A cinematic training montage for Theseus
(Ages: from fighter → warrior → disciple → weapon)
“Strength without purpose is just violence.” — @Lance Topper
The yard becomes a graveyard for excuses.
Theseus wakes with bones like rusted steel, muscles trembling just from standing. Lance Topper doesn’t ease in. There are no warmups. No breaks. No pity.
Morning: Sprints with chains dragging behind, ankles bleeding in the dust.
Midday: Sandbag drills with loaded gauntlets — every punch like swinging bricks.
Evening: Meditation under freezing showers, fists clenched to keep from shaking.
Lance watches in silence. Occasionally mutters:
“Again.”
“Faster.”
“That one would’ve gotten you killed.”
Every night, Theseus collapses. Not in defeat — in transformation. His body starts to change. Lean muscle knots tighter. Hands become iron. Pain becomes background noise.
🥊 “You want to break dragons? You start by breaking yourself.”
“A dragon doesn’t blink before it burns you alive. You think faster… or you die slower.”
Theseus is thrown into live combat scenarios. Lance brings in older boys, failed adoptees, even former saints-in-training turned mercenaries. It’s all real now — bruises, busted ribs, torn skin.
Sparring under strobe lights to simulate city ambushes.
Shadow boxing while reciting the Proven Codes of Ascension.
Puzzle-fighting: figuring out Lance’s techniques blindfolded, learning to “see” with his hearing — his first taste of spatial kinetic perception.
Late at night, he studies dragon war tactics on battered holoscreens:
Veythar’s swarm assaults.
Thalyssra’s tidal feints.
Zeydran’s aerial misdirections.
Each day, Theseus grows quieter. Not from fear — from focus. His street-fighting instincts evolve. Every move is now calculation, every breath an equation of survival.
“The Ring doesn’t want good men. It wants resolved men.” — Lance Topper
Theseus is taken below the Boy’s Home for the first time — into the stone crypts beneath Saint Estes. There, the remnants of the original Order remain: broken statues, cracked murals of saints slaying dragons, and the vault that hums with the Ring's presence.
He isn’t allowed to touch it. Not yet.
But he trains in its shadow.
Barefoot kata on burning coals.
Meditations where fear is carved into clarity.
Silence for days — until thoughts scream louder than fists.
Hallucinations begin. He sees visions of Saint Estes in the flames. Not comforting — challenging. The Ascetic Saint stares down at him, unmoved.
In one vision, Estes speaks:
“You still ask if you deserve power. That question is weakness.”
“Ask only if you are ready to use it.”
“Weapons don’t hesitate. You’re not a child anymore.” — Lance Topper
By now, Theseus no longer cracks jokes. No longer smirks. Even the other boys avoid his gaze.
He moves like a specter. Silent. Swift. Coiled like a goddamn serpent ready to strike.
This week, Lance stops training him — and starts fighting him.
Day 1: Lance pulls no punches. A cracked rib. Two concussions. Theseus rises every time.
Day 3: Lance uses tech-enhanced gloves. Theseus adapts, flipping the environment.
Day 5: Theseus wins a round. Not with strength. With precision.
Each fight ends the same way:
“You're not there yet.”
But by the end of Week Four… even Lance is breathing harder. Even he stops calling him “kid.”
Twilight paints the sky in war-colors: ash-purple, ember-orange.
The yard is quiet. The sandbags hang untouched.
Theseus stands shirtless, fists wrapped in faded cloth, arms scored with weeks of war. His body is no longer a boy’s. It’s something built — piece by piece, day by day — out of blood and defiance.
He looks up at the sky.
For the first time, he sees the stars not as distant things…
…but as targets.
And he finally whispers:
“I’m not scared anymore.”
Lance steps out of the shadow of the yard.
He nods.
“Then you're ready.”
And beneath Saint Estes…
The Ring stirs.
🕯️ “You have completed the Four Weeks of the Forging. Your character, Theseus, now begins the final approach toward the Ring of Saint Estes — and the war that will determine the fate of Nova Prime.”
🩸 “The Cult of the Crimson Scale moves. The Ember Scion prepares to rise.”
🔥 “Your soul is a furnace. Your fists are the key.”
A Primer on the Theseus Campaign
Long before Theseus or his companions ever set foot in the South Saint Estes Boy’s Home, there was the man himself: Saint Estes. A brutal warrior, feared as much as he was revered, Estes waged war against dragons, broodspawn, and all manner of primal horrors. His victories were etched into murals, his name invoked in half-whispered prayers. But what gave him true power was no mere martial skill.
The artifact that bore his name—the Ring of Saint Estes—was not a bauble of gold, but a weapon of will. It demanded of its wielder something greater than strength: the absence of hesitation, the abandonment of mercy, and an unshakable resolve. Estes carried it alone, though even he, with his divine spark, never truly controlled it. What mortals learned only later is that the Ring was never meant for one. It was designed for four. Four anchors, four souls, one burden.
Theseus, a ward of the South Saint Estes Boy’s Home, discovered the hidden passage behind a library bookcase labeled Estes’s Folly. Alongside him were his companions:
Goten Namaki — brash, cynical, quick to scoff at myths.
Hermoine Peppermint — bookish, earnest, and hopeful.
Lance Topper — soldier, mentor, survivor; once tasked with forging boys into weapons.
Together they entered the Dungeon of Saint Estes, where Theseus, already wearing the Ring, sought not possession but mastery. Within, they found a faded painting: Estes mid-kick, defiant before a dragon. The relic whispered of burdens yet to come.
It was Goten, against all odds, who became the Ring’s second bearer. Urged by Theseus to “let go of it all,” he placed his hand upon the Ring. For the first time in history, the artifact did not devour a soul. Instead, it breathed. Memories not his own coursed through him — battles against fire-beasts, blood-soaked warriors, the loneliness of heroes.
Lance Topper, ever the hardened cynic, admitted what none before had achieved:
“No one… not a single boy… has ever touched that ring and walked away whole. You two just did.”
And in the mind of Theseus came the whisper of Saint Estes himself:
“Not one. Not one alone. Four wills. Four souls. One burden. You are the second.”
The Ring revealed its truth: it was never meant for one hero. It was meant for a brotherhood.
The revelation stirred unease. What if one of the four anchors was not good, but evil? Lance Topper himself admitted the grim reality:
“The Ring doesn’t care about evil, boy. It cares about will. Saint Estes was brutal. He burned cities. Mercy is weakness. If an ‘evil’ one wears it… they may be the strongest of us all.”
Thus the companions understood the peril: that their greatest weapon might also be their greatest threat. To bear the Ring was to gamble with humanity’s future.
Their doubts soon gave way to discovery. When Theseus and Goten touched the ancient painting, its image dissolved and reshaped. In place of Estes, a new figure emerged: Tenemi Helsingr, Grand Lantern of the Order of Saint Estes.
Clad in radiant garb and wielding a dragon-carved staff, Helsingr seemed a phantom glimpsed across time. Around his feet was a strange angular symbol — one that echoed the inscriptions on the Ring. The painting had transformed into a map of sorts, a clue toward the other anchors.
But the image gave no certainty of place, only hints: city lights, shifting shadows, symbols in forgotten tongues. If Tenemi yet lived, he was a hunter of broodspawn, a ghost moving in the cracks of the world.
Now, the path is clear yet perilous. Theseus and Goten are bound as brothers, the first two anchors of a weapon too great for one. Hermoine’s faith, Lance’s grim discipline, and the spectral guidance of Saint Estes himself drive them onward.
Their charge: to seek out the remaining anchors — and to decide whether the Ring shall be salvation… or destruction.