“The best way to get through the thick skull of meatheads is to just beat whatever you want them to get in, hard.” - Old Clangeddin saying.

Aideen casually twirled her staff around with one hand as she approached Pedro. The seemingly nonchalant gesture was a habit she picked up after using her weapons for over a century, to maintain some momentum in its movements, which she kept even while she used the weapon in staff form.

Pedro himself approached her with some caution, his shield kept in front, covering his entire torso and the lower half of his face. The flail in his right hand also whirled around, as he kept it behind him, prepared to strike at the first opening he saw.

With a gesture, Aideen beckoned for Pedro to strike first, an invitation the young nobleman took without qualms. He charged in with his shield up front, as his flail swung viciously towards her from the side. She was pleased to see that he hadn’t taken her lightly, and had gone all out in their spar.

Aideen twirled her staff around, and struck the head of Pedro’s flail with one end of her staff shortly before the other end struck hard against his shield and stopped his charge dead on the spot. Pedro was likely too dizzy to notice it, however, as the end of his flail ricocheted back to hit hard against the side of his own helmet, hard enough to rock his head a bit and leave a growing bruise on his scalp.

Pedro staggered a couple steps backwards before he shook his head to clear his mind, and saw that Aideen had not chased after him as she simply remained where she was with a smirk on her lips. He sighed, shifted his helmet a bit so it sat properly on his head once more, and charged once more, more carefully this time.

He refrained from large swings this time, and kept his strikes short and cautious, yet he found them stymied at every turn by Aideen’s staff, often with moves that looked far too casual to be able to stop his strikes. Eventually he tried to forcefully press forward with his shield in front of him, only to find that Aideen had placed the end of her staff on the center of his shield and held him in place that way, before she shoved him back with a heave.

She had not moved even a single step from her spot all battle long.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“You know, a flail is a good option when you want to catch someone off guard, or around their defenses,” replied Aideen with some approval. Despite how easily she had handled him, she admitted that Pedro knew what he was doing, and part of the ease with which she dealt with him was because he used a weapon type she was intimately familiar with. “It doesn’t work that well against someone familiar with the weapon and its uses, however.”

To punctuate her words, Aideen twisted her hands around, and her long staff collapsed into its three-sectioned form. Her left hand held one of the end staves, while her right hand held the middle one as she whirled the third stave around by its chain.

Then she moved and took to the offense. Her three-sectioned staff whirled around her body almost like a living serpent, as it struck at Pedro from all sorts of strange angles that had him scrambling to defend himself.

Pedro was more surprised by the force behind the at times casual-seeming strikes, as they were far heftier than he had expected. A couple times his shield or weapon was almost shoved aside by one of those deceptively heavy strikes, and he only held on by the barest margin.

Even then, his defenses were quickly overwhelmed and he took strikes from her weapon all over his body, mostly on the joints. To his surprise considering the weight of her blows, Aideen somehow kept her strikes from being crippling, and instead merely bruised him painfully all over.

He collapsed into a tired, bruised heap shortly after as Aideen offered him a hand to help him rise. Pedro shook his head in admonishment to himself as he took the offered hand and rose up, and felt some magic coursing from her hands into him.

“Leave him some bruises,” said his father the Duke from the sidelines to his dismay. “This meathead will forget the lesson all too soon if he doesn’t have some reminders of it.”

“Sure, as you say,” replied Aideen with a chuckle. She adjusted her healing to mostly take care of the inflamed and damaged muscles under the skin, while she left the superficial bruising alone. “All done. We good now, Young Duke?”

“Please, call me Pedro,” replied the young nobleman as he lifted his helmet and gave her a sheepish smile. “And it would be my honor to travel with you, Miss deVreys. Please pardon my earlier ignorance for not recognizing a master before my eyes.”

“Water under the bridge,” replied Aideen nonchalantly. They walked together to the Duke side by side as they talked about fighting styles.

“So what is this planned trip about?” Aideen asked the Duke when they reached him. “It must be something important if you were sending multiple of your children under the current atmosphere, much less after that attack on Solenia.”

“In essence, it is a yearly gathering where the nobles or their heirs were required to visit the capital,” replied the Duke with a more serious look on his face. “I’m also having them take a trip to their maternal family in Algenverr to relay some personal correspondence. I hope that suits your needs as well.”

“It will definitely do. That said… You’re saying that if anyone were to desire harm to them, they would know to expect that they would be coming around that time, is it not?”

“Quite correct, Miss deVreys. That is one reason I am tripling their retinue for this trip,” replied the Duke with a knowing nod. “If someone asks, they can always excuse it as one retinue for each of them.”