronger upon his brow and beating against his frame, each swing felt like eternity. He had, at this point, abandoned his theorycrafting against what he had remembered of the aforementioned raid's notable enemies. He could feel he was getting too sloppy in his footwork. Positioning was of utmost importance in his school of fighting— If one could call it that without smirking. To rep out his entrances, evasions, and exits was one thing, but after a certain point of fatigue...

Putting it simply, it would bake bad habits into him, and get his head lopped off in battle. Segremors had no deficiency in courage, he was certain of it, but a proper knight didn't make such clumsy mistakes.

So he had returned again to the simplest of all his cuts, the Oberhau— a sign of his tiredness indeed. Wasn't even bothering to translate their names any more. A seemingly endless series of downward hews, consistently patterned in three angles— descending from above his near shoulder, then above his head, then his far shoulder. This, at least he could still do. Though he made sure he was still minding the subtle things such as the shifting of his weight to maximize striking force, his maintenance of steady balance in both stance and blade, it was almost simply conditioning. Just burning it further into the back of his brain...

Those words were popping up a good bit.

Baking. Burning.

Hot...

After what he had guessed was his fiftieth repetition of that three-cut pattern, the knight felt his shoulders slump. He was panting, ragged, and drenched, like a hound that had to cross a rushing river. His skin cried out for the cool morning air that tore against his overworked lungs, for its own chance to just breathe and suffocate no longer, and he could feel his heart thudding against the bone of his chest.

Even Sagramore Gellert, so furiously driven to improve, could see the writing on the wall: He was done.

"Guh..."

His voice and tongue were unresponsive and sticky. Maybe even swollen, on account of how much he simply felt them. Far too dry to speak right now, not until his breathing had calmed down in the least. Felt like a pinecone had lodged itself in his throat...

Goddesses, he'd let himself get parched. Better do something about that.

He slowly returned the longsword to its sheath and wiped what sweat he could off his brow, wanly realizing that it was going to return in an instant until he got himself out of the armor and into a cleansing soak. If he recalled correctly, the antechambers of the Baths had something in the way of refreshments— surely some drinkable water wouldn't be hard to find. Perhaps after that he'd visit the kitchens and fill his empty stomach. Neither were terribly far, thankfully.

He didn't really know. Maybe he'd end up wandering into bed first. He had no doubt that once his blood stopped surging through his veins with such a spirited fervor he'd begin to feel all he'd done today and yesterday. 

Whatever would come to pass, he trudged onward, toward respite. In doing so, he passed one familiarly dour and quiet figure, shaking off the same listlessness that he'd begun to feel descending upon him as they were attended by one of the healers. Normally, he would be content to mutter a small greeting, even if it was just a grunt, and continue on his way.

But as it happened, he owed this one an apology. He'd nearly forgotten.

"Sir Jerel," he said, voice still rough but now working after the walk had taken him into the halls, "How's the shoulder?"
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