XII

"It's time." 

Rouising from my brief rest bit I looked up at Atravius standing above me with an expression I had never seen on his face before, "Are we sparing again?" 

A muscle feathered in Atravius' cheek as he spoke, "You misunderstand. Our time together has come to an end." 

For a moment I didn't know what to say, 'Has it really been a whole year?'

Losing track of time was normally such a disorienting experience but my time learning under Atravius had been different. The primary reason being I didn't sleep once during the entire year, instead I took short breaks to meditate and allow my mind to refresh. 

Every other waking moment I spent learning everything Atravius had to teach me. However even my most generous expectations didn't reach the sheer breadth and variety of the subjects Atravius had drilled into me. 

Picking up my head I looked around at the same massive stone pillars and the void beyond them that had never once left my sight. 

"So what happens now?" I asked, still seated on the floor, enjoying the soft goose down stuffed in the pillow under me. 

"Someone will be here to pick you up shortly." Atravius answered curtly and I couldn't help but glance up at my teacher seeing that same unrecognizable look, "I'm going to the Academy then?" 

"I haven't spent the last year training you for naught," The vampire responded as he walked around me navigating through the towers of tomes and scrolls that I had piled up over the year. 

Standing up to follow Atravius I said nothing as we moved into the middle of the circular platform like we had so many times before. 

Atravius then turned to face me and I saw his eyes dip down to my waist where my hands naturally rested, "Why haven't you fixed yourself?" 

Raising up my mangled right hand I stared at the scared flesh that had finished healing long ago, "I was saving it for a special occasion. I guess today counts." 

Reaching inside of me I felt the countless tendrils of aether weaving through my body and directed them towards my amputated hand. 

I felt my arm flush with a familiar heat before my hand exploded in a shower of blood. But instead of raining to the ground the dark red liquid remained suspended in the air. Then from my freshly opened wrist a skeletal hand grew out from my radius and ulna like a flower blooming in spring. 

Then, muscles grew up like red fibrous roots covering the bone, before the suspended blood rushed back into my body forming veins and arteries before a fresh layer of skin covered the entire appendage. Opening and closing my hand to make sure everything was functioning I almost couldn't believe how smooth my control had become as the entire process only took a minute. But a dull buzzing pain surged to the forefront of my mind as my aether reserves plummeted. 

Learning how to use my Blood Sorcery was the most difficult and painful part of my training. The first thing that Atravius taught me was how to ignore pain.

"When you fight your opponent will expect you to avoid pain at any cost. It is a response drilled into the deepest part of every living being's psyche. You must learn to overcome it and use your willingness to suffer against your enemy." 

His method of overcoming pain was to make me numb to it. Not by torturing me or cutting me apart like a butcher, but teaching me how to control the thousands of nerves within my body. 

Atravius taught me that pain was a signal used by the body to tell the mind if something was going awry. All I needed to do was change the pain into another far less jarring sensation. It was only after that I learned how to control my pain that Atravius started to teach me how to heal myself using Carnomancy. 

"Even if you can ignore pain, a wound can still hamper your fighting prowess. While most vampires can heal from mortal wounds in a few days time. A master of Carnomancy can regenerate their entire body as long as there is a piece of brain left to think." 

Learning how to heal and regenerate was a surprisingly mundane and repetitive process. It involved hours upon hours of studying anatomy, and not just human. Atravius piled scroll after scroll upon me filled with countless diagrams of dissected creatures, beasts, and even other Fae. 

"When fighting as a Carnomancer there is no information more valuable than the capabilities and limitations of your opponent's body." 

Each time I finished a scroll Atravius would test me on what knowledge I retained. But my years spent as a burgeoning scholar served me well and I rarely failed one of his tests. 

After the theoretical knowledge came the practical portion, which presented a hurdle I hadn't expected. In order to heal I needed a fresh wound to recover from, which Atravius made me inflict upon myself every single time. 

At first I couldn't even cut my palm without hesitating for a handful of seconds as I worked up the guts to draw my own blood. While I couldn't feel pain, my brain still subconsciously stopped me from hurting myself. But after a few hundred self-inflicted wounds of increasing severity I could bite off my own finger like chomping down on a carrot. 

Only after I managed to heal from every kind of injury imaginable did Atravius start to teach me how to fight. However his idea of combat differed wildly from the little I had seen.

Atravius' fighting style was all offense and little to no defense. Instead of deflecting my knife with his own blade he would turn, letting the blade glance off his ribs in order to stab me in the heart. Another time he let me stab him in the forearm, trapping my knife and leaving me defenseless as he slit my throat. 

There was no self preservation when Atravius fought, it was like fending off against an enraged beast that only cared about killing its prey. 

But his skill in combat was undeniable, no matter what weapons we used, the fluidity and familiarity the vampire displayed spoke to several lifetimes of honed technique. 

It also gave me a chance to find what suited me best, our first day of weapons training however I immediately discarded any two handed weapons. Not only due to my physical limitation but they seemed unwieldy even in Atravius' masterful hands. 

Slowly I whittled down the seemingly inexhaustible number of weapons Atravius had to offer until I arrived at armament of choice. I still remember the conversation we had after I announced my weapon of choice.