"Hey, Zara. Give me my Viper’s Spine."
"Coming right up!" she said, far too enthusiastically for someone whose entire job was handing a five-year-old a weapon, and brought it over with both hands.
’Today I’ll try to use the expansion mechanism properly. That’s the biggest advantage this weapon has over anything else in the training hall.’
He walked to one of the training posts, stopping well short of the dummy fixed to it, deliberately putting more distance between himself and the target than his arm could ever hope to cross unassisted.
’This is far enough that I can’t hit it directly if I wanted to. But with my weapon...’
He activated the mechanism and swung in a diagonal slash.
The blade snapped outward, too far, too fast, the force he’d put behind it sending the extension past where he’d meant to stop, and the strike went wide, only grazing the dummy’s edge before the momentum carried it off course entirely.
"Too much force," Zara said from the side, not unkindly, just stating it.
Alex deactivated the mechanism.
The blade snapped back into its compressed length with a sharp click, the recoil jolting up through his wrist, and he held his footing through it, if barely.
He tried again, lighter this time, and the blade extended, but too little, falling short of the dummy by a hand’s width, the tip barely brushing canvas before he killed the mechanism and let it retract.
"A little less than that last time, a little more than this time," Zara said, settling onto her usual stone. "Try it a few more times. You’ll get the hang of it soon."
He repeated it.
Again.
Again.
Each attempt shaving the error down a fraction, his sense of exactly how much intent the mechanism needed sharpening with every failed strike, until finally the force matched the target, the blade snapping out clean, connecting with the dummy in a loud crack of impact, and he pulled it back into itself with the same motion, controlled from start to finish.
"Good. Keep going," Zara said.
He did, striking and retracting, striking and retracting, the rhythm settling into his hands the way the falling drills had settled into his body days ago, until the gap between activating the mechanism and the blade finding its mark had shrunk to something that felt almost instinctive.
Then he moved to the next piece of it.
Until now he’d been expanding first, then attacking.
What he actually wanted was to extend the blade mid-swing, after the strike was already committed, the expansion arriving as a surprise partway through the arc, the kind of thing that would throw off anyone reading his attack by its opening motion.
He got into position and swung.
Partway through the arc, he triggered the mechanism.
The blade shot outward, and the pull of it hit him immediately, the extension yanking forward with a force he hadn’t braced for, dragging his whole arm and half his shoulder with it.
He stumbled a step, then two, to keep from going down entirely. The strike connected, but his balance was a mess by the time it did.
"Brace for it immediately the moment you decide to expand mid-swing," Zara said. "Don’t wait for the pull to tell you it’s coming. You already know it’s coming the second you commit."
Alex reset. Swung again, and mid-arc, triggered the expansion, bracing this time the instant his mind made the decision rather than the instant his arm felt the tug.
He was still pulled forward, the mechanism’s force not something a five-year-old’s frame could fully absorb yet, but his footing held this time, steadier than before.
He ran the sequence again. And again.
Each repetition a little cleaner, the stumble shrinking with every pass until it was barely a shift of weight rather than a near-fall.
Then came the last piece of the drill, learning to retract the blade under pressure, specifically while moving.
’In a real fight I won’t be standing still,’ Alex thought, resetting his stance. ’I’ll be moving constantly, and retracting mid-motion isn’t the same problem as retracting from a dead stop. It’s never easy to pull something back when you’re already in motion. I know that from experience.’
He took his first step.
Expanded the blade on the second, the extension striking the dummy clean.
On the third step, he tried to compress it back down while his legs were still carrying him forward.
The blade retracted, but the recoil caught him off guard mid-stride, and he wobbled hard enough that he had to plant a foot wide just to keep from going down.
Not clean.
Not close to clean.
"Recoil’s always going to throw you off," Zara said. "If you can’t brace against it in a given moment, don’t fight it, go along with it instead. It’s not the best option, but it beats getting knocked flat on your back. Right now you don’t have the strength to brace it fully every time. You could, eventually, with better technique. But that’s not a one-day thing. Keep both options in your head until the strength catches up."
Alex nodded and ran it again.
Step, expand, strike, step, retract. Step, expand, strike, step, retract.
Over and over, the wobble shrinking with each pass, sometimes catching himself by bracing, sometimes simply riding the recoil the way Zara had told him to, letting his body absorb it rather than resist it outright.
By the time he finally let the blade collapse for the last time and lowered it to his side, his arm ached in an entirely new configuration than anything the physical training had given him, smaller muscles, the ones that handled fine control rather than raw power, burning with the specific fatigue of a day spent doing something delicate over and over.
’This Aspect of mine really is a miracle,’ Alex thought, watching the last of the tremor fade from his hand.
’I’m picking this up fast. Almost unnervingly fast. I remember how long it took me to get used to a rifle the first time, I dislocated my own shoulder because I didn’t brace the recoil correctly, and it punished me exactly the way recoil punishes everyone who underestimates it. That took weeks to unlearn properly. This is taking hours.’