Ashara blinked.
"No weapon at all?"
Celeste uncrossed her legs and stood up.
"Dance for me."
"... What?"
"You're a dancer, right? You heard me. Dance. Right here, right now. Whatever comes naturally."
Ashara looked around the empty training room. Padded floor, no mirrors, no audience. Just her and an A-rank adventurer who was asking her to perform in a combat academy.
"I don't have music."
"I'm sure a professional like you hardly needs to hear a rhythm to dance, right?"
"..."
Ashara stood up. She felt stupid for about two seconds. Then she closed her eyes, and her body remembered.
She started slow. A roll of her shoulders, a shift of her hips. Weight from one foot to the other. Her arms came up, tracing lines through the air, and the rest followed. These were old moves, the kind she'd drilled so many times they lived in her muscles now. She didn't need to think about them. Her body just knew where to go.
A spin. A low drop, one knee almost touching the floor, then back up in a single fluid motion. Her hips led, her shoulders followed, and her feet placed themselves exactly where they needed to be without her telling them to.
She opened her eyes. Celeste was watching her with her chin resting on her fist, sitting on the floor again.
"Good. Keep going."
Ashara kept going. She moved through a sequence from the troupe's showcase set, the one Delara had choreographed years ago. Extension, retraction, weight transfer. Every motion connected to the next.
"You know what I'm looking at right now?" Celeste asked.
"My tits?"
Celeste snorted.
"Your body control. Don't stop moving." Ashara didn't. "Most first-year students can barely walk in a straight line while reinforcing," Celeste continued. "They trip over their own feet. They tense up. Their bodies fight them because they've never learned to move with precision. You, on the other hand, have been training precision your entire life. You just didn't know what you were training for."
Ashara came out of a spin and shifted into a slower sequence, arms flowing.
"Okay, I hear you," she said, still moving. "But we're talking about fighting monsters. Things with claws and teeth and, you know, the general desire to eat me. How does dancing help with that?"
"It doesn't. Not yet." Celeste held up a finger. "But hand-to-hand combat, real hand-to-hand combat, is about three things. One: reading your opponent's movements. Two: controlling your own body in response. Three: channeling mana through your limbs so that your strikes actually hurt." She lowered her finger. "You saw what I did to Vik today."
"... You sent him flying with your palm."
"With a palm strike reinforced by mana at the point of impact. The strike itself was simple. What made it devastating was timing, control, and the years I've spent training my body." Celeste looked at her. "You already have the control. Your aura projection is better than most B-rankers. Your mana pool is enormous. And your body does exactly what you tell it to, every time, without hesitation. I'll be honest, I would have killed to have those three advantages when I first started."
Ashara slowed her movements. "But I can't reinforce for shit."
"Yet."
"And I've never punched anyone in my life."
"Also fixable." Celeste stood up. "Stop dancing for a second."
Ashara stopped.
"Make a fist."
Ashara made a fist. Celeste walked over and adjusted it, tucking Ashara's thumb to the outside and tightening her fingers.
"Now punch the air. Just once. Put your hips into it, the same way you'd throw a spin."
Ashara set her feet. She thought about it for a moment, then rotated her hips and threw her fist forward, her whole body turning into it the way she'd turn into a dance move.
It felt... good. Her weight transferred clean, her arm extended straight, and she felt the snap of her hip through her shoulder, through her elbow, through her knuckles.
"Did you feel that?"
Ashara looked at her own fist.
"... Yeah. I did."
"That's because your body already understands rotation. Momentum. Weight transfer. I figured the body of a dancer like you would. The difference between a dance move and a punch is just intent." Celeste smiled. "I'm not going to lie to you, Ashara. This road is the hardest one. Weapons give you reach, they give you options. Fighting with your fists means getting up close and personal with things that want to eat you, and hitting them before they can. It means your reinforcement has to be perfect, because your body is the weapon and also the only thing between you and whatever you're fighting."
"..."
"But," Celeste said, "I think it's right for you. Your mana pool can sustain the constant reinforcement it requires. Your aura control gives you an edge no one else in that class has. And your body, the way you move, the way you've trained it, that's a foundation most martial artists spend years trying to build." She paused. "You already have it. You just need to learn what to do with it."
Ashara looked at her fist again. She opened it, closed it.
She thought about the weapon rack in Kael's class. The quarterstaff that was too long. The daggers that felt wrong. The sword that didn't fit with how she wanted to move. She thought about how frustrated she'd been, how she'd stared at that rack and thought something was broken in her.
Maybe nothing was broken. Maybe she'd just been looking in the wrong place.
"What would training look like?" Ashara asked.
"Every day." Celeste folded her arms. "In addition to your regular classes. We work on reinforcement, strikes, footwork, and eventually, we start building your own style. Something that uses everything you already know."
"Every day?"
"Every day."
Ashara looked down at her fist again.
"So you're saying... eventually, I'll be able to punch a monster in the face and not get eaten?"
Celeste tilted her head.
"I'm saying that eventually, you won't need to worry about getting eaten at all."
"..."
"Unless you're not up to it."
"No, no, no, I mean, yes, I mean," Ashara's brain tripped over itself. "I am. I'm up to it. Absolutely. One hundred percent."
Celeste laughed. A real laugh, warm and short.
"Very well, then." She nodded toward the door. "Get some rest, Ashara. You've had a long day, and tomorrow will be longer."
Ashara stood there for another second, looking at the small woman in front of her. A-rank. Hand-to-hand specialist. The person who'd sat with her on a bridge and told her she could do this, before Ashara even knew what "this" was.
"Celeste."
"Hm?"
"Thank you."
Celeste waved her off.
"Don't thank me yet. You haven't seen my training regimen."