Chapter 64: Routine

The following morning, Frost arrived at the training hall quite early in the morning. Most of the recruits were still gathering.

He regarded them curiously, attempting to check out how they differed from him in terms of overall build.

A few were stretching beside the running lane, while others talked in small groups near the benches.

Of course, he had grown familiar with many of their faces over the past six weeks, though watching them from a distance was different from standing among them.

He couldn’t quite say he knew them yet, except for a couple who had made an active effort to actually speak with him over the last couple of weeks.

Soren noticed him first and waved him over.

"Finally joining us?"

"I guess. I’ve been deemed to have improved enough to be everyone’s problem now."

Talia smiled from beside him. "That’s good. Soren’s been carrying that responsibility alone for too long."

Soren gave her an offended look, but before he could respond, Ava arrived with a lean, broad-shouldered man whose short hair was beginning to grey at the temples.

His sleeves were rolled up, revealing several pale scars along his forearms, and he looked Frost over with considerably less interest than even Ava usually did.

"This is Frost," she said. "Master approved him for group training."

The man nodded. "Orven. You’ll follow my instructions while you’re here, and if there’s something you can’t do, tell me before you hurt yourself trying."

Frost nodded as well, though the man had already turned towards the others.

Ava remained beside him for a moment. "I’ll bring you the reading material later."

"Thank you."

She gave a small nod before leaving, and Frost watched her go with the strange feeling that something had been forgotten. It took him a moment to realize she hadn’t insulted him once since arriving.

Perhaps it was too early in the morning.

The session began with warming up and running; both were familiar enough that Frost got into it without much difficulty.

He couldn’t match the pace of the stronger recruits, but he no longer felt as though he was going to die before reaching the next corner.

By the time Orven brought them to a stop, his breathing was heavy, his shirt was damp, and he was still standing without needing to brace himself against anything.

That alone was enough to make him feel a little proud.

The feeling faded somewhat when they moved on to the rest of the training.

Ava had spent weeks teaching him to control his own body. Orven seemed interested in finding out how well that control held up when another person was trying to interfere with it.

The recruits worked in pairs, taking turns pushing against each other’s shoulders, pulling against resistance, and trying to disturb their partner’s balance without simply throwing them to the floor.

Frost was paired with Soren, who obligingly moved him backward during their first attempt.

"Your feet," Soren said, easing the pressure. "You brought them too close together."

Frost glanced down and adjusted his stance before they tried again. This time, he held for a few seconds longer, though Soren still managed to turn him far enough that he had to take a hurried step to avoid falling.

It was a frustratingly simple exercise. There was nothing particularly impressive about two people pressing against each other, yet Frost soon discovered how easily all his careful positioning could fall apart when someone applied force from a direction he hadn’t expected.

Orven moved between the pairs, correcting small mistakes and making them repeat the movements. When he reached Frost, he placed a hand against his shoulder and gave him a light push.

Frost fell backward.

"Don’t wait until you’ve lost your balance to move your feet," the man said. "And stop trying to solve everything by pushing harder."

By the time they brought out the wooden weapons, Frost’s arms were already tired. Soren handed him a practice sword, then stepped back with his own held loosely at his side.

"We’ll start slowly."

Frost looked down at the weapon.

He had watched Krazz and plenty of other evolvers swing swords, and he had picked up a few things during his afternoon practice, but none of that made him particularly comfortable facing someone who intended to swing back.

Soren demonstrated a simple guard, then waited while Frost copied it.

What followed was less a fight than a prolonged discovery of all the places Frost had forgotten to protect.

Whenever he concentrated on Soren’s sword, his feet stopped moving. Whenever he remembered to move, his guard drifted aside.

A light tap against his shoulder would remind him to raise the weapon, only for the next one to catch him near the ribs.

Still, Soren kept the pace manageable, explaining what had happened instead of simply striking him again. Frost appreciated that more than he could express while trying to catch his breath.

Once, he managed to catch an incoming strike on his wooden blade and move aside without tangling his feet. It wasn’t graceful, and he nearly lost his guard immediately afterward, but Soren nodded in approval.

"Better."

Frost couldn’t help smiling. A moment later, the tip of Soren’s sword tapped his stomach.

"Don’t stop because one thing went well."

By the end of the session, Frost understood that joining the others hadn’t brought him any closer to an easy morning.

He was tired in ways that felt slightly different from Ava’s training, and there were several spots on his body that would probably be sore by evening. Still, walking out beside Soren and Talia felt better than dragging himself away alone.

For once, he had been allowed to take part instead of watching from the edge of the hall.

Ava found him later, after he had eaten and washed, and handed him a thin book with a plain cover.

Frost took it carefully, looking between it and her as though she had given him something considerably valuable.

"It isn’t a rune tome," she said. "It’s a beginner’s guide to the script. Read the explanations properly, and don’t skip ahead just because you recognize something."

"I won’t."

"You can keep it in your room. If there’s something you don’t understand, mark the page and ask me."

Frost thanked her, then waited until he was back in his room before opening it. The first pages contained rows of unfamiliar symbols accompanied by explanations he could actually read, and he settled on the edge of his bed with the book resting across his knees.

Some of the shapes were familiar. He had seen them within triagrams, glimpsed them during hunts, and tried to reproduce them from memory without knowing whether he had even drawn them correctly.

Now, beside one of those symbols, there was an explanation of what it meant and how it was used.

Frost traced the shape with a finger, then read the passage again.

For months, he had been watching people use something he couldn’t understand. He was still a long way from casting a rune, but at least he could finally begin finding out what he had been looking at.

Frost made it through the first three pages, but he soon discovered that recognizing a symbol was considerably easier than understanding what it was doing.

The explanations were simple enough when he read them on their own, but the moment several symbols appeared together, he found himself turning back to check something he had been certain he understood a few minutes earlier.

He positioned himself higher against the wall, resting the book on his knees, and started again.

One of the first sections concerned the direction in which essence moved through an inscription.

Frost had already worked out that certain sigils handled the flow, but there was more to it than simply drawing a line between two points.

Small changes affected how the symbols connected, and something he had dismissed as a decorative stroke turned out to be part of the instruction itself.

Well, that explained why some of his attempts to copy triagrams had looked so wrong.

He had been trying to remember the general shapes while missing details that mattered just as much.

It was rather like copying a sentence from a language he didn’t understand and deciding that a few missing letters probably wouldn’t make a difference.

Frost rubbed his forehead, then reached for the scraps of paper Ava had included with the book. He began copying the first symbol slowly, checking the example after every few strokes.

By the time he finished, the result looked close enough to satisfy him. Then he compared them more carefully and noticed that he had joined two lines that were supposed to remain separate.

He stared at the page for a moment before drawing another.

...

Over the next few days, his routine acquired one more activity.

He trained, ate, washed, and then spent whatever energy remained trying to make sense of the book before sleep finally claimed him.

Sometimes, he woke with it still open beside him and a page of crooked symbols resting against his leg.

Studying after a day of physical training was its own kind of challenge.

There were evenings when his mind wandered no matter how often he reread a passage, and others when he understood something so clearly that he wondered why it had confused him in the first place.

Unfortunately, the latter usually happened shortly before he had to put the book down and sleep.

He began carrying his notes with him during the day.

Waiting for breakfast became an opportunity to review a few symbols, while the quieter parts of his recovery breaks gave him time to read through the explanations again.

It was almost like he was back at school again.