06: Infernal Chair, day one

"From time to time, at night I remember those first weeks, the days I spent in my first hell"

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"So?! What happened to that confidence you had a minute ago?! Are you giving up already?!" Seng laughed, the ridiculous brat looked dumber than usual in front of his eyes. "Could it be that this is how my teachers saw me as a child? Hahahahaha, of course not" he joked to himself without hiding his laught.

"Can you shut up?!" Airys yelled. "What the hell?! Why does it cost so much?! "

After the humiliating fight between Airys and her defective pets, Seng had proposed a deal full of malice:

"How dare you useless brat?! Do you think I will tolerate this kind of behavior?" He said to Airys as he forced her to stick her head to the ground using her shadow as a rope that almost didn't tear the girl's delicate flower skin.

"I-I'm sorryyyyyyyy" she said almost crying.

"Oh don't worry," he smiled. "That you attacked me was a serious mistake but you made me think of something. Tell me, how confident are you in invoking them?"

A while later Airys was sweating sitting on the floor with one foot on a tree and the other on a fallen leaf. She had a face as if she were pushing hard and an expression of enormous shame that was made worse by each undisguised laugh of his irreverent spectator.

"Come on Brat, or don't you want to eat?"

"It's not fair! Why can't I use my hands?!"

The deal was simple. If Airys managed to summon her two creatures without using her hands Seng would forget what happened and let her eat, otherwise he would do his best to prevent it.

Airys tried to bring Terry and Leafy into this reality, but regardless of whether they were feet, legs, butt, back or breasts, nothing worked.

"Please!" She yelled as loudly as she could, rubbing her forehead against the rough wood.

Obviously the result was a nice scratch.

"I'm tired of seeing you Brat. We have no time to lose, we will continue."

"B-but you'll let me eat, right?" She asked to the cold air.

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They had been hiking for about seven long hours through the mountain and its vegetation, for Seng it was easy to choose the worst possible trails and the ugliest: A cliff where Airys slipped uncontrollably, a makeshift bridge made from the trunk of a thorny tree, a surprise mud pit that according to Airys little logic shouldn't be there and lastly a path full of sharp rocks that just didn't cut through her leather shoes. Routes that for Seng were a walk in the park thanks to his useful control over his shadow.

"A-a-a-ashu!" She sneezed, crumbling. Her nose was red, her back ached, her feet hurt, and her head was hit by the sun.

"You haven't gotten very sick in your life, have you Brat?"

"Eh?" She mused for a second. "I think not… ufgh."

"Like I supposed. Congratulations Brat! Now you are ready for the first and most important lesson of your life so far"

"Say it already" she growled.

"The best way to train the use of your Resonance is to be as sick as possible"

"What?"

"What do you mean by what? It is not very complicated, you learn to use your internal energy better or you continue to suffer"

"You, ugfh, you mean learn magic? Do I have to get sick for that?"

"Of course!" he smiled mockingly. "And from now on instead of calling it that, you'll say Soul Resonance, understand?"

On that cold cloudy afternoon, standing in the middle of sharp rocks and in her dirty and wet clothes, Airys received the first class of her life regarding what she always wanted to learn, and she couldn't care less.

About three thousand years ago a woman named Delyia dedicated herself to understanding why there were people who from birth were unable to move. Those studies produced a couple of breakthroughs in the area of ​​disease, however, what perpetuated her name as one of the most important people in history was what she called a lack of Resonance between soul and body. That theory was used centuries later and developed for the understanding of what ordinary people call Magic.

It turns out that living beings are divided into two existences, the body and the spirit.

The body acts as a medium between the spirit and the physical world, consuming resources to act in search of obtaining more resources and maintaining the spirit. And the spirit influences the body so that the individual can achieve that goal.

That major argument was expanded and combined with theories about why living beings were capable of controlling, creating and extinguishing entities outside their body without touching it.

The soul can resonate to a varying degree to the body and other elements.

It was the final conclusion.

If a healthy person is unable to move his body, it means that his Soul doesn't resonate with his body. If he is able to bring other spirits into this reality, it means that their souls resonate. Since Seng can manipulate his shadow that means that his Soul resonates with his shadow with intensity similar to the resonance between his body and soul.

"That's why I'm capable of doing this." In Seng's hands there was a small rustic glass made of ice and which she placed on what was assimilated to a bench formed by her shadow. "My Soul resonates with ice, my shadow, sound, and my body. In your case, Brat, I know yours resonates with your body and with those weak spirits."

Airys frowned even more.

"And why can I only bring Terry and Leaf with my hands?" She looked at her soft, bruised hands sadly.

"For the same reason that you cannot walk using your hands, only that instead of not knowing how to use your body well, you do not know how to use your Soul well"

"How/"

"How do you learn to use your soul? Blurring the boundary between your soul and the physical world!" Seng yelled in an exaggerated tone that hurt Airys's ears and also caught the attention of rough-legged gray wolves adapted to hunting on the rocky part of the mountain.

"Iiiih!" Airys screamed in fright, seeing the animals approaching with obvious intentions to eat her. "Sen those wolves are coming! Seng?"

For her Seng had disappeared from the place. He had actually only run straight to the nearest treetop so that the wolves would have a free hand and wouldn't run away instinctively.

"I think it won't be so frustrating to teach the Brat" he thought as he took a bite of one of the fruits of the tree to enjoy the show.

She leaned back on the log to relax; that didn't last long, because he was reluctantly forced to go down to save the Brat, if he didn't want to be the one in serious trouble tomorrow.

Thus ended the first day of Airys's nine hellish months under the tutelage of Seng, the worst teacher she could have.