"Welcome to cram school, runt." Eurya spun a long, thin twig between her fingers as she squared off against the boy. They stood in a shallow valley between two dunes, and the early morning light cast shadows across their battleground.

The boy furrowed his brows in confusion. "Cram school?"

"Outdated establishments aside," the Keeper smoothly interceded from his place on the sideline, "today the two of us will be throwing a lot of information at you. Absorb it at your own pace, but remember everything that is said. Do you understand?"

"Yes." The boy nodded uncertainly. "I'll do my best."

"Good." Eurya stepped forward with an eager smile. "Your resonance is coming along nicely, so it's time for something a little more complicated. Defend yourself."

She lunged forward without delay, wielding her thin twig like a sword. The boy yelped heroically, and barely managed to bring his own training blade up in time to parry. He instinctively fell into his resonance meditation, and foreign instincts guided him to cut through his adversary's 'weapon'.

His attempt went poorly. The boy had watched his teacher pluck that twig off a decaying tree, its bark dry and crumbling. When he struck it with his blade it felt like a bar of solid iron. His parry nearly broke his own grip, as his wrist strained to deal with the unexpected force. He twisted away, barely managing to escape the disadvantageous bind.

"Your ancestors are not all-knowing," Eurya said, pressing forward with a series of light thrusts. The boy felt like he was deflecting hammer blows. "You must follow their instincts, but not be controlled by them. You are in command, not the dead."

She swiftly advanced on him, her probing strikes slowly gaining speed until her arm was just a series of blurs. The boy fell deeper into his meditation. When his own strength failed, he pulled on his ancestors'. One, at first, then another, and another. He drew on them as quickly as he dared without losing focus, feeling his body swell with power as he did so. Six generations of Heroes, their strength and speed and skill, merged with the boy, and for a brief moment they felt invincible.

They pushed forward with their newfound strength, striking at their teacher once! Twice! Thrice! The initiative was theirs! The Heroes of Farathun knew only victory!

Then Eurya contemptuously slapped aside their sword and walloped them over the head with her stick. They became he once more, as his concentration broke, and the Memory of his ancestors was sent spinning back into the void. He quickly lost his footing, and planted himself ass-first into the sand.

"Congratulations," she said. "You did exactly the opposite of what I suggested. It takes a special kind of stupid to pull off such a spectacular blunder."

The boy winced and cradled his head. "I'm sorry, teacher. I didn't realize how overwhelming it would be."

"You mustn't resonate with them fully like that," she chided him. "At least not until you've gained your own set of instincts. It's no surprise that the collective battle experience of your family overwhelmed your own."

He grimaced at the Memory, brief as it was. He had lost his own identity, there, for a moment. Dead was dead; it wasn't his ancestors that he summoned, but the Memory of them. The gestalt that he had briefly become was not a combination of real people, but the boy's and the world's idealizations of them. He hadn't really known any of his ancestors, only heard stories about them. He was grateful for that. He might've lost himself for good, otherwise.

His teacher crouched down before him, putting herself at eye level. "You understand, now, why your family technique is only used in small bursts? It's a dangerous thing, you've been taught to do."

He nodded, but hesitantly voiced a question, "But teacher, I thought you wanted me to learn how to maintain the technique?"

Eurya grinned at him. "Just because something is dangerous, doesn't mean it's not worth mastering. Baby steps, Nicos. Take small bites. Take from them only what you need. Six conflicting sets of instincts has never helped anyone, but six-fold strength and speed is more useful."

"I will try," the boy promised.

"Do so," Eurya sniffed. "Now, get up."

The boy scrambled to obey. The pair squared off once more, the boy with his training blade and the older woman with her very dangerous twig.

"As useful as your family's technique is, it's only real purpose for you is to be a foundation for true skill," Eurya stated. "The strength you gain from it will one day pale beside your own. The instincts will become unnecessary, because you'll have your own. These things are the almost inevitable consequence of being my student, assuming you live long enough. If you only use that technique as your ancestors have, it'll never be more than a crutch."

The amount of arrogance the woman could pack into a single statement was astounding. She was also nearly impossible to argue against. The boy knew her strength. She was, much to his chagrin, far stronger than any member of his family had ever been. Though, in his ancestors' defense, she'd had a lot more time to hone her abilities.

Abilities which she would teach him. He grudgingly acknowledged her words. "How can I fix this, teacher?"

She preened, as she always did, when her superiority was noticed. "The core of the technique is the connection between action and Memory. Just about any warrior worth a damn can use resonance to gain strength from their bloodline, or empower themselves through their own accomplishments. Your family trained each generation the exact same way, the exact same moves, with the exact same goals. You resonate through actions, not just your bloodline, and that deeper bond allows you to gain more strength. In theory, your strength is only limited by your number of forebears. Six isn't much, but if your family survives another few millennia? The technique could truly show its worth."

It was the boy's turn to puff up with pride.

"But you live in the now, not a few millennia from now, and as it is the technique is more or less useless."

Her words deflated him faster than a sword could have. He didn't bother to argue, knowing how his teacher could be. He disagreed with her evaluation, but lacked the ability needed to give his words merit.

"Fortunately," Eurya continued, "we can salvage something useful from the technique. You've learned how to find common Memory through actions. Take that idea, and build upon it, and you'll find something similar to one of my own techniques."

"Your technique?" the boy echoed, perking up with anticipation. Anything that his teacher was willing to claim as her own was bound to be terrifically powerful. Her pride would demand nothing less. "Is it a strike that can split open the sky? Or- or the ability to move faster than lightning!?"

His teacher chuckled. "It gives one the greatest strength of all: knowledge." Her twig came up in a readied stance, and then the spar began once more. Eurya advanced like a slinking predator, keeping her twig held lightly in her hands.

"A fight between two masters should be over by the third exchange," she said. "The first—!"

She lunged forward, slow enough for the boy to track, and he intercepted her blow. Memory enforced his limbs, but his reflexes were entirely his own. He didn't bother matching her strength, he knew he would fail at that, simply letting the force of her blow drive him backwards, out of reach. She smiled approvingly at his actions, but continued to lecture.

"A probing strike, to get the measure of your opponent. Our weapons clash," she wiggled her twig mockingly, "as they tend to do, and a connection is made. Almost every fight that doesn't end immediately has some variation of this action. Find that Memory, that connection, that action, just as you do with your ancestors; follow it until you've found your opponent, and let them be known to you."

The boy had heard of the phenomenon known as enlightenment. Single moments in time, where the world seemed to unfurl before you. Where things that were once impossibly complicated suddenly seemed so very, impossibly simple. So it was with Eurya's words. Such an obvious application of Memory manipulation, that he had never even considered.

Perhaps, because it should be impossible. Memory, outside of oneself, was conventionally sensed through touch. The boy's family techniques were notable specifically because they did not require touch to function, but rather initiated the connection through actions. Though he had been taught to focus on the way his actions lead to the Memory of his ancestors, the boy saw no reason why he couldn't expand the scope of his technique. And, as Eurya said, clashing weapons was an action that nearly every warrior undertook, and frequently.

"The second strike, to confirm my findings without over-committing," Eurya intoned, dashing forward with sudden speed. "I now know my opponent, his strengths and weaknesses and preferences. A strategy is needed. The Memory of our clash tells me all I need to know."

Her strike staggered him with its force. He attempted the same trick as before, letting her blows help him retreat, but she clung to him like the desert sand.

"The third strike: execution," she finished, slipping a thrust past his guard and grazing his throat. She pulled back, and laughed. "Literally and metaphorically."

The boy fell to the ground, out of breath despite the brief exchange.

"The trick is speed and control," Eurya told him. "You have to find that connection quickly, then hold the Memory of your opponent inside yourself, without losing focus. Learning the technique is pointless if your distraction leads to getting stabbed."

She absently poked him in the thigh with her twig. "So get up, Nicos. You don't have time to master my technique, today, but until you can find that initial connection we're not going anywhere."