It seemed like her father got his wish and now the fighting pits were opened for all races to fight through their issues. Rory, bottled up nervous energy and a competitive streak, was both thrilled and distrustful at the prospect. Watching the fights had been a common pastime of hers, and her interest seemed to have only heightened since humans and Upyr had joined the mix, but for once in her life, she decided to exercise some foresight and mimic different fighting style by herself before attempting to spar with someone else.
It wasn’t really a secret that the Upyr’s weapons were a point of fascination to her – at least not for those who actually knew her – so her first choice was naturally to pick up a sword. A wooden one, at least at first, until she could gauge her strength. There was no point in chipping a steel blade by hacking away with it at a tree, and besides, she wasn’t half bad at carving those things out of logs, and those were much easier to replace than the real thing.
Swinging her training sword experimentally to accustom herself with the feel of it in her hand, Rory circled a lonesome tree trunk, trying to keep as close to the steps she’d seen Upyr accomplish. She rolled the blade, flicking her wrist between the edge and the flat of the blade, before whacking at the tree. The flimsy material smashed, turning to kindling in her hand. She tossed the leftovers away and went to pick up another one of the swords she’d carved, hefting it tentatively in her hand. Testing the limits of their resistance sounded like as good a place to start as any, so she didn’t actually mind the idea of breaking some of them to figure it out.
This time, she threw the blunted sword at the trunk, tip first, a smirk flickering across her features for a moment as the thing embedded in the trunk. She was just about to hurl a second sword, when a noise made her spin around, her hold on the weapon tightening. “What do you want?”










