Jax looked at the rows upon rows of weapons sitting in front of him. Pakza caught his wandering eyes and snapped him back to attention with a whistle.
"You have your weapons, no need for anything else." was his gruff remark.
Jax shook his head and listened to what his ringleader told him. He watched and learned the strokes of the hammer. The downward sweep to crack on the head. The side swipe to break the ribs. Swing above your head for momentum to deliver the final blow. With every move he learned, he became more and more scared. It's not the Games or the fact that he has to kill, he was well aware of that when he joined the guild, but the fact that anyone could use these moves on him. That was his fear. But in the Games, fear is your motivation, fear is your drive. So he would carry on.
Now was time for the whip. He got a training whip without barbs to learn the moves. He was a natural with the crack and flow of the weapon. Pakza had never seen somebody so fluent in the language of any weapon, especially not the whip. Well, he had seen one before.
"Your father had the hammer, you have the whip. Two very different weapons, yet the two of you were made for them so perfectly," he told Jax. Jax replied with a silent nod, then continued his accuracy training, knocking bottles off a platform. "I think you're ready. What do you think?"
"The Slaughter Games are in less than a week, I'm ready whether I think I am or I don't. But I feel like I'm ready anyway."
"That's for me to know, and you to find out." And with that Jax took the the whip, went around Pakza with it, wrapped around a bottle and they both watched as it landed into the new competitor's hand. They exchanged devious smiles.
