Sword Dance

Rhia made her way into the salle minutes before dawn overcame the meager illuminations of false dawn. She started to stifle a yawn as she closed the door behind her, until she noticed she'd beaten her master there this morning. She'd never been too sound a sleeper, but it seemed she could never get there ahead of him. With no one to impress, she opened her mouth wide with a noisy yawn, if for no other reason than to protest the morning. She glided through her stretches and warm-up excercises, and soon enough there was no trace of a desire for her bed. Once her muscles were thoroughly loosened and ready for the day's punishment, she went to one of the weapons' racks along the walls of the spacious salle.
She had gotten so used to the typical broadsword shape that Blade took, that she had been rather at a loss when she saw all the different weapons there; but only for a moment, as the next instant she had been overcome with a hunger to learn the ways of each of them. Her master didn't doubt she would master them all, either, though he never said so directly. Presently, he was schooling her in the ways of the cleverly designed scimitar. She'd never been so in love with a weapon before, though her master had mentioned that many fighters felt that way when first coming into contact with the lovely blades. He promised that love would more than likely pass on to a different blade as time went on and she came across more advanced weapons. At the moment, she highly doubted that.
She picked up the sword from the rack, as well as its sister blade, weighing them both carefully in her hand. "Get to know your weapon," her master had told her each time she picked a new one up. "Learn its strengths and weaknesses now, before your enemy shows them to you." She was getting to know these little pretties very well. She moved out into the center of the salle, working out a breathing excercise to calm herself as she went. By the time she came to stand in the center, she was completely relaxed, and nothing short of a tornado would have rattled her focus. Then again, being the Typhoon, it might take even more than a tornado.
She closed her eyes, mentally conjuring an opponent. As she opened her eyes again, she easily visualized the shadow-stalker, and raised one of the swords in front of her face in a salute, imagining it doing the same.
Without a tense muscle in her, she glided into the dance. She brought both swords up together from the left in a graceful arc, turning her body with the motion to build momentum and speed behind the blades. As she came around again, her right blade cut down at an angel across the shadow-stalker's shoulders, and the left hummed through the air at its waist. She reversed the momentum with a step forward, driving both scimitars ahead together in a spear-like thrust. She continued to drive the invisible opponent back with an intricate web of deadly slashes and thrusts, using her body's weight and spin to feed the swords power and momentum. Then, as gracefully as the dance had begun, the lead shifted, her steps and momentum reversing. The fatal web became a protective shield of feints and parries.
After a small number of short steps back, the lead once again shifted and she ceased to lose ground. She raised the hilt of one of the scimitars in a disorienting parry and spun her body forward between imaginary thrusts. She angled one of the scimitars down through the defenses of her opponent and brought it across what would have been its arm. With the forward momentum, she took another heavy step forward, using shoulder and sword hilts to collide into the opponent and knock him back off balance. Then with a final pivot, she guided both swords down and across the unguarded chest, and the last reverse of momentum brought the blades up under its chin.
She stood poised, perfectly balanced, with the swords pointed towards the floor in a guard position, and waited the appropriate three seconds. Then, releasing her breath, she stood up straight and flicked the swords down, to clean them of any blood that would have been there with a true opponent, then saluted once again.
A faint clapping came from the doorway, startling Rhia out of her trance. She glanced over, and blushed immediately to see her master.
"Very nice, Rhia. I think you've learned just about all you can with those scimitars. You may put them back now."
She did so, though let them go a little reluctantly. "What shall I use now?"
"Why don't you try out that rapier?"
As she lifted the flimsy-looking blade her master motioned to, she at once decided he'd been right about that love moving on.