The Lenaris Cycle
Chapter 1: The First Thing You Learn . . .
The first thing you learn as a Warrior of Akela is to block. When you are young, with loose joints, brittle bones, and clueless as a half reformed criminal, you learn to block. You learn to block before you ever are even hinted that you will learn how to strike. Akela's teachings tell us that one can cause more change, more good fortunes, and certainly less horrors simply by blocking a stray blow than with a graze of any mortal weapon.
Life can never be given back, but death is always able to be dealt like cards of fate. Even though we are called the Warriors of Akela, our primary role is one of defense. Only in one war were we ever tools of offence, and the world and we paid for it greatly. So thus, the first thing you learn as a Warrior of Akela is to block.
Most warrior orders that focus on defense use shields, armor, or at times staves or other such defensive weapons. Warriors of Akela don't even touch a sword until they have the primary tool of any Warrior of Akela down to an art. The first tool a warrior is given when they join the order is a large bracer. It goes from their wrist, sometimes with parts of it going to lace between their fingers, all the way down to their elbow. Besides being nearly indestructible, ornamental, and specially made for each and every warrior, these bracers are the very foundation of every Warrior of Akela's training.
These bracers can block anything. A stray blow, a heart blow, and they even work for the person next to you. It's a bit of a self sacrifice to use your main defensive technique to save the person next to you and leave yourself open, but it is common practice among the ranks of Akela. Beyond just being useful, these bracers also serve a very special ceremonial purpose. Whenever two warriors duel, the first move the two make is to bring their bracer arms up high, and bring them down towards each other's heads. Of course, this is done in such a way so that the two bracers meet, metal to metal. Bracers are to stay pressed up against each other for an entire battle. Sometimes, the warriors will entwine fingers. There are even known to be some bracers that are already two attached, but I don't see why they would be needed.
Though when a warrior begins his or her training the bracer goes from wrist to elbow, gradually they are given a new bracer, a smaller and smaller one. Some warriors eventually once they have mastered the use of a bracer barely wider than their own wrist will switch back to their first bracer that they ever used, feeling that mastery is all that is needed for training, and that on the field one needs any extra help they can get. On the opposite side, some warriors eventually wear a thin strip of metal no bigger than a small bracelet and claim they have never regretted not going back to a larger size.
My personal belief, is that you should use whatever keeps you alive, and whichever you use best. Some just aren't meant to protect against a two handed axe with something thin as a coin. Yet in the end, it is not only the bracer in which all warriors must inevitably be trained in. There is another very important component to any warrior, whether they be of Akela or no.
Unlike most paths of a warrior, a Warrior of Akela wields their bracer on their primary wrist, and their weapon in their off hand. Though there have been exceptions where one of the caste used a different weapon, the primary weapon of this sect of warriors is a long curved sword. If it is the weapon's proper name or not, over time it has come to be known under many a name, from the sword of balance, to simply cutlass. Whether it's design is more efficient than a hand and a half sword isn't even up for debate. Akela used a cutlass in her days as a mortal woman. That is all any Warrior of Akela truly needs to know to make their choice of weapon.
So a Warrior Akela learns to block with her primary hand, strike with the other, though often times both hands work in concert. Most opponents can be worn down and driven to the point of total exhaustion. When this is an ineffective tactic, either the bracer or the blade itself can easily become weapons. The gems that often stud those shining bracers often make very them useful bashing weapons. But generally us in Akela's service do not go out seeking adventure. Generally, we don't go out seeking action.
Generally, it seems to come to us all on it's own.
There was a time ages ago when the Warriors were a clan that was in every town, in every kingdom, on every isle of land no matter how great or diminutive. The Warriors of Akela were the world's protectors, along with several other clans. They did not act as a police force, but rather an extension of balance itself, hands and eyes and mouths and ears of our goddess. This all broke apart when The Knights came, when Delonna came, and when we tried to save the world from the fallen warrior Shashonna. Since those horrors, the Warriors have fallen into disgrace. Akela's name is often not a safe one to align one's name to. But still, the Warriors of Akela do not fight back against these false beliefs of our evil.
That is simply not our style.
For you see, as a Warrior of Akela, the first thing you learn to do, is block.
