To Teach and Learn
13th of July 2006 A.D.
"Wait." You take off the heavy padding and tear off the helm. "What? It's not like I'm going to get into a real fight in this get up am I?"
Though your dad doesn't say anything his expression is telling.
In the salle you wear proper protections, that was a mantra you had heard since your first lesson all bouncy thirteen years old that you were.
"Made my own," you say as the black mail gleams beneath common cloth. With a smile you reach into your purse and flips your shield open with a click of subtle mechanism, the arc closing in a couple of seconds. And yet if the shield closed with the speed of insight than the sword that is Usum is drawn with the speed of thought.
Lost 1 Essence
Guard up and mind set on the task you advance... you breathe and it is Essence not air that passes through your chest. Amoracchius like silver lightning rises to the defense, but from the way your dad's eyes widen you guess it's doing something he's never felt before and so you twist the blade this way and that and so you turn and so you strike, so fast that brass blurs in the air. Low and high, left and right, you pass his guard again and again, but frustratingly never with a blow heavy enough that it would be telling if it were for real.
When the attempts at parry had flowed into riposte you do not know, but when the blessed sword clashes with your own you feel it, not as you had been afraid you would, as fearsome judgement barely held in check. Instead you feel its namesake, love. Weariness echoes though the touch, heavy as the weight of long years and through it all relief that this time it is not used in deadly earnest, but only to temper and to train. Well was it named and heavy the task laid on it. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, for all that the knights have given for faith and for the protection of mankind the spirits in the swords have given more, for their vigil does not end in the span of one mortal life.
Lost 1 Essence
"What...?" your dad must have noticed your expression.
You shake your head. "I'm good, I just felt something, an impression from the Sword, let's keep going..."
Dad is not convinced, he stops and peers at you concerned.
"You said that Amoracchius is not the salle and that is true, but its calling weighs on it every bit as much as it does on its bearers. The sword of Love is alive and it loves. It remembers every hand that went slack on its hilt and every life ended on its point." Insight beyond mortality whispers in the back of your mind. "I think that is why
Fidelacchius still rests and has not chosen a bearer, even sanctioned steel can only endure so much without rest."
"It just told you that..." Dad looks down at the sword his expression at once of sorrow and confusion.
"It was literally tapping against my soul like metaphysical Morse Code. think that is why I got impressions and no, it did not tell me the last bit, I guessed, but it feels like a
good guess if you know what I mean." You pause. "It's
happy to be in a duel that counts and yet one which is not paid for in blood."
"I never considered..." he shakes his head looking guilty
"Dad, it's a sword, of course you didn't consider it might be alive. Wired insights are not in your job description. If anything they are in mine," you conclude. "Come on let's go again."
Gained 2 Essence
Though he nods, granting the point you think he might still be distracted, the next exchange goes to you by a country mile, He'd be bleeding from his left arm and at best he would have a cut over his right eye that would make it hard to see, at worst he wouldn't have a right eye. Shaking off the
way too vivid image of the damage you could have caused you go again.
Lost 1 Essence
This time you are not going go against dad at all, you are going to try something tricky, something you probably would not have been brave enough to try if you had not felt the sword and known it does not want to hurt you. You ask with blade and arcane cunning a simple question.
What happens if you try to disarm a Knight of the Cross of his Sword?
You twist your way out of the clinch with more force than you should reasonably have... and you feel a pressure behind your temples, like the world itself rebelled against what you are trying to do.
I am not of this World, something in you rises to meet it... and Amoracchius flies from your father's fingers just as you had meant to.
"Was not expecting that to work, I
really wasn't expecting that to work," you say a little stunned as you realize your inner reserves are a little lower than they had been a moment ago.
Lost 1 Essence
To your relief when the surprise clears off dad's face he looks at you with pride, maybe a little worry still but no anger. "When I took up the sword Shiro told me that only the greatest of powers can separate a knight form his sword even for a moment."
He doesn't have to say the rest, you are already thinking it. Be careful how you use it.
Introspection can only last so long. "Wait I want to try something, you try to get to it and I'll try to stop you, like body block you or something. I want to see if that burns Essence as well."
It does not, but you also just plain
cannot do it. It feels like you are swimming against an riptide of fate and in a moment dad has the Sword again. You guess the lesson there is if you do manage to part a Knight form the physical Sword it does not part them from its power and any foe had best take their chance while they have it.
***
Mom on the other hand is just plain weirded out by the fact that you had some kind of emphatic conversation with the Sword of Love, like she is afraid you might start talking to the mixer or the hairdryer given half the chance. You do not tell her that you could talk to them, but it would involve binding demons of the Wicked City into them.
Much of the reminder of the weekday is filled with last minute make up essays and projects, but you do snatch up a bit of time to look at what the internet has to say about the supernatural. What do you look for?
[] Signs of the big players, fey, vampires etc...
-[] Write in stunt
[] Minor talents in Chicago
-[] Write in stunt
[] Write in
OOC: To explain what happened there at the end, most people cannot disarm a knight, like you make the maneuver and no matter how good you are the sword says nope in a perfect defense. Beings of a certain weight class get to roll off against the Knight's Faith. I was not expecting your one die from Essence 1 to win against Michael's thee from True Faith 3. You also rolled Perception+Occult to get that insight on the Swords being alive and even with soul on soul contact you needed 3 successes, that is not an easy thing to learn. 
