THE VROL TRILOGY (22 page)

"Now
that
is a lycan warrior!"

Max avoided her attack by sidestepping
her and performing a tuck-roll off to his left, regaining his
footing with his katana set in defensive position. Again the young
woman attacked, yelling out as she swung her massive sword at him,
only to see Max sidestep yet again, and then comically slap her on
the buttocks with the flat of his blade. This enraged Jennie, so,
spinning around she started to swing her blade in a figure-eight
pattern, approaching her opponent at high speed. Once within range,
she tried in vain to make contact with his armor, only to have her
every swing parried by the surprisingly skillful commander. When
she had finished her final swing, Max jumped up and over her,
performing a front flip, and had tapped her armor in three target
locations before he set his feet on the ground behind the
girl.

Krynos and Draagh watched with intense
interest, with Krynos leaning over to his old friend, while saying,
"He is quite nimble this one, but I do not think that his fighting
style would enable him to so easily defeat any of Vladros'
soldiers."

Donus, the lycan commander who had
initially escorted the trio into the castle just days before, was
seated at Krynos' other side, and said calmly, "My lord, if you
would, please look at the students' targets. While true that the
female used much more power than the male, note that the majority
of her attacks would not have resulted in fatalities. Rather, her
enemies would have been left still able to fight. The enemy does
possess substantial regenerative capabilities, but the male's
attack were precise, and each one, though not as impressive
looking, would be considered lethal if this were a real
battle."

Krynos looked at the targets and saw
that Donus was indeed correct. Turning to Draagh, Krynos saw his
old friend wiggle his eyebrows and say, "Precision. It is a family
trait." With that, a grinning Draagh loaded his beloved pipe and
puffed away, as the other two men waved their hands around,
attempting to dissipate the pungent, second-hand smoke.

Max and Jennie continued battling, with
Jennie scoring two more points with blatantly powerful attacks on
non-lethal areas, but Max kept racking up the tally with perfect
hits. Then, without warning, Jennie managed to land a thundering
blow, crossing into Max's chest plate.

This unfortunately caused Max to panic.
His eyes grew wide and his heart rate soared. He rolled backwards
three times, but when he had finished his final roll and stood up,
his canine teeth had elongated and his fingernails had grown to
claws - claws that protruded out of the tips of his leather gloves.
His face was partially covered with what appeared to be fur; he had
obviously morphed into something different. Max snarled and leaped
through the air so quickly that no one could trace his movement,
tackling Jennie onto her back and landing with his knees on her
arms, which were splayed open wide, as if she were nailed to a
cross on the ground. With a violent scream, he lifted his sword,
the blade pointed straight downward, and was about to impale the
poor girl.

"Max! No! Please! - Max!" she
cried.

Maybe it was that he had regained his
senses, or it was because Jennie finally called him by his first
name, but Max stopped where he was, breathing heavily, rage being
replaced with sudden remorse. He dropped his katana and fell
backwards, terrified by what he had become. Then, in an instant he
surged forward and scooped her up into his arms, holding her
tightly and whispering, "Oh my God, Jennie. I'm so sorry. Please,
I'm so sorry."

She remained still for a moment, scared
out of her wits and hyperventilating. She didn't understand how she
could have underestimated him so much, but she had, and it almost
resulted in her untimely death. The two calmed themselves, and with
the battle over she pushed him away, abruptly standing
up.

Looking down at Max, who was still on
his knees, she said, "Good fight, Gunnarsson," and walked away. Her
hands were still shaking as she approached the balcony where
Krynos, Draagh and Donus were seated.

Jennie stood before the lycan leader
and his guests, and then bowed. Falling to one knee, she said, "My
Lord, I have been defeated," while keeping her gaze at the ground
below, and getting into the Old-Earth-feeling of her new
world.

Krynos stood up and started clapping,
which prompted everyone else in the arena to do the same. Max
walked up with some hesitation, and stood next to Jennie, but at a
distance of three meters, still smarting from his near-fatal loss
of self-control.

Krynos extended his right arm out to
the arena, with his hand opened, palm facing upwards, and silencing
all he boomed, "Brothers and sisters! A fine battle we have
witnessed here today! I must say that young Jennie is a strong and
skilled warrior, and she has done her gender proud without a doubt.
That being said, Jennie, I will need you to continue your battle
training, for you were not victorious today in the way of the
sword. However, Max! You succeeded in defeating your colleague, but
unfortunately lost control of your wits. This means that you must
go to yet another phase of training - one where you will learn to
access skills long-ago hidden from the people of your world. So, we
have two champions! Max is victorious in sword-battle, while Jennie
wins the battle of self-control, of which we lycans must always
remain vigilant."

Jennie looked up, bearing a face full
of confusion and said, "My Lord, wasn't this purely a test of
fighting skills? I thought there would be a winner and a
loser."

Krynos looked down at the beautiful,
but muddy young lycan female, and grew an immensely happy
grin.

"No, my dear young lady. What good is
it to fight when one has the mind of a brutish beast? There is no
victory in that, neither moral nor logical. Why, if we lycans were
to fight like animals we would be slaughtered by weaker, but more
intelligent foes. One needs not only skill, but also reason in
order to procure victory."

Jennie glanced over at Max through the
corner of her eye, expecting to see him glowering at not having
completely won, but instead, and to her surprise, she saw a gentle
smile on a face showing true admiration.

Off to the side of the demonstration, out of
her peripheral vision, Jennie noticed a small, raggedy girl with
unkempt, shoulder length hair, waving a small stick around as if
she were practicing magic. To the woman's surprise, it lit on fire,
startling the girl, and causing her to drop it and run off. Jennie
thought it was odd, and whispered to Max, "Hey, Gunnarsson, did you
see that?"

"What?"

"Hmm, nothing. Never mind."

After the mock battle Jennie showed Max
more respect, and although they were to train apart, they got
together for their evening meal and sat up that night telling each
other stories about growing up on Azul, and as they talked they
found they had much more in common than they had ever imagined
before. She was still reticent about calling him anything except
Gunnarsson, but as the evening passed she found herself a bit more
comfortable around the odd, yet kind scientific
commander.

Chapter 14 - My HUD

Max had completely lost control of his
humanity when fighting in the event with Jennie, and it took a good
day for him to stop feeling like he was a potential ax murderer. As
Jennie had to continue with her sword training, she was placed with
Ohiro, the man who had trained Max. She also switched to the katana
of which Max was so fond, and found it to be a superior weapon,
especially when combined with athletic maneuvers. In fact, after
witnessing the mock battle, nearly half the warriors in the castle
sought to train with katanas, so impressive was the
sword-type.

No longer required to practice only
with a sword, Max reported to a dungeon for his next phase of lycan
training. He found it odd, as he believed lycan skills training
would happen out in the open. The funny thing was that he had no
idea what was in store, nor what these lycan skills
were.

Max's trainer was a woman named Alea.
She was, of course, also lycan. Appearing roughly five years older
than him, she had a subdued beauty that, although not as striking
as Jennie's, was still formidable. The two greeted briefly, and the
woman was quite professional in her approach to the training. She
started off by detailing the myriad of lycan abilities, some of
which Max did not quite envision at first.

Of course, a lycan had
enhanced strength, and three transformational modes, if one counted
their normal, everyday state, which was called
day form
. Of the other two modes,
Max had already experienced one,
battle
form
(alternatively called phase
2)
, and it was critical that he learn to
master it so he would be able to maintain self-control while
exercising his doubled strength. The other mode was that of
death form
, or werewolf
(also called phase 3). He would transform into a raging beast,
running on all fours and attacking anything and anyone in his
vicinity. This would only happen for a few hours every lunar cycle,
during the full moon - the reason for this would be explained to
him at a later time by Draagh, who apparently knew a lot more about
that world than he was letting on. Lycans also had incredibly
sensitive noses and razor-sharp vision, even in darkness, which Max
already knew. One thing he didn't know was they were also able to
change the light spectrum they would see at night, going to a mode
similar to infrared.

Max was strapped down, shirtless, into
a chair, and Alea told him to look at a placard with writing on the
wall facing him. He was required to read this while being goaded
into an agitated state, which would cause his transformation into
his battle form.

What he didn't realize, until it
happened, was that she was going to beat him quite severely as he
sat bound to his chair. When he started to read the script - the
Oath of Office for lycan commanders - she punched him in the face.
Hard. Max was shocked at first, but Alea, showing no emotion,
ordered him to continue reading. As he did so she punched him again
in the face, and followed up by taking a cat-o-nine tails whip and
striking him across his bare shoulder. This caused him to fly into
a state of rage, the sudden onset of this resulting in his canines
growing longer, his nails converting to claws on both his hands and
feet, and for hair to grow on his body in places where it did not
previously exist. His limbs also elongated slightly, giving him
more run and reach range, and of course his metabolism shot through
the roof.

It took him roughly two hours of being
beaten by the lovely lycan female until he was able to read the
commander's oath and maintain his the battle form state, all while
keeping his logic and reason.

The one thing he did not expect was
what he saw in the upper-left corner of his field of vision. It
appeared to be an organic readout with four horizontal lines. The
line at the top was blood-red, the second one vein-blue, the third
one down was a brilliant green, and the bottom one yellow in color.
This apparition flashed in and out of his field of vision, but the
longer he could control his state, the more stable this readout
became.

After explaining what he
had in his peripheral vision, Alea detailed to him that these were
his vital readouts. The top three were health, strength, and
stamina, respectively, but she had no knowledge of any yellow line,
and assumed it had something to do with his genetic abilities as a
mage. It was critical that he monitored these three lines during
battle, because if even one tanked he could pass out. When a lycan
went into battle form, his or her metabolism jumped through the
roof, and this also meant that his system would consume resources
at a much higher rate. If he were to be hit too much, his red
health line would decrease, and likewise, if he were to expend too
much energy too quickly then his blue stamina line would shrink.
His green strength line was affected by a combination of decreases
in stamina and health, so if he were to lose any of the lines he
would, for all intents and purposes, be
powerless.



Jennie had no difficulty at all
mastering her battle state. In fact, she was one of the quickest
studies ever in the recorded history of the Rhönen Dominion. While
it was true that female lycans tended to be more adept at
self-control, Jennie set a new standard upon which to complete this
training, doing so in conjunction with her sword and battle
efforts, which went along smoothly.

By day three of her training she had
mastered the art of the katana, and was working on ancient martial
arts, while Max was just mastering being able to enter into his
battle state at will (and also without being savagely beaten by
Alea). He was also able see his readout (which he called his HUD,
after the Head's Up Display in his helmet he left back on the Machu
Picchu), and to simultaneously read ancient manuscripts and have
calm discussions with his teacher. As his training was so intense,
he burned through tens of thousands of calories, so he was required
to eat eleven meals during each training session. Alea had him skip
meals on purpose, and on more than one occasion forced him to drop
into a light coma, from which she awakened him with a quick
nourishment drink, administered by shoving a tube through his mouth
and down into his stomach. After one of these occurrences, he awoke
to find himself with his head on her lap, with the woman calmly
stroking his dark hair.