Her training session had run very smoothly. She was improving and learning many new skills. She was by no means a master in them yet, given the number of times she managed to fail when repeating the same thing, but she was heading in the right direction.
Althea had taken her through a good deal of techniques and had her attacking all across the notched pole, which forced her to move in ways she had not done so before. These included using her non-dominant hand to lead strikes and improving her aim.
She had also been taught how to perform quick strikes. While lacking in power, the speed would be enough to throw an attacker into a defensive position for a while. It involved shifting between using both ends of the staff to hit your target. Simple in principle, but in reality, it involved a lot of work. As before, she needed to improve her use of her non-dominant hand. It also required a good deal of accuracy, as well as shifting the angles that she hit with for both ends. All of this and more ensured that whomever she was attacking couldn't easily spot a way to cut her off and go on the offensive.
Other techniques included overhead strikes, sweeps, lunges and a few others, all adding to the arsenal of her attacks, while improving her understanding of when they should be used, along with her speed and strength.
So far Octavia had thoroughly enjoyed the session. She was a little haggard and there was still some time left before dinner, but it had been good.
"Now, you have done very well so far. With more practice and repetition, you should have all your techniques down easily and it will just be muscle memory after a while."
That, Octavia hoped would be true. If she could practically walk up to a bandit and without even thinking, take them down, she would survive for a good long while in this world.
"The next thing for you to learn is how to apply them to your weapon. I gave you the staff as it's similar in length to your weapon, it's easy to use and to show you how the techniques work. But, your pole axe, as you know, has quite the weight on one end. This makes it unbalanced and difficult to manoeuvre. That is why you now need to go through that whole routine with this." Althea said as she handed Octavia a new weapon. This was wooden and as long as the staff, but on one end was a metal orb. It was not massive, but as Octavia took the weapon, she could feel the weight imbalance.
"Why didn't we just do all that with this weapon first? Why bother with the staff?" Octavia replied and little indignant. It felt to her like the who training session had been a waste if just the added weight of her weapon meant all the techniques wouldn't match up well.
"This is how I train my students and it was not a waste of time. It is like learning to walk before you can run. It also means you can pick up any normal staff and defend yourself, should you not have access to your weapon. There is also the possibility that when fighting, the head of your pole axe is broken, leaving you with something akin to the staff. If you had learnt how to fight with the unbalanced weapon first, fighting with the balanced staff would be harder. You could probably still do it, but you would have many openings any of which could lead to your death."
Octavia had a hard time picturing this all, but so far Althea's training had been top-notch with all the skills and techniques. There was no reason to think she was lying now. She would have to see how different it was fighting with this new weapon to compared to the staff.
…
'Yeah, Althea was right.'
It didn't take long before Octavia understood fully what Althea had said.
It was only a small amount of weighty metal on the end of the staff and she felt like she was drunk as she tried to aim for the right locations. She had only managed to hit a few of the spots where Althea had placed her hand, the rest had been way off.
If she had learnt with this weapon first, she was sure that picking up a staff and fighting with it would be challenging having been accustomed to the weight on one end.
"I know this is frustrating, but this is what happens to everyone who learns how to use a halberd. You are not the only one who faces this problem. With time, you will be able to better judge how the weight will affect your aim, and you will be able to perform all the techniques you learnt with the staff with ease."
It didn't feel like it to Octavia, but only time would tell.
She continued to practice the routine, again and again, trying out all of the different skills and techniques Althea had taught her and she only started to make progress. She had quite a way to go in order to just get a passing mark, let alone perfect the moves. She also had to see about perfecting them with the staff as well, which should help her figure out how to do so for the unevenly weighted weapon.
As far as she could see it was only accuracy and speed that was the problem. As you would expect having a heavy metal ball on one end did wonders for her power, causing her to dent the wooden pole in many locations. The only problem was that they were in the wrong locations, and the weight bobbing all over the place caused swings to take longer.
The weight threw her off balance very easily. As she swung down following what she did with the staff, the weight caused her swing to go wide or shift from where she aimed. This was also the case when using the techniques she had learnt. When shifting to attack with her non-dominant hand, bringing the weighted side down, it shifted the other side more than she had expected, causing her to hit higher than she wanted. It would take some getting used to in order to fight with this weapon. The only saving grace was that when she compared it to the poleaxe, they were quite close in weight. So, if she could figure out this training tool, it should be easy enough to apply to her poleaxe.
She continued to train, but it wasn't too long before the bell chimed signalling that it was dinner time and the end of their lesson. Octavia drenched in sweat handed the weighted staff over to Althea.
"Thank you for the lesson. I've learnt a lot and I will definitely keep practising to make it work for my Poleaxe."
"Good. It has been fun teaching you and I can see you becoming quite the deadly warrior with your poleaxe one day. You are quite a quick learner." Althea said as she placed the weighted staff onto the nearby weapons rack. She then paused for a moment and picked up the staff, before handing it to Octavia.
"Here, take this. You have your poleaxe to train with, but you do not have a weapon with an even weight. Use this to help with your training going forward when you are outside the town. We have plenty lying around."
"Thank you."
"Now, be sure to come back tomorrow for another lesson, this time on actual combat with a foe. You have the techniques down well for the staff and now you need to apply them to a target. A moving target that fights back. Should be fun."
"Yeah…sounds like it. Again, thank you for the lesson."
With that, the training was over and she headed back to her room to store her weapons.
She also needed a bath, but with the smell of food in the air, she only had time to quickly wipe the sweat off her body before heading to the dining hall.
…
As before, the lord and his family were present, along with Sylvia who was chatting with everyone.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, she sat down in her usual seat and tucked into the meal.
Todays of which looked to be something akin to steak. The large piece of meat was however tinted slightly green giving it an almost poisoned look, which did not look too appetising. To its side was some greenery along with what looked to be some form of potatoes. She would have called them potatoes outright given that the texture was the same, but them being thin and curving into a spiral meant the name didn't feel right.
She decided to ask Sylvia what the meat was and was told it belonged to a monster that is very regularly hunted, called a Golash. As far as the description of them went it reminded her of how Orcs from fantasy novels were described. From being large and formidable, to tusks in their mouth and the green skin, it was a very similar comparison. To think she would be able to eat a creature she had practically read about in fiction was just very odd to her.
…
The meal tasted lovely, especially the, what she was calling Orc meat, as Golash just didn't sound right to her.
The meal concluded with a short discussion on what everyone had done in the day. Octavia spoke of her training with Althea and the dance practice with Sylvia. Lord Desmon and the rest of the family were very eager to see the fruits of their labour, wishing them luck with the rest of the dance training.
The day was coming to a close and everyone headed their separate ways. Octavia having spent most of the day doing some form of physical activity very quickly headed back to her room. She called the maids to fill the tub and took a nice relaxing bath.
Sighing in bliss, she relaxed in the water for a good long while. Once done, she dried herself off and headed to bed, Sylvia joining her soon after. With a short goodnight, both drifted off to sleep, getting some much-needed rest so they were prepared to train on the last day before the ball.