"Ow!" I yelped as a rock smacked into the back of my skull. The stone turned to powder on impact, having been thrown hard enough to break on my higher ranked head. I reached up to grip my head with a hiss of pain, spinning around to try to spot the person who threw it. Something I had no luck doing while wearing this gods damned blindfold. I heard a chuckle to one side and whirled to face that direction. "How is this a useful training exercise?" I snarled at Abel, who was completely hidden from my sight.

Abel's voice echoed around us. "I already told you this. When you're working with a partner, you need to be able to function as if you're two halves of a whole. It's not enough to just cover their back. You need to abandon your own defense and dedicate yourself solely to theirs. A proper partnership means you can unleash your full attack power at all times with no thought to defending yourself. Protecting your partner can be done offensively, but in order for that to work, you need absolute trust."

I whirled uselessly in circles, listening for the sound of stones flying. Not near me, but off to the side where Callie stood. I couldn't resist pointing out the obvious though. "Yes, but there has to be a better way to do that than...THIS. This is ridiculous-" My eyes widened behind my mask as I heard a sound, shooting out to attack the spot I heard the stone split the air. My fist hit nothing and I heard Callie yelp in pain as the sound of a rock being destroyed against a human skull rang dully in the air.

I winced. "Sorry baby." I got a snarl of annoyance in response, but Callie didn't speak. It was my turn now anyway though, so it wasn't like it would matter. Still, I had to admit, I HAD actually noticed that attack, if belatedly. I groaned. "Ok. I get the basic idea, but can you explain the actual mechanics of this bullshit again? Because if you can't make it make sense, I'm going to assume you just like throwing rocks at us."

That got a snicker from our teacher. "Fine. I'll explain it one more time. When you're operating as part of a team, you are half of a whole. Concentrating on protecting yourself and working with your partner are TWO tasks. Separate tasks that detract from each other. However, when you abandon self defense and dedicate yourself completely to cooperation, you reach a level cohesion impossible when you're just two independent entities supporting one another."

There was another whoosh of air and a crack against my skull as I staggered under another rock blow, yelping in pain. I wasn't allowed to block his attacks on me. Only the ones aimed at Callie. I also wasn't allowed to fucking SEE. Apparently the point of this was to hone our instinctual response to danger aimed at the other to work indistinguishably from our own survival instinct. By making it perfect reflex to defend the other person, we would have deeper integration in combat.

Being able to see the attacks coming would make this a conscious effort rather than a reflexive action. So we both got to wear fucking blindfolds and try to defend the other person in darkness based on intuition and the brief instant of noise when the rock was launched. I sighed, devoting myself to perceiving...everything. I really needed to get this down, since we apparently wouldn't be allowed to stop until we managed it.

I closed my eyes (not that it mattered with the blindfold, but it just felt right) and focused on my senses. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch. Literally anything that could function in a helpful way. I could have used a skill obviously. Seek Hidden would be perfect here. But despite my complaining I was mildly interested to see if this would work. I already felt like I was seeing some results, and I didn't want to ruin my possible gains by cheating. It would defeat the whole fucking purpose of asking for their help if we just ignored them.

A sigh of air split the space a few feet to my side, and I lashed out at the spot as quickly as possible. At the last second though, I altered my course, aiming instead right in front of where the thing had been when I heard it. I didn't manage to actually land the hit, but I DID manage to slightly graze it. I heard a grunt from Callie, but it sounded different. "Time out!" Mel called. "That was actually close to a proper hit. Not exactly reflexive, you're thinking too much, but it's progress, so you can have a break."

I took off my blindfold, glancing over to see Callie brushing grey dust off her shoulder. The slight graze had changed the trajectory slightly. That wasn't bad. Still. I had to question the process. "Ok. Being able to properly predict attacks is great and all, but I don't think this is having the effect you think it is. I'm just learning to predict attacks, and there are less stupid ways to do that."

Mel snickered at that. "Do you think so? Quick question then. If you just heard the sound of the air being disturbed and reacted, how did you know what direction it was heading? You didn't just predict where it was going, you managed to perfectly match that prediction to where your partner was standing so you could properly react to it. You showed an innate grasp of exactly where Nightstrike was positioned without needing to call out to her or bother with verbal communication."

Abel stepped into view, tossing a rock up and down casually. "She's right. You might not think you're learning anything, but your baseline awareness of each other IS improving. It's just a slow and irritating process to go through. Trust me. We did this training too. It's never fun." He paused, catching the rock. "Well, that's not true. It's fun actually DOING it to someone. But experiencing the training is never fun."

"I get it." I said with annoyance. "I just wish I felt like we were managing this effectively instead of stumbling through it. Can we take a minute though? I need some time to kind of mentally reset." Abel looked dubious for a second, but finally nodded, and I exhaled with relief. There was such a thing as too much training. Sometimes your brain needed to shift back to a receptive state before you could learn more.

Producing a small case from his coat, he gestured us over to the edge of the ring to sit down. We were in the Pavilion, using some sort of training setup that he'd had on hand, bracelets that partially suppressed Perception, and probably did other things I didn't notice.

When we all sat down he opened the case and started pulling out what looked a bit like energy bars, passing one to each of us. I took mine, sniffed it experimentally, then took a bite. I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of strawberries and cream, and chewed happily. Eventually though, I swallowed and turned to Abel with a question. "Can I ask you something? It might be a little abrupt, maybe even personal depending how you look at it?"

He just shrugged, seemingly uncaring, and I paused to figure out how to frame my next words. "How do you do it?" I asked. "How do you kill people so casually? We killed a bunch of people in the siege, I killed them. I know it was necessary, that they would have killed or hurt us, but it still makes me sick just thinking about it. How do you learn to ignore the part of you that recoils at that?"

Rather than be offended, Abel just made a noise of understanding and interest, like I'd asked something very interesting. "I suppose to answer that I would need to really know when it happened. My case was a bit different though. Cicero and I lost our parents young, and I think that triggered our abilities sooner than was normal. We were still children when our powers came to the forefront. We ended up down here, where Alden took us in, and we were raised for this kind of life from a very young age."

He looked at Mel wistfully. "Mel was already here when we arrived. She awakened even earlier than we did. I never asked why. Didn't seem right. I suppose none of us ever had the resistance to ending others that normal people develop and Ascendants unlearn. For other Ascendants, I suppose part of it is recursion. Cultivation is brutal, we all know it deep down, we all know that there are only so many stories to tell, and that for ours to continue others must end, even if we fight it."

"But." He said. "If you're asking how to turn that off, how to stop caring when you take a life...don't. It's inconvenient, and messy, but caring like that makes you better. It's a little bit of humanity that other Ascendants mostly don't have. Touchstones like that are, somewhat counterintuitively good for holding off other forms of recursion as you grow. If nurtured properly, you can use that as a foundation to build the person you are in such a way that you'll come out stronger for it." He sighed. "I'm explaining this badly, but it isn't something you can understand without a decade or two of recursion behind you. Just trust me. Don't stop caring. Not until you have to."

It was strange talking to someone at the same rank as me that was already so much further into their life as an Ascendant. Even stranger because he felt so much further along the process of becoming a legend than I was. We had the same Impact, but it felt like he'd left behind so much more of his humanity. Was it the time? Was I somehow avoiding recursion by sprinting through the ranks? But then again had I really? I'd changed so much since becoming an Ascendant.

Maybe it was the fact that I was a superhero. Abel wasn't exactly a villain, the WCP didn't really delineate that kind of thing, but he wasn't considered a hero even back in the day. Abel was closer to a pure cultivator than a heroic cultivator. Hell, I didn't even know if he used the job system. That wasn't the kind of thing you asked someone who was already going out of their way to help you. The subject of recursion never failed to unsettle me when it came up.

I just sighed. This shit was complicated. I finished my power bar and popped to my feet, putting the wrapper in my pocket. "Alright. I think that's enough philosophy. I believe you two still have rocks to throw at our heads. I'd like to get this training out of the way so we can move on. You said this is a necessary first step right?" I was now mostly convinced it wasn't just an excuse to beat on us, but I couldn't help but ask one more time. My questions couldn't possibly be more annoying than the training itself, so I hardly had a reason to feel bad.

Abel stood up, stretching casually despite having been doing nothing but throwing rocks at us for like two hours. "Once your awareness of each other has reached an instinctive level we can begin combat training. I'm not going to start teaching you when you'll just develop bad habits you'll need to unlearn. This is the first step, we need to get it right so the following ones will be built on a stable foundation." He tossed a rock up and caught it, giving me a vicious grin. "Now, blindfolds back on. We have work to do." Joy. My head was aching already.