[18]

“All right, dogs, listen up. This is physical fitness training, and my aim is to get you in shape. You lollygag on me, and you'll regret it, that I can promise you,” said my new fitness instructor.

Instructor Cen-Boleman was big for a stoneblood dwarf. They normally stood at around five feet in height, but made up for their smaller size with double the muscles of a man. The good instructor was still five feet tall, but was three or four times the size of a man. His green instructor robe had to be the size of a bedsheet to fit around the blocky gray skinned monstrosity of a chest. I estimated him to weight close to 400 pounds, not even counting the reinforced mineral bones I heard dwarves had—which probably added another 100 pounds. Even if I put my points into strength for the next twenty ranks, I could not see myself catching up to him.

Further, Instructor Cen-Boleman looked like he had fought across the Ruinlands and back by himself, by the number of scars and old injuries. The hairless state of stoneblood dwarves exacerbated his ferocity, making his battle marks gleam in the sunlight. I looked down the line at the other twelve black-robed students, and everyone but that moron Reynold and his probably equally stupid ogre-looking friend, who I had overheard was named Tedric, looked scared. For whatever reason, they limited this part of our training to only ascendent classed students.

“First thing we’re going to do is run. Running is the single most important skill in the Ruinlands. It gets you to your friends, gets you to your enemies. And just as important, it gets you away. The Ruinlands are a savage place. You can’t trust the roads or trails you find, so that means more often than not you are going to be running through the wild. For our training, you are going to run through the rough terrain. You will run slow through rough terrain. You will run fast through rough terrain. You will run through rough terrain for a long time. The only thing you won’t do is run through rough terrain for a short time. On the obstacle course now, let’s go!”

In a line, we began jogging what I would later consider hell. The first portion of the training field was miles long sticky mud that held onto our boots. How they kept it like that, I do not know, but whoever was responsible, I wished vehemently that I could cast a curse on. We all slipped and fell repeatedly, and looked more like earth elementals of legend by the time we finished. Instructor Cen-Boleman made us jump in place anytime someone fell over and never let someone get ahead. He repeatedly stressed the importance of staying together as a group.

Exhausted from that awful trek, it relieved our group to see grass ahead, but the sentiment did not last. The next portion of the course was a sprawling hill that only seemed to go upwards from where we started. Carefully tended trees blocked our path in every direction. Branches slapped us in the face, and trunks, both upright and prone, arrested our jog at every turn. Though the word jog is an embellishment by that point in time.

By pure happenstance, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with a sea gnoll student I had not met before. Breathless, the student and I supported one another, holding branches for whoever ended up behind and boosting each other over stumps in sequence. The laugh that people attributed to his hyena headed kind ended up becoming a balm to my exhaustion. Every so often he would let loose an unintentional yelping snicker, and by the abyss it made me laugh every time along with him. We became like brothers without ever saying a word to one another.

At the top of the hill, a human woman that I did not know passed out, prompting Instructor Cen-Boleman to force us into the pushup position while we waited for her to wake up. I looked over my new blue furred sea gnoll friend and we bared our teeth at each other in mutual appreciation of the “rest”.

Instructor Cen-Boleman tired of waiting for the “lay-about” student and ended up putting something under her nose that woke her up. Afterward he gave her a stamina potion that he kept for just such emergencies, then told us the easy part was over.

We soon found ourselves back in mud, only this time waist-high water accompanied it. A simulated swamp lane circled around in a lazy bend around the top of the hill, carrying out our torture in the hellish spring heat. It may have been artificial, but the bugs that attacked were certainly not. The only upside to the swamp trek was that the water cooled us some and washed off much of the mud that we had accumulated earlier. Despite being a sea gnoll, my new companion struggled just as hard as everyone else. I guess I should have expected that. He was not a swamp gnoll after all.

A God's damned cliff wall was the next part of our journey. I kept wondering how it could get worse than it already was, but Ashmere found a way to exceed my expectations. Everyone except for Reynold asked for a stamina potion to continue, and Instructor Cen-Boleman gave us enchanted amulets to wear in case we fell. He explained it would still hurt, but that nothing should get too injured, though he wished otherwise. His unsolicited opinion was that anyone that could not climb a simple cliff was a failure at life and deserved whatever pain that came along with that state of being.

I only made it halfway before my arms and legs trembled so uncontrollably that I had to stop. Elaine Highrow clung to a rock ten feet beneath me, and I knew that she simply did not have the strength to continue. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but she hid her face from me in embarrassment. Eventually, I made it to the top to see that the instructor forced the others to do squats as a reward for making it. I came very close to cursing the stoneblood bastard, but was too afraid of him figuring it out. Against all sanity, the enormous grey monster had followed right along with us, screaming and berating us while carrying a gigantic sack full of supplies. That kind of power was too terror inspiring to cross.

For those that could not make it, we had to lower a rope down and pull them up. Not one at a time, either. The instructor insisted we lower five separate ropes down to the “weaklings”, and only then could the rest of the class pull them up together at the same time. It was awful. Screaming students below us crashed into one another in a tangle of limbs and twine, while we huffed and yanked them up on the unforgiving cliff side.

Water in a barrel was the reward we got for finally making it up the cliff as a group.

Then our instructor informed us we had to climb back down on another side that was two hundred feet long. Instructor Cen-Boleman warned against us trying to fall our way down on purpose, saying that if we did, he would drag the unfortunate person back to the top.

Initially, and because of my limited experience in climbing, it relieved me we had to climb down instead of up. However, the feeling did not last. I soon found that any kind of climbing was appalling and still ended up being a trembling, shaky wreck by the time my feet touched the ground. Fortunately, no one fell; but it still took some of the class long enough that I ended up doing over a thousand jumping jacks while waiting for everyone to descend.

Our instructor handed out more stamina potions, and this time even Reynold had to give in. His grimace while drinking the foul liquid twisted the still freshly stitched wound I had put on his face earlier that day, hurting him, while giving me a much needed second wind. Well, the potion probably did it, if I am being honest.

A steep downward mountain trail carved out of the huge hill ended up being the next leg of our journey. We had to pick our way carefully along ledges, avoid rocks and cracks that could twist our ankles. At least two people had that happen, and each time, the instructor gave the person a healing potion. In hindsight, it was kind of incredible that it took that long for someone to hurt their foot.

The longer the class wore on, the more impressed I found myself with the exceptional magic that it must have taken to create such a multitude of environments. Torture master Cen-Boleman told us we would come up this way the next time we had class, and that just for today we had taken the easy route just to get acquainted.

A sprint through a sandy track was the last portion of the course, returning us to where we started.

More than a few of the students were openly weeping. I did not have the emotion left in me for it. In fact, I had remembered hating the dwarf, but was so bone tired I could not even muster up the energy to care.

Or so I believed.

“All right, wimps. The warm up is over. Now we're going to work on building up your muscles! Everyone pick up a stone.” said Instructor Cen-Boleman.

“I hate you,” I whispered behind his back, meaning every damn word.

For the first time in my life, I dreamed of going back to being little ugly Harald.