Don't let your head get in the way

He looked at the shuriken again that he had pulled out of the wall in the warehouse. He still could not believe that he had missed an unsuspecting, stationary target. He could hear the laughter of Dar'goch, his weapons teacher, in his head. He had trained Daelagor for years on all throwing weapons. Daelagor could hit running targets while jumping off trees in his training lessons, but by the beauty of Tiandra, he had missed a simple standing human. He could hear the encouragements of his brother who was never good at ranged weapons but an expert with spears and had always envied him for his talent to kill over distance. But this hadn't been training and Dar'goch was right when he said that only true masters live long enough to make it into songs that are sung at the table of kings!

Daelagor was sitting on the tree stump weighing the shuriken in his flat hand. It almost felt like a natural extension of his arm. He closed his eyes and without warning jumped up, did a somersault backwards, landed sideways, ... and along his stretched arm, watched the shuriken fly past the target he had carved into a nearby tree and hit a tree in the distance.
The surprised face of Argent, who stood frozen still with his head exactly between the hand and the target, slowly turned into the direction of Daelagor and then towards the tree with a cross on its trunk and two shuriken sticking near its center point. It slowly seemed to dawn on him that he just almost took a shuriken to his face. He looked back at Daelagor who straightened up "Apologies Argent, I should have warned you that I'm training. You should never walk in between me and my targets or you might lose your head. Fortunately your's was big enough to be spotted in time." The Dragonborn looked at him still not sure what to reply, but then started laughing, gave Daelagor a pat on the back which almost made him tumble over and went towards Ghanash. Walking into the forest to recover his weapon, Daelagor's eyes followed Argent.

He still couldn't make sense of the two Dragonborn. Both of them almost got themselves killed again on the ship by running straight into the opponents and although Daelagor respected their audacity, he also considered them improvident. But he could not disregard the speed in which they took down their opponents. There was no elegance in their movements, no stylishness in their attacks, but he could not deny their effectiveness. His own attacks were swift, well placed and, apart from the embarrassing throw, most accurate and even though Dar'goch would have been proud to watch his student, it took Daelagor too long to disable his enemies. Style and grace are skills to strive for but are not the most efficient tools in a real battle.

He might have to consider augmenting his arsenal with weapons that dealt more damage at the cost of elegance. Dar'goch had always insisted that he was especially good with a longsword and had forced him to train hours and hours sparring with his brother. He had always considered a longsword too unwieldy for his fighting style but it might be just what he needs to give him more options. He might be able to find a blacksmith of acceptable quality in Highmarsh. Unfortunately he won't be able to find quality as sold by the Eladrin masters in Senaliesse, but some of the dwarfs might know how to produce a worthy weapon!