Meanwhile, on the training grounds outside the watchtower - not to be confused with the blasting range outside the mage tower, on the far side of the village - someone is putting Lila Roisen through her paces a bit ahead of schedule.

Diana Pallas-Smith, or Diana Smith-Pallas, is very good at fighting.

She's not as good at teaching, because that means she has to put her kinesthetic intuitions into words - but when it comes to walking someone through weapons to see what actually suits them best, she doesn't need to be the best teacher.  She can just watch.  Watch, contemplate, understand, integrate.  Observe, orient, decide, act.

...Lila moves weird.  And sure, her fellow student of the Light hasn't been down on the practice fields before - that's always been more her own thing; you need to understand how things handle in order to craft the best tools and there's something about a good fight that gets her blood pumping, even though it shouldn't - but there's just something a little bit off about the way Lila handles the practice weapons.  Like she's - got half-rusted instincts from another body, or something, moving in ways that could have been effective rather than awful if she'd been half a foot taller - which is obviously impossible but still not obviously false.  It's weird.

She's seen Ser Mattan knock his own rust off a few times, and while it looks like the one kid her age in the village is kind of just stumbling around with new weapons she's never held before - it still has her watching intently, because reflexive actions are where a façade is most likely to slip.

(She doesn't know why Ser Mattan thinks she'll need to know ranger tricks, but he's teaching her, so she's not going to complain about it.)

Lila knows she's moving weird.

She-of-Maranon was never great at swordfighting, but she'd held her own in a few battles.  But those are the instincts she's reflexively reaching for, because she-of-Villarosa has never done this before at all.  And those instincts are for a different body... and lately for one that'd been older.

(She-of-Maranon had preferred magic.  Which might have been thanks to Fraddir --  As she moves too late to duck Diana's strike, she decides not to dwell on those memories just now.)

"I - need - better instincts," she says out loud, rubbing her arm.  "Where'd you learn?"

"Well.  Right here, for the past several years," she laughs.  "Ser Mattan is good at teaching.  Where'd you learn?"  She doesn't notice that this question should have no answer until several secomds after she's asked it.

"Trinn --" 

-- no wait, Trinnsford doesn't even exist in this world.

"-kets and bits from Ser Mattan and travelers and such, and practicing by myself in secret.  I'm sure I've got a lot of bad habits to learn to do right."

Diana just - stops the spar, flares her Light into Lila to dislodge anything that's not her friend(?), and gives her Baroness a Look.  The Look clearly communicates that she was not fooled in the slightest.

"You should ask Ser Mattan for lessons on how to dissemble, while you're picking up those trinkets.  Nobody really expects a Light-wielder to lie, but if you're already looking strange that won't protect you from people connecting dots.  Like the lack of wear on some of the weapons that you obviously knew how to handle, and the weaponry in your house that I've run errands to maintain for years without observing use, because it's apprentice work and I'm an apprentice.  ...Not for much longer, but.  Yeah.

"...You don't need to tell me whatever it is that happened, though.  I trust you to know what's right.  So if your secret is really important, then...it's really important.  But I want you to take me with you when you run off into danger.  You'll need backup."

... Where did all her political-face skills go?

Oh, of course, gone along with her-of-Maranon's old face, when they got mixed in with her-of-Villarosa's instincts.

... and she can almost imagine Jenny or Selma saying she'd never been good at lying by surprise in the middle of talking with friends.

"I... hadn't thought through how you'd notice that.

"Thanks.  I..."  (How much does she want to tell Diana?  No, she wants to actually think about that.)  "I had a dream.  I think I'll need a friend to go with me, soon.  I'm not sure yet where."

(Well, she has a few good ideas, but she's not sure.)

"...I'm with you.  We'll find whatever it is and solve it.  Together."  As knight and liege, as friends, as - who knows if there's more, certainly not she.  But still, Diana Pallas-Smith promises herself: Whatever comes for Lila, they'll go through it together.

...Mattan Hyas watches the conversation from a distance, quietly.  His student is clever, strong, and loyal, and this is good.  She'll go far, wherever she goes.  And that part of him that's still echoing Kosvin is proud of Lila and Diana both.  For trusting eachother.  For bonding together, over Light lessons and quiet talks.  For supporting eachother through whatever has come to their little barony's doorstep.

...He'll do his best to make sure they both make it out the other side.

Lila thinks back over her-of-Villarosa's memories.  She and Diana have seen each other around a lot, between magic classes and just going around town.  What's she like?...

Busy, primarily!  She works in the smithy, learning metalcrafts from the master smith during the day; in the evenings she joins Lila's study of the Light with the village's priest, having a sturdy sense of duty that gives her the right sort of strength to come back when she joins the Light.  Between all of that she somehow manages to fit in time to learn to fight, and has apparently demonstrated a talent for it that Mattan wants to nurture.  She has an analytical mind, as well - she's picked up a few useful Arcane spells, though she's no wizard to stand back and formulate where hitting them with a warhammer would solve the problem faster - and she intends to make her Masterwork an enchanted blade of some sort.  Well, enchanted weapon, enchanted shield, enchanted armor - enchanted something.  Really, it'll probably be a hammer.  She's going to need to go out of the village for that alone, notwithstanding her ambition to a Knighthood in defense of the peoples of Villarosa.

Wow, yes, Diana's busy.

Lila doesn't remember her from Maranon - at least, they hadn't met there.  There'd been a lot of good people in the Resistance she hadn't had the opportunity to meet, though.

"I don't know myself how long it'll take, except my dream made it sound like it'll take years.  And you're obviously working toward something already..."

"Something that means we'll likely benefit from working alongside eachother anyway, if the part where you suddenly need to know how to fight properly is important.  I might be a smith by trade, but I'm called to knighthood as much as your dream has called you to this moment."

And she does want to get started moving quickly, so she can clean things up without the Princess's help...

"I'm still not sure where to start... but all right."

"You won't be starting anywhere if you're assassinated because you were too busy with declarations of undying loyalty to keep watch," comes Mattan's growl from Right Behind Her.  "What have you learned?"

"...Sir.  Recruit Roisen has some prior experience, but most of it is bad experience - or if it wasn't at the time, it's tripping her up now.  She has a good sense of tempo, though, and I believe she may benefit from training in dual-wield or otherwise using off-hand weaponry; anything that trains her off-hand is going to completely bypass the bad reflexes, and that will hopefully build good patterns to check against her main.  She knows archery basics, which is rather expected given that she's known you this long, but I want to note it anyway.  You could teach her some of the tricks I don't have time or inclination for."

"Lila, add your thoughts?"

"Thanks, Diana," she says weakly.  She doesn't disagree with anything, but it's a little disconcerting hearing herself summed up like that by someone her age.

"Yes, I need to - fix up my bad reflexes, now that I can.  Training my off-hand makes sense... especially if it lets me cast at the same time with my right hand.  I could always improve my archery too - but I think time with the sword would be better spent."

"...I've heard you have an affinity for spirit magic.  Most of the common foci there are totemic in nature and not really meant to be a wielded weapon, but...I actually do wonder, if you can make spirit-focusing swords.  Never heard of anyone doing it, but if it works and you want to cast with both hands...  I'm gonna look into it, I think.  It'd be a good Masterwork."

"Oh, YES!"

That would be so useful if that one battle with the cultists - or that other ambush - goes anything like it did in her vision of the future!

(It probably won't, with Princess Alicia trying to be helpful, but it'll still probably help anyway.)

"...I know that arcanists need every bit of help they can get, with their circles and whatnot, but you shouldn't need a hand free to cast with, Lila.  Gestures and suchlike, they might help in the short term, save focus for strength - but they're also a tool that you will one day need to function deprived of, if you're adventuring like your da used to.  He beat up half a dozen armed guards without weapons, armor, or his hands, the once, when they had to let him walk somewhere and underestimated his ability to cause trouble.  Mostly by kicking them in the sensitive bits, judging by the dents in their armor after we finally caught up, but he needed to knock 'em down first to do that, hear?"

"Yes... but it might be handy sometimes to make them think I do need the gestures and then surprise them."

It's a whole lot more handy than the magic of Maranon, where you'd often need both hands and a minute to go through a ritual.

"... How long do you think till I can get to that point?  Maybe a year or two?"

And then whatever he says, she'll expect sooner than that because she's now officially supposed to be a Magical Prodigy.  Which is good, because she needs to get started soon.

"Depends on what you're trying to go for.  I've never needed to practice it as something separate from the skills I've learned; charged shots are a very basic spell, and the rest is either for stealth or for amplifying something I have to do as part of the spell - there's a lot of ways to hit harder.  I'm sure you've seen Squire Pallas-Smith practicing with the Light, and she's still trying to get it truly reliable.  Shamans actually have to have foci to channel from and amplify if they don't have a bond with a free spirit, but the whole practice there is a little bit different, from what I recall...

"...Diana, if you're going to make spirit blades as a Mastery project, I still write a couple of war-dancers we fought alongside in that last campaign," the one where they fought a fucking Demon Lord, "every so often; they're not quite the same sort of alignment as the Baroness, magically, but I think the introduction can't hurt and they'll definitely have good advice for you both.  Was probably going to write them anyway.  They have a lot of Spirit-bonded up on the mountaintops, and some very good dual-wielding forms."