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Send ☭ for a vs. battle quote to your muse

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"Greed transcends all boundaries man claims to have." Aatrox pointed out calmly. "My people, lost in the wastes of the Great Sai, were never forced from our lands, but the Vastaya have lived in areas of great magical power since the beginning of time, for they were created there, according to their own myths. Men came to these places, and desired that magic for themselves, and that greed has forced the Vastaya to retreat to the fetid corners of the world."

"It is always the way, when the arrogance of man is complimented by overwhelming force." He continued. "You grasp and you claw and you demand more and more and more until eventually the land revolts against you, and then, in your overweening arrogance, you decry the Vastaya, or the local tribe, or some other group you need getting rid of, for not warning you sooner of the apocalypse you are drawing down onto your own fool heads." He said, getting more heated as he spoke.

"And then you kill them." He finished, a depth of sadness in his words, such that the girl had never heard, which is to say incredibly slight by mortal standards, but impossibly deep by Aatrox's own standards.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

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Aatrox opened his mouth to answer, then closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly to the side, laughing inside at the universe's sense of timing, as the soft desert-song of hunting foxes began to lilt across the sands.

"Among my people, we know that grief is not just shared by mortal men and women." He said, gesturing to the song on the wind with his off-hand. "When the desert fox finds her meal, you can be sure that some mouse family grieves just as strongly as you did, and for as good a cause. You see it, if you understand the world around you as we strive to."

"As to the nature of the Vastaya, that I could not tell you. The Vastaya of this land are... standoffish, and for good cause. Humanity has not been kind to them through the centuries, and all too well do they remember the old warning 'beware when mortals ask questions'.

He stretched out his form, settling down into a pose of meditation and relaxation once more, closing his eyes and listening to the sounds of a universe at war around him, quietly exulting in the brief moments it stole away from his all-encompassing madness.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

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"Nothing makes grief easier." Aatrox said, grave sincerity in each syllable. "The passing of knowledge is a burden that all must grapple with in their own ways. My tribe try to keep that knowledge alive, but it never lives again. We just see the cold fact of the matter, not enlivened by the one who lived through the events."

Aatrox stared down at the girl, reading her emotional responses from the inside, as the tiny awareness he had tied into her bloodstream did its work and fed him information on the girl. He'd needed to rely on it more than usual today, mostly because he was so far beyond what one might call rational human emotion that he hilariously misread what humans considered normal. Regret, pain, anguish and grief, came the whisper from inside the girl, which was good, as Aatrox had half thought she was about to start laughing, or possibly sleeping.

"Pain is good." Aatrox said simply, relying on memories of his own masters. "Pain teaches us we are still alive, despite what the Gods throw at us. It reminds us of how to continue to live, and not merely exist." It was the greatest curse that blood magicks had forced upon them, Aatrox reflected; they felt no pain while they ripped blood and bone and power from the still screaming flesh of mortals

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

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Aatrox watched her draw the blade, eyes glittering slightly as the strange crystal of the blade caught the light. "Crystal is a hard thing to forge." Aatrox said quietly. "And that crystal is not of mortal hands." He said, walking away before the girl could start asking any questions.

"Grief is a hard one to fight through." Aatrox said, "The loss of knowledge is a terrible thing. It's why my people do this." He said, shaking his head slightly to allow the beads to chime once more. "When a lorekeeper dies, each member of the tribe takes a lock of hair to share the burden that is knowledge." He said, shaking out a specific lock of hair, which, if one looked closer to it, there was a section of slightly lighter coloured dark hair woven into the overall braid, close to the base.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

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Aatrox waited, patient as the grave, as the girl dithered and prevaricated and threw confused words out into the world as though that would help the situation at hand. Even when he had been mortal, if he cast his mind that far back, he had been confused by the endless noise folk vomited forth when something didn't go according to their own plans. The Great Sai taught a man or woman the value of brevity, and the ability to change plans in the skin of a second.

His patient countenance no doubt grew slightly less patient, and more like a particularly ugly mask, as the girls blade flew into her hand, flickering past Aatrox with the merest whisper of wind denoting its passing.

Leg, back, spleen, arm, crush her eyes then her hands and then her throat, all these thoughts and more were thought, considered, allocated resources and then ruthlessly crushed by the great monsters ever-restless mind. Muscle memory only carried you so far, after all.

"That I could not tell you." Aatrox said, an odd roughness to his voice as he struggled to cover his brief window into the appalling madness which still grinned like a dead mans skull from the recesses of his own mind. "The Vastayan peoples are many and as varied as the birds of the sky, and the animals of the earth. What one does out of easy friendship or loyalty, another would decry as the blackest of monstrosities."

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

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"Nevertheless, the point stands." Aatrox said. "Armour is useful, and while the get-up of Shurima may not be right for you in your travails, armour still helps one survive longer, no matter where they are."

"Fast as you are," He continued, face darkening slightly, "You are not faster than an arrow when you don't expect it. Look over there." He said, relying on the microscophic twitch in the girls face as she processed the request, realised it for the oh-so-obvious 'LOOK OVER THERE' trick one outgrew in the cradle, and prepped for a blow to cover what he actually intended on doing, and flicked her on the nose.

"What if that had been an arrow, hmm?" He said, face grim as he proved his point. "You would be short a few pints of blood, and we'd be having a very different kind of lesson, one on field medicine and how to cut arrows out of the sky.'

🪡 - Ancient Egyptian get-up

//Since I know who sent this, tweaking this to Shuriman

‘I…well…it’s comfortable…oddly.’ She twisted her torso, trying to look down at the outfit in more detail. ‘There is too much metal for my taste…but it’s light enough. I can move freely for the most part. Probably would have ditched the neck piece though.’ She folded her arms, noticing the blue shard in the bracer.

‘Does this satisfy you, sir?’

@facemeandperish

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"Hmm?" Aatrox said idly, his great brain still clicking over the working within the crystal. He couldn't quite fathom the working itself, but it seemed to create a bridge between magic and the individual. It was a crutch, but an elegantly made one, one clearly designed for the workings and the ways of a people that had been beaten out of hearth and home more times than man could count.

"I said Vastayan." He said, finally now looking at the girl. "Where do you think I got the style I call 'Tiv'yr'asarran', and you, with your barbarian tongue, insist on calling 'The Vultures Strike'? I spent a few years amongst their tribes, learning how the Path of the Sword called to them, and the ways it had affected their culture, and in turn how their culture had affected the Path." He continued.

"Wonderful people, with a great and proud history." of getting kicked around by any bastard with an army and lands to settle was the sentence that very carefully did not exit Aatrox's mouth. He had a great deal of sympathy for the Vastayan peoples, but no great patience for subtlety or the vast track of the mighty river that was History.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

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Aatrox shook his head slightly at the girls ignorance. An entire land of Magi He thought to himself. Their blood would taste like the finest wine to a Hemomancer, if she wasn't hideously mistaken.

Coiling his hand around the crystal, Aatrox cast his mind forth, racing through every facet of the thing and finding... fuck all. Was the girl wrong? Surely not, he realised there WAS power here, but diffuse as smoke.

Curious now, he enveloped the crystal with his own powers, and finally ran into something physical; a door. Such concepts were worthless in the battle of minds that Aatrox was currently engaged in, but metaphor is the only language he truly had right now, so a door it would remain.

Aatrox decided, if it was a door, then treat it as such, and wrenched at the 'handle' of the thing. He wrenched it to his will, using all his magic. He was strong, he was mighty, he was incredibly skilled in magic, he... wasn't getting a single fucking thing right, was he?

Baffled, Aatrox regrouped for a moment, before deciding on another tack. It was a magical artifact, the girl had said, so perhaps interacting with it magically would work best, rather than with his flesh sorceries.

He tried everything his mind could come up with over millennia of learning magery; he tried beating the door down, he tried crushing it beneath his magical talent, he tried knocking on the door and a myriad other options before he stood before the 'door' completely and totally lost.

"Well, fuck." He said, a feeling of smugness emanating from the stupid fucking thing he found himself barred from. He blinked - and awoke in flesh once more, less than a heartbeat of time having passed by the reckoning of mortals.

"Vastayan." Was the only thing he said aloud. He recognised the power itself, it was a power of land and blood and life, all of which he had been barred from for longer than civilizations had shambled through the world, but the working itself was new.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

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"A connection to the world is a rare and precious thing. " Aatrox rumbled. "Rarer still to have it be inheritable by blood." He continued, idly sending a pulse of energy racing through her bloodstream, trying to find the link in her blood to what she was speaking around.

He noticed the girl gripping the crystal which dangled from her throat. She'd used it in the past against him, leeching power from the thing to accelerate her body and mind, and run really damned fast, but he'd never been certain if these were inherent abilities or something granted by some artifact or external power.

"May I?" He asked, stepping slightly closer and gesturing towards the crystal around her throat.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

[facemeandperish]

"Bronze is not as light a metal as its cousins." Aatrox explained. "They fought in the height of the summer, sometimes for hours at a time. If you think a mortal man can survive five hours of killing, while wearing the same kind of armour I see in my travels today, with their great stupid shoulder pieces, while under the eye of the Mother, then you have never fought in the heat before."

"Your speed is a great strength." Aatrox agreed, throwing a sudden, hummingbird-fast punch at the girls head and grinning as she blurred slightly to one side, voiding the blow entirely. "But even with speed, sometimes someone gets lucky, or worse, you decide to be stupid and ignore all the wisdom I try and teach you, and you decide to try and fight 4 people at once." He said with a mock glare.

🪡 - Ancient Egyptian get-up

//Since I know who sent this, tweaking this to Shuriman

‘I…well…it’s comfortable…oddly.’ She twisted her torso, trying to look down at the outfit in more detail. ‘There is too much metal for my taste…but it’s light enough. I can move freely for the most part. Probably would have ditched the neck piece though.’ She folded her arms, noticing the blue shard in the bracer.

‘Does this satisfy you, sir?’

@facemeandperish

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"What little knowledge I have comes from my People." Aatrox said, shaking his head slightly, just enough to let the music of the golden caps pinging into one another to play out.

"The music of the gods was never something I wished to learn." Aatrox said, summoning a tiny flame to shiver across his hands, making it seem like this tiny effort of magic was truly titanic in nature, veins bulging in his neck and his heartrate seeming to double.

"That," He said, "is the only magic I was ever able to come close to mastering. Useful for lighting fires on a cold night, but hardly the music of the world. The only instrument I truly know is this." he said, hand lightly drumming on the hilt of a nearby blade.

"I thank you for this gift of Knowledge." Aatrox said, reverting to an old, almost courtly tone. "May the Great One keep this knowledge in Her Heart." He said, remembering the sheer arrogance of the later Librarians of Shurima claiming to know all things, especially that pious fuck Nasus. 'Knowledge was to be shared' he'd mouth, as ever more knowledge was destroyed and declared 'Unshuriman', anathematized, and then lost forever to the sands of the Great Sai

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

[facemeandperish]

"And I look like some weakskin magi?" Aatrox asked with a smile, gesturing to his heavily muscled, and even more heavily scarred arms and body. "I know only what my People know." He said, lying through his teeth.

"It is possible." He admitted. "The magic of blood is a cumulative power; the more one studies, the more one naturally masters. It is much like training the body itself, muscle memory builds up, for lack of a better term. If one trained from the cradle, then it is possible the next generation would learn more than the first generation ever did, and so on."

"This is all conjecture, however." He hastily clarified. "It is certainly possible the old magics survived, but it's also just as possible that someone discovered the power in blood, not realising they were in fact rediscovering something that nearly ended the world. It did, after all, happen more than a thousand years ago." He said gesturing to the ruins nearby, little more than glass edged mounds of fallen stone and sand.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

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"Typically you'd wear even more armour atop this." Aatrox said casually, checking the fit of the thing. He'd found the thing in a tomb, remarkably well preserved in a sealed section off to one side of the main burial chamber. Perhaps the lack of air had helped preserve the thing?

"This might be used for an archer, since even someone as useless as an archer might eventually summon the courage to try and close with a foe, and so having armour somewhere on their frame might help them screw up their courage enough to fight.

He very deliberately kept quiet about the neck piece, though the words 'something like that might have helped the last time I succesfully cut your stupid throat' certainly tried their best to crawl out his throat.

🪡 - Ancient Egyptian get-up

//Since I know who sent this, tweaking this to Shuriman

‘I…well…it’s comfortable…oddly.’ She twisted her torso, trying to look down at the outfit in more detail. ‘There is too much metal for my taste…but it’s light enough. I can move freely for the most part. Probably would have ditched the neck piece though.’ She folded her arms, noticing the blue shard in the bracer.

‘Does this satisfy you, sir?’

@facemeandperish

[facemeandperish]

"From here is perhaps a misnomer." Aatrox said, running a hand through his braids, beginning the labourious process of tying the mass of hair back through to its accustomed place.

"Hemomancy is an interesting word for it." Aatrox mused. "There were stories of human servants given the lesser secrets of the abilities of the Ascended, most especially known was the Prince. Vlodymyr, or something, like that." Aatrox said, casting his mind back, remembering the snivelling brat at the arm of one of the other Darkin.

"None of those powers could have sustained mortal flesh for long, however, so it is likely that some cabal of fools outlasted their masters, and decided to continue their evil works, passing down the power from generation to generation, until finally they reached this Noxus of yours." Aatrox said, finally tying his hair back up.

"Fleshwork and bonework were difficult to master even for the Ascended, according to the stories." He said, remembering the difficulties he'd had in learning to close a wound that would have needed stitching. "Perhaps this explains the differences you speak of."

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

[facemeandperish]

"Death comes at a cost, for ones like them." Aatrox said grimly, unconciously flexing one of his unnaturally gained hands. He reached up into his hair, and undid the knot that tied the great mass of his hair in place, allowing all the stories of his people to scatter down around him.

He smiled slightly at the memories that came back to him in that moment, memories of a woman (his mother? a servant? Aatrox had long since lost the importance of the memory) braiding his hair and telling him the stories of the People.

"We fought one of them once, a long time ago." Aatrox said, pointing to one specific braid. "If you were of the People, or wished to settle, I'd teach you the language of story-braids, but for now you'll just have to listen." he said, settling into the role of storyteller.

"It was a great beast of a man form, that reshaped itself according to its own will, now a man, now a beast with whip-like tendrils of skin and bone dangling from both arms, allowing them to ensnare men and animals alike, to drag them screaming into the maw of the thing, for their flesh to be torn from their nightmarishly warped form to become a part of the great monster."

He ran his fingers through the braids, reading the story to himself unconciously as he remembered that day. He'd still been in control enough of himself to not want to harm his People, but his madness had been great enough that he thought he could forget, surrounded by his loved ones. It had taken him five hundred seconds to kill his sister Val'kaan, an eon to a warrior of his caliber, and she had managed to kill more than forty people before his balde had found what passed for her heart.

"They lost many people." He said shortly. "One of my ancestors among them, which is why this one is capped with a carved bead." He said, showing the bottom of the braid's golden cap, which did show a small carving of an eagle, one of the symbols of the Kindred in the Great Sai."

"What do you mean, girl?" he asked, attempting to remain outwardly calm, but leaning in slightly as he spoke. "Who among the monsters did you see?" He asked, praying he might know the brother or sister in question.

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish

[facemeandperish]

"All men, if they wield a sword for their living, will come across one great truth in this world; that blood has its own power." Aatrox said. "When one looks down the edge of a blade, fighting for something they believe in, they can feel all their fatigue and injuries vanish for a single pure moment. They can master themselves in a way that even masters like myself struggle to achieve over the course of a lifetime in but a moment, and perform great feats of prowess or strength."

"The creatures that were once the Ascended learnt that this strength was not caged solely for the use of the one who's heart pumped it around their body. They realised that they could, in fact, encourage the healing powers of others, by reaching their will into anothers form, and encourage the growth of those forms of life inimicable to sickness and disease."

"Some of them," he said heavily, remembering exactly who had discovered certain of those tricks, and knowing that his hands would never clean, "learnt that, if they cut a man down on the field of battle, they could use that same blood from the mans dying form to puppet his dead corpse, to raise a small host of true-dead corpses to fight for their oppressors. They learnt to reshape blood, and then bone, and finally flesh, creating abominations of gore that tormented the world for more than a century."

"The people of Shurima survived because, even in their madness, I don't think they truly wished for anything more than death, and they fought for so long, with such twisted weapons, that it only hastened that which they desired; a final ending"

Perched on a stump, it could be seen that the fighter was sharpening a blade that clearly wasnt her own. Aside from the sound of stone grinding on metal, there was a silence in the camp, one that she had become accustomed to over the months. Outside of training sessions and other forms of tutilege, they left each other to their own devices. Idle chatter wasn't exactly expected, nor entertained most of the time, but a question had been simmering in the back of her mind. One that could make an exception to this expectation.

Her strokes slowed before she laid the sharpening stone beside her, inspecting the blade's edge for any signs of wear, and once satisfied, she returned it to its sheathe, pausing before her eyes flitted to her tutor.

'Sir...do you have a moment?' Her words were quiet, unsure how to break the silence and grimmacing when she did so.

@facemeandperish