Chapter 31 – Friendly competition
The morning after, Bryn woke up thinking about the steaks made by Lysander. He tried to relive each bite as his eyes opened, reminiscent of the lingering taste.
I'm still not sure that dinner was real or in my dreams. How can meat be so delicious? Bryn thought. His stomach was still replete from the feast.
Rubbing his eyes he noticed that the sun was up already. As usual, he started his day by using appraisal on himself and then walking outside. As they were now doing training sessions daily, he would stretch and warm up together with everyone.
As he left his tent, he walked towards the stables. Arriving there in a few steps, he saw many new faces. That damn blondy, he is giving me too much work.
The current group was at least double the size from the day before. There were many people there for the first time, which gave Bryn a headache. His time was consumed by many of the new people, leaving him with little or nothing to spare for his training.
"Good morning! How are you all doing today?" Bryn asked.
All present answered, and Bryn asked the new people to present themselves so he could try and remember their names. While everyone was speaking, Amelia, Gabriel, Jonas, Kwame, Luca, Michelle and Zara arrived.
Before they started, Bryn presented himself as the instructor of the class everyone was about to take. As he said so, many of the people frowned looking at Gabriel for answers.
"Everyone, Bryn is telling you the truth. As many of you know, yesterday I participated in this same morning session and I can guarantee you can take things from it."
His words didn't inspire that much, since everyone looked back at the faun and the same thought was on their mind. Level 1.
Bryn's mind was still not awake enough for him to care about such trivial things, he went about things as he normally would.
With their addition, the class could start. Like the previous day, Stretching and Yoga were the very first part of their day. Since many people who started today were not as capable as Jonas, Gabriel and his family, Bryn spent some time helping the newcomers with some movements.
After one hour, the next part was usually martial arts combined with physical training. Today, Bryn asked Gabriel and Jonas to help think of training sequenced challenging enough for students from different levels. With the increase of the class, Bryn would focus on correcting the Taekwondo movements and stances of each student individually.
During the previous lesson, Bryn had fewer pointers for people. He was still unable to transform his stretching into yoga, so he was going in circles for now. But ever since learning taekwondo, his mind clear on which path to take. Still, to get people to his destination, he had to take a much more active role in supervising each person's training.
With so many students, by the time he taught and corrected the initial forms for everyone, more than an hour had passed.
The next part was Bryan's nightmare coming true. Having more than thirty people doing physical and mobility training, he was barely able to find good places for the people from yesterday to train.
Walking in circles and biting his fingernails, he kept thinking about the next part of the training session.
Looking at the pacing faun, Gabriel could almost see imaginary smoke coming out of his ears.
Coming closer and gently placing his hand on Bryn's shoulder, he said "Bryn, remember that we can help, you don't have to do everything yourself you know? What do you need?"
"Mr. Gabriel, how are thirty people going to train in climbing and acrobatics in an open environment such as this? Yesterday there were fewer people and I imagine it was already hard enough…"
Gabriel pondered for a few seconds. About to suggest something, Bryn's shirked posture straightened. As if the gears inside his head clicked, he looked at Gabriel with a good malevolent smile.
"Mr. Gabriel, you said you would help us with the training correct?"
"Yes… why is that?"
"Come here…" the faun pulled the man down and whispered in his ear.
As Bryn spoke, Gabriel's pupils would dilate and constrict with his plan. Nodding his head in agreement, Gabriel asked Jonas for help and ordered everyone to turn around for a second.
Both men focused as ripples of air and energy came out of their bodies. Bryn kept peeping at what they were doing and for the first time, he saw sweat coming out of Jonas's head and body.
In seconds the ground shook loudly. Different types of stone and earth came up from the floor. Trees got uprooted and fell to the sides, making loud bangs. With each increasing noise, those turned back either clinched, dropped to the floor scared, or looked back dropping their jaws at the scene in front of them.
Bryn had asked and imagined obstacles and platforms for people to train both skills. What Gabriel and Jonas delivered was similar to a mix of a bouldering and parkour amusement park. A "U" shaped wall about three to four meters in height. On the outer wall, there were different textures and angles to facilitate or complicate someone's climbing experience. On the inside, some parts of the monumental structure were stairs, others had big drops from the top or even mid-sized ones.
"Instructor, is that enough for everyone to train?" Jonas asked as he gasped for air.
Bryn could barely speak from the shock going through his body and soul.
"That is perfect!" he exclaimed.
"Everyone, like yesterday we start mobility training with a question. Please raise your hand, those who already have the climbing still… now those who have acrobatics skill…"
Bryn then separated the class into groups, he gave each group a task, allowing him to organize a leader of each group and their daily task. Some people were assigned to unlock climbing, others to increase their climbing skills. The same happened for acrobatics.
Few were the people Bryn asked to combine both during their training. The division was based on the level of each skill. Since his skills combined around level five, his goal was to in time, achieve the same with everyone.
The main difference for Bryn was that today he decided to use the mobility training as an excuse to get closer to Luca and Michelle. Yesterday he lost himself in the amazing meals and got so stuffed that his mind shut down.
With the new training structure, he called for both of them and provided the group with a task. Today they would have to test out all routes on the outer and inner walls to test how hard the challenges were.
In the beginning, Luca was cold and distant. He remembered Jonas in some ways more than others. He was focused on being the best at what they were doing but did not necessarily love the process. Michelle on the other hand, was much more like their father. She took some time to focus on their training, but after that, it was hard to calm the little girl down. As in the acrobatics training, she had demonstrated physical talent. What shocked Bryn the most was that her skill levels were growing at alarming rates compared to others.
When they got to the latter parts of the outer wall it was clear that Gabriel and Jonas had tried to create a progression from simple to complex and physically hard to complete portions.
Luca started to have trouble with some of his grip strength, something that non-climbers would feel almost every time they tried holding their body weight on their fingers and forearm muscles. Michelle and Bryn were so lightweight that the same thing was still not happening to them.
When they finished different routes on every portion of the wall Bryn had an idea of the difficulty level of each segment. Some changes could be made, but the overall experience was good enough for everyone to train.
Next came the inner portion, designed to be used for those training in parkour or acrobatics. There were so many obstacles that they would have to focus their session on a few each day. Today Bryn decided to go for the ones with the small-size drops, so he would not risk any joint injury. Yes, comprehending the works of the inner portion was relevant, but going hunting for the first time with both Luca and Michelle was much more important.
Today Bryn's goal was to get close to both of them as well as assess their running away capabilities. He had only gone hunting with Daniel who was much stronger than the three of them in his mind. Should trouble arise, would they be able to fend it off or run away?
"Bryn, you might be the instructor for today, but it is getting boring. Climbing at least has the challenge of the wall itself. Jumping around obstacles is too simple…" Luca complained.
"Brother is right Bryn, how about a game?!" Michelle added.
"But we are training, what game do you propose?" Bryn was annoyed that too many new things were under his control and making friends with people much younger than him was not easy at all.
"I vote to "Follow the Master"!" Michelle said. Raising her hand as high as she could, even her feet went off the ground for an instant.
Luca used the opportunity to assert his dominance over the faun who has caught everyone's eyes. "I second that." He said, smirking at Bryn.
"Could you explain the rules? I would love to play it as well." Bryn answered as his head tilted back slightly and his gaze ran down his nose. One side of his mouth curled upward and. How low have you come? From an executive to playing "follow the master with two kids."
"Perfect! I start! The rules are simple, I'll try and do a sequence of movements you two can't repeat. If all of you can repeat it, we change the master, if you can't, you are out of the round! We can play a best of 3, what do you say?"
"It is almost lunch time, one match should be enough." said Bryn.
Luca nodded in agreement and complemented, "Playing only one round, I suggest each be master once… The person that falls behind the least is the winner."
Neither Bryn or Michelle were against his suggestion.
Using things she had learned in the previous day, Michelle looked around to create her first route. With a few drops from the top of the structure and some obstacles on the floor, she decided to go for a descent with flips combined with each jump.
Her first sequence was composed of 4 jumps in total, a regular one, followed by a side flip from one platform to the one below. The next one was a front flip to a side platform and the last was a jump with a roll on the landing.
"Luca, you can go first…" Bryn said, lowering his head as he waved his hand toward the beginning of the route. The tone of mockery in his voice was perceptible even to Michelle down there waiting for them. Increasing the tension between the two.
Luca had no trouble with the chosen movements. Doing them flawlessly as did Bryn.
"Time for a new master, how about you take the lead Bryn…" Luca suggested.
Bryn started to ponder which sequence might take the bossy attitude from Luca, and he decided for a precision sequence. There was a part of the structure with Pillars, each with a difference in height, going up and down.
Bryn walked all the way there as he figured the moves to make. Both Luca and Michelle followed.
The pillars were big enough only for two adult feet. As Bryn decided to start, he looked a few times at the route. It was higher looking down than from the ground.
He started with a precision jump to position lower than the top of the structure. As he landed, his body used all he had to control the landing. The intrinsic force from a jump that high was hard to muster, but his bighorn legs were able to do the trick as his hooves sunk into the earth portion atop the pillar. That allowed him to be bolder with the next few movements since a fall from that height would not incapacitate him anymore. He followed the first move with a jump grabbing the top of a further pillar with his hands and hooves hitting its side. To finish it all off, he used his feet to propel backwards and to the side as his body twisted in the air performing a backflip and landing on top of the lowest pillar of all.
As he landed, his hands trembled as sweat dripped from them and his hair. He couldn't show it to his adversaries, but he had never done those moves from that height before.
Michelle's eyelids opened wide as her neck tilted forward. "Acrobatics is cool…" she thought out loud.
"Michelle, are you paying attention?? Do you wanna go next or would you like me to go?" Her brother asked.