The Fight in the Dog | Open
Aug 10, 2017 20:22:28 GMT -5
Post by Adam Brontes on Aug 10, 2017 20:22:28 GMT -5
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Long Island, Camp Half-Blood | The Fight in the Dog |
Arena | Adam Brontes, [Open] |
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark Twain
Training. This had always been one of Camp’s great mysteries to Adam. Why? Because there was no conceivable, logical way that he should enjoy it. And yet he did. Combat was different. Predatory, powerful, mind over man and superiority among your peers. Combat was primal and incredible, especially if you won, but even if you lost. To enjoy cutting one’s teeth is the mark of a predator, and the man had the blood of one of the greatest in the history of the world pulsing through his veins. But that wasn’t training.
Training was grunt-work dialled up to eleven. Repetitive, exhausting, dull drills that would only ever stop if you weren’t doing them right. Logically speaking, people should do these things exclusively out of necessity. It was a dog-eat-dog world out there and, for those of immortal descent, this metaphor and others like it rang far less figuratively than they should… and this demigod had the scars to prove it. And yet, Adam had always found he enjoyed these tedious tasks.
It was something this son of Zeus had been trying to wrap his mind around for years. Anyone could see there was a certain testosterone-driven charm to repeatedly bashing something, not to mention an aspect of catharsis when one would channel all the built-up aggression in the body and let it run wild, but there was more to it than that. A certain je ne sais quoi. An Apollo kid or some other Muse-driven poet might compare it to a dance, and there was a certain annoying aspect to that, not simply because he couldn’t quite refute it, but because it seemed to clash with his man-pride for some reason.
Image had never been too important to Brontes, but he had somewhat cultivated himself as a man of acquired tastes, and this brutish activity had always struck him as being a little off in this picture he’d painted of himself.
”Boys will be boys, I suppose”, Adam told himself with a half-derisive smile as the layer of perspiration covering his body soaked the cotton shirt beneath the leather chest piece, or bunched up into droplets and ran down exposed skin until it reached an edge and fell to the ground. A sword gripped in his right hand flurried at the wooden dummy before him, the occasional chip flying out. The blade was tinged with the golden-brown tonality campers would associate with Celestial Bronze - a son of the Sky Father had means, it seemed.
The surroundings echoed with thuds as sword met wood, some hard, some soft, threaded only by the rustling of steps and the occasional crackling of electric sparks around him - an unavoidable tell that this particular spawn of Zeus was having more fun than he’d care to admit.
As the set drew to a close, Adam grasped his knees to regain of breath and allow for the cold air to cool his body. For the first time in a good while, the demigod looked around him, to inspect his surroundings and decide whether to continue with training, or call it a day.
Training was grunt-work dialled up to eleven. Repetitive, exhausting, dull drills that would only ever stop if you weren’t doing them right. Logically speaking, people should do these things exclusively out of necessity. It was a dog-eat-dog world out there and, for those of immortal descent, this metaphor and others like it rang far less figuratively than they should… and this demigod had the scars to prove it. And yet, Adam had always found he enjoyed these tedious tasks.
It was something this son of Zeus had been trying to wrap his mind around for years. Anyone could see there was a certain testosterone-driven charm to repeatedly bashing something, not to mention an aspect of catharsis when one would channel all the built-up aggression in the body and let it run wild, but there was more to it than that. A certain je ne sais quoi. An Apollo kid or some other Muse-driven poet might compare it to a dance, and there was a certain annoying aspect to that, not simply because he couldn’t quite refute it, but because it seemed to clash with his man-pride for some reason.
Image had never been too important to Brontes, but he had somewhat cultivated himself as a man of acquired tastes, and this brutish activity had always struck him as being a little off in this picture he’d painted of himself.
”Boys will be boys, I suppose”, Adam told himself with a half-derisive smile as the layer of perspiration covering his body soaked the cotton shirt beneath the leather chest piece, or bunched up into droplets and ran down exposed skin until it reached an edge and fell to the ground. A sword gripped in his right hand flurried at the wooden dummy before him, the occasional chip flying out. The blade was tinged with the golden-brown tonality campers would associate with Celestial Bronze - a son of the Sky Father had means, it seemed.
The surroundings echoed with thuds as sword met wood, some hard, some soft, threaded only by the rustling of steps and the occasional crackling of electric sparks around him - an unavoidable tell that this particular spawn of Zeus was having more fun than he’d care to admit.
As the set drew to a close, Adam grasped his knees to regain of breath and allow for the cold air to cool his body. For the first time in a good while, the demigod looked around him, to inspect his surroundings and decide whether to continue with training, or call it a day.
