What was happening to him? Was he possessed by someone who was good at archery? Probably. That was the only logical answer to why he had managed to hit the center of the target twice now. Also beginners luck, that was a thing.

Olly moved on to his next target. He took out another arrow and loaded it into his bow. He was ready for the next target. Olly didn't even know what to expect from his next shot. He simply raised his bow and released the arrow. Where would it go? He honestly had no idea.

It flew toward the target and hit it. Not on the bullseye, but it did hit the target. Somewhere along the outside of the outer ring. It seemed like a more likely thing to happen. Honestly, he was relieved. It actually made sense, and he liked it better that way.

Benny absently picked up one hoove and then another as he stood in place, trying to get used to his temporary form as he gradually moving up the line. All he needed was a the tail to make it better as he seemed to keep a better balance with five appendages instead of four. But for the most part he wasn't too bad, still up on his feet and not totally tripping over his limbs. Who knew that dealing with his best friend and his antics could help him in a class.

Especially one like this one.

Certainly a benefit since Thereos was almost trying to see them fail.
Eventually the pouch was passed to him and rounded arrows were placed within. He tentatively half-walked/half trotted to the first target, pausing in place once he was in position. Woah...a stop was weird when he wanted to move. Benny took a deep breath and took aim, lletting it linger before finally letting go. The arrow sailed from its place with his towards the target, actually hitting the board which surprised him.

Not bad for a first try.

The fifth and final target was up!

Adi snagged the last arrow from the satchel. Because of this being the last one, he was determined to end on a high note. Come on, Adi! Channel Oliver Queen! He took an even more proper aim with the arrow and his eye. As he came closer, focusing on not tripping and stumbling as well, he let the arrow fly.

ZIIIING!

Into the white circle of the target. WOOT! Adi happily sped back to the start to hand the satchel over to the next person in line. But still... he had failed the activity... kinda? Thereos said that centaurs should get four out of five targets? Then again, he wasn't truly a centaur, was he? Still, he had their four legs right now so Ali could say...

Aditya Rehman, you have failed this activity.

#ArrowReference

Having a pretty good idea of what a bow was supposed to look like in terms of width, Caleb was able to finish trimming the wood of his bow until it was nice and smooth, with the thick bit right in the middle so he could hold on to it tightly. It looked as pretty as...um...that one cartoon princess girl. The Scot one with the crazy hair. It was as pretty as HER bow.

He went over to the caterpillar silk and began to tie it to the top of his bow, then moved it down and tied it to the bottom of the bow, making sure it was taunt so that it would be good for a bow and whatnot. And now he had to name it? Well, of course, the best weapons were named in memoriam for someone...

So he took his wand, muttered "Intaglio!" and carved the name "Beans" into the wood.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jessiqua

Beatrice was weaving between some other students, looking at their lovely work, when Thereos announced the next part of the lesson. The reason for her being there. Although, in all honesty, she was certainly learning.

But now onto one of her favourite things... Human transfiguration. She gave Thereos a small smile and nod as he looked towards her and Cosgrach, and pulled her wand from her pocket. And who was the first lucky duck she was to transfigure?

She looked towards the first student in the line, and with a smile said "Hello dear." She tapped her fingers to her chin and looked at them. She had never used this spell to transfigure a humans legs into that of a centaurs. But she had spent the first bit of the lesson studying Thereos and his legs, which were firm in her mind. Pointing her wand down towards their legs, she took a deep breath in. "Bestiar legs," she said, clearly picturing the centaur legs as she looked at the students own set, swishing her wand at them. The effect was transfiguring them from two human legs to four centaur legs. And with a big smile she looked back at them. "How does that feel?" she asked them.

OOC: this was Beatrice's post! If you would like Professor York to be the one transfiguring your character's legs into those of a centaur, please use this post and pretend you were next in the line.

Ugh, great, time for horse legs. The moment Caleb had been dreading. Now that his bow was all nice and pretty, he knew he couldn't put this off any longer...so he walked over and got in line. When he got to his turn, he felt a weird tingly sensation, mainly in his calves, and suddenly...HORSE LEGS. And it was so weird! You had to think about moving TWO legs instead of one at each time...it was hard to move anywhere. He kept feeling like he was going to fall down, even with his arms out to keep his balance. It just felt...off.

He was going to just...stand here. Just for a minute. To keep used to the whole thing.

Y'know the nice thing about being distracted with other thoughts meant that all of these misses weren't even discouraging. Because Zander Adair didn't really care to hit in the center of the target at all. No, this activity was the last thing he was thinking about at the moment. Sorry, Professor Centaur Sir. But this lesson was not a priority.

And y'know, normally he lived for this class.

But alas, things vary every lesson. Apparently. That's just how it worked for a real life teenager like Zander Middlename Adair

As for the next target? Eh. Zander lazily shot over at that one next. Just to miss again. Nice. He could live with that. He was way off with this one too. Ahem. Way off as in somewhere over in the grass way yonder.

He'd pick it up later. Maybe.

Okay...that first one was a failure, but Paulina wasn't going to give up. Not yet. She still had four more targets to shoot for, and that meant four more opportunities to make a hit.

She still couldn't reach the speed that Thereos had, but that was no real surprise seeing as she was having a hard time staying upright. Paulina was losing track of the amounts of times that she was stumbling, but she did manage to extract another arrow and position it against her bow so that she could shoot it.

You can do it, Paulina.

Letting the arrow go, she watched it soar through the air before...

... THWACK.

Was she seeing things? Because there was no way that she had just gotten a bulls-eye on her second try. O_O PAULINA WAS BEAMING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE SHE WAS SO HAPPY!!

Bow made, and now with FOUR legs instead of TWO… Zeke looked visibly alarmed as he stumbled after taking one step. BAH! Considering he’d lived some time as a wolf, he thought he’d have had a better handle on this whole FOUR legs thing, BUT… at the time, he had been thinking of it as hands and feet, arms and legs… his arms right now were perfectly fine, and moving them in sync with his original feet was not going to get him anywhere. Just HOW did he control the OTHER legs? Hhhmm?!

Nevertheless, somehow he managed, fumbling, stumbling, he managed.

Zeke had followed Thereos and the group, despite it taking him longer than some of the others. He managed to catch up just in time for their instructions. He saw the targets, and that in itself was… kind of exciting, though, bow work would be… interesting.

He heard lots of thing about flowers and spring, and at this point he was LOST as to how this tied in with archery, but he listened. And then it KIND OF made sense, only it didn’t. Coming of Age thing… manly centaurs be manly be hitting things with sticks. It sounded legit. The demonstration they received next though, was AWESOME. The dude was FAST and he was a cracker shot! Zeke was convinced THIS would be fun, even if he failed.

When the time came for him to go up, Zeke took the satchel of arrows and slung it over his shoulder, bow in hand, and slowly… but surely, he made his way to the starting position. His legs were rickety, and his front knees gave out on him more than once along the way. But he was ready!

Taking an arrow and drawing it through his bow, Zeke held it in front of him, his hand used as an anchor against his cheek before letting it arrow fly at the target!

…… and it missed it entirely. Booooooo.

With the previous result, Ava could feel optimistic that she could get another bull's eye in the next chance... Perhaps she could get three more. Okay, time to move to the next target! The young lioness walked to the third target for her next chance, tried not to fall miserably because seriously, it's not easy walking with four legs.

And now, here's her third chance.

She cleared her head, tried to focus to the next target. Again with the squinting, she aimed the arrow, pulled it back and on the count of three she released it. Come on, Blue Bird. She whispered and watched the arrow. Come on come on come on!!!! And..... THUD!!!

Great!! She couldn't help but threw her fist to the air. Ava was very optimistic that she could ace the next two target.

So her first try wasn't all that great. In fact it had been down right horrible. The arrow hadn't even come CLOSE to it's mark. It had only been her first attempt thought, so it wasn't really expected of her to be all that good at it, was it?

And these legs! Good gosh how could one get used to this so quickly. One tentative baby step. Two steps. Stumble! Oops! Sorry anyone if she banged into them. There was to much wobbling going on here and she didn't like it. Anymore of them and surely she would be meeting the ground on some more then comfortable terms. Like with her face.

Very slowly Hady made her way to the area accepting the arrow from the person ahead of her. Trying to remain straight, tall and still she set the arrow against the caterpillar string and pulled it back firmly. One three she released and let it FLY!

TWACK! YES!

It struck the target just on the other side of the line to the bullseye. It wasn't the perfect shot but it was a million and one times better then before. She had hit the target! Grinning widely she passed the bag to the next person.

They were going to be transfigured into centaurs? ...Cooooool! As long as his clothes were still intact after the transformation, unlike that time he transformed into a parrot for their potions homework. Prancing without clothes around the Whomping Willow was no fun. But when Owen learned that their Professors were the ones to turn them into centaurs, he immediately trudged over to where Professor Bee was. Of course. She was the Transfiguration Professor here. He trusted she knew what she was doing.

...

It was his turn. Grinning, Owen took a deep breath as the woman did her magic. WHOAAAA. He had chubby centaur legs! ....... But he was missing his balance.

EEEP!

This was so so so weird. Owen was having TROUBLE walking, and even merely taking a step. How did centaurs move on these things? It took a whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiile but after a few body coordinating exercises, the young Hufflepuff was able to take ONE successful step.

But he had to get himself together, and quickly because Professor Centaur was not waiting for any of them before he went into a long talk about rituals and wine...Owen could use something to drink right now. He was a bit thirsty and hungry. Theeeeeen Professor Centaur was off... showing his mad four-legged running and archery skills. Very cool, sir.

Owen fell in line and tried to keep himself upright as he waited for his turn to fire an arrow towards the first target. Haphazardly getting his legs to follow the student before him, Owen got Woody (the bow) ready as well as an arrow... He was getting near. He didn't know how bows and arrows really worked but he tried to follow the lead of those in front of him. Aaaaaand... AIM!

THWACK!

It missed the target entirely.

Oh well.

Angel was still getting used to her new legs, seriously she had four and she wasn't used to it at all, though she was liking the fact she looked so cool as a centaur even if she was stumbling all over the place, boy how did the baby animals get up so fast after they were born. She was sure it would take her a month if not longer.

Angel now had to get going as the student in front had just finished their turn and she was sure they had done a lot better then she would, she started to move and then stumbled a bit, it was like that until she was getting near the target, she started to aim when suddenly she stumbled more and let go of the arrow.

O____________o

Okay so that one was a miss then, well at least she had a starting point and she knew now to make sure before she aimed that she was steady on her legs.

Walking over with the centaur was one thing. It hadn't been TOO hard even with his legs adjusting like they were and him trying to figure the use of all four legs. Sure, balance was important but he could balance just fine back when he had only two. What did they need the extra two for? Which ones did he lean on most? Which ones did he focus on because certainly no one expected him to focus on ALL FOUR. Merlin.

The boy had only started getting the hang of it when they had to come to a stop, therefore ending all the training he'd gotten. Dangit, he was starting to be good.

Blaise looked at the course set out for them, only vaguely listening to all the important stuff about ceremonies and wine and other hopefuls. A bad habit he'd developed from always expecting his quill to be there taking notes FOR him. Oh well. What were the odds they would need to write an essay about this for the final exam?

He got in line with everyone else, his feet moving restlessly--all four of them, though not at once--while he waited his turn. When it finally came and the boy received the satchel. Very awkwardly he tried going at a run but had to slow when he nearly tripped on his own back legs. Trotting, uncomfortable trotting he could do but then he had to focus on the shooting of the arrow and he just couldn't do BOTH okay??? That meant stopping. Right there.He stopped and took aim.

Whooooosh!

O_O

Holy kneazle....it....the edge of the target...he....it....it HIT.

She only had two more chance.

The young lioness moved to the next target, dragging her four feet. Hehehe. She almost couldn't control with them but lucky that she didn't fall to the ground. OKAY!!! TAP TAP TAP TAP.... She's ready to shoot the next arrow. Could she ace it with another bull's eye? She hoped so. Ava took a very deep breath to calm her nerves down.

Come on, Blue bird! She whispered to her bow. Was it weird to whisper like that? Maybe not. Aiming her arrow to the target range, she squinted her eyes and shoot it.

THUDD!!!!

Ah, too bad that she didn't get the bull's eye again.

Trying to make his way to the second target as quickly as possible - without falling flat on his face, Zeke found he was trotting rather haphazardly. His body or rather, legs, refused to march him in a straight line, and so he did more of a meander along to the next position.

Ready.

Aim...

Walking... walking... walking...

FIRE!

And miss!..............................

He was not becoming a centaur man today... stupid. What was perhaps more annoying than just missing the target, was the fact that he was missing the WHOLE target. Like, that was BAD... very bad... SUPER bad.

"There's something wrong with my bow!" he called out to nobody in particular... just casually making excuses as he continued along, hooves misplacing every so often, causing him to jolt. Jeez. He could barely trot this thing, let along gallop. Gosssshhh!

He could stand there ALL day marveling at the fact that he hit a small piece of the target on his first try which obviously meant he could be inducted into the Order of the Centaurs and everything but then he remembered there were other people still waiting on their turns and at present all eyes were on him. He had to move on, and move on he did.

This time he tried going a little faster. It wasn't so hard when he concentrated really hard on his legs and how they were moving. Most might argue this was hardly efficient and he'd agree in a heartbeat. Why? Because in all his focus he'd just ridden by his target.

....

........

Right then.

With a heavy sigh the boy doubled back, going at a near walk this time as he prepared his boy and arrow. Almost there...pull back on the arrow. Hold. RELEASE...right off into the thicket of trees.

Cool story bro, He was just...gonna....ahem...keep trotting.

The forest had been quiet and tranquil until this moment, when not the whole herd, but a good many of the centaurs found their way at the edge of the Forbidden Forest to watch their fellow attempt to teach the humans to appreciate the way of the centaur.

They had not much hope in the humans’ skillset in this aspect. And it seemed, in contrition with their prediction, that indeed, the humans could not shoot an arrow at a target at a moving pace.

“The stars of Orion are bright tonight...” one of them stared at the sky as he said it. The rest agreed in a muffled unison, except for one.

“Bright? No—“ he shook his head. “Look at the humans—“ and their heads all turned towards the target course. They had no desire to involve themselves in this; they simply came to watch. Apparently, they were here to watch the humans fail at this sacred ceremony suited for young centaurs.

Being a centaur was a tough gig, he decided, cause, legs, tail, the bow and arrow thing... there was so much to take in.

After having missed BOTH of his first shots, Zeke was determined to at least get ONE to stick to the board before he reached the end. It'd be super embarrassing if he didn't. Reaching over his shoulder to claim an arrow, he threaded it into his bow and pulled back on it, all the while his hooves carrying him forward, rounding slightly to face his target head on... and release!

....

THWAK!... Right on the bullseye.

HOW DID HE GET IT ON THE BULLSEYE BUT MISSED ALL THE OTHERS?!

He didn't even think he knew what he was doing any better than what he had been doing until now. Nevertheless, he didn't question it, and kept moving.
But WHOA... whoa... more centaurs? Were they here to laugh at them? At him?

HE JUST NAILED ONE! They had to have seen that.

Angel was moving around a bit better on her centaur legs, but she was still stumbling, it was like she was a new born deer who was jut getting used to the legs, though it didn't take them as long as it was taking her, she was glad she wasn't a centaur, no offence to the Professor or anything but she doubted she could actually life like one for an length of time, she was useless as it was.

Angel then saw the second target, she was stumbling around as she aimed at the target.

*fire*

Angel watched as she missed once again, she seriously needed to stop stumbling or everything was going to go wrong and she would miss all the targets and that was something she didn't want to happen, she decided to take it a bit slower and steadier to see if that would help her.

Some more awkward movement on his extra legs and the second target was quickly upon him. It was getting a little easier to get around but still felt relatively odd. And ro think he was only really walking or fastish walking on four legs not the running Thereos had been doing. That would take effort, though it wasn't as if his legs didn't want to do that. Or that he didn't want to give it a try.

Benny lined bow and arrow up to be ready to take the shot. He might not have given himself enough pause to be more sure of his attempt, the seventh year pulling back the silk and letting it fly towards the new target just like he had the first and last one. However it was clear after he had let go that his luck wasn't with him this time around. The arrow soon seen zooming past to target to lock into the ground nearby.

That would be two fails.

MAYBE, just maybe, he was getting the hang of this? He liked to believe that was the case instead of simply getting lucky. There was nothing great about getting lucky... skill was always preferred.

Trotting along, Zeke loaded up his next shot, but before he could take it decided to pick up the pace a bit. Bad idea.

His legs could not sustain a canter, and the attempt had his legs knocking into each other and throwing him off completely. He was lucky though, in that he didn't fall, and he recovered quickly, opting to stay trotting and save the pace for the pro's.

Shot lined up.... Zeke pulled back on his arrow... and....

A complete miss again, this time his arrow landed short of the target onto the grass...

So he wasn't getting the hang of it. That was a shame.

She only had one more chance now.

Though she didn't understand why on earth the centaur wanted them to do this, but actually archery was quite fun. Not as much as fun as dueling but still.... fun.

Ava moved to the next target, and this was gonna be her last chance since there's only an arrow on her satchel now. Okay. She took a deep breath and focused on the target board by again, squinting her eyes. She pulled back the arrow, and released it.

THUDDD!!!!

Yay! She threw her fist to the air as she successfully got the bull's eye again.

This was it though, his final target, his final arrow, his final shot... he couldn't do any worse than what he'd done so far, and he succeeded in reaching his own personal goal of hitting the board ONCE... in fact, he'd technically done better than that.

Still only trotting, because anything faster was more effort and danger than he cared for right now, Zeke loaded up his next stroke, feeling the wood between his fingers.

If anything though, this might be decent practice as far as aiming spells went.

Drawing the arrow back, Zeke released it, his left eye squinted closed.

.......... TWACK!

It hit. IT HIT! It hit! This time it was nowhere near the centre, BUT at least he could say he had more than one lucky shot. Once was luck, twice was, well, more than luck. He had SOMETHING going for him, he was sure.

Zeke rejoined the group and passed off the arrow satchel.

Owen had ambivalent feelings about this task at hand. Sure, he wanted to be one of those lucky few who would pass the ritual but the circumstances were proving the ritual to be VERY difficult because as much as he was trying his hardest to be optimistic towards his four legs, he was not just successful. For the few minutes that he had transfigured as a centaur, he had more stumbles than actual steps. What's more, his pudgy fingers were not making his aim any easier. Readying his bow and arrow, Owen focused on the target. He waited until the arrow felt taut enough before he fired.

The arrow zoomed past with woosh but once again fell from the target.

"Ugh."

One more to go. Olly made his way to the last target as quickly as possible, which was still not very fast. He didn't think he could ever get used to the centaur legs. As awesome as it was to look like a centaur, he was looking forward to being done with the lesson so he could become a human boy again. He missed walking around on two legs.

The end of the lesson would come quickly after he shot at the last target. Olly loaded his bow and took aim. The arrow soared through the air and he watched the impact on the target. In the middle. Olly simply smiled, not celebrating too much because he knew it wasn't really his doing. Beginner's luck was his best friend at the moment.

He was finally done. Olly passed the pack to the next person in line and moved away from the course.

It was probably a near hopeless task, but Owen was not one to give up easily. In fact, he had a persistent spirit. He was going to try and try again until he was better.

This was one of those times.

While those in front of the line were getting ready for their turn, Owen spent his waiting time to practice walking properly on his four legs. He still stumbled and such, but he was having more successful consecutive steps now. Three steady steps! Woot.

Then it was his turn for the next target once more.

He eyed the target closely, drew back his arrow as he inhaled and as he exhaled gently released.

...

WHOA! ... No way.

Lucky!