“How’s it feel, Commander? Weight’s good, balanced?”
Typhoon stood in Hammer’s workshop and screwed her face up as she bobbed on the tips of her hooves. After a few minutes of donning her armor (with Hammer’s help) and getting her straps and restraints fitted, the old soldier found herself trying to get a feel for a kind of heavy armor she’d never really worn before. The heavy steel peytral protecting her chest pulled down at her shoulders, and the half-plate reaching midway down her back left her hindquarters feeling dangerously unprotected. The pauldrons and leg bracers on her forelegs at least had a familiar weight to them, if not a familiar sound as the scales mutedly clattered with her motions, though most uncomfortable of all was the quilted cloth that provided padding between the disconnected pieces of armor. It felt like a cocoon, pressing against her legs and pulling on her chest in ways that restricted her freedom of movement.
“A bit heavier in the front than I’m used to, but I’ll manage,” Typhoon admitted. She gave her wings a few tentative flaps and lifted herself into a short hover, then landed on the ground with a grunt. “Distance flying might be difficult, but it shouldn’t slow me down in a fight. It’s not all that heavier than a skysteel cuirass. The cloth feels odd, though. I’m used to fighting without anything restricting my legs.”
“The Legion may have been the finest fighting force the world has ever seen, but we still could stand to learn a thing or two from the unicorn knights,” Hammer explained. “A little bit of quilted cloth can go a long way in protection without much weight. It should provide enough protection against glancing blows that you won’t even notice them. The padding is thick enough to stop arrows as well, at least from a distance. I wouldn’t try my luck at point blank.”
“I wasn’t intending on it, but you never know,” Typhoon admitted. “I suppose it will take some time getting used to. It’s a lot to put on, though. Not like a cuirass and bracers, which I could manage by myself.”
“The gambeson should suffice in a pinch, but I made sure the straps on the other plates are easy enough to reach by yourself,” Hammer assured her. “It just might take a bit more than tossing a cuirass over your shoulders and popping your wings through. But at the very least, I can give you this.”
He reached out to his desk with a wing and flipped a Cirran-style galea onto the crest, then held it out to Typhoon. Typhoon, in turn, took the helmet between her wingtips, and after flipping it around, she pressed it down atop her head, finding the holes for her ears with a little wiggling. It had no plume, no onyx plate or gold trim like she used to wear in her battles of old, but it was skysteel, light and strong like the clouds it was forged from. “This I can trust,” Typhoon mused, and her lips curved upwards as she felt the familiar and comforting weight on her head.
“It’s my old helmet from my days in the field,” Hammer told her. “Might be a little big on you, ma’am, but it’s practically good as new. I never had any close encounters with monsters or bandits. Working the forge, I was always well away from the actual fighting, but you know how it was.”
“‘Every pegasus a legionary, from the troops in the field to the mothers nursing their foals,’” Typhoon said, repeating a saying she’d long heard throughout her lifetime of service. Rare was the pegasus who had never received a basic instruction in fighting nor had felt compelled to honor their warrior blood in their youth. War was a part of the pegasus soul, the worst impulses curbed through Cirran honor. In that vein, service in the Legion was the highest honor, the most noble of obligations. And it was not something a pegasus parted with easily.
Typhoon took the helmet off of her head and offered it back to Hammer. “I couldn’t take this from you. You earned this as a soldier of the Legion. It’s yours to keep.”
“I don’t need a relic to remind me of my glory days,” Hammer said, scoffing and pushing it back toward Typhoon. “I’m not going to be fighting anymore, ma’am. The only time I swing my hammer is to shape steel to protect other ponies. And if I wanted a new helmet or armor, I could just make it.” Then he sighed and looked away. “Besides, I lost my old cuirass when I lost my skyforge. Some Lost Legion-type is probably wearing it right now. I’d feel better if you at least put the helmet to good use stopping all that nonsense.”
After a moment, Typhoon relented and tucked the helmet under her wing. “If it puts you at ease, then I’ll keep it,” she said. Then, following a moment more, she raised an eyebrow and gave him a sideways look. “Do you happen to have a mirror here?”
Hammer couldn’t help himself but snort. “I didn’t take you for a vain mare, ma’am.”
“No. But if I’m trying to get what I want out of a pack of bandits or a troublesome wizard, I at least want to know that I look the part of the formidable old soldier.” Her lips pulled back ever so slightly to reveal teeth. “I never really wore dresses or makeup when I was younger. Armor, though…”
“Birthday shopping for you must have been difficult,” Hammer chided.
“I did ask my mother for skysteel pteruges when I was fifteen.” Typhoon couldn’t help herself but smile a little as she remembered simpler days four decades prior while Hammer started rearranging some open space in his workshop. “They’re scout armor, though, and I was a legate. She teasingly offered to demote me if I really wanted them, though.”
“Tsch. I’m sure the grunts would have loved that. You probably turned heads when you were a young mare.” He snatched the corner of a tarp in his teeth and pulled it down, revealing a large if dusty mirror—and missing Typhoon’s sharp wince at his comment, reflected back at the mare through the glass. Still, after brushing some of the dust off with his wing, Hammer took a step back and beckoned Typhoon forward. “Come on, get a good look. I’m sure you’ll like what you see.”
Typhoon stepped forward, recovering enough to give Hammer a sly glance as she passed by. “You’re a little too young,” she teased, brushing her armored shoulder against him in the process. She saw the momentary fluster on the blacksmith’s face in the mirror and gave her gray-streaked tail a flick as she drew herself up before the mirror and turned her head this way and that. “Nothing beats skysteel… but this is masterful nonetheless.”
It was more than just a hollow platitude; the peytral was exceptionally forged, the steel flowing from the shoulders to a ridge that followed Typhoon’s sternum from the base of her neck down to her breast before tapering away to give her forelegs room to maneuver. Scale pauldrons affixed themselves to the shoulders of the peytral by latches and straps, each one with almost a hundred individually cut scales layered over each other and bolted to a swatch of leather, with a matching design in the form of a pair of bracers protecting Typhoon’s forelegs below the knee. The steel half-plate reaching from her withers to the start of her croup protected her spine, again with a slight centerline ridge to deflect blows away from the body, and large holes in the sides gave her ample room to pop her wings through and maneuver them as she pleased. Her belly and flanks were bare and unarmored, but the cloth gambeson beneath the armor at least gave her some minimal protection where metal lacked. All of the steel had been finely shaped and hammered out so carefully that Typhoon could barely notice any irregularities in the surface, and black-painted engravings even decorated the peytral’s collar.
“I’m good at what I do,” Hammer said, leaning against a crate full of iron scraps and admiring his own handiwork while Typhoon turned this way and that to look her armor over from different angles. “Ground steel’s more stubborn than clouds blasted into metal with magic, but it can be shaped if you know how to speak to it.”
“Is that with sweet nothings or with loud curses?” Typhoon asked him, looking back over her shoulder at him with a ruby red eye.
“Encouraging compliments with some stern scolding sprinkled on top. Sometimes you’ve got to beat the metal like you’re spanking a misbehaving foal.” Typhoon snickered, and Hammer lightly chuckled. “Probably a good thing the gods haven’t given me a foal to raise. I’m probably not cut out for the whole parenting thing.”
“It’s harder than it seems, and it doesn’t seem easy to begin with.”
Hammer thoughtfully nodded. “Yeah, I suppose. Your colt came out alright though, from what I heard… err, if you don’t mind me saying, ma’am.”
Rather than remark on that, Typhoon drew herself down with a reserved nod. “I wasn’t perfect, but I did my best,” she murmured to herself, and her gaze wandered to her reflection in the mirror. Beneath the strong armor, an old and tired mare stared back at her, her eyes filled with regrets and lessons learned.
Panting and hoofsteps pointed Typhoon’s ears backwards, and through the mirror, she saw a young brown unicorn appear in the workshop entryway behind her. Typhoon and Hammer turned toward Sparrow as she leaned against one of the posts supporting the workshop’s ceiling and pulled a few strands of her mane that had escaped its tie back out of her face. “I’m… here…” she panted, and when she saw the curve of Typhoon’s lips, she frowned at her. “You could have waited for me!”
“I could have,” Typhoon agreed. “I just didn’t see any particular reason to. You knew where I would be and where you were going.”
When Sparrow simply glared back at her, Hammer chuckled and scooped up a rag off his workbench, tossing it to the unicorn with a wing. “You and the Commander know each other?” Hammer asked her. “I should have known you’d find her one way or another.”
“She tried to rob me at Eagle Springs after I left your forge,” Typhoon explained, but then she cocked an eyebrow at the smith. “You know her?”
“Enough that I should have warned you you’d probably cross paths with her at some point,” Hammer said, and Sparrow scowled at him as she wiped the sweat off of her brow and out of her mane with the rag. “She’s a bloodhound for legionaries. As a former soldier myself, and a blacksmith no less, she’s often by my smithy once a week asking if I’ll make her a sword. She’s a great errand runner if you don’t mind paying her in war stories, though it seems like you two have something else going on.”
Sparrow tossed the rag back to Hammer, who caught it on the same wing he threw it from. “She’s going to teach me how to be a legionary!” Sparrow proclaimed, even bouncing in place with excitement like a filly half her age.
Hammer turned to Typhoon in surprise, and Typhoon rolled her eyes. “I need to meet with the mage who visits this city, and she claims she can set up a meeting. If foalsitting her while she swings a sword around is the price for it, then I’ll pay it.”
The young unicorn huffed. “You could at least try to pretend to be interested!” she whined.
“This is a transaction, not a day in the park.” Then Typhoon turned to Hammer. “I don’t suppose you have practice swords locked in a chest somewhere?”
Hammer shook his head. “I’m not a stallion-at-arms, so no. But I do have some scrap swords I’ve been meaning to melt down for a while yet.” He jostled open the crate full of scrap metal with the crest of his wing and began to rummage through it. After a few seconds, he pulled out a dull steel blade, its edges rounded and rough like chiseled stone and flecked with orange specks. “This ought to do the trick for practice. It’s got no grip on the tang, but that shouldn’t be a problem for a horn.”
He set it down on the table, but the metal had yet to come to a rest before Sparrow seized it in pink magic, twirling it around with her horn and getting a feel for its weight. “What’s wrong with it?” she asked him, holding the length of steel up to her mismatched eyes and squinting at the dull edge. “It looks like it’d be fine if you sharpened it up.”
“There’s imperfections in the steel. You strike that against something too hard and it’s liable to snap right in half.” Hammer started to reach his wing into the crate for a second sword, though he paused and offered Typhoon a raised eyebrow first. “Will you be wanting one?”
“No,” Typhoon answered. “We won’t be sparring.”
“Oh…” Sparrow said from across the workshop, though when Typhoon glanced at the young unicorn, she thought she saw a little bit of relief in her face.
“Suit yourself.” Hammer gestured behind his workshop with his wing and added, “I keep some practice dummies in the yard behind the shop. I need to make sure my swords can hold an edge after all… and my armor can stop one. Just…” he hesitated and pointed at Typhoon’s sword as the old soldier picked it up and hooked it onto the side of her new armor. “Just, if that’s what I think it is, please don’t use it on my dummies. You wouldn’t believe the price of wood and straw these days…”
“Unless we’re attacked by bandits, the sword stays in its scabbard,” Typhoon assured him. Then, turning to Sparrow, she gave the unicorn a glance before walking away from the open forge and onto the grass outside. “Come on. Let’s start by stretching.”
“Eeee!” Sparrow squealed, though she abruptly froze in horror as she realized what sound had just left her muzzle. Hammer smothered a laugh in his wing, and Typhoon only paused and eyed Sparrow with a deadpan expression. “Sorry!” Sparrow apologized, and she bounded out after Typhoon with a vigorous shake of her head. “It’s just that… I’m training with a legionary! This is so awesome!”
“No. It isn’t,” Typhoon deadpanned, her stern tone dampening some of the unicorn’s enthusiasm. When they were in the open grass, the old soldier took a breath and fixed Sparrow in her gaze. “There is nothing fun in being a soldier. It is not something you do for recreation or enjoyment. It is not a sport. It is not ‘awesome’. When you are a soldier, you hold the power to kill in your hooves. In some cases, it is expected of you. Demanded from you. And in the same breath, you forfeit your right to life. There will be many out there who want to take your life from you, and only you can protect yourself.” She narrowed her red eyes, red as the blood they’d witnessed in many long years of service. “Do you understand?”
Sparrow tried to meet their intensity—but cowed after a mere breath. “Yes,” she said, averting her eyes and lowering her head.
Typhoon watched her, and her nostrils twitched as she drew a breath. “Hmph,” was her only response, her thoughts hidden behind a contemptuous exhale. And just like that, she returned to the task at hoof. “Set your sword down and find some space. Start by stretching your legs. Lift one hoof off the ground, press it against your belly, then slowly stretch it out as far as it can go.”
“Like this?” Sparrow asked, drawing her right forehoof up to her belly and then sticking it straight out. She frowned and wiggled her hoof, her mismatched eyes narrowing at it as if it was making a fool of itself, and her along with it. “Miss, uh…Wait, what am I supposed to call you? You never told me your name. Did Hammer call you ‘Commander’?”
“He did,” Typhoon acknowledged. “You may not. You will not use formalities with me.”
“Why not?” Sparrow asked, cocking her head in confusion. “Not even ma’am?”
“No,” Typhoon insisted, and she frowned at the young unicorn. “I was a commander in the Legion, and the Legion is gone. You may call me Typhoon if you must.”
Typhoon expected her name to get a reaction out of a young mare so obsessed with the Legion, but was instead surprised when it failed to elicit even a curious one. “Alright,” Sparrow said with a nod. “Guess the whole storm things makes sense for pegasi… But, uh, why are we stretching? I don’t have to move to fight. I’ve got a horn.”
“Do you think just because you can hold your sword between you and your opponent without touching it that you won’t have to move in a fight?” Typhoon asked her.
“I can move a sword with my magic faster than a pony can rush me,” Sparrow insisted.
“Do you think you could stop me from rushing you?”
Sparrow opened her mouth to retort, thought better of it, and snapped it shut. “Fine,” she admitted, memories of her and her friends’ botched robbery in Eagle Springs likely flashing through her mind. “Can you at least show me how to do it? I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”
“Because you’re doing it too fast. Watch.”
Typhoon took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and opened her wings. Stretching and her warm-ups had been a daily routine for countless years, and she effortlessly slipped into the motions of stretching each of her muscles with intention and purpose. One hoof at a time, she raised and curled her legs until her hooves brushed her belly, then extended them as far as they could reach, before sweeping each leg out to the side and bringing the hoof back down to the ground. She did this several times for each leg, and she added wing waves and flaps to stretch out her flight muscles and energize the source of her magic. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Sparrow trying to mimic her, sans the wing stretches, and her movements had gone from shaky and uncertain to slow and deliberate.
“Do you feel your muscles stretching?” Typhoon asked her. When Sparrow nodded, she continued: “Just because you feel relaxed or you haven’t been active lately doesn’t mean you are. Muscles grow sore from overuse, but they also stiffen with disuse. They let us move, and so that is their natural state: movement. That’s why stretching is important. You loosen your muscles and prepare them to work at peak capacity longer than they otherwise would. It can be the difference between life and death on the battlefield.”
“But… aren’t we just doing some sword practice?” Sparrow asked her. “There’s no life-or-death situation today.”
“No,” Typhoon agreed. “There isn’t. But it’s easier to learn now when it’s peaceful and not right before a battle.”
The two mares continued to stretch, moving from their legs to their shoulders and hindquarters, their backs, and then their necks. Typhoon worked her jaw from side to side as well, more out of habit than anything else, and when Sparrow gave her an odd look, she explained. “I don’t have a horn. I have to hold my sword in my mouth. And a good legionary can change which side she holds the blade with her tongue and teeth alone.”
At the mention of her sword, Sparrow shot the weapon in question a fearful glance. “What is that thing?” she asked her.
“My sword,” Typhoon bluntly answered.
“But when I touched it I…” Sparrow shivered at the memory. “It felt like it wanted to kill me.”
“It probably wanted to,” Typhoon agreed. Then she pointed at Sparrow’s scrap sword and pivoted the conversation away from that topic. “Yours will not. Pick it up and let’s start with the basics.”
Sparrow gave Typhoon’s sword one last wary glance, but she hefted her weapon in her magic and gave it a twirl before leaving it idly floating in front of her. “Shouldn’t we go over to the dummies first?” Sparrow asked, noting the distance between the two mares and the straw-stuffed practice dummies at the other end of the yard.
“No. First, we work on your form. Now, hold your sword in front of you, tip up and readied.” Sparrow repositioned the weapon in her magic, and Typhoon slowly walked in a circle around the young mare and her weapon. “I never trained unicorns to fight,” Typhoon admitted, “so most of what I have to teach you will be translated from how I would train a pegasus legionary. But there are a few things that I do know about unicorn swordplay that I can share with you. First, let’s start by fixing your grip.”
“My grip?” Sparrow blinked and looked at the pink aura surrounding her sword. “What’s wrong with it? It’s magic. I can hold it any way I need.”
“You’re holding the entire sword in your magic,” Typhoon said, and she gestured with the end of her wing to the glow surrounding the sword from tip to tang. “When you swing with it, you swing with an equal force over the length of the sword. That means your swing is only as strong as your telekinesis.”
“My telekinesis is pretty strong,” Sparrow said, and she gave her sword a few practice swipes. “If this had an edge to it, I could make it cut.”
“Why does an axe or a hammer have its head on the end of a stick?” Typhoon asked her. “Why not connect it directly to a mouthheld handle? The answer is leverage. Shorten your grip to the tang and then try swinging. It’s harder to hold, but you can leverage the weight of the sword to hit harder.”
Sparrow did as instructed, and her magical aura shrank to only cover the tang of the naked blade. She gave it a few experimental swings, and her tongue poked its way out the side of her mouth as she swung it about and wrestled with the mass. “I feel like I’m going to slip off the sword,” Sparrow admitted when she drew the weapon back towards her body and let it idly levitate again. “The tang’s too smooth.”
“You would know better than I how you feel with your magic,” Typhoon said with a shrug. “I do know that unicorn smiths would inlay the hilts of their weapons with gold or silver wire. Those metals are like magical sponges. They’re sticky, and it’s harder for a unicorn to lose their grip on something webbed with precious metals. That seems to correlate with what I’ve seen, both on the battlefield and in the ballroom.”
Sparrow furrowed her brow. “In the ballroom…? Wait, did you just make a joke about stuffy nobles and gold?”
“Did I?” Typhoon only asked back, leaving Sparrow flustered and groaning. “Come on. Next let’s talk about your stance. And before you ask what’s wrong with it, you should know what my answer is going to be.”
“Ughh… yes, mom…”