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Kabru is used to being stared at when he practices his swordplay in public, but today there is an elf looking in Kabru's direction without actually following his movements.
The elf's diligent, unmoving stature and his unfocused gaze are so mismatched that Kabru wasn't sure that he was reading the situation correctly at first. The elf has an odd eye that may have been throwing him off, but Kabru has shifted around the dummy he's sparring with many times in the past hour, and neither the elf's head nor his eyes have moved. It is completely clear the elf is not watching Kabru despite his prime position to do so, and he isn't watching any of the other occupants of the training field either.
No matter what anyone in front of him does the elf stares ahead without moving at all, looking at nothing in particular.
He could still be watching someone on the field despite his lack of movement, of course. He could even still be watching Kabru, could be a new employ of his mother's chosen specifically to make him think that he's not being supervised, but that seems unlikely. Kabru's mother has pivoted entirely to letting him get hurt “to toughen him up” and hasn't hired a chaperone for him in years.
The Canaries' practice grounds are quite safe for Kabru anyways, given that all the elves think of him as his mother's delicate baby and even the Canaries that he's seen bothering new recruits leave him alone on that account. A chaperone isn't needed in the first place.
The staring elf clearly isn't here for Kabru and so it would be best to ignore him and return to sword drills, but he's sitting so close by with such strange behaviour and Kabru can never resist a mystery.
He makes sure to finish the set of exercises he's doing before he approaches, parrying another six of the dummy's thrusts then standing back and sheathing his sword so the dummy's enchantments would acknowledge he was done. Kabru is starting to be winded anyways, and it would be best to sit down and recover even if there weren't a strange elf sitting nearby.
The elf doesn't react at all when Kabru approaches his bench and does some cooldown stretches. He doesn't even move his eyes when Kabru sits down next to him and takes a swig from his waterskin, letting out a loud, contented breath when he's finished.
Proximity doesn't mean anything to him then. Kabru clears his throat, loudly, and the elf continues not to react. Bizarre.
“Excuse me.”
The elf's one visible eye tilts toward Kabru, which is close enough to paying attention that he must be listening.
“I've noticed you've been sitting here for quite some time. Was there someone you were hoping to find?”
“No.”
A curt answer. Semi-expected, though Kabru's surprised at the exact curtness of it. Even rude elves usually embellish their sentences.
“Are you waiting for someone to arrive, then?”
“Yes. I am waiting for my second, Driel, to return from requisitioning our supplies, the full list of which she did not divulge to me.”
This time the sentence is far too embellished, Kabru didn't need to know the exact name of who the elf is waiting for or that he doesn't know the supply list, but the length of it encourages him to ask a third question.
“Why sit so still to wait? Surely you could get some training in.”
It's a question that could get a reaction from pretty much anyone else around the Canary compound, a seemingly naive question that undermines their own decision-making, but there is still no physical reaction from the elf.
"I don't need to train."
That truly throws Kabru for a loop. Time spent training is usually a point of pride among Canaries, a sign they're taking their duties seriously and won't get complacent in the field. At first Kabru thinks this strange, placid elf must be arrogant underneath it all, but he seems so detached from that emotion he makes "I don't need to train" sound like a fact.
Kabru decides to push his luck, "Why not?"
"That's classified," he doesn't sound smug about having classified knowledge either. "You can't be high enough clearance to hear about it because you aren't a Canary."
At that point the elf actually faces Kabru, and quickly looks him up and down.
"You can't be training to become a Canary either, given that you aren't an elf."
Kabru's stomach falls, dreading the "why are you here?" that's sure to follow the elf's realization, dreading the inevitable condescension when Kabru explains his purpose, dreading the real or false concern for his safety that comes every time without fail when an elf realizes Kabru wants to stop dungeons himself.
Instead the elf looks away again, seemingly bored by the conversation, though Kabru can see no indication that his mood changed at all.
With that lack of change and the elf's flat affect in mind, Kabru feels he's solved the mystery of him.
The elf has no emotions and that's why he can stare at nothing without feeling bored, and furthermore has no incentive to do anything but sit as he waits.
Kabru would be cursing himself for that simplistic conclusion later, but in the moment the revelation bores him. Lacking emotion is hardly the strangest quirk Kabru has seen in a Canary, and if there's no emotion for Kabru to play off of then getting anything out of the elf would be next to impossible.
Kabru stands up and does another set of stretches before he gets back into full training.
"I'm going back to my exercises now," Kabru tells the elf. "It was nice to meet you."
Predictably, the elf does not respond to that. He is already staring ahead blankly again. Knowing now that the elf isn't interested in him, Kabru feels no shame in stretching in front of him, then picks up his practice sword, taps the stitched-on heart of the training dummy to animate it, and starts a new set of exercises.
This time around Kabru focuses on parrying, a skill much easier to practice with an animated dummy than on his own. The dummy's pre-prepared drills take him from relatively slow strikes to fast ones, from high blows to blows coming from any direction, from simple movements to slashes and stabs that seem to come from one direction and end up coming from another.
Kabru has completed this exercise before, and even in his second session of the day he is able to keep up with the dummy. It doesn't actually hurt much if the dummy hits him, they're designed not to harm, but everyone can see if he misses and Kabru can't have that. He's always on the verge of losing this privilege and he must—
“If you're here to train for dungeons, why are you fighting a humanoid?”
The dummy hits Kabru's fully exposed side with its rod and Kabru stumbles a couple of steps over because he's spinning around to see the elf, who has stood up and moved much closer to him. Before Kabru can react, the elf then jabs at the dummy's heart, fully in Kabru's space and fully deactivating the dummy. The dummy freezes in place, and the elf doesn't look so blank as before when he rests a hand on its forehead. His focus has shifted.
“If you're serious about pursuing monsters, you should practice with monsters.”
Before Kabru can ask anything about that, the dummy's shape starts to change.
The elf forces the dummy down to its hands and knees and kicks the rod out of its hand as its hands become claws, material gets transferred from its limbs to its body, and the dummy grows wings.
Kabru's attention is drawn mostly to its face, where the dummy grows a snout and implausibly sharp teeth inside its newly hollow mouth. The elf is hollowing all of the dummy to make its outside shape more monstrous and looking inside its mouth is seeing a void, a lack, a permanently empty mouth that Kabru can't help but feel wants to swallow him and everyone was right, he isn't ready to face real monsters if this—
“CAPTAIN MISURN, WE'RE DONE WITH THE SUPPLIES!”
The monster in front of Kabru slumps in on itself, just a pile of fabric and stuffing, because the elf has lost interest.
He has lost interest so instantly that he's teleported over to the area behind the bench he was sitting on before. Another elf stands there, looking aghast at the mess by Kabru's feet.
"Captain! Why did you do that?!"
"I was told I could get some training in."
"By who?"
The elf, Misurn apparently, gestures over to Kabru, whose heart has not yet stopped pounding.
"That's one of... Captain, don't listen to suggestions from outsiders."
"I wanted to."
"You w—"
"Properly trained children can simplify missions in the future. We're leaving."
Misurn turns on his heel, and the other elf calls out to Kabru.
"Sorry about him! We'll replace the dummy with our own money, no cost to you!"
They follow after their captain then, leaving Kabru to slump down in front of the ruined dummy, whose loose stuffing is already starting to scatter. Canary members and trainees are already gathering by him as well, complaining about the apparently famous erratic actions of that strange, odd-eyed captain.
Swallowing any thoughts of monsters and teeth and blood as he shakes off any of the elves' attempts at comfort, Kabru thinks that Misurn wasn't wrong, and he should face his next monster with the same anger he caught in that elf's eye, the same lack of fear.