Memories of the Reaper

Chapter Twenty

The fledgling opened the door to the arena expecting an attack, but there was none. As before, the Lazarus stones shined with brilliance and illuminated the platform in the center of the room. On it, a reaper with gauntlets meditated in silence with her cowl raised over her head: Kendra. He recalled how poorly their last conversation had ended, with him walking away and her spending the night at a riverbank of forgotten memories.

Well, this will be awkward, Derek thought. He cleared his voice and addressed the reaper. "Lady Kendra," he said aloud.

"Come here, Derek" Kendra told him without raising her head. "I am going to show you how to fight."

"Yes, Lady Kendra," he told her as he walked toward her.

"Stop calling me that," she snapped at him.

He stopped. "I thought you wanted me to follow the rules. That was the deal, remember?"

Kendra shook her head. "I know what the deal is, but I don't want you to call me that."

"What do I call you then?"

"Kendra. Just when we train in private, of course. In public, you will have to address me as Lady for the sake of appearance, although I do hate it."

Derek nodded. "Okay, Kendra..." He felt the tension in the air, and decided to address it. "About what happened last night—"

"Don't." Kendra told him.

"What?" he asked, taken by surprise.

"Whatever you planned on saying about last night... just don't. I don't want to deal with it right now."

He tried again. "Don't you think we should talk about this?"

"No." Her voice was quiet, but it had a tone of absolute finality.

"Can we talk about it some other time then?"

"Probably not."

"Why not?"

She raised her head toward him and stood. "Because I say so. That's all you need to know... Now get on the platform, Derek. Do it before you make me angry."

Derek sighed, and jumped up onto the platform, knowing that he would never win an argument with her. His legs ached, but it was nothing compared to earlier that day. That concoction that Reynold had given him had worked better than he could have expected. A workout supplement like that would be worth millions back on Earth. Possibly even—

"What do you think the first rule of fighting is?" Kendra asked him.

"Uhhh, good form?" he asked.

"Uhhhh, wrong. It's intimidation." Kendra pulled down her cloak and glared menacingly at him. It was a mixture of blood-curdling rage and insatiable fury. By Derek's assumption, she had to practice that face in a mirror, or, even worse, she was just always that angry. "Look at my face. What does it tell you, Derek?" Her eyes squinted half-way like an Eastwood gunslinger.

Derek didn't even hesitate. "That you're gonna kick my ass six ways to Sunday." Although he had never said the phrase aloud before, the saying was familiar—apparently, Kendra thought so too. The reaper stiffened. The look of rage was replaced by a wave of confusion and melancholy that distorted her war face for a brief moment before being wiped away.

Did Chris used to say that? Derek wondered but didn't ask.

"If you can intimidate your opponents, then your enemies will already believe that they have lost the battle before blood has been drawn. The real fight is in the mind." She pointed to her skull with a gauntleted finger. "Fear is one of the most important tactics to master. If you can scare your opponents, then their own minds will cripple them." She took a step back. Her brown gauntlets flared brightly before her body melded together and took the form of a gigantic jaguar: it was the biggest animal Derek had ever seen outside of a television screen, even larger than the gryphons. Though the eyes were the same, the jaguar was pitch black, just like Kendra's cloak, and its sharp incisors glowered white in comparison.