Like the good little soldier Wessex is, the General’s frequent shadow accompanies him out of the Basin and into the spring-filled world. As the chill melts away and is quickly replaced with a pleasant warmth, Wessex finds herself relaxing, enjoying the small beads of sweat that trickle down from underneath her mane. A body in motion - stretching and working to the best of its ability is something to be enjoyed, she thinks. They are not climbing ridges, they are roaming the plains, and damn it feels good to stretch her long legs in a different way. Erebos takes a path to the sea; although Wessex is curious, she does not question him why, assuming that all will be explained in due time.

At the line where long grass turns to sand, the eight-horned warrior pauses, closes her eyes and simply smells the brine, the washed-up kelp, the occasional whiff of fishy decay. The breeze is refreshing, but also potentially misleading in its information, as it is overwhelmed by a singular source. She hears the cry of gulls and the roaring of the waves, the solitude which permeates the farthest corner of Helovia. Her name breaks her reverie, and Wessex opens her eyes to find the General a ways down the beach, telling her that he brought her out here to spar. Here?! Really? Already, her front hooves have begun to sink into the soft, dry sand, while her hind hooves still have some loamy purchase. It is awfully unbalancing. She does not find this setting as pleasant and the fields behind them. Why couldn’t they fight there?!

They entered at the northern part of the Endless Blue, and the edge of the Bay that borders trees and cliffs lays to her right. Grumbling and mumbling to herself, Wessex hauls her heavy frame across the brilliantly white expanse, to where the surf soaks the sand and turns it beige. “You just had to choose someplace sandy, didn’t you?” she calls out in jest as she crosses to the water, letting him know that she knows her heavier frame is at a disadvantage in dry sand. Wet would give her a firmer base from which to launch her powerful muscles, and simultaneously keep the wild spray of granules out of their eyes. Hopefully. This puts the early morning sun to her left and the ocean behind her, leaving Erebos with a potentially blinding glint, but herself with a potentially dangerous situation, if he were to try and force her into the sea.

Not that Wessex believes Erebos would try to drown her during a spar - but she is well aware that she hedging her bets, and in a real battle, being pressed up against the water isn’t ideal, though it is better than, say, being pressed up against a cliff’s edge. That is the dichotomy of sparring an ally versus fighting for one’s life; she has the luxury of the first move, of lining herself up in such a way as to hope to take advantage of natural occurrences. That shit doesn’t happen in real life.

Knowing full well that Erebos is unlikely to stand still and simply take her attack, she begins to move clockwise at a trot, leading with her right foreleg. A slight frown creeps across her face. Even the damp sand is looser than she’d like, so, knowing that she has the luxury of time for this one, makes a full circle to get a good feel for it. As she passes her original position, Wessex increases her gait to a canter, and when she hits the seven o’clock position, somewhere just past directly opposite where she began, the soldier begins to make her move. Up until now, she felt calculating, driven half by the desire to impress her superior and half by finding a way to outsmart the ‘sand situation.’ Now, however, as her legs coil beneath her she swerves suddenly to the right, back towards Erebos, she feels that familiar thrum of electricity through her veins. Yes. This is living.

Trying to maneuver herself around to target his right hip area, her focus is two-fold: avoiding his horn, and landing an attack. He is likely to both outlast and out-maneuver her, but she imagines her strikes will hit harder. When she draws close enough to his body to lash out with her front hooves, Wessex collects her hind legs beneath her and pulls herself up with (hopefully) enough room to clear his croup and come back down again with as much force as possible. She purposefully tries to avoid hitting any bone, unsure of how far they are supposed to go in these training exercises.