Chapter 28: 28. Somewhere Between the Third Drill and Sunset, They Stopped Being Strangers

The training ground at dusk looked different from the training ground at noon. The shadows stretched longer across the stone, and the six women scattered around its perimeter looked like pieces on a board that William had spent the last hour arranging without telling any of them the rules of the game.

"Alright, we’re going to start with the ambush drills," William said, standing in the center where everyone could see him. "It’s a simple concept really..."

"Somebody’s going to come at you when you least expect it, and your job is to survive long enough to turn the tables."

Kaela cracked her knuckles with an eagerness that made William suspect she had been waiting all day for something that let her hit people without restraint. "Finally, something that isn’t just theory because I’ve had with those bullshits!"

"Careful what you wish for, princess," William said. "Since you’re asking for it, then you’re going first, and I’m not telling you when or how."

Kaela’s grin faltered slightly. "Wait... what does that mean?"

It meant exactly what she thought it meant. William had her walk a marked path through the training ground while the rest watched from the sidelines, and halfway through her route, Lia came out from behind a stone pillar with a training sword already swinging.

Kaela reacted the way she always did, which was to meet force with more force. She turned into the strike instead of away from it, catching Lia’s blade arm and using her own momentum to throw her off balance.

It should have worked. It had worked against dozens of sparring partners before.

This time Lia twisted out of the grip at the last second, a movement she had clearly been practicing since her last defeat, and tapped her wooden blade against Kaela’s ribs before she could recover.

BAM!

"Nagh!" Kaela was caught off guard.

"That’s a clean hit," William called out. "Kaela, you’re already dead if this happens in a real situation."

"That’s... that’s bullshit...!" Kaela said, rubbing her side. "She used a trick! Those chickens are tricking again!"

"Nah, more like she used her training that I gave," William corrected. "The kind you’d know about if you spent half as much time drilling technique as you spend punching walls."

Kaela opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again, glancing at Lia with something that looked almost like respect fighting its way through her irritation.

"Again," she said instead. "The same fucking drill."

"Nope~! Not the same drill," William said. "You already know it’s Lia now, so next time... you won’t."

"Narggghhhh!" Kaela starts messing up her hair.

...

He rotated through them one at a time after that. Ellie faced a surprise attack while she was mid-channel, forced to choose between finishing a control exercise or defending herself, and she froze for exactly the amount of time it would have taken a real enemy to end her.

William watched her face crumple with frustration and stepped in before she could spiral into the kind of self-doubt that would undo the progress they had built.

"You didn’t fail," he told her. "You found the exact moment your reflexes break down."

"That’s not failure; that’s data right there."

"But still... It felt like failure," Ellie muttered.

"Everything feels like failure the first hundred times," William said. "Ask Catherine how her blind forms felt on day one."

Catherine, standing at the edge of the group with her sword still sheathed, gave him a look that was somewhere between amusement and betrayal. "Thank you for that."

"Anytime."

Clara’s turn came with a twist William had been planning since the first day he learned about her condition. He had two students attack from different directions at once, forcing her to process two threats simultaneously instead of the single clean shot she was used to tracking.

For a moment her whole body locked up, overwhelmed exactly the way she always described it, sensory input flooding faster than she could sort it.

Then something shifted. She dropped low, letting the two attacks pass over her instead of trying to track both at once, and came up already moving toward the nearest threat, dealing with one problem before turning to the other.

It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t the kind of textbook execution the academy usually rewarded. But it worked, and when she straightened up afterward, she looked at her own hands like she had just discovered something about herself that she hadn’t known was there.

"You didn’t try to process everything at once," William said. "You picked an order and committed."

"I couldn’t sort them," Clara said, sounding almost apologetic. "So I stopped trying to sort them and just moved."

"That’s the whole lesson," William said. "Sometimes the answer to too much information isn’t better filtering."

"It’s trusting your body to handle what your mind can’t organize fast enough."

Clara wrote that down immediately, mouthing the words to herself as she committed them to her journal, and William caught Olivia watching the exchange with an expression that suggested she was taking mental notes of her own, not about combat theory this time but about him.

And then came Olivia; her turn was rougher, because theory only carried a person so far when someone came at them from an angle they hadn’t calculated for.

She got hit twice before she managed to put anything she’d learned into practice, and by the third attempt she finally used her size and reach the way William had shown her, redirecting an attacker’s own momentum instead of trying to match it with strength she didn’t have.

"There," William said. "You just fought like someone who studies fighting instead of someone trying to imitate someone who does it naturally."

"Use what you actually have."

Catherine went last, and William made her ambush count for something. He had Kaela, Lia, and Clara come at her together, not to overwhelm her completely but to force her into the kind of chaotic multi-front defense that no amount of textbook memorization could prepare a person for.

She stumbled through the first several seconds, falling back into the same rigid, overly precise forms that had held her back since day one.

Then, somewhere in the middle of the exercise, something in her posture loosened. She stopped trying to execute the perfect counter to each individual attack and started moving the way William had been trying to teach her, reacting instead of calculating, trusting the muscle memory buried under years of desk work instead of overriding it with conscious thought.

She ended the drill standing over three disarmed training weapons, breathing hard, hair coming loose from its usually immaculate braid, staring at her own hands with an expression William recognized because he had seen it on every one of them by now.

It was the look of someone remembering they used to be more than what the world had convinced them they’d become.

"Phew~! There she is," William said quietly, and Catherine looked up at him with an expression that made something in his chest do something he chose not to examine too closely.

"You’re slowly showing your prime, I hope," William chuckled.

...

By the time the session ended, the sun had dropped low enough to paint the whole training ground gold, and all six women were gathered in a loose circle instead of scattered at opposite corners the way they usually stood.

Somewhere over the course of the evening they had stopped treating each other like competitors sizing up threats and started acting like people who had bled through the same drills and come out the other side still standing.

Kaela clapped Clara on the shoulder hard enough to stagger her. "Not bad, scout girl. You almost hit me that time."

"Well... I DID hit you that time," Clara said, deadpan. "So it’s still my accomplishment as an archer."

"Heh! Barely!"

"Bruised for a week, probably."

Lia snorted, an actual undignified sound that seemed to surprise even her, and Ellie laughed outright, the tension of her earlier frustration finally draining out of her shoulders. Even Olivia, who still carried herself with the careful formality of someone new to the group, allowed herself a small smile.

William watched all of it happen and felt something settle in his chest that had nothing to do with the system’s constant stream of notifications. Six people who had walked in as strangers, rivals, or reluctant recruits were now walking out as something closer to a unit.

It reminded him of the good days from his old life, the rare afternoons when a squad of terrified recruits finally clicked into place and became something worth fighting alongside.

"Same time in two days," William told them as they gathered their gear. "Tomorrow’s a rest day, so use it well enough and try not to slack off too much."

"Sleep is important; eat something that isn’t academy rations, and for the love of everything, Kaela, do not go looking for a fight to fill the time," William said while pointing at Kaela. "You better use that rest well!"

"No promises, Instructor Wade," Kaela said cheerfully, already walking backward toward the dormitories.

The group dispersed one by one, calling out variations of goodnight, until only Catherine remained, lingering near the edge of the training ground with her sword still in hand.

’Hm...?’ William noticed her, and then he walked close to her.

"You did well today," William told her.

"I nearly took Clara’s head off in the third exchange."

"Hahaha! Well, she’d tell you that was a compliment."

Catherine allowed herself the ghost of a smile before sheathing her sword properly. "Get some rest, Instructor Wade."

"Tomorrow you’ll actually have time to yourself for once."

"Don’t remind me," William muttered, mostly to himself, and Catherine gave him a curious look before heading off toward the instructor housing, leaving William alone under a sky rapidly draining of color.