Damnation. If no one stayed dead, then the Roses would have to, realistically, best all obstacles to their escape in one outing, which put out the chance of wearing down the opposition nearly as much. Doubly so considering the capabilities of those who would be barring their progress. That also made the thought of more underhanded efforts...quite unhelpful, given the way such actions would no doubt sour the outlook of those present on the Roses, even by association alone. From the sounds of things, however, they were the first to have any real option beyond sort of idle about, and simply be. A shadow, strange given there were no clouds, distracted Rolan as his instincts started tracking for a threat, even in this apparently safe city. The shadow again, and a red-gold dragon of all damn things came crashing down.
Rolan shifted backwards, arm moving under his cloak towards his knife, which in the face of a dragon was quite the comedic thing to consider. The lack of arms, shouting, or the like quickly indicated that this one was not hostile, though Rolan shifted his stance back to a more relaxed one his arm remained under his cloak for the time being, out of habit now rather than anything else. He had gone from dealing with would be rebels, bandits and the like to legends and dragons in far too quick a span for his tastes. Let alone everything that had happened while he was on longer ranging taskings, he had frankly quite little time to effectively process anything. The uncomfortable warmth of dragon's breath and casual insult aside, Rolan took the chance to analyze as much of the dragon as he could. Weak points, old wounds, anything. Initial thoughts of 'go for the eyes, use as potent a toxin he could brew, and pray' were not exactly something he wanted to plan for.
They were going to leave, that much was certain. Legends, skilled warbands, dragons, all of them be damned. He had little else of value to add, and sure enough they were on the way back to Candaeln with a lot to think about.
Rolan had been almost silent on the march back, continuing to process everything going on. Fighting notoriously skilled warbands, still unknown trials, hunting down and slaying a dragon. All for the purposes of 'training' for whatever nebulous real world consequences remained waiting for them once they finished training in this rather peculiar manner. Part of him wondered if the other knights thought of any of this as sheer madness as he did, but he wasn't going to risk asking and potentially find himself to be the odd one out in the matter. No, that line of questioning would do nothing of value, right now he had to think on how he would improve to the point of being able to assist in slaying a dragon. The rest would fall in place, or would be something to improvise along the way. There was a lot he needed to do to even begin catching up, let alone competing, with the other knights usefulness. Upon returning to Candaeln, he would remark to those who he had visited the city with.
"Now that we have two thirds of our impossible tasks in mind, I have a lot to do to prepare. Whoever sees the Captain should let her know what we learned, now if you'll excuse me..."
Rolan excused himself from the returning members of the Roses to head to the training yard. Part of him had wanted to begin digging through the library for what natural reagents he could track down that would prove poisonous enough to significantly impact a dragon, but decided against it in the end. Preparing for problems was good, but he couldn't be certain foresight would always be available. Sure, knowing a dragon waits at the end of all this mess was one thing, that didn't mean he could always assume he would need something capable of slowing an overgrown lizard. Ideally killing it, but again, defeated the purpose of this little training exercise. No, they had to get better, and while tempting, Rolan suspected he was never going to compete with the others in terms of melee. He was good with a knife, and getting in close worked well most of the time, but it wasn't his forte. No, that was with his crossbow, which was why he was in the training yard long enough to gather up a number of targets.
He wasn't going to practice here, firing from one end of the yard to the other wouldn't do anything except pass time. He would find a patch of long, open ground outside Candaeln, though not out of sight of it, to set up a long range set of targets. From here, Rolan began drilling himself, and hit the first issue. It wasn't accuracy that was the problem, even when considering even the slightest deviation from his chosen marks as failures, it was the fact he wasn't putting more of the accurate shots down range. For a crossbow it was quick, sure, but compared to a proper archer with a bow, he was sluggish at best. Scowling, Rolan considered the problem, as he collected his bolts, a more involved process given the stretched out range he was deliberately operating at. Two problems came to mind, when it came to the speed of his shots, since he was confident in his accuracy.
One, and the one he had little recourse to resolve at the moment, was the inherent nature of a crossbow. It took time to prepare the lever, draw the string back, secure the lever and load the bolt. Assuming he worked up the raw strength to simply wrench the string back bare handed, which eliminated several steps, he could only work so fast. Second, was his method of shooting. He followed shots in before loading and making the next ready. Good for marksmanship, especially for the less accurate, but even under duress he was confident in his accuracy. He could hit his marks, though the memories of the gauntlet of enemies in the last dream sequence came to mind. Faster loading, not wasting precious moments watching his shots hit and deflect, might have given him more time to load and make that difficult shot. The eye slits of armor, joints exposed for moments as a weapon is raised or shield moved aside to facilitate an attack. The throat of a dragon as it reared back to attack, perhaps.
Muttering inaudibly to himself, Rolan walked back with a full quiver, and turned and took stock again. During the next drill, rather than watch his shots, he forced himself to begin preparing the next, not waiting to see where his shot ended up, instead focusing on volume of fire. He was mentally timing himself, and emptying his supply of bolts again he went to take stock of his shots. Still accurate, not as much as when he shot how he had always trained, but it hadn't taken as long as before. Not a significant improvement, something that would take long term practice to show significant change and improvement. First was improving how much time he had to work with between shots, then he could start getting trickier with what he did. A strong foundation first, or else everything above would collapse.
