Chapter 255: Storm Step

Ryuken taught the Storm Step on the first morning of week five, which was the morning after the rest day, which meant Vane came to the inner sanctum still thinking about the roof in Korreth and the fish and what Ashe had said about belonging to both.

He stopped thinking about it when Ryuken told him to walk across the sanctum.

“Just walk,” Ryuken said. “Normal pace. To the far wall and back.”

Vane walked to the far wall and back.

Ryuken watched his feet the entire time. When Vane returned to the starting point Ryuken said: “You have been telegraphing your directional changes since before you could fight properly. Your weight shifts two beats before your foot moves. Any Sentinel-rank opponent who has watched you for thirty seconds can predict every change of direction before you commit to it.”

Vane thought about the evaluation courtyard. About Lancelot moving to where he was going rather than where he was. About eight rounds on the leviathan with the same result eight times.

“I know,” he said.

“You know now. You did not know it was happening. You have been doing it your entire career.” Ryuken walked to the center of the sanctum. “The Storm Step. Five beats. Each beat addresses one of the five telegraphed patterns your body currently produces.” He demonstrated the first beat, which looked from the outside like nothing at all. A slight adjustment in how the weight sat over the foot before a directional change, invisible from any distance greater than arm’s reach.

“The first beat is the most important and the most difficult,” Ryuken said. “Because it requires your body to lie.”

Vane: “To lie.”

“Your weight shift is an honest communication. It is your body telling the ground where it intends to go before it goes there. The ground does not care. Your opponent does.” He ran the first beat again, slowly. “The Storm Step teaches the body to make the same weight shift in every direction regardless of where it intends to go. The commitment happens later, at a point your opponent can no longer predict. From the outside this looks like no telegraph. What it actually is, is a false telegraph that means nothing.”

He stepped back. “Run the first beat. Walk to the far wall.”

Vane ran the first beat and walked to the far wall.

Ryuken: “Again.”

He ran it again.

“Again.”

Again.

After the twelfth repetition Ryuken said: “Stop.” He looked at Vane’s feet. “You are performing the adjustment. The body knows it is false and it is performing it rather than producing it. The opponent will read the performance.” He paused. “The first beat has to become true. Your body has to believe the false telegraph long enough for the commitment to happen without announcement.”

Vane looked at his feet.

“This takes time,” Ryuken said. “There is no shortcut for it. The nervous system has to be retrained at a level below conscious access.” He walked out. “Walk to the far wall and back. Do this until dinner.”

He walked to the far wall and back for most of the morning.

This was not metaphorical. The sanctum was twenty meters long. He walked it, ran the first beat before each directional change, and turned around. Walked back. The first beat felt wrong on every repetition because the wrong he was trying to produce was a specific kind of wrong that had to feel like right, and finding that quality was not something he could instruct himself into. It either happened or it did not.

It did not happen for the first two hours.

At some point in the third hour Lancelot passed the sanctum entrance on his way to the middle ring. He glanced at Vane walking back and forth across the sanctum floor and did not stop or comment, which was not surprising. He went on to the middle ring.

Ashe appeared at the entrance an hour after that. She looked at Vane walking the sanctum, assessed the situation in the way she assessed things, and said: “He had Kaito do this for six weeks. Kaito said it was the worst six weeks of his life.”

“How long until it worked.”

“Four weeks for the first beat.” She leaned against the entrance frame. “Then two weeks each for the second and third. The fourth and fifth were faster because the nervous system had the pattern by then.”

Vane turned at the far wall and started back. “How long for you.”

“Three weeks for the first beat.” She said this without pride or performance. “But I grew up doing the precursor form so the nervous system was not starting from zero.” She watched his feet for a moment. “You are performing it.”

“I know.”

“Stop trying to make it happen.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.” She came into the sanctum and walked to the center of the floor. “Watch.” She ran the first beat before a directional change. From Vane’s distance it was completely invisible. There was no adjustment, no preparation, no communication from the body to the ground about where she intended to go. She simply moved and the direction was decided at the last possible moment.

“How does that look to you,” she said.

“Like nothing.”

“That is what it feels like on the inside too.” She ran it again. “Not like lying. Like the decision genuinely has not been made yet.” She looked at him. “Your body is trying to lie. It needs to not know instead.”

He stopped walking. He looked at his feet.

She went back to the entrance. “I am going to run my forms in the outer ring. Ryuken said your Storm Step work carries better if there is someone nearby who has it.” She paused. “I am not teaching you. I am just going to be there.”

She left.

He looked at the far wall.

He walked toward it. At the midpoint he tried to be a body that genuinely had not decided yet.

It felt wrong in a different way from before. A less performed wrong. He filed this and turned at the far wall and walked back.

The outer ring connected to the inner sanctum by a short corridor, and the Storm Step work in the sanctum was close enough to the outer ring that when Ashe began running Asura’s Dance he could hear the footwork through the stone. The specific rhythm of her forms, the first and second and third in sequence, the Storm Step embedded in the transitions between them so thoroughly that it did not produce a separate sound from the rest of the movement.

He listened without intending to. He walked the sanctum.

At some point in the fifth hour something shifted. He could not identify what had changed. He ran the first beat before a directional change and his weight moved in the way it moved when the decision was not yet made, and he turned, and the turn had a quality he had not produced before.

He stopped.

He walked back to the starting point.

He did it again.

The same.

He did it a third time and the third time it was gone, the performing quality back, the nervous system reverting to what it had always done.

He ran it a fourth time and it was there again.

He stood in the center of the sanctum and thought about what had been different between the third and fourth repetitions. He had not done anything consciously different. The only difference he could identify was that on the fourth repetition he had stopped thinking about the first beat and had been listening to Ashe’s footwork in the outer ring.

He filed this.

He walked the sanctum and listened to her forms through the stone floor.

By the end of the afternoon he could produce the quality approximately once every four attempts, which was not consistent but was not nothing. Ryuken came back at the sixth hour, watched three repetitions, and said: “The nervous system found the edge of it. Tomorrow the edge will be closer.”

He left.

Vane sat down on the sanctum floor. His legs were functional but had opinions about six hours of directional changes. He looked at the far wall.

Ashe appeared at the entrance. She had finished her forms and her hair was damp at the temples and she was eating something from her jacket pocket, dried fruit of some kind, with the post-training appetite she always had.

“How many times did you get it,” she said.

“Maybe one in four.”

“Good.” She sat down against the entrance wall, which was not inside the sanctum but was close enough for conversation. “First day, once in four. Kaito got it once in twelve his first day.”

“You said Kaito took four weeks.”

“He did.” She ate another piece of fruit. “He got it once in twelve the first day and once in ten the second day and it still took four weeks.” She looked at him. “You are not Kaito.”

“How long do you think it takes me.”

She looked at the ceiling, which meant she was actually calculating rather than deflecting. “The nervous system work. Two weeks for the first beat, maybe less. The second and third will be faster.” She ate. “The fourth and fifth are the hard ones. Those are not just the nervous system. Those require the Storm Step to be complete enough that the body can build on it.”

He looked at the far wall again.

“Three weeks,” he said.

“Maybe.” She stood. “Dinner in twenty minutes. Wash your hands, you have sanctum dust on everything.”

She left.

He sat for another moment in the quiet sanctum. Outside the window the mountain was going dark. The day had been six hours of walking a twenty-meter floor and approximately one honest directional change in four. Tomorrow the edge would be closer. In three weeks, with some probability, the first beat would be in the body instead of in the performance.

He looked at his feet.

He stood up and walked to the far wall and back one more time before dinner, because the day was not finished and neither was he.

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