Soul Streets

To Control

"Better move!"

I dodged the knife flying past me, electricity sparking next to my ear. I went down to my knees after the third knife hit the board behind me.

"Done already?" The old hag asked me, balancing another knife on the tip of her wrinkled finger.

"What is the point of this exercise?" I asked, the woman who called herself the trainer of the Casadin family scowling at me.

"To scare the living daylights out of you and get your natural instincts as a Neotha to emerge," she said as she threw yet another knife at him. This one was much more accurate as I had to roll to the side to dodge, my body sprawling on the ground.

"To slow!"

A knife flew at me yet again, I could feel the electricity coming of from this one as soon as it left her hand. I couldn't move from where I was on the ground.

The knife would hit me.

I waited for the impact, but the impact never came. Timidly, I looked up to see Sherry standing over me, the knife on the ground in front of her.

"Grandma Heather, you shouldn't try to kill the new initiate before he's even been inducted into the family," Sherry said, seemingly more concerned about the fact I hadn't been inducted yet than the fact that the old lady was trying to kill me.

"Sherry, sweetheart, you know the goddess will want to see some potential in the boy if he is to be welcomed under her blessing."

"That doesn't mean you should kill him. He already has potential, Trent has already approved of him and his potential. I sent him to you to see if you could figure out what we couldn't in that potential," Sherry said, grabbing my hand and lifting me up to my feet.

"Sherry, who is this woman exactly?" I asked.

"The Casadin family trainer, and the Knight of the family's 7th generation; Heather Narcissus. She raised me, so out of everyone in the family she the most like a mother to me," She said. Then with a glare, "but I call her grandma because she's such a mean old lady."

"Sherry, no need to be rude to me," Heather said as she threw one of the knives at Sherry, leaving a jet stream of pure electricity as it flew through the air.

Sherry swung her arm past her face and deflected the knife, the blade of the knife never touching her arm.

"I can't remember the last time you threw a knife at me, pretty low level training you guys are doing here. Is the Fatale Thunder losing her spark?" Sherry said, taunting Heather by crossing her arms in a relaxed pose against one of the pillars in the training room.

"It was the same training you did when you were just starting out, Sherry. I would throw knives at you for hours until you learned how to accurately predict them. Its perfect sixth sense training."

I frowned at hearing them say sixth sense, "what exactly is the sixth sense?"

"Its the Neotha sense, the power of being one with the energy of life," Heather chided. "Your sight is part of your sixth sense, as you grow you will develop more things that feed into your sixth sense. Everyone's sixth sense is different, as every Neotha is different. To master the sixth sense is to be the king of the Neotha."

"So it's a sense that controls all of the other senses."

"Exactly," Heather said as she skillfully threw another knife at me, electricity sparking off of the sides of the blade.

Focus with your eyes.

In an instant, the world faded to black; however, my eyes were still open. The knife was flying at me, that much I knew, but the world seemed to slow down. I remembered the colors that I had seen on the streets earlier, and I focused on the aura I had accumulated around my eyes, all with the goal of seeing the knife's aura.

An object, covered in sporadic green-purple energy that flew off in several different directions. Even if I could dodge the knife, I would get hit by the electricity, and while the electricity hadn't hurt very much with the other two knives, this one seemed more threatening.

Remembering that Sherry had deflected the knife, I quickly raised my hand and tried to move energy into it, attempting to make my hand into a shield against the knife.

In that split second, I watched as the knife slowed when it hit the shield; but it was obvious even to me that the knife would not stop and my hand was going to be impaled by the blade. I could not stop it and I had no idea of how to redirect the knife besides to move my hand out of the way.

The knife moved only a little as I moved my hand away, the blade catching the edge of my hand and leaving a cut across my thumb.

When the knife finally landed on the ground behind me, I fell to my knees.

"Nice try," Heather said, "but it's not as easy as it looks. Using your aura is 40% practice at controlling it."

"And the other 60%?" I asked.

"How hard you want it to follow your will."