20. Training Arc II (Patreon)

8.

Silvah returned to the school at nighttime. The gates were already closed, and one of the guards had to verify her identity before she was let through.

She asked for directions once she reached the main hall, and a helpful assistant led her towards the Practice Rooms. Silvah stalked behind them, tired beyond anything she had ever felt. Not even her father’s training had been this exhausting.

When she reached the practice rooms, she found a piece of paper pasted to the door, which said:

Slowpoke! I’ll only wait till eight in the evening!

There was a tiny drawing of the bottom of what Silvah supposed was Miles his face but drawn entirely round like a donut.

She sighed and went to bed.

9.

It was a week later that she finally finished her task before the accursed eight in the evening. Though she was in no state to work. Silvah all but collapsed inside the practice room. She was sweating and her disciple tunic was covered in dust.

‘You also stink horribly,’ Miles said. He pinched his nose. ‘Couldn’t you have showered before coming here.’

‘Screw you.’

She hadn’t understood how much a hundred kilograms of cele stones had been until she tried it. It was double what the average worker mined in a whole day. Silvah had half a day at most if she started early.

‘Well, at least it’s helping your energy balance.’

Silvah looked up from the wet pool she had created on the floor.

Miles smiled.

‘You should’ve noticed yourself, no? The mines are more a task of stamina than anything else.’

They were. She needed to be precise with her energy usage for long periods of time. Which was also a recipe for running out. Luckily, her cele and foul reserves had grown ever since she absorbed the…Primordial. She wasn’t sure why, though.

‘Now get up. I’ll explain your next task. See those robot arms over there?’

He pointed further into the room. The practice room was as big as an indoor soccer field would be. There were weapon racks on the side but also equipment for playing sports such as badminton. All of the sport equipment was engraved with shapes Silvah couldn’t make heads or tails of.

She followed Miles’s finger to the absolute back of the room, where a set of six, robotic arms jutted out of a platform fastened to the ceiling. The ends were holes, big enough to fit a soccer ball through, and the arms appeared to have the freedom to move over the entire width and length of the last quarter of the practice space.

Miles tapped her on the shoulder, and they were in the middle of said arms.

‘Essentially, you’re going to be practising dodge ball.’

As expected.

‘I take it there’s a catch?’

‘You know me,’ Miles said. ‘These arms are capable of firing balls of both foul and cele energy. They are going to be moving around as they do so.’

‘So, I have to protect myself with the appropriate energy type as they fire?’

If so, this would be another task related to quickness and precision. Coating her entire body in a protective layer would work, but it would drastically reduce her lasting time.

‘That’s the next phase of the training. Which we’ll do after I teach you how to enhance your body. For now, you just need to dodge. Of course, the arms also have levels related to their speed and power. Seven in total.’

Silvah looked at the arms again. They were moving already, changing angles and latitude and longitude. Albeit slowly. The first level would be doable.

‘Doesn’t sound too complicated,’ she said.

She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to say that out loud because she jinxed herself when he offered her a blindfold next.

‘Try it,’ he said.

There was a circle indicated in the middle of the field with enough room to spin around twice before hitting the other side of the edge.

Shadows swallowed her vision as Silvah put on the blindfold. The dark. It made her…remember. See the silhouettes of that creature again.

‘Ready?’

‘Yes,’ she said hesitantly.

The grating of metal sounded around her. It was starting.

‘Visualisation is the most important aspect,’ Miles said. ‘Follow the shift of energy in the atmosphere.’

Of course, Silvah didn’t see anything but a whole lot of black—

An impact near her upper back sent her reeling forwards.

‘Au!’

She tried to rub the spot when another ball hit her fingers and made her cradle her palm.

‘Sto—’

One hit her in the side of the head, forcing her mouth shut with a snap. She tried to jump away, and a double barrage hit her in the stomach.

Miles watched the proceedings with a grin on his face.

Silvah cursed his name, but he strode over to a nearby chair, and flexed his ability to steal a milkshake one of the students in the building had gotten from the cafeteria.

‘Keep at it, Target Dummy!’ he said, taking a sip.

He sighed. Free stuff always tastes better.

10.

Pain was a lie. A construct of the mind…that’s what Silvah tried to tell herself as she crawled into bed.

That had been the most horrible and torturing set of training she had ever done. She was bruised all over, and she could feel the hurt deep in her bones.

She just couldn’t get herself to visualise the shift Miles was speaking of. No matter how hard she tried.

Laying in the dark, she thought back to what Haku had told her:

You’re not cut for this, Silvah.

She could not come up with any logical refute of the girl’s statement.

11.

‘Kiddo, what happened to your face,’ Lao G asked the next day. ‘You’re bruised all over!’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Silvah said.

The old man sent her a worried look, which made her feel bad for being cutthroat.

‘Thank you for asking,’ she said. ‘But I’m alright, really.’

A pause.

Then the old man nodded, going back to his work.

Silvah breathed in. Closing her eyes, she tried to envision how the foul energy moved through her body, to the shaft of the axe, and around the head. It was still sluggish. Even after a week of training.

And this was with help from the runes on the axe. She still couldn’t enchant her father’s heirloom, which lacked the enchantments for making it easier.

What were the runes doing that she was missing when they weren’t there?

She tried to think, still gathering the foul energy within her. Emotions, Miles had said, were key to a sorcerer. Rage and anger. Should she think negative thoughts to provoke herself?

It’s worth the try.

She touched the beads of her necklace. The cold was no longer there. She hadn’t felt it since the Primordial infected her.

It was that thought, and not the many potential others, that upset her greatly. Everyone was doing what they wanted with her without suffering the consequences. Exactly like Miles had said.

Her blood heated up.

Boots shuffled over the tunnel floor, away from her, but she paid it no mind.

She bit her lip so hard it bled. Then she swung.

The piece of the wall she hit evaporated on impact, and she heaved on the other well of power within her, trying to swap between the forces of energy. But her hate had been so great that it was slow to retreat, and she heard the mineral break within the walls as it had done plenty of times before.

The digging sound of the other miners had stopped.

Silvah pointedly did not look around her. She spent the rest of the day mute, swinging her pickaxe in silence.

12.

A little more than halfway through the second week, Miles hovered over a floored Silvah, who had failed another run in the practice room.

‘You’re going to challenge Haku again,’ he said.

She was so tired that she couldn’t call on the necessary outrage she wanted to feel.

‘I can’t beat her,’ she said. ‘I haven’t improved enough yet.’

Almost half of her allotted time had already passed, and she was in no state to take on the moon-skinned girl. She couldn’t even get passed the first level of the dodge ball training.

‘She’s just going to beat me up,’ Silvah added.

And she was in enough pain as it was.

‘That’s why you have to go,’ Miles said.

Silvah looked up.

‘You need every advantage you can get,’ Miles said. ‘Getting accustomed to Haku’s habits is a part of that. Otherwise, you’re never going to beat her.’

Silvah let her head rest on the floor.

‘Why would she agree to fighting me?’

‘Because I won’t let her reject you,’ Miles said.

He gave her a cheeky smile and a thumbs up. The mirth could not penetrate Silvah’s mood.

‘Fine,’ she said.

13.

Haku was seated in the same dojo as before, the moon beaming down in the same manner, as if this moment in time had been frozen for Silvah to repeat indefinitely.

The girl watched Silvah and Miles enter.

‘I know what you’re doing Miles,’ Haku said. ‘It won’t work.’

‘You think you can run from me?’ Miles said, raising his brow in challenge.

Haku shook her head.

‘The result will stay the same,’ Haku said. Her white eyes locked with Silvah’s. ‘Stop wasting your time and learn the right way.’

Silvah remained silent and Haku sighed. She got up and retrieved her practice weapon. 

Haku broke more than one bone in Silvah’s body that night.