"The first thing you have to know with any weapon is how to take care of it," was how Professor Sky started her lesson. They spent the entirety of the first hour going through the cleaning, storage, carrying, and sharpening processes of various weapons. She allowed Hashim to keep the bow, and he held onto it throughout the whole lecture. Most of the students had been standing awkwardly at the beginning, and more and more had slowly sat down, with the new students the first to do so. However, almost half of them stood up again once they noticed that Hashim was the only one who was still upright. Since then, they had drifted closer to him, occasionally nervously glancing at their glaring seniors.
Professor Sky had gone over swords of different lengths and structures, daggers of many styles, and even some basic sorts of spears. She had impressed upon them the importance of having sharp weapons, having your weapons near you, and knowing what they were made of and how they were made, in order to better care for both them and yourself.
And then she did something different. She looked at Hashim and said, "The bow."
Toon instantly snapped to the front. Bows had always fascinated him. More than any other weapon, they were about math rather than speed and strength. Of course, you needed plenty of strength to draw proper bows, but it really didn't matter as much as the amount of force you used to draw it back.
Bows were precise control. Ruling the battlefield, piercing through any defense or armor with proper aiming. It was all just math in the end. Some people said it was instinct, but those people just had a better sense for force distribution than others.
"The bow is a weapon that has a special level of respect," Professor Lillian Sky said. "At a distance in a capable expert's hands, it's as deadly as a knife to the throat, every single time. But even experts miss. And if your target gets close, it's over. There's no protection on a bow, and if you use it to block anything, it's more likely that you break the bow and still get hit than anything else. With skill, and years of practice, maybe you can use it to its full advantage. But otherwise, stick to melee."
Toon rose as she motioned him forward. Regus forcibly stole control from him, preventing him from tripping over anyone on their way to the front. Once he was there, Lillian offered him a quiver of arrows and gestured him to a set of targets. Regus pulled back the string to his sternum, turning himself so that he was standing perpendicular to the row of targets. He took one arrow and turned to Lillian, asking her quietly where it was supposed to rest on the bow.
There was some laughter from the older students, but it was mostly mocking rather than amused. the younger ones were more confused. He had seemed so confident and eager when taking the weapon, and now he didn't know how to use it?
Lillian blinked, her lips briefly parted as she stared at him. Clearly, she had had the same misconception. After that pause, she stepped forward and set the arrow with its butt on the string.
Regus turned his head away from Lillian, deliberately placing her out of his line of sight and drawing the bow back once, then slowly bringing it back to where there was no tension. When Toon took over, he would be facing away from any other person, so he couldn't possibly bump into anyone as long as he didn't move his feet, and he needed Toon to feel how much force the bow transferred. It wouldn't be exactly unnoticed if he just drew towards the other students, or the instructor.
Regus stood there for a moment, waiting for Toon. It took almost a quarter of a minute, but then Toon roused himself from his calculations and absently told Regus how far to pull back and what angle to aim at for each target before subsiding again. Hashim was able to help Regus convert the numbers to rough directions, and then Regus took in a breath.
He let it out slowly, then drew the bow back. After taking one more breath in, he released.
The arrow cut through the air, its fine fletching[1] keeping it steady despite the low quality bow. The arrow was much better than the bow was. Maybe it had come from Lillian's own collection and not the training supplies. He would look at her to see her reaction, but he couldn't. He had to focus. He had to be impressive.
One by one, Regus launched the arrows. Three, then five, then fifteen feathered stalks zipped through the air with the same hissing sound that stray cats made. They were unrelenting, furious.
And he controlled them, knowing that any tremble as they were released would throw them off-center.
[1] That's what the feathers on the back of the arrow are called.