Terracana

Terracana
Chapter 16: Training Part 1

Day 1

Luna and I both wake up and get ready for my training session, Luna walks out of her closet wearing her armour from the Gala.

We head down for breakfast where Celestia is talking to Blueblood in the Dining Hall.

"Aunty, the Nobles are demanding an immediate response to the gryphons attack," he tells Celestia.

"That is why we are having a war meeting with the Captains today," she replies.

Blueblood looks over to us. "Good morning, aunty Luna," he says to Luna with a respectful tone, then glares at me. "Sir Knight," he practically spat out but still sounded respectful.

I just ignored him and look at Celestia. "Good morning, Celestia," I greet her.

Celestia looks confused as to why Luna has her armour with her. "Yes, good morning. Is there a reason why you're in your armour, Luna?" she asks.

"Yes, we will be training Adrian ourself from now on," Luna replies.

POV:Celestia

'You're what!?' I ask her telepathically with shock.

'We shall be training Adrian ourself to make him stronger,' she tells me again, sitting next to me and Adrian next to her.

'What suddenly brought this on?' I ask.

'He shows great potential, but his form and technique could use some more work,' she replies.

I sigh. 'That is true, while he did admirably against the gryphons, he was nearly killed due to his inattentiveness. Very well, just go easy on him at first,' I tell her with a chuckle.

I notice Blueblood squinting at Adrian while Adrian is just adjusting his armour.

POV: Adrian Stormsword

After adjusting the straps some more so my armour is more comfortable, breakfast arrives and I gather an assortment of foods.

"So what kind of training will I be going through?" I ask Luna.

Blueblood grunts in disgust. "You are a Knight now, you'll most likely be put through standard guard training, then through the higher level training programs," he says.

Luna ignores him and answers me. "We shall first improve thy perception, thou failed to notice the gryphon thou knocked down recovered. We shall teach thee to always observe thy surroundings," she tells me.

Blueblood gasps. "You're going to train him yourself!?" he shouts.

"Is this a problem?" Luna asks him calmly.

"Of course! You are a princess, what of your duties to the nation?"

"I shall see to the nation, my sister shall help Sir Adrian hone his skills," Celestia tells him.

"...Very well then," he replies, though I can tell he isn't happy with it.

After we finish breakfast, Luna and I head to the Training Grounds where she informs Shining Armour that she'll take over my training for now. He nodded and went back to training the other guards, she then throws me a wooden training sword as she also picks one up.

"Firstly, we shall test thy hearing, we shall use an invisibility spell and thou will try to locate us by our hoofsteps," she tells me.

"Sounds easy enough," I reply.

Her horn glows and she fades away, I close my eyes and listen intently. It's hard to locate her with the noise of the other guards training.

I hear a slight shuffle to my right and focus there, I then hear another to my left, wait... how did she get over there? I then hear a step in front of me and I lunge forward. I hit nothing but air and receive a whack to the back of my head. "Ow!" I groan from the light tap and rub my head.

"Focus, Adrian... again!" Luna says and I listen. Two steps to my right, three behind, two to the left... hold on, she's behind me again. I turn around and swing horizontally Clunk, Luna reappears holding her sword vertically where she blocked my swing.

"Much better, now we shall use our wings, listen for both our hoofsteps and our wing beats," she tells me and vanishes again.

I listen out for her, two steps left, one ahead, three right, wings flapping behind me, flapping above and steps to the left. I swing left and miss, I get another bash to my noggin. "Oooooh..." I hiss as I rub my head again.

"Thou were very close, let us try again," she says.

We practised for hours, I've gotten a tiny bit better but not by much, but it's a start. We take a short break where maids bring us refreshments. Once rested, we get ready for the next exercise.

"Now we shall see how thou can use magic to support thy attacks," she says.

She quickly teleports behind me and clonks me on the head. "Bugger!" I yell and some of the guards laugh, including Shining.

"We have seen thee teleport during thy fight with the manticore, we shall now have a little contest, neither of us can leave the circle, we both can only move via teleportation and the first to get three strikes wins," she says.

"Whoa whoa whoa, I can barely teleport without throwing up my lunch as it is, shouldn't I get used to it first?" I ask her.

She sighs in irritation. "Very well, thou has one hour to practise, then thou shall rest and then we continue," she replies.

So over the next hour I practise teleporting and I was very close to losing it after the third teleport, but after forty teleports, taking five minute breaks in between, I didn't feel as nauseous. Though it wasn't completely gone.

After resting up, I join Luna back in the circle. "Good, now thou has the first move," she says.

I quickly channel the three elements for the spell and teleport in front of her, she looks at me with wide eyes, I guess she expected me to go behind her and I swing at her. She quickly teleports herself away and I get clonked again.

"Thou need to shorten the time it takes thee to channel thy elements," she tells me, easier said then done.

She waits for me again and I cast the spell, I teleport to her left and swing, she teleports to my right and I just teleport in time to evade her attack, I appear right in front of her in a crouched position and bash her in the shin.

Her armour absorbs the blow and she yelps in surprise, I stand up and grin at her. "Yes yes, thou got us, now get ready," she says.

Two hours pass and I'm exhausted, Luna stepped up her game and I didn't get another hit in, I healed myself after receiving many, many bruises.

We head in to get lunch and Luna tells me what I need to do to improve myself. Once lunch is finished, we head back out.

We're standing back outside but this time at the target range. "We want thee to practise thy aim with thy earth element projectile spell, since normal magic shall not work on the gryphons, thou shalt improve thy physical based magic," she tells me.

I channel three earth elements and pull a rock out of the ground and channel mana through my stave, I fire the rock at the target and hit the forth ring... and rip a third of the targets top left corner off.

"Thy aim needs work, but at least thou hast power behind it, does it require thee to charge the spell up to increase velocity?" she asks.

"Yes, if I were to cast it without charging, it would look like I'm just trying to throw it," I reply.

"We see. Well, try again then, we must work on thy aim," she says.

For the next hour or two, I practise my aim. I can now score hits on the second inner ring, but moving targets are still a problem for me. It's now about five in the afternoon and Luna takes me to our final area of training for today.

We arrive at her's and Celestia's personal gym where we do some stretching before she sets me up on a strange platform with handles on each side and a panel in front. "We shall now run for three miles together," she says and stands on another to my left. "Now, do as we do," she tells me and presses a button on the panel in front of her, part of the platform starts moving and she starts jogging on the spot.

I look at my panel and press the same button she did. "Whoa!" I yelp startled and I stumble a bit before jogging along with her.

Ten minutes in and I'm really sweating, running in armour, even if it feels light, is not very easy. I then trip and fall onto my side, the platform still moving, launches me into a wall with my ass in the air. "Ow..." I mutter.

Luna giggles and steps off of hers. "Come on, up with thee," she says and helps me up. We both get back on what Luna told me is called a treadmill and finish the run. Celestia then walks in wearing a rather tight looking pair of pink shorts, a sleeveless, stomachless pink top, wristbands and a headband.

"Oh, Hello, Luna. I'm surprised to see both of you here," Celestia says as she gets onto one of the treadmills and starts a light jog. I had to look away from her out of embarrassment, her outfit showing off her body's curves.

"Well, our equipment is more suited to his size than the guards, we thought it would help speed up Adrian's training," Luna replies.

Celestia giggles. "It's alright, just don't break anything," she mockingly tells me.

Luna then drags me over to a bench with a set of weights, she tells me to remove my armour as she places a few metal disks on each end of the a bar. "We now want to see how much weight thou can lift," she tells me.

Once out of the armour, I lay down on the bench as she instructs me on what to do. I grip the bar as she tells me to and push, I extend my arms fully and hold it for a few seconds, it's not that heavy.

"Fifty pounds, put the bar back please," she tells me and I do so, she replaces the disks with bigger ones and tells me to lift again. I push, straining a bit as I do so. "One-hundred pounds, bar down again." She adds the other disks back on and again tells me to push, I grunt from the exertion but barely manage to lift it for a few seconds before placing the bar back on the stand. "One-hundred and fifty pounds, we need to build thy arms up some more," she tells me.

For the next hour or so, we do different exercises and lifting. I do sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups and even rock climbing on an artificial cliff face on the back wall.

Once we finish, we all take a shower in the two shower cubicles in a room through a door to the left of the gym. I let them go first while I do some more weight lifting, then wash myself when they're done. I put on fresh clothes Luna brought for me and re-equip my armour after my shower, Celestia is wearing her white dress with the gold trimmings while Luna is wearing her black dress. Once ready, we all head down for dinner. "Thou did well for thy first day," Luna says. I yawn feeling extremely tired. "But tomorrow we shall increase our pace," she says causing me to groan and the Princesses to laugh.

"After dinner, we shall be holding a war meeting with the Captains to discuss what we shall do about the gryphons," Celestia says, suddenly serious.

Dinner was quiet as we ate and Blueblood didn't show up. Once finished, Celestia leads me to a room in the back of the Castle with a round table and chairs all around it, a map of Equestria and it's borders on the table.

Celestia sits at the back in the middle with Luna to her left and me to her right. Luna tells me that we'll be doing what we did today over the next two weeks, the doors open as five people walk in, the first is Shining Armour.

The second is an orangey yellow pegasus woman with fiery red hair wearing a tight blue suit with a yellow lightning bolt down the middle, she also has a pair of goggles on her head.

The third is a large muscular grey earth pony man with black hair wearing heavy looking plate armour and a massive hammer on his back.

The forth is someone who looks just like Night Blade, with the tufts of fur on the tips of his ears, the eyes and the sharp looking teeth but with leathery bat like wings instead of a curved horn. He has dark purplish grey fur with dark blue hair, he's wearing what looks like purple and black leather armour, but it's probably a different material since these people don't like killing animals. Then again, it could be the hide of a dangerous animal they had to put down... I'll have to ask later.

The fifth is a light green unicorn woman with yellow hair that has two white stripes through it, she's wearing robes with a gem rod on her left hip.

They all sit down at the table and Celestia speaks up. "Thank you all for coming, as you know, we were attacked yesterday during the Gala," she says making the Captains frown.

Luna then takes over. "We are here to form a plan of retaliation, they wish to treat us as livestock, then we shall put them down as the animals they are," she says, receiving nods from all the Captains.

"But first, introductions. Captains, this is Adrian Stormsword, the first Knight in over eight-hundred years," Celestia says. The captains all greet me. "Adrian, you already know Shining Armour who oversees the entire Royal Guard."

I smile and nodded to him which he returns. "Next is Captain Spitfire of the pegasi guard, who specialize in air to air combat with speed, agility, light weapons and bows, also known as the Wonderbolts," Celestia says towards the orange woman.

Spitfire smirks at me. "Nice to finally meet the colt that swept Princess Luna off her hooves," she says making Luna's face blush a bit.

I chuckle. "Nice to meet you as well," I reply.

"Next is Captain Hammer Strike of the earth pony guard, who specialize in heavy armour and weapons," Celestia says.

Hammer Strike gives a deep sounding chuckle. "I hear you crushed one of those turkeys heads in with a rock, is it true?" he asks.

"Yes, but it was a spell, not me throwing the thing. Probably would have dropped it on my own foot if I tried that," I reply.

He lets out a loud laugh while the unicorn Captain just rolls her eyes. "I like him!" Hammer Strike says.

Celestia smiles. "Next is Captain Bright Mind of the unicorn guard, who specialize in offensive and defensive spells."

"How you got the Princess's attention with your lack of manners is a mystery," Bright Mind says. "No offence to you of course, Princess," she then says to Luna, who looks annoyed.

I decide to throw in the ol' prince charming routine. "I apologise if my manners are not up to your expectations, my lady. I shall refrain from any future vulgarities and uncouth behaviour in your presence," I reply with a bow of my head, sounding as respectful as I could.

She looks at me wide eyed while Hammer Strike is once again laughing. "I really like him!" he says still laughing. I just sit there looking as calm as possible while Bright Mind glares at Hammer Strike.

Celestia coughs to get our attention. "Ahem, lastly is Captain Dark Wing of the thestral guards, who specialize in stealth and reconnaissance."

Dark Wing just nodded at me which I return.

"Now onto the matter of the gryphons," Luna says gaining all of our attention. "Our sister offered a means to live peacefully, but they responded by killing our guards and attempted to kill us. We are still unsure on how they managed to get in, but an investigation is under way," she tells us.

Celestia then takes over. "And as such, their act of aggression and openly stating that they shall now hunt us within our own borders, we have declared war upon the gryphons, any gryphon on Equestrian soil that isn't a legal citizen and without the correct paperwork will be either taken prisoner or killed if they resist," she states, anger showing in her eyes. "For now, we will station guards at each town and city along the border for protection, we want you Captains to sort mixed squads of twenty of each guard and send them to the towns. Each squad will have a pegasi messenger to return with news of any attacks where we shall send reinforcements if needed," she tells them.

They all nodded and Shining speaks up. "What will Adrian be doing during this?" he asks.

"We shall continue to train Adrian until such a time he is called upon," Luna tells him.

Hammer Strike gawks at me. "You're training him personally? Lucky bugger..." he grumbles, making me chuckle.

"Until we can gather enough Intel on the enemy forces, we shall defend the border and repel any attacks. Once we receive adequate information, we'll plan a counter-attack on the gryphons Elder Council at Aires Peak," Celestia says.

All the Captains agree and are dismissed.

POV: Silent Shadow

After listening to the meeting I head back to the Master's office, I step out of the shadows and kneel before Prince Blueblood.

"Ah, Silent Shadow, I take it the meeting is over?" he asks me.

"Yes, Master, they plan to send squads to the border towns and gather Intel on the gryphons forces before devising a plan of attack," I tell him.

"I see, keep watching our esteemed Knight, I want to know how he's progressing and if we can find a way to remove him without suspicion," he tells me.

"As you wish, Master," I reply and step back into the shadows.

POV: Adrian Stormsword

Luna leads me back to her bedroom where we say good night to Celestia as she goes to hers.

We strip down to our night wear and get into bed, or more like fall onto the bed in my case.

"Get plenty of sleep, thou will be needing it for tomorrow," Luna tells me, I just groan knowing what I'm in for.