“Come on,” she said. “I cut a few trees for us to leap from stump to stump, which should help keep you flexible and balanced. The fighting style my father will teach you is heavily reliant on speed. You can’t just be a big hunk of muscle like a lot of paragons.”

He missed several jumps, the worst cracking his shin against the side of the stump hard enough for it to bleed. Cyrus refused to let a limp show. He feared it might only encourage Stasia to push him even harder somehow, as punishment for the error. At least his balance seemed decent, which he discovered after she had him try a few stances on one leg. Most of his issues came from his tired legs feeling wooden and weak.

“Not bad,” she said. “Now, I know I said you need speed, but you do also need some muscle, and a lot more than what you currently have.”

A little outdoor shelf next to the mansion stored whatever things Stasia kept for her workouts, and she retrieved the newest set now: two vaguely circular lumps of metal he assumed she’d taken from Thorda’s forge.

“Lift those up above your head, then lower them, like this,” she said, demonstrating. “I want you to do that, and only that, while we walk a single lap around the mansion. Up and down, that’s it, you can do up and down, can’t you? And they’re not so heavy, right? Yours are much lighter than mine, even!”

Cyrus tentatively lifted them up over his head, then back down so his elbows touched his hips.

“Not so terrible,” he said, and even risked a smile.

And they weren’t so terrible, nor so heavy, the first ten or so times. But as he walked, and the motion repeated, it seemed they grew in weight as his arms tired. What started as an easy lift above his head soon topped at his shoulders, then barely into the air at all.

With the end of each exercise, he prayed for a break, but never received it. Next was a return to the sacks of dirt, which, after having Cyrus lie on his back, she set one atop his legs.

“Lift it,” she said, as if it were that easy, as if his legs weren’t made of jelly after the morning run and the sprints and the leaping from logs. The entire lower half of his body shook as if he were trapped in an earthquake.

Stasia showed him no pity, nor remorse.

“Higher,” she said. “You got this, little prince, now again, and higher.”

Cyrus had no idea so many different exercises existed, but Stasia knew them all. Hour after hour passed, broken only by occasional rests and breaks for water.