From the top of the keep's stairs, it was possible to see one of the practice yards. Presently, Leon was doing just that, Michäel next to him. The yard in view currently had several people working drills or battering away at practice dummies, but one of its most frequent occupants was quite stuck on the sidelines.
Even from this distance, the red hair made Khari very easy to pick out in a crowd. As did the way she carried herself, though Leon doubted she recognized the latter. At the moment, however, the ease and uprightness of her typical posture had given way to something much less impressive. She leaned against the fence, for all he could tell silent in her survey of the others, either unwilling or unable to participate. He knew why, of course. He could understand it quite well. Estella was not the only one who knew how it felt to be paralyzed by self-doubt. If anything, Leon suspected his case and Khari's were actually more similar than either of theirs was to what the Inquisitor contended with.
“I'm not asking you to decide right out," he said, glancing at Michäel from the corner of his eye. “It is quite a lot, should you choose to accept. But if you wouldn't mind at least observing for a while, I think you'll find she's a worthy candidate."
Michäel nodded slightly, though he kept his eyes on the practice yard below. "Yes ser, there is promise in that one," he agreed absently. He stood at military rest, his hands clasped behind a straightened spine, beside the Commander. Ever since Lady Marceline had assumed the role of the Inquisition's ambassador and brought her husband with her, he had served as an advisor of sorts to the Inquisition's army, though that mostly included consulting with the Lions in coming up with training regiments for the regulars, as well as checking the quality of arms and armor. Leon had seen many reports written in Michäel's impeccable handwriting.
“Then if you would not mind remaining here for a while, I will go... speak to her." Somehow, Leon doubted that was really what was going to happen as such, but he elected to leave it at that for now. Michäel would be able to read between the lines of the statement well enough.
"Good luck Commander," Michäel added with a wry grin.
His progress towards the training ring was broken by quite a lot of respectful nods and a few salutes; while he'd managed to convince the majority of the people he saw regularly that such things were not necessary with him, he of course was not often among the regulars unannounced, and he could not fault them for being polite by default. Still, it eventually became clear that he wasn't there for any sort of official inspection, and they went back to slightly-uneasily ignoring his presence after a while.
Leon approached Khari, electing to brace his hands on the fence next to where she stood and join her in her observation of the drilling and practice. “Seldom do I encounter you close to the practice but not participating," he remarked mildly, casting a glance down at her. It was quite a distance, admittedly. Normally, her spirit made her seem much larger than she was, but he was quite underwhelmed by comparison at the moment.
She seemed somewhat deflated, in all honesty, slumped a little too far over the fence. Even his presence didn't have the near-automatic energizing effect that it had on her when she was constantly badgering him to spar with her. She tilted her head up far enough to catch his eye for just a second before she sighed. “Yeah." She shrugged, the agreement falling a little flat. Khari braced her elbows on the fence, her expression pensive. Never really the type to conceal much, she was easy to read now as well. Especially for someone with as much practice as Leon had. The slouching curve of her posture, the vague listlessness of her eyes. It all pointed to the same thing.
“Guess you probably wanna demote me now, huh? Told you all this great stuff about my training when I applied and all." She scrunched her nose. “I won't make a big deal out of it, if I can stay at all." She flicked another glance up at him then, a bit more urgently. “I... I can stay, right? I'm honestly not totally sure how this works."
Leon felt his mouth twist down. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised. By some understandings, Khari's own honor had been contaminated by the deeds of her teacher. He did not doubt she was questioning the legitimacy of her standing in more ways than one. In relation to more than just the Inquisition. He also wasn't sure that it was enough to tell her he couldn't give less of a damn about it. No doubt closer friends than he had already tried, and if she was still down like this, it was something she probably had to work through on her own.
What he could give her was a jump-start.
“You want to stay?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Then prove it." Turning back towards the ring, he took a deep breath and called out in his booming bass.
“Everyone clear the area!" He suppressed the natural urge to add a 'please.' It was, after all, not a request. While the regulars scrambled to get out of the way as fast as possible, resetting all the training equipment in the process, the commander returned his attention to Khari. “I placed you into the Irregulars with a test. I'll decide where you go now the same way. Arm yourself and get into the ring."
He'd shocked the dull grimness off her face, at any rate. “Wait, but... what? I can't fight you—I don't even have a sword!" Khari's eyes were wide; she gripped the fence with pale knuckles, hovering uncertainly between swinging under to enter the dirt ring and... well, something else. Perhaps even fleeing.
“Oh?" Leon hardened his tone deliberately. Catching Reed's eye, he gestured him over. “Reed's blade is about the size and heft of the one you usually use. I'm sure he would not object to you borrowing it." His aide shook his head to indicate that it was fine, drawing the sword from its place over his shoulder and holding it hilt-first towards Khari.
Leon pitched his voice at such a volume as to make himself easily audible to everyone now exiting the practice area. “Or am I to understand that you are refusing a challenge?" He kept his expression stern, but he truly hoped he was not miscalculating here. He hoped he understood what she was feeling well enough, understood her well enough, that he was making the right move.
For a moment, it was honestly impossible to say. Khari's expression closed off, losing its former easy readability. Her brows drew down, and she seemed to teeter on a thin edge between acceptance and refusal. And with the way he'd drawn the stakes, it was no trivial decision. Her hands dropped from the fence rail, balling into fists.
“I'm not refusing anything." She snarled the words as much as she said them, reaching for Reed's sword and snatching it from his grip, ducking under the fence and coming up on the other side. She walked backwards towards the center, tilting her chin up to keep eye contact with him the entire time. “Let's go, commander! I've never been patient, and I'm not about to start now!"
Leon went over the rail. Saying anything else was unnecessary at this point. They began with no formalities, no words of ritual or gentleman's bows or anything of the sort. For all their differences, they had one thing in common: they had learned to fight in only the most brutally-pragmatic of ways. To use whatever they had, however they could, to keep themselves alive. After that, the rest of it was only decoration.
Unarmored, Leon would be easy enough to cut, but that was only assuming she could land a hit on him in the first place. He didn't intend to make it a simple matter, but even so, he was not content to be merely defensive. It wasn't his way any more than it was hers, and he charged at her with all the speed his lack of encumbrance afforded him, perfectly willing to come within range of her borrowed weapon.
Khari didn't stand there and wait for him to come to her, either. Instead, she ran to meet him, collecting momentum as she churned up the ground under her feet, angling left and swinging for his legs. It was clear she meant to let the weight of their charges do most of the damage.
Leon saw it coming and jumped to avoid the low hit, twisting his body around and converting the torque into a heavy kick for her midsection. He pulled it to the extent he was able—he had no desire to cave in her ribcage, of course, only to put her flat on her back in the dirt.
It might not have broken anything, but there was no doubting that Khari felt it. She turned her body slightly into the blow just before it landed, reducing the impact, but not by nearly enough to match Leon's sheer power. The breath left her lungs in a whoosh; she flew back several feet and landed hard on the ground, rolling a few times. It took her a second to move again, but then she was back on her feet, spitting a glob of blood to one side from where she must have inadvertently bitten her tongue or the inside of her mouth.
“Fuck, you're strong." She flashed a red grin at him, and then charged again. Having realized that his legs were not what to aim for when he was so mobile, she swung for his chest the second time. It was a considerably larger target.
“From you, I will consider that a compliment." Unlike Khari's berserker talents, Leon did not need to be under the influence of rage to spar. It was a different matter entirely when he had to kill, but of course that was the furthest thing from his intention here. As a result, he found it rather enjoyable.
Her second attempt was much better; he sidestepped and caught the blade of the sword between his palms, twisting up and over in an attempt to disarm her.
Rather than simply letting go, Khari redoubled her grip on the hilt of the sword, twisting with him and letting her knees buckle, effectively becoming dead weight. It was additionally complicated, however, by the fact that she was making every effort to tangle her legs with his, as though she intended to bring him to the ground as well.
Grappling was not something most people ever attempted with Leon. His size alone tended to dissuade it, he supposed. The fact that he fought barehanded by choice was also perhaps a reliable indicator that he knew very well how to handle himself on the ground. The attempt was audacious in the extreme, but then, this was Khari. That should not be surprising.
Instead of letting it happen, he released her sword, dropping her to the floor with it, then anchored his balance on one foot and tore the other free of hers, stepping on her right arm hard enough to pin it to the ground.
Abandoning the effort to tangle up his legs, Khari kicked at the one within reach, closing her free fingers around a handful of sand and hurling it in the general direction of his face.
It had further to go than it went, but Leon stepped off her anyway, allowing her to regain her feet before he went on the offensive again.
There was never any question of which one of them was going to win, but Leon didn't expect there to be. He was genuinely impressed, however, by the way Khari seemed to learn even as the fight progressed. By a few minutes in, she'd already absorbed enough about how he moved to avoid the obvious mistakes, and there was no denying her swiftness and talent for improvising things as she went. Every time he so much as left her an opening, intentionally or otherwise, she was right there, having spotted it and acted quickly to take advantage. More than once, his defense was hastier than he would have liked, as he rushed to keep up with her attacks.
He jumped back, dropping once more into a defensive stance. He wanted to see what she planned to do next.
She didn't disappoint, surging forward to attack almost immediately. She feinted left first, then spun away from his block without ever actually touching it. The heavy hand-and-a-half in her grip rushed for his arm, leaving a shallow cut when he didn't move away quite fast enough to avoid it entirely. It was a trivial injury at best, especially considering the wounds she'd taken in the course of the fight. Leon might have turned his blows, and she'd gotten used to minimizing the impact when she took them, but she'd likely be a mess of bruises for quite some time after the match. But nevertheless, she'd landed a blow.
As soon as she'd done it, he raised his hand. “Enough." Leon straightened, rolling his shoulders out and lifting his uninjured arm to wipe the sweat from his brow. She'd certainly kept him on his toes. Letting his hand drop back down, he offered her a smile. “As I suspected. You're just as qualified to be here as you were the day you arrived. Moreso, in fact."
He moved his eyes over her shoulder. “You think so, too, don't you, Michäel?"
"I do, ser," came the reply. During the spar, Michäel had descended the keep's stairs and took up a spot nearest the fence line, the purple in his cloak standing out from the sea of russet the Inquisition's soldiers wore. He looked in with impish smirk across his lips as he absently stroked his beard, clearly invested the fight he'd just watched. "Granted," he added, allowing his hand to fall from his face and limply in front of him, "The girl has her rough edges to be sure, but it is nothing that I cannot grind away in time." His large frame swayed from an internal chuckle.
Khari, breath still sawing in and out of her lungs, lowered Reed's sword. She came slowly out of whatever battle-high seized her in the middle of a match. As she did, a look of confusion blossomed over her face. “Wait... what?" The point of the sword brushed slightly over the dirt before she realized that and lifted it again. “What's Ser Michäel doing here, anyway?"
"Watching," he answered, which caused a few of the soldiers to chuckle at such a obvious response. "Gauging," he added, this time more honestly. "You have the practical experience to keep yourself alive, despite your best efforts. But what could you do with more I wonder?" he said, leaning forward and a fence post and steepling his fingers together "What you could do with a chevalier's training?"
“But—" Khari looked, perhaps understandably, a bit flabbergasted by the question. Handing Reed's sword back to him, she rubbed the back of her hand against her brow, scrubbing off some sweat. The contemplative look returned to her face. “Why?" Her tone was suspicious, and she moved her glance between Leon and Michäel, settling on the latter. “Why would you want to do that for me? It's not like I can just enroll in the Academie and... and do things that way. It's not like you need more hands for your bandit problem. So why go to all the trouble?"
Her brows were furrowed now, forming a deep crease over her nose. Her lips had compressed into a thin line, and the muscles in her shoulders and neck were unmistakably tense.
"You have potential and we have no wish to see it squandered by bashing your head into every sword arm and shield wall you can find from here to Antiva," Michäel answered sternly. He'd lost his grin and now frowned. "And I do not know if you have noticed, but the Inquisition faces more than just bandits. The Ventori, the red templars, both led by a magister turned darkspawn somewhere in Thedas. That qualifies a little more than a bandit problem, do you agree?" He'd risen from the post and now stood straight, his arms crossed beneath his cloak.
"You cannot enroll into the Academie, that much is true, but neither could Aveline," he said, referencing the old Orlesian tale. "I cannot make you a chevalier, but I can train you like one. What you do with that training is up to you."
“I don't know what the status of your ambitions is," Leon admitted gently. It was entirely possible that Khari didn't want to be a chevalier anymore, or was no longer certain what she wanted. “But you should know that regardless, the foundation of your abilities is still what it is. If we are to succeed in defeating Corypheus, each one of us needs to improve. We all need to keep training and honing our talents. I'm not an exception. Ser Michäel is not. And I'm sure you know that you aren't either."
He sighed. “If that is all this is, training to build on your foundations, then it need not be more. But if you still want what you wanted two weeks ago, then this will help. I understand feeling like your foundation is giving way underneath you. But it isn't. Not in this respect. You're talented, Khari, and you deserve to be able to develop that talent. It does not matter to us who taught you—only what you do with what you've learned."
She swallowed thickly. A little of the tension left her posture, but not all of it, and she stared intently at the ground under their feet for several long, slow moments. “Okay." She nodded slightly, almost to herself, and raised her head. “I get it. And... and thank you. I'll learn whatever you want to teach me, however you think is best. But..." her expression hardened for a moment. “I want to know all of it. Everything any other chevalier learns. So that if something happens again, I know. I know what honor means and how to follow it."
"Good," Michäel said, the smirk slowly returning to his face. "If I were you, I would enjoy the rest of the day. It will be your last easy one for a long while," he glanced at Leon, indicating that yes, that was even including their spar.
"See the quartermaster and get outfitted for full plate. You will need it for your morning runs."
Even from this distance, the red hair made Khari very easy to pick out in a crowd. As did the way she carried herself, though Leon doubted she recognized the latter. At the moment, however, the ease and uprightness of her typical posture had given way to something much less impressive. She leaned against the fence, for all he could tell silent in her survey of the others, either unwilling or unable to participate. He knew why, of course. He could understand it quite well. Estella was not the only one who knew how it felt to be paralyzed by self-doubt. If anything, Leon suspected his case and Khari's were actually more similar than either of theirs was to what the Inquisitor contended with.
“I'm not asking you to decide right out," he said, glancing at Michäel from the corner of his eye. “It is quite a lot, should you choose to accept. But if you wouldn't mind at least observing for a while, I think you'll find she's a worthy candidate."
Michäel nodded slightly, though he kept his eyes on the practice yard below. "Yes ser, there is promise in that one," he agreed absently. He stood at military rest, his hands clasped behind a straightened spine, beside the Commander. Ever since Lady Marceline had assumed the role of the Inquisition's ambassador and brought her husband with her, he had served as an advisor of sorts to the Inquisition's army, though that mostly included consulting with the Lions in coming up with training regiments for the regulars, as well as checking the quality of arms and armor. Leon had seen many reports written in Michäel's impeccable handwriting.
“Then if you would not mind remaining here for a while, I will go... speak to her." Somehow, Leon doubted that was really what was going to happen as such, but he elected to leave it at that for now. Michäel would be able to read between the lines of the statement well enough.
"Good luck Commander," Michäel added with a wry grin.
His progress towards the training ring was broken by quite a lot of respectful nods and a few salutes; while he'd managed to convince the majority of the people he saw regularly that such things were not necessary with him, he of course was not often among the regulars unannounced, and he could not fault them for being polite by default. Still, it eventually became clear that he wasn't there for any sort of official inspection, and they went back to slightly-uneasily ignoring his presence after a while.
Leon approached Khari, electing to brace his hands on the fence next to where she stood and join her in her observation of the drilling and practice. “Seldom do I encounter you close to the practice but not participating," he remarked mildly, casting a glance down at her. It was quite a distance, admittedly. Normally, her spirit made her seem much larger than she was, but he was quite underwhelmed by comparison at the moment.
She seemed somewhat deflated, in all honesty, slumped a little too far over the fence. Even his presence didn't have the near-automatic energizing effect that it had on her when she was constantly badgering him to spar with her. She tilted her head up far enough to catch his eye for just a second before she sighed. “Yeah." She shrugged, the agreement falling a little flat. Khari braced her elbows on the fence, her expression pensive. Never really the type to conceal much, she was easy to read now as well. Especially for someone with as much practice as Leon had. The slouching curve of her posture, the vague listlessness of her eyes. It all pointed to the same thing.
“Guess you probably wanna demote me now, huh? Told you all this great stuff about my training when I applied and all." She scrunched her nose. “I won't make a big deal out of it, if I can stay at all." She flicked another glance up at him then, a bit more urgently. “I... I can stay, right? I'm honestly not totally sure how this works."
Leon felt his mouth twist down. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised. By some understandings, Khari's own honor had been contaminated by the deeds of her teacher. He did not doubt she was questioning the legitimacy of her standing in more ways than one. In relation to more than just the Inquisition. He also wasn't sure that it was enough to tell her he couldn't give less of a damn about it. No doubt closer friends than he had already tried, and if she was still down like this, it was something she probably had to work through on her own.
What he could give her was a jump-start.
“You want to stay?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Then prove it." Turning back towards the ring, he took a deep breath and called out in his booming bass.
“Everyone clear the area!" He suppressed the natural urge to add a 'please.' It was, after all, not a request. While the regulars scrambled to get out of the way as fast as possible, resetting all the training equipment in the process, the commander returned his attention to Khari. “I placed you into the Irregulars with a test. I'll decide where you go now the same way. Arm yourself and get into the ring."
He'd shocked the dull grimness off her face, at any rate. “Wait, but... what? I can't fight you—I don't even have a sword!" Khari's eyes were wide; she gripped the fence with pale knuckles, hovering uncertainly between swinging under to enter the dirt ring and... well, something else. Perhaps even fleeing.
“Oh?" Leon hardened his tone deliberately. Catching Reed's eye, he gestured him over. “Reed's blade is about the size and heft of the one you usually use. I'm sure he would not object to you borrowing it." His aide shook his head to indicate that it was fine, drawing the sword from its place over his shoulder and holding it hilt-first towards Khari.
Leon pitched his voice at such a volume as to make himself easily audible to everyone now exiting the practice area. “Or am I to understand that you are refusing a challenge?" He kept his expression stern, but he truly hoped he was not miscalculating here. He hoped he understood what she was feeling well enough, understood her well enough, that he was making the right move.
For a moment, it was honestly impossible to say. Khari's expression closed off, losing its former easy readability. Her brows drew down, and she seemed to teeter on a thin edge between acceptance and refusal. And with the way he'd drawn the stakes, it was no trivial decision. Her hands dropped from the fence rail, balling into fists.
“I'm not refusing anything." She snarled the words as much as she said them, reaching for Reed's sword and snatching it from his grip, ducking under the fence and coming up on the other side. She walked backwards towards the center, tilting her chin up to keep eye contact with him the entire time. “Let's go, commander! I've never been patient, and I'm not about to start now!"
Leon went over the rail. Saying anything else was unnecessary at this point. They began with no formalities, no words of ritual or gentleman's bows or anything of the sort. For all their differences, they had one thing in common: they had learned to fight in only the most brutally-pragmatic of ways. To use whatever they had, however they could, to keep themselves alive. After that, the rest of it was only decoration.
Unarmored, Leon would be easy enough to cut, but that was only assuming she could land a hit on him in the first place. He didn't intend to make it a simple matter, but even so, he was not content to be merely defensive. It wasn't his way any more than it was hers, and he charged at her with all the speed his lack of encumbrance afforded him, perfectly willing to come within range of her borrowed weapon.
Khari didn't stand there and wait for him to come to her, either. Instead, she ran to meet him, collecting momentum as she churned up the ground under her feet, angling left and swinging for his legs. It was clear she meant to let the weight of their charges do most of the damage.
Leon saw it coming and jumped to avoid the low hit, twisting his body around and converting the torque into a heavy kick for her midsection. He pulled it to the extent he was able—he had no desire to cave in her ribcage, of course, only to put her flat on her back in the dirt.
It might not have broken anything, but there was no doubting that Khari felt it. She turned her body slightly into the blow just before it landed, reducing the impact, but not by nearly enough to match Leon's sheer power. The breath left her lungs in a whoosh; she flew back several feet and landed hard on the ground, rolling a few times. It took her a second to move again, but then she was back on her feet, spitting a glob of blood to one side from where she must have inadvertently bitten her tongue or the inside of her mouth.
“Fuck, you're strong." She flashed a red grin at him, and then charged again. Having realized that his legs were not what to aim for when he was so mobile, she swung for his chest the second time. It was a considerably larger target.
“From you, I will consider that a compliment." Unlike Khari's berserker talents, Leon did not need to be under the influence of rage to spar. It was a different matter entirely when he had to kill, but of course that was the furthest thing from his intention here. As a result, he found it rather enjoyable.
Her second attempt was much better; he sidestepped and caught the blade of the sword between his palms, twisting up and over in an attempt to disarm her.
Rather than simply letting go, Khari redoubled her grip on the hilt of the sword, twisting with him and letting her knees buckle, effectively becoming dead weight. It was additionally complicated, however, by the fact that she was making every effort to tangle her legs with his, as though she intended to bring him to the ground as well.
Grappling was not something most people ever attempted with Leon. His size alone tended to dissuade it, he supposed. The fact that he fought barehanded by choice was also perhaps a reliable indicator that he knew very well how to handle himself on the ground. The attempt was audacious in the extreme, but then, this was Khari. That should not be surprising.
Instead of letting it happen, he released her sword, dropping her to the floor with it, then anchored his balance on one foot and tore the other free of hers, stepping on her right arm hard enough to pin it to the ground.
Abandoning the effort to tangle up his legs, Khari kicked at the one within reach, closing her free fingers around a handful of sand and hurling it in the general direction of his face.
It had further to go than it went, but Leon stepped off her anyway, allowing her to regain her feet before he went on the offensive again.
There was never any question of which one of them was going to win, but Leon didn't expect there to be. He was genuinely impressed, however, by the way Khari seemed to learn even as the fight progressed. By a few minutes in, she'd already absorbed enough about how he moved to avoid the obvious mistakes, and there was no denying her swiftness and talent for improvising things as she went. Every time he so much as left her an opening, intentionally or otherwise, she was right there, having spotted it and acted quickly to take advantage. More than once, his defense was hastier than he would have liked, as he rushed to keep up with her attacks.
He jumped back, dropping once more into a defensive stance. He wanted to see what she planned to do next.
She didn't disappoint, surging forward to attack almost immediately. She feinted left first, then spun away from his block without ever actually touching it. The heavy hand-and-a-half in her grip rushed for his arm, leaving a shallow cut when he didn't move away quite fast enough to avoid it entirely. It was a trivial injury at best, especially considering the wounds she'd taken in the course of the fight. Leon might have turned his blows, and she'd gotten used to minimizing the impact when she took them, but she'd likely be a mess of bruises for quite some time after the match. But nevertheless, she'd landed a blow.
As soon as she'd done it, he raised his hand. “Enough." Leon straightened, rolling his shoulders out and lifting his uninjured arm to wipe the sweat from his brow. She'd certainly kept him on his toes. Letting his hand drop back down, he offered her a smile. “As I suspected. You're just as qualified to be here as you were the day you arrived. Moreso, in fact."
He moved his eyes over her shoulder. “You think so, too, don't you, Michäel?"
"I do, ser," came the reply. During the spar, Michäel had descended the keep's stairs and took up a spot nearest the fence line, the purple in his cloak standing out from the sea of russet the Inquisition's soldiers wore. He looked in with impish smirk across his lips as he absently stroked his beard, clearly invested the fight he'd just watched. "Granted," he added, allowing his hand to fall from his face and limply in front of him, "The girl has her rough edges to be sure, but it is nothing that I cannot grind away in time." His large frame swayed from an internal chuckle.
Khari, breath still sawing in and out of her lungs, lowered Reed's sword. She came slowly out of whatever battle-high seized her in the middle of a match. As she did, a look of confusion blossomed over her face. “Wait... what?" The point of the sword brushed slightly over the dirt before she realized that and lifted it again. “What's Ser Michäel doing here, anyway?"
"Watching," he answered, which caused a few of the soldiers to chuckle at such a obvious response. "Gauging," he added, this time more honestly. "You have the practical experience to keep yourself alive, despite your best efforts. But what could you do with more I wonder?" he said, leaning forward and a fence post and steepling his fingers together "What you could do with a chevalier's training?"
“But—" Khari looked, perhaps understandably, a bit flabbergasted by the question. Handing Reed's sword back to him, she rubbed the back of her hand against her brow, scrubbing off some sweat. The contemplative look returned to her face. “Why?" Her tone was suspicious, and she moved her glance between Leon and Michäel, settling on the latter. “Why would you want to do that for me? It's not like I can just enroll in the Academie and... and do things that way. It's not like you need more hands for your bandit problem. So why go to all the trouble?"
Her brows were furrowed now, forming a deep crease over her nose. Her lips had compressed into a thin line, and the muscles in her shoulders and neck were unmistakably tense.
"You have potential and we have no wish to see it squandered by bashing your head into every sword arm and shield wall you can find from here to Antiva," Michäel answered sternly. He'd lost his grin and now frowned. "And I do not know if you have noticed, but the Inquisition faces more than just bandits. The Ventori, the red templars, both led by a magister turned darkspawn somewhere in Thedas. That qualifies a little more than a bandit problem, do you agree?" He'd risen from the post and now stood straight, his arms crossed beneath his cloak.
"You cannot enroll into the Academie, that much is true, but neither could Aveline," he said, referencing the old Orlesian tale. "I cannot make you a chevalier, but I can train you like one. What you do with that training is up to you."
“I don't know what the status of your ambitions is," Leon admitted gently. It was entirely possible that Khari didn't want to be a chevalier anymore, or was no longer certain what she wanted. “But you should know that regardless, the foundation of your abilities is still what it is. If we are to succeed in defeating Corypheus, each one of us needs to improve. We all need to keep training and honing our talents. I'm not an exception. Ser Michäel is not. And I'm sure you know that you aren't either."
He sighed. “If that is all this is, training to build on your foundations, then it need not be more. But if you still want what you wanted two weeks ago, then this will help. I understand feeling like your foundation is giving way underneath you. But it isn't. Not in this respect. You're talented, Khari, and you deserve to be able to develop that talent. It does not matter to us who taught you—only what you do with what you've learned."
She swallowed thickly. A little of the tension left her posture, but not all of it, and she stared intently at the ground under their feet for several long, slow moments. “Okay." She nodded slightly, almost to herself, and raised her head. “I get it. And... and thank you. I'll learn whatever you want to teach me, however you think is best. But..." her expression hardened for a moment. “I want to know all of it. Everything any other chevalier learns. So that if something happens again, I know. I know what honor means and how to follow it."
"Good," Michäel said, the smirk slowly returning to his face. "If I were you, I would enjoy the rest of the day. It will be your last easy one for a long while," he glanced at Leon, indicating that yes, that was even including their spar.
"See the quartermaster and get outfitted for full plate. You will need it for your morning runs."