Shadowfire Book Two: Ice Cold

Chapter 16

"You'll have to train here for a while. Once you've mastered your physical abilities, we'll work on the psychological portion of your training."

"Psychological?"

"You'll understand soon enough. By the way, my name's Ira."

Three months later

I leaped out of the path of a several burning arrows from Ira's bow. I then kicked another out of its course before it impaled my neck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of gold fire, and then felt a clone of Ira on my back. Then, I caused a blade to appear from each of my elbows and stabbed it in the sides. Weeks of sparring with Ira had taught me her tricks and habits, making it seem that she was getting weaker. However, she made it a point to remind me that it was me getting stronger at an extremely fast rate. And that there was no way I could know whether she'd been holding back the entire time.

After her clone burst into flame, I began running towards her again. Two clones appeared in front of her, each with a broadsword. When the first ran towards me, I had two katanas appear in my hands, with I used to slice the blade apart, and then two diagonal lines across the clone herself. As it exploded, I ran towards the other. Its broadsword had become a rapier, which was now flaming with power. When I was close enough, it moved, attempting to pierce my body. I was able flip over the attack, and simultaneously slice it apart vertically. However, the pure force of the attack was able to cause my side to explode with blood.

I landed on my knee, wincing from my pain. I looked up at Ira, who was smirking, despite the obvious exhaustion on her face. She wouldn't be summoning any more of those clones.

"You might wanna focus on that wound."

"You might wanna lay off the clones."

"Touche." Ira separated her bow into halves, which turned into two blades. Unfortunately, I couldn't waste any energy on healing my wound. Instead, I tightened my grip on my blades, then summoned another. I grabbed the hilt of the katana between my teeth, and bit down hard in order to distract myself from the pain. When I stood, she twirled her blades, which she did every time she was preparing to fight. I attacked, and the blades we each held met. Moving at incredible speeds, our swords clashed in a flurry of steel. Cuts appeared all over our bodies, but the swords moved too fast for us to tell what attack caused them.

Unlike Ira, however, I didn't need to worry about defending myself, due to the extra blade I wielded. At one moment in the duel, we both jumped away from the other. Ira took the opportunity to connect her blades, and then extended the space between them, creating a two bladed staff.

"You know Ira, I've noticed that there's only one flaw in your fighting style." It was difficult to speak with a sword in my mouth, but I had no doubt she could understand me.

"Oh? And what's that?"

I shifted my right foot back, and bent my torso down. Power flowed into each of my muscles. Ira knew this technique. It was called Flash Step.

"You spend so much energy-" I Moved even faster than I had before. In Ira's eyes, I vanished.

"On your constructs-" I appeared in front of her, and at the last second, she blocked my blades with her staff. I then whipped my neck in a downward diagonal line, causing a long slice to appear along her chest from my sword. I vanished again.

"That it leaves your real body-" I appeared upside down behind her. I cut her twice across the back before landing. She turned around and swung the blade of her staff towards me. I slid under it on my knees. Once I was up and behind her again, I crossed my first two blades across her body, and my third was pressed to the back of her neck.

"Slow and weak."

"Good job Kaizen. This is the one time you've actually beaten me."

"What do you mean?" I removed my blades and backed away. We faced each other and our weapons vanished.

"I mean that this was the first time I wasn't holding back against you. You actually beat me."

"So now what?"

"Now we start the psychological part I told you about."