Parabatai: Beginnings

Part II - The Strength of Two

I was beyond excited. This was a day when Izzy and I were twelve (okay, Izzy was thirteen but she had just turned it a week prior). We had accompanied my father to Shadowhunter Academy. A new class of mundanes had just begun their training. We were to instruct them on the use of different weapons. Sebastian usually did this but he was sick at home today.

"I'm so excited!" I exclaimed to Izzy Lightwood. We were in the training room early. My father had left us here while he went to go see to a matter.

"Me too!" Izzy gleamed. Her attention was fixated on a whip on the table. She picked up the weapon and tested it. Her smile widened. 

"Oh, you're good with that!" I complemented her as she wrapped the whip around the neck of a training dummy. 

"I have one at home that I sneak out of the weapons room sometimes," Izzy said. She uncoiled the whip from the dummy and held it in her hands. "My mother doesn't like me using it though. She thinks I should be focusing my training on seraph blades and daggers, not specialty weapons."

"Well, I think your mother's wrong. You should use whatever you want!"

Izzy and my conversation was interrupted as a couple mundanes came into the room. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was already five past the hour! Where was my father?

"Er, is this daycare?" One of them asked. Both mundanes were teenagers. That's what most Ascended were, teenagers or young adults. It was just easier to Ascend at that age. It was dangerous if you were too young or too old.

"This is the weapons demonstration," Izzy spoke up. She was the more grown up looking of us two. She crossed her arms and stood straighter.

"Right," the mundane snicked as he and his friend went to take a seat at one of the tables.

I got more anxious as time went on and my father didn't arrive. We weren't supposed to be running the class! We were only supposed to be showing how to use the weapons.

"Where is your father?" Izzy whispered to me as nearly all the seats were filled.

"I don't know!" I glanced behind us. I heard the cocky teenager whisper something about 'not coming here to be trained by children.' Apparently he didn't know I had an audio rune. Or he was just dumb. Probably the latter.

I turned back to face Izzy, she had heard them too. It had been my idea for us to apply runes. Ever since I had started my rune training I used every opportunity to apply the marks. I gave her a knowing look and she nodded at me. 

I took off my coat jacket revealing my tank top underneath. But it wasn't my shirt I wanted to show, it was the runes across my arms and neck.

"Listen up!" Izzy yelled but no one paid her the slightest bit of attention. That made me angry. No one ignored my best friend.

I picked up a throwing knife from the display table. I first tested the weight of it in my hands before throwing it across the room. It impaled itself in a target on the far wall but not before narrowly missing the cocky teenager's head. That got the mundanes' attention.

I could tell that Izzy was suppressing at laugh at Cocky Teenager's shocked face. "Now that we have your attention, we're going to begin the demonstration. I'm Isabelle Lightwood, and my friend, Clarissa Morganstern, just showed you how to properly use a throwing knife." We had been on the same page of thinking. Name-dropping our last names was a good idea. The mundanes knew who our parents were.

"And now Isabelle is going to show you how to use a whip." I stepped out of the way to give her the floor. 

"Whips are especially good for getting under toe of an enemy and tripping them, or stop them from attacking or running away," Izzy explained. Once again she wrapped the whip around the neck of the training dummy. This time she pulled, hard and the dummy was pulled over an fell onto the floor. She stepped out of the way to wrap up the whip.

"The most widely used weapon for a Shadowhunter is a seraph blade." I had picked one up from the table and held it in front of me. "Michael," I called upon the name of the particular blade and it blared to life. "They'll kill pretty much anything." I swung the blade in motions around me to demonstrate. "Although, you mundanes probably don't want to touch one of these until you Ascend. A touch to your flesh will cause you to burst into flames."

"You guys will beginning your weapons training using regular swords." Izzy was walking back towards me with a sword in her hand. I smiled and drew my blade, Heosphoros from my side.

We began to demonstrate a few moves against each other when an alarm suddenly rang in the building. My eyes widened as I looked to Izzy. We knew what that alarm was. It was the first thing my father told us when we got here. The demon alarm.

"Stay here!" I ordered the mundanes as Izzy and I ran out of the room. The second thing my father had told us was to stay put, but I wasn't exactly inclined to listen to that. I was a shadowhunter after all. I ran towards the danger, not away from it.

Mundanes were running down the hallway and I soon realized why. There were several imp demons scurrying towards us.

"Clary!" Izzy yelled as she flung one of the demons towards me. She had brought the whip from the training room. In one fluid motion she had captured one of the demons. I swung at it with my blade causing it to disintegrate.

I didn't have time to revel in my first demon kill because more of the little devils kept coming. We were in Shadowhunter Academy! What were demons doing on the loose?

Nonetheless, Izzy and I were the last line of defense between the demons and the mundanes hiding in the classrooms down the hall. We would have to hold.

I felt adrenaline kick in as I ran at the demons, slicing and slashing Heosphoros at the little monsters. One Imp had launched itself at me, but I was bringing up my blade too slow. Then, the black rope of Izzy's whip coiled around the demon and crashed the Imp into a nearby wall.

Time seemed to slow as I looked at my best friend. She was smiling at me and I grinned back at her. In that instant I trusted her more than anything. I knew she would have my back; she wouldn't let one of the little demons touch me.

So, we fought as one for what seemed like a lifetime until the last Imp demon was dead. My strength seemed to waver the second the fight ended and I slumped down against the wall. Izzy did the same next to me. I looked at her again and conveyed what I was thinking. Had we just done that? Killed a dozen demons? Somehow, we broke out in laughter.

Then, I heard the sound of black boots on the hardwood floor and looked to see several Nephilim rounding the corner. My father was among them. They had shocked faces and what a sight must have been upon them. Two young shadowhunters sitting in the aftermath of a battle.

My father ran to our side, kneeling down before me. "By the Angel," he gasped. "Are you two all right?"

"We're fine," I told him and it was the truth. Except for the occasional scrape here or there we had escaped the battle without any serious injuries. After all they had only been imp demons. More of a nuisance then anything else.

My father would tell us later that they had planned to summon a couple of imp demons for some of the newly Ascended to fight. The summoning ritual had gone awry and summoned hoards instead.

"You did very well," my father told me before getting up and ordering one of the other shadowhunters to get the Silent Brothers just in case.

I looked at Izzy. "We did it together," I said, gleaming at her. In that moment I hoped that would be the start of everything together. Because in that moment I knew that I wanted Isabelle Lightwood to become my parabatai.

Next Time: Part III - Together or Not At All