Heinrich von Koertig looked up from his battered copy of<i>Erstaunliche Technologie</i>issue 37 as the undead creature marched into his oft-underused domain. The instructor was sat at his small desk which was awash with notes, old coffee cups of different sizes and degrees of staining. His brightly polished boots were up on the flimsy table top, crossed neatly at the ankle. They squeaked slightly with each little movement.<br/><br/>An eyebrow cocked and he carefully retracted them, avoiding a pile of much-flicked through, yellowed fitness pamphlets and set his feet down upon the floor.<br/><br/>The instructor’s eyes were of an unsettling milky blue hue and they studied the newcomer with a certain degree of interest. Somewhere near the top strata of detritus upon Heinrich’s desk was a memorandum about Ithalin. It had referred to him as being ‘under control’, but to the elf it didn’t much look that way. Somewhere within the mass of scar tissue that criss-crossed the Heinrich’s face his brows furrowed.<br/><br/>Very slowly the instructor closed the dated magazine and folded it in two. He set it down and watched as the undead man stalked between the different pieces of equipment and settled upon a punching bag. Without taking his hard eyes from Ithalin he slid open one of the desk drawers and removed a small tin and a simple, six inch blade. While it was true that some knives had enjoyed simple, carefree existences where the most dramatic thing was to slice a piece of bread, this particular knife was not one of them.<br/><br/>Heinrich closed the drawer and tucked the tin into one of the pockets on his baggy, flared-hip britches, then got to his feet. For an elf he was practically built like a horse. Despite clearly being somewhat long in the tooth his pigeon chest pushed the limits of his short-sleeved, sandy-hued desert uniform to breaking point. Tanned arms with sculpted ridges and valleys of muscle corded and flexed as his posture developed. He was in possession of the type of body that one gained by worked themselves religiously in the right direction, not a single part of him seemed to be out of proportion to the other.<br/><br/>He tucked the knife into a sheath mounted to one of his braces and folded the flap down over it. It was there in case it was needed, but stowed safely enough not to have been considered an outright threat. Besides, how much damage could one little knife do, even if it was one of the less than innocent varieties?<br/><br/>Ithalin was really getting into the swing of things by the time the instructor had got to his feet. Judging by the different posters up on the walls, Heinrich was the type of man to think that pugilism was all well and good, but nothing could beat a hard knee to the groin when your opponent was expecting Westmeister Rules. Followed of course by a stiletto blade to a point just beneath the ear. Many a student had left his lessons realising that fights weren’t supposed to be fancy, elegant affairs. They were supposed to be over quickly so that the fellow’s friends didn’t have a chance to gut you after you’d done the same to him. His students tended to come away with a realisation that just about anything was a weapon under the right circumstance. Heinrich’s oft trotted out story of the teapot and the Felinyashae was a little bit too graphic to have been made up. Brews down in the barracks had never been the same again.<br/><br/>Heinrich watched the dead man pounding his fists into the sand-filled leather. No gloves, not real awareness. Just violence. After a few minutes of angry smashing the creature appeared to have recovered some sense of self and even looked up and acknowledged the instructor’s presence. Heinrich nodded back and kept his lip buttoned, as though it were entirely obvious that now was not exactly a time for words or suggestions on how to improve the undead man’s hammer blow right-hook.<br/><br/>Instead, the elf took the small tin out of his pocket and unscrewed the lid. He popped it down on one of the corner support struts holding up the sparring ring ropes and dipped his fingers inside. They came back waxy and Heinrich ran them over his moustache, curling it into a firm and springy coil at the tip. He worked the other side in an almost ritual method, ensuring that both sides were sufficiently ‘dandy’ enough. Many people had laughed at his facial hair in the past. None of those still felt a similar level of mirth. After all, the majority of them were dead.<br/><br/>He put the cap back on and secreted the tin away. Then, with an obvious sense of pride, he adjusted the light field cap perched between his damaged, bladed ears. He skirted the ring and took up a closer perch to Ithalin. Heinrich leant with one shoulder upon a miserable concrete pillar and hooked his thumbs beneath his belt. Then he spoke, in clipped common, with a voice that even a layman without a skerrick of knowledge about Reik elves would have called ‘posh’.<br/><br/><b><i>‘I take it that the bag said something unpleasant about your mother. It’s been a while since anyone else gave it such a </i>damned good<i> thrashing.’</i></b><br/><br/>Heinrich smiled and displayed a mouth full of teeth that had clearly once belonged to a multitude of other people.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>