Find Your Center I

"Find Your Center I" is a BOTGD 2 Act II oneshot written on January 25, 2021.
==Summary==
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==Full Text==
It had been a day after the conquering of the Jaw, and though the storms continued to skid across the sky, they hadn’t quite cleared. The day was both gray and sunny, with large spots of sunlight passing in between Fenrir’s teeth as time passed, and the rebels recouped. Over the period of time that Yun had returned to the Golden Timeline, he had dove headfirst into helping out in any way he could. He could walk the streets and find rebels struggling with anything from communication to manpower to treating the injured, and though Yun wasn’t particularly skilled in any of these things, it was still better to have more hands than less. It kept his mind off the things that allowed him very little sleep last night. 
Today, he was helping to hand out generous portions of rations to the weary and wounded, when he felt a hand–or rather, a hoof–take his shoulder. Yun looked around in alarm and saw that it was a familiar half-breed, who gave him a small smile and nodded. “Finally caught up to you. You’re difficult to find,” he said, in his strange accent.
Yun gave a half-smile in return and put down the basket he was carrying across his shoulder. “Can’t imagine you were any different.”
“Indeed.” Milae eyed him up and down in a flash, taking in his new garb. “Hm, met with Juro?” Yun nodded, and the goat continued, “Seems like he found enough to suit you. He has good timing.”
“Timing?”
“Yes.” Milae turned a bit while keeping his head trained on Yun, and it was only then that the young man noticed that the goat had something strapped to his back that Yun knew had not been typical for a while. A long wooden staff. “Follow me.”
***
Yun stood nervously in the middle of the courtyard as Milae finished pacing around him, the staff carving a large circle into the drying dirt dragged up by many floods and portals. Milae had removed his cloak, and Yun had only the topmost long-sleeved layer gifted to him by Juro, though he kept his bracers on, per Milae’s advice. There were a handful of young, curious rebels hanging around the area, as it was one of the more common areas of traffic in the reclaimed Jaw. As the new seidkonur’s eyes shifted around the overcast buildings around him, he saw a deer half-breed sitting next to a lean, blond man, on the back of an unused cart, both clearly waiting for the time jumpers to begin. His heart thumped a little faster, nerves twisting in his gut.
“Alright,” Milae finally said, snapping Yun’s attention to him. Ironically, Milae was in slightly less focus than the other two, because Yun had taken his glasses off for the session. “Now, I know I am unfamiliar with any styles of fighting you may have developed in your world. But I know we share some bank of memories, and no matter how small, I want to see what carries over, just to start off.” In his off hoof, he had a similar staff. In an ordinary man’s hand, it would have been a little short, but because of both Yun and Milae’s statures, they were the perfect size, about six inches taller than both of them. There was a slight hum as Milae spun the staff in his hoof and held the end of it out to Yun. He carefully took it, gloves sliding comfortably against the worn wood. Yun glanced up at Milae, who nodded once. “Go on.”
Yun took a breath and stepped back, holding the staff in both hands and focusing, eyes almost closing with the effort. The memories of the goat before him slid into his mind, and he tried to swing the weapon into a more ready position, but as he did so, it felt like wires crossed in his brain, and his hands fumbled as they were very confused on why his mind was telling them to act like half-breed hooves, and not human hands. He exclaimed softly as the staff tumbled quickly out of his fingers and dropped on the ground, spinning with his fumble to catch it. There was a small titter among the surrounding crowd, and Yun’s cheeks burned as he moved to pick it up, thankfully able to sort of bounce it upright once more with the toe of his boot and catch it with his hand. Milae blinked at him. “Did…something happen?” he said, and Yun felt his face heat further at the sound of some suppressed amusement.
“I don’t think your memories work,” he protested, looking the staff up and down, like it had betrayed him. “They clashed. My hands got messed up.”
“Hmm.” Milae had him learn several basic stances, walking him very slowly so as not to repeat his earlier mistake, and though some of it came more naturally to the man, he still had some trouble getting his fingers to follow through with the motions. “Interesting,” he said. “Interesting, but not impossible to deal with…” Milae approached and took Yun’s staff for a moment, thinking. A swipe of movement caught Yun’s eye as he did so. Juro’s pen was practically flying across the notebook across his crossed legs. Yun bit his lower lip nervously. 
“Alright, come on, focus on me.” Milae gently tapped Yun’s head with a bonk of wood.
“Sorry,” he said, taking his staff back as Milae stepped back. The goat put both hooves and his own weapon behind his back and considered Yun, his ear flicking once.
“I want you to close your eyes,” Milae ordered.
“Oh…okay?” Yun hesitantly did so, sure that he was about to be humiliated further. He could feel a slight sheen of sweat between his fingers and the wooden grip.
“Ready up.”
Both the memory of Milae’s recent instruction, and a distant callout of a stiff, Central accent echoed across his mind, and outwardly, Milae saw his brow knit in concentration, along with his fingers spreading slightly along the staff in an odd shape–pinky touching ring fingers, and index touching middle. Milae’s pupils shifted in the ever-changing sunlight, and he watched with curious excitement. In one swift movement, Yun copied Milae’s most common readying stance exactly, planting his feet firmly against the damp earth, and he couldn’t help a wide grin break across his muzzle. 
“There it is,” he said in a low voice. “Good, good job. Does that feel better?“
“Yeah, but…you’re not going to make me fight with my eyes closed, are you?”
Instead of answering, Yun heard Milae say, “Upper hand block,” and Yun took the next stance, bracing his left forearm up against the staff while holding it steady with his right. A dragon cry emanated across the Jaw as the wind rushed overhead.
“Milae? Do I op–”
Yun’s arms shocked with a sudden crack of hardened pine clashing together, and he yelped and snapped his eyes open, taking a step back to brace himself. Milae’s grin looked far too cheeky. Another soft rumble of hushed laughter. “Apologies, I should have warned you.” He pushed a little with the staff, making Yun take a pace back. “No, we’re not fighting. You are getting used to taking hits.” He tapped the corner of his eye with a hoof. “Come on, now.”
“But I can’t see–!”
“And you were doing much better.” Reluctantly, Yun closed his eyes again, and heard Milae’s voice slide to his right. He held up the staff defensively, once more falling into a smoother, easier set of movements. “You will get to the point where you can trust your sight, but you should also understand an innate part of having seidr, even when using mundane weapons such as these. Brace!” Yun was ready for the staff that clashed into his this time. He listened even harder, hearing the soft fall of hooves against dirt under the the half-breed’s words. “Using the threads of time is not about being all-seeing. It is about using your previous knowledge to be ready when you dive in blind.” This time, Milae did not warn Yun, but the younger man heard the whistle of the staff from his back right, and in his mind’s eye, he saw stacks upon stacks of the exact same maneuver he performed in that instant. The snap of wood shook the air, and the crowd murmured. “The universe is your training ring. Your advantage is having as much time as you need to learn the patterns of your enemies, and this means that you use those patterns against them, and can easily spot when they break–” Yun sucked in an alarmed breath as he felt Milae rush him, and barely blocked him in time, his balance thrown, “–those patterns.” 
Yun peeked at Milae, and the goat tilted his head at him, casually handling the staff by his side in several lazy turns of the wrist. Over his shoulder, Dario had his chin in hand, his eyes bright and and loving and fixated on the sparring match, and Juro was shaking his head good-naturedly at him. “Focus, Yun.”
“Right–ah!” Milae attacked him once more, and even though the visual of his own hands tried to betray him, Yun made a practiced slash, not only blocking the staff, but throwing it to the side. The goat’s animal eyes gleamed, and Yun swallowed. The weapon was feeling more and more natural to him, but it was impossible to forget that Milae was far more practiced and nimble than he was. They started to circle each other, and there was an excited buzz in the air, given that there was a handful more rebels watching than when they started.  
“Never fought a half-breed before, have you?” Yun shook his head, keeping his eyes tracking on Milae’s staff and his hooves and legs, which bent in the strangest way as they moved. “You’ll be fighting many enemies I had yet to come across as your predecessor. These muscle memories will only take you so far. The rest will be up to you.” A tighten of furred tendons, a spray of dirt, and suddenly Yun’s arms shocked once, twice, and then a line of pain whipped across his calf as Milae expertly drew his cover upwards and spun the staff around to slip under and through, faster than any reaction time Yun felt like he could muster. He hissed in pain and slight frustration; he’d been doing well up until that point, and he was realizing Milae had been holding far, far back. “Why are you fighting me?“ Milae asked, commanding in tone.
“Cause you told me to!” 
The crowd had a good laugh at that, and Milae allowed himself another grin. “Yes, besides that. What is the purpose?”
“To win? Ow!” Milae’s staff cracked across his knuckles and he nearly dropped his own weapon in pain. The half-breed gave him room to breathe, but continued to slowly pursue him in a circle.
“Not as a practitioner of seidr. You are collecting information to discern weakness. What are you gathering right now?”
“You are way faster–” He yelped with another attack, trying to distance himself, but he felt sandwiched between a slowly advancing Milae and the ring he had drawn at the beginning of the match. “And you’re messing with me while I’m trying to listen…”
“Child’s play. What else?”
Yun tried to focus a little more seriously. The old time jumper hovered before him, the staff occasionally tracing small circles at either end as he readjusted to be ready to either strike or defend. His frame was still so strange–even though he was the same height as Yun, his center of gravity was different because of where his shoulders and neck were built. Yun’s gaze slid closer, to Milae’s arms, and the thin scar that bisected each part of his seal. An idea occurred to him. The two circled each other one more time, and then Yun quickly swung out a leg behind him to brace against the ground and brought the staff quickly overhead to strike down at Milae. The goat compensated just as he predicted–he took the force of the strike with most of his small body, absorbing the shock well, but the way he did so pointed out something very important. His forearms were crossed and braced behind the length of wood in an unprecedented way.
"You’re protecting your arms!” he called out triumphantly. Milae’s chest swelled.
“Exactly. Shields any larger than a very small buckler will put us at a disadvantage, so we must compensate with what we use to attack.” Yun went in again, and Milae’s staff quickly rotated in two extremely rapid circles, left, then right. The first to knock the staff aside, and Yun’s consciousness practically yelled at him to avoid the second rotation, as he knew that Milae liked to follow up after doing so. The air whistled as Yun lurched backwards, dodging just in time, and everyone buzzed again. The goat pressed forward, and he intentionally jabbed forward, trying to entangle the butt of the staff in Yun’s arms. The young man did his best to avoid this, but he found his inner forearms knocking against the staff very painfully. The sound made many people call out in excited sympathy. Another attempt to disengage, and Yun found he was locked into place. Their muscles strained against each other; Milae was far stronger and had his staff situationally pinned to keep Yun from pulling away. His heart beat a little faster. He saw Juro’s distant, bright gaze fixed on him out of the corner of his eye. 
“You’ve been learning,” Milae instructed, as the two of them held in the mock struggle. “You will use your own memories of timelines to reconstruct fight after fight, just as my memories have helped you this far. You will collect information. Sometimes that information will tell you that you won’t succeed, but in learning that…you already have. Because you always have a fallback. You always have the upper hand, so long as you protect that option.” Milae twisted the staff in a sudden, brusque movement, and Yun stumbled backwards and couldn’t catch himself, hitting the ground hard with both knees, still unable to wrest his staff away from Milae. “You haven’t seemed to have thought of it yet.” Milae’s voice was much more intense. Yun felt a light sweat break out across his brow and cheeks as his heart rate continued to increase.
“No, I know, it’s my seidr, but–!”
“But what?” The staff pushed harder and Yun was bent back further. He was panting lightly now. “Can you defeat me any other way?”
“I–”
Milae tilted his head aside to look at Yun more directly with one eye, and his expression was very pointed. The young man puffed his cheeks out in a sigh and strained one more time up against Milae’s hold. “I don’t know where to go!” he pleaded. 
“Overthinking will get you killed, Yun. Don’t feed me excuses.” Yun’s eyes widened at Milae’s harsh tone, and with one more wrench, Milae disarmed Yun, discarded the extra training staff behind him and pointed the butt of his weapon at the center of his chest. The thought that there could be a blade on the end of the staff in the future almost overwhelmed his realization, and as Milae wound up for a blow, Yun snapped his arms up and activated. 
He was kneeling in an empty field in the middle of the night, and he began shivering as the wind crashed over him with no buildings or gargantuan skeletal wolf to provide cover. But it was unpopulated, quiet, and safe–exactly what Yun had been picturing that he needed when he left. A herd of antelope pranced in the distance, horns gleaming in the strong moonlight. Yun got to his feet, catching his breath, and then fixed his eyes on the ground in front of him, trying to envision the circle, his fallen staff, and where Milae was standing. A bird cried across the fields as he closed his eyes, trusting his mental vision. Light flickered and raced up and down his forearms as he slowly curled his fingers into loose fists.
In the Jaw, Milae kicked Yun’s staff up into his hoof and held both of them at the ready, ends pointed down diagonally at the ground in parallel lines to his scarred arms. Several hushed whispers swept the training ring as the goat simply waited, ears flicking back and forth. 
Without warning, a rush of blood to the head for everyone in the vicinity, and Milae whirled around and crossed both staves in an X shape above his head, and another crack rang out across the Jaw as Yun and Milae stood with locked weapons. But there was one extra where it should not have been, in Yun’s hands. Shining above Milae’s head was an extremely familiar blade, long and gently curved, and worn with time. Tied near the head of the naginata on an iron ring, just below where blade met wood, there was a long strip of fabric snapping in the breeze, and though it should have been impossible, it shimmered teal with gold threads and dark amber undertones. Between the two of them, Yun’s seal was wavering and gleaming under his sleeves, shedding aquamarine light across both of their faces. They found each other’s gaze, and while Yun’s was full of shock, Milae’s was almost devious with pride. Where the Hel did he get that…?
The goat lifted a leg and roughly kicked Yun in the center of the chest, sending him back a few steps. The crowd gasped and bubbled with noise. Yun was now suddenly afraid of hurting Milae with a real weapon. But he quickly realized that Milae had no such qualms; he was teaching him a very intense lesson. They both swept their weapons together in another crack, followed up by several more. Milae was seamless with his dual staves, but now Yun had something in his hands that he felt like he had known for almost a thousand years. There was nothing special about the naginata proper, at least that he could tell–it just felt like an old friend. The difficulty of trying not to actually harm Milae started to trip him up, and he once more slipped out of the timeline to try and gain an advantage. But he was back almost instantly, behind Milae and sprinting forward to try and get the haft of the naginata in against his abdomen, similar to what Milae had done earlier. One of the staves clattered to the ground, and several people that had been sitting jumped to their feet, the noise getting louder outside the ring. Yun found Milae’s eyes and grinned, but Milae wasn’t ready to congratulate him yet. Yun went to leave again and Milae stopped him by batting aside one of his arms, making him cry out with the force of wood slapping bone. Dario jumped to his feet and Juro grabbed his arm, holding him for the moment.
“Aren’t you cheating?” Yun tried to joke, as he shook out his forearm and readied a few steps back. Milae’s eyes gleamed.
“Aren’t you?”
Yun shrugged and squared his shoulders, setting a foot back against the earth. His scars continued to flash and undulate with light. They engaged in another round of attacks and blocks, and Yun grew more and more comfortable with the fight as it passed. At the same time, Milae was definitely landing more hits than Yun was, and though Yun managed to peel away from the timeline once more and surprise Milae with a hefty blow to the shoulder blade, the goat still wasn’t going down. Yun tried to analyze him further, but he wasn’t getting much other than the fact that Milae was trying much, much harder.
Milae’s eyes suddenly shifted behind Yun, focusing on something else, his ears flicking forward alertly. “Something’s wrong with Juro,” he said in a low voice.
Yun’s heart quickly thundered and constricted. He went to glance over his shoulder, and that was when he saw Milae blur forward. He moved way too fast; Yun barely had time to react. The world went briefly white and then his temple exploded with pain, a blow that he could literally feel travel through his head and shock the rest of him. Very dimly, Yun felt the hard ground come up to meet his folding body, and he squinted up at the sky with a grimace, but as his arms started to lift in a daze, he felt a hoof step down on his wrist, pinning it to the ground, and the end of a staff pressed into the hollow of his throat. Yun let his aching head fall back to the ground, shutting his eyes in disappointment. The light swirling under his sleeves flickered and died away. The onlookers called out and heckled good-naturedly; they were familiar with Milae and how well he could fight. The outcome came as no surprise.
“Okay, that was definitely cheating,” Yun croaked, feeling wounded at the deception.
A soft chuckle. “It was a test, but you didn’t necessarily fail.” Milae planted his staff in the ground and extended a hoof to Yun. The intense aura around him had mostly vanished, and he seemed kind and relaxed once more. Yun took his hand and sat up, clumsily brushing dirt off of himself as the world spun a little. “Your allies getting hurt doesn’t change the fact that you are in a fight, or that your enemy will take any chance they can get to kill you. Your focus needs to be on yourself and being available to activate at any time, so that you can help others if they fall, or communicate with leaders and retrieve aid. Alright?”
Yun looked down, still feeling a bit of bruising to his ego, and Milae knelt and put a hoof on his shoulder. “You did well,” he said intently. “I am trying to help you see where you are lacking, so that you succeed in the future.”
The young seidkonur twisted a more genuine smile at him, nodding. “Okay. Thanks.” Milae affectionately bumped foreheads with him, and then helped him to his feet. The rebels had started to meander off now that the sparring had drawn to a close.
“We’ll keep up with this,” Milae said, picking up the naginata and looking at it closely before handing it back. “I will meet with you tonight for a different lesson. One that leaves less bruises.” Milae gave a wry smile and gestured with his staff, pointing at the side of Yun’s head, and Yun ran his fingers through his tousled black hair, feeling a goose egg starting to form. He grinned shyly.
“That sounds good.”
Milae softly pushed Yun by the shoulder with his staff, turning him towards Dario and Juro. His hazel goat eyes were gentle and proud. “Go get healed and gather your strength. You’ll need it.”