Promise

"He is the Sword Master." The boy beside me said. I looked at the man with both horror and admiration. The way I saw him fight... it was marvelous. When he noticed us, he smiled and waved towards us. He stood in front of us and Steve bowed in respect. He brushed Steve's hair like a loving father and then looked at me.

"Steve, have you brought with yourself a new warrior?"

"I don't know if I will be able to swordfight, sir." I said. And he started laughing.

"Why do you decide that? If you won't even give it a try then how do you know that you are good or not." he said and started picking swords that were kept in the corner.

"Yes! This should do." and he handed me a bronze sword. I tried to hold it right but didn't know the technique, Steve tried to help me but the man denied. "She's not a kid. Let her learn through mistakes." and Steve backed off.

When I got hold of the sword, the Sword Master attached me without any warning.

"The first lesson in swordfighting: you have to be alert all the time. Never let your guard down."

He advanced again but this time I dodged and attacked back. He deflected it with just one blow and we carried on. He disarmed me once, twice, thrice and I lost count. His sword hit me and I was thrown back. I tried to focus myself and I felt a familiar surge of energy within.

I stood up and raised my sword and I felt my whole body burning up as if it was lava, not blood, that was running in my veins at that time. I looked at my hand, it was getting red and suddenly the sword bursted into flames.

Everyone's eyes widened in surprise. I looked around me and saw the crowd that had gathered due to sudden presence of fire on a sword. There faces had a really big question mark on them. Nobody had any idea about what was going on and honestly, neither did I.

But I decided to take advantage of this and attacked my opponent who was still staring at me with disbelief. As he saw me attacking, he seemed to have came out of his shock and he deflected my strike. I attacked again, this time with all my might. My opponent raised his sword to defend and when my sword hit the other, it broke into pieces and it's wielder fell on his knees.

And when I looked at the old man, my human senses came back. Oh what did I do. Is he okay? How can I be so cruel? It was just a practice fight and I actually ended up hurting him. I was thinking of a way to explain things when I saw the man kneeling in front of me laughing. What? did I hit his head or something? Why is laughing like that?

The fighter looked at me and smiled. "No one until now had ever managed to disarm me in a swordfight. But you surprised me.I see you have some special powers and I would like to help you control them. Things will get ugly if you ended up killing someone. "

Why was he not surprised after seeing such strange thing? I mean seeing someone setting up a sword on fire is not something that you get to see everyday. Out of curiosity, I finally asked him, "Sir, are you not surprised to see some thing like this? "

And he frowned "you don't remember me, do you? "

"Um, no"

"Well, I am Maurice Richard. Your father's best friend and... your godfather."

Hearing this my jaw dropped. WHAT!? This guy, in front of me is my godfather and he knows about my powers as well. Now this is totally not fair. Everyone around me seemed to know a great deal about me except me. Until half an hour I didn't even know that I was adopted. I gotta tell you something, dear readers, my life totally SUCKS!

"Oh! It's dinner time." Maurice said looking at his watch. "You must be hungry. Go with Steve, he'll show you the way to the Great Hall."

Food? As soon as I heard those words I realized how hungry I was. I hadn't eaten a thing since last two days. I followed Steve to the place called Great Hall.

The Great Hall was truly great with marbe columns and four very, very huge dining tables. One table was different than the others. It looked like it was for teachers. I saw Maurice and Mr McLean sitting over that table. Seeing me Mr McLean smiled and I nodded. Maurice was more interested in his beef.

"Come over here, Scarlett." Steve said and sat next to him. "So, what you'd like to eat? We've got pretty much almost everything here." he said.

I looked at the food kept on the table. Everything seemed very delicious. I wasn't sure where to start. I took an enchilada and tasted it. Oh my God! This was the most amazing enchilada I had ever tasted. Why was everything in this academy so perfect? They could have left at least one thing imperfect.

I ate heartily and after that Steve said he'd show me my room. And so I followed him to the girl's dorm.

"Are boys allowed to enter in the girl's dorm?" I asked.

"No" he answered.

"Then why are you going there?"

"To you your room, of course. That's allowed." he said with a smile.

"Um, I'm sorry for what happened today."

"It's all right. Non of it was your fault."

"Still, it difficult to let go of such past and I am happy that you chose to move ahead." he said and then our eyes met. His deep blue eyes were just like endless sea. They were beautiful but also reflected hard times. As if he had gone through my sad moments. Looking at him like that I tried to suppress my desire to hug him. I so much wanted to console him that the world isn't all bad. I wanted to tell him that I am with him but the words were stuck in my throat.

After a long silence he said

"I just want you to know that I am with you, always. I promise." and he moved forward towards a room, opened it and then left after glancing at me one last time.