Training

For the next few months, I spent training with the lady who wants me to refer to her as Dane. For the first two months, I just spent exercising my body. Right now it feels like I can lift a boulder with ease. After the first two months, she finally said that we were going to practice with a weapon. When I heard this, my face immediately lit up.

"What is it?!" I said. "Is it a bow?" as I pretend to pull back a string. "Or is it a sword?" as I swing an imaginary sword.

"Neither," she says as she shows her hands.

"What?," I said, confused. "Is there something in your hands?"

"No dingus. You're going to learn how to fight with your hands and legs."

"But isn't a weapon way more useful?"

She sighs as she says, "Watch." She hands me a sword. "Try and hit me."

I hesitate but run at her. Just as I'm in range to swing, she sidesteps, avoiding my swing.

"First thing is that I can move freely without the hindrance of a weapon. Second..."

I try again and swing multiple times. She dodges in and out of each swing before grabbing my hand behind my back.

"...is I will never get disarmed." She jumps back. "On top of learning how to fight with your body..." She picks up a long stick, "I'm going to teach you how to use a staff."

I rush forward ready to swing at her. Before I can even reach her, she lands a hit on me and disarms me.

"Woah," I said with amazement.

For the next few weeks, I trained on fighting techniques and with the staff until both became second nature.

"Alright!" shouts Dane. "Now that fighting with your body has become second nature to you, now you will learn how to control your strength."

"How will you do that?"

"Follow me."

I follow her into the forest.

"Here you will jump from branch to branch."

"What the! No way I'm going to fall!"

She smiles at me, "Not if you know how to control your strength. Land too hard and you might slip. You have to learn how to land gracefully like a leaf landing on the ground. Watch."

She jumps up to the trees with ease. She then proceeds to jump from branch to branch with relative ease.

"Woah," I said in amazement.

Suddenly she jumps to a tiny branch.

"She's going to break it!" I thought.

Just as she lands on it, she gently pushes it down and pushes off of it, not breaking it.

She lands back down gently saying, "This is really helpful with balance and controlling your strength. Now you try it."

I look up.

*Gulp*

I jump up and immediately overshoot the branch, crashing back down.

Dane smiles, "As I said, you have to learn how to control your strength. Too much and you overshoot. Too little and you won't make the jump!"

I try again, hitting the branch instead.

Ok. Harder than it looks

I try for the third time and land on this time. I look down at Dane smiling, "I did it!"

She kicks the tree and I fall hitting the ground hard.

She looks down at me saying, "Balance Foster. Good job though."

For the next two weeks, I keep practicing despite the pain from every time I fall down. In the end, I'm now able to jump from tree to tree.

The next day, I ask Dane, "So, when are you going to teach me moves that kill?"

She stops. She turns her body towards me and stares at me with a cold stare. "Resume position, today is the day you'll learn." She puts her hands up in a chopping motion.

We face each other and stare, waiting for the other to make a move. The only thing I feel is my breathing and the snow falling on top of us. I charge towards her and jump, swinging my leg down.

She blocks it and sidesteps.

I regain my footing and face her. But by the time I did that, she was already charging toward me and is about to swing from the left. I quickly ready and block.

She swings.

Misses.

Jumps.

She lands behind me and slams my ankles making me fall to the ground. I swing around seeing her grab my punch. She launches my body over hers. I slam into the ground. Just as I get up, Dane grabs onto my neck squeezing hard. I look into her red crimson eyes. I could feel the intent to kill radiating from them.

I... can't... breathe…

She looks at me seriously saying, "Why do you want to learn how to kill?"

"You wouldn't understand," I said trying to breathe.

She lets go and sits down saying, "Tell me."

I look at her reluctantly until finally giving in, "I… I want to kill someone."

"Why is that?"

"He killed my uncle."

"Who killed your uncle?"

I stay silent.

"I don't know."

"So you want to know how to kill a person that you don't know."

"Like I said, you don't understand! First I lost my parents at a young age and now my uncle who I looked up to as a father!"

There's silence.

"Well," Dane says as she stands up. "It's not my position to tell you what to do." She puts her hand on my shoulder. "But I can tell you this. From past experience…" She pauses, "I've gone down the path of violence. I don't want you to go down that same path."

After that, I spent another month training on perfecting my fighting and my parkour.

After one month, Dane finally says, "Enough, you have grown efficient with your fighting and parkour. It's time for the next step. Show me your magic."

"My magic?" I said. "Huh! Good luck with that. I already tried doing magic. I don't have it"

"Show me your hands."

I do as I'm told as she grabs my hands.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Feeling for your magic."

"Is that possible?"

"It is. I learned it from someone long ago."

After a few seconds, she opens her eyes in shock.

"I can't find any."

I sighed disappointedly, "See?"

"This is my first time seeing this."

"You sound like my school teacher. What's so special about it?"

"Everyone should be born with at least a bit of magic." She grabs onto my hand saying, "You just don't have any at all. Just a hole where your magic should be"

"My teacher mentioned something about that. She said something along the lines of if one doesn't have magic…"

"They should be dead," Dane finishes my sentence.

There's silence.

"How am I alive then?"

"I… Don't know."

One day while training, I asked, "So who trained you?"

Dane looks at me, "You want to know? Well." She scratches her head, "I didn't get trained by anyone."

"So you trained yourself."

"Yes and no. When I was young, I trained with two others. One was a boy named Aamon who had black eyes and black hair while the other was a boy named Enzo who had red hair and light brown eyes. We three knew each other at a young age and began training each other. Enzo was really close to Aamon. He would do anything for Aamon. Unlike me, Aamon was a prodigy in magic! He could borrow magic from people and use it!"

"Woah."

"Ya, I learned how to detect magic from him. We both knew each other really well. He was very attached to his mother since she was the only one that was family to him. Then one day, his mother was killed by people who were trying to mug her… This caused a change in Aamon as I started to notice that he was starting to have dark emotions growing inside him."

She stops for a moment.

"Before I said anything, he disappeared along with Enzo. Never to be seen again."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said

"It's ok."

Wanting to change the subject, I said, "Speaking about magic I never got to see yours."

She looks at me and smiles, "Sorry, that is something I won't show you."

"Why?"

"Because I can. Enough chit-chat. Get back to training."