Copyright J.B. Norman
“Armbar!” Amara cries, leaping at Nolan and locking him into the hold.
As a — well, not proud — graduate of the Matthias Cursor Academy of Grappleology, but certainly a graduate of the Matthias Cursor Academy of Grappleology, Amara has decided to share some of what she learned with the rest of the Lyte Brigade to improve their own combat readiness. In the words of Matthias Cursor himself, their Grappleologitude.
“So, like, if you cranked his arm a bit more, you’d break something, right?” Matilda asks, eagerly taking notes.
“That is correct,” Amara notes.
“Could you give us a demonstration?”
Nolan’s eyes go wide.
“Matilda!”
“Best not,” Amara decides after of contemplation. “I don’t really want to hurt him.”
Matilda shrugs and rolls her eyes.
“Thanks, Amara,” Nolan says. “That means a lot. But could you please let go now?”
“Now,” Amara continues, “I do still have serious misgivings about Mr. Cursor’s credentials. Not least of all because Grappleology is most definitely not a word. I doubt I’d include Certificate of Grappleology on my resume, but even so, his techniques are undeniably effective.”
“Tell me about it,” Nolan groans, massaging his now freely unbarred arm.
“If you don’t want anyone to know that you went to this school, why are you wearing a tunic with his emblem on it?” Matilda asks.
“Well,” Amara concedes. “I can’t exactly exercise like this in one of my dresses. And the colour does bring out my eyes.”
“If you’d like,” Falcata offers, “I could supplement your techniques with several forms of Amazon unarmed combat.”
“Let’s do that!” Matilda says eagerly. “We can all practice on Nolan some more!”
“Eep,” Nolan squeals.
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Amara answers.
“Yay,” Nolan says.
“While Mr. Cursor did say it’s better to practice on live victims, erm… partners, we have plenty of perfectly serviceable training dummies. Excellent craftsmanship by the way, Sir Tancred.”
“What can I say, Miss Amara,” the young knight replies, blushing bashfully. “I do enjoy sewing.”
“I’m just impressed you gave them all different faces,” Pela notes.
“We don’t think we want to risk damaging our Captain, so I can continue my demonstration with the dummies.”
“I don’t see the difference,” Matilda notes.
“Matilda!” Nolan cries.
“Wait, I don’t get—” Pela begins. “Oooh, she’s saying Nolan is a dummy!”
“Yeah, thanks, Pela,” Nolan mutters. “Thanks for explaining to all of us. Loudly.”
Pela throws her hands up indignantly. “What did I do?”
“Well, I’ve shown you arm drags, and armbars, and armlocks,” Amara says, counting off on her fingers. “Why don’t we move to a different limb?”
Nolan silently slinks away and grabs one of the dummies.
“He volunteers this time,” Nolan says desperately, handing the dummy to Amara.
“For all this foibles, Mr. Cursor was nothing if not thorough. He has quite the corpus of throws, holds, strikes and ways to strike someone after you’ve grabbed and thrown them. And, of course,” Amara continues. “We did learn how to snap a man’s neck—”
Considering the implications of this, Nolan says, “Oh.”
“—with your thighs.”
Considering the implications of this, Nolan says, “Oh.”
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