Ink Raindrops

The silence between us hung in the air like wet laundry on a hot summer day; oppressive, heavy and uncomfortable. Master Mikhail didn’t know where to begin; the muscles in his cheek twitched with failed speech. Raimen no longer slouched in his chair; he stood erect before Master Mikhail like a wave at breaking height, myself on his left and Nana on his right. Every line in his body spoke of haste that Master Mikhail had yet to order. Nana stared at the wall. She veiled her blue eyes with her thick, dark lashes, as if beguiling her teacher into exposing his secrets to her; it wouldn’t work. For my own part, I had to remember to breathe, and with each breath I took, I grew more and more frustrated by the wait. Master Mikhail knew it; his glances at me were as much apology as I had ever gotten from him in my entire life. I had never been good at waiting for inevitability to knock instead of letting itself in.

In the end, the voice that spoke stunned us all, perhaps most because it was not mine. If Nana had ever broken a silence before that moment, we had never known it. “What has happened, Master? You said we must know.”

Her brave words, spoken in her usual dream-like monotone, convinced Master Mikhail to cease his hesitation and let out his breath in a huge sigh. “You are correct, Nana. Though I have thought long and hard on how best to spare you from this, I cannot escape fate.” A bare suggestion of a wry smile crossed his face as he turned back to the rest of us. “Your Dragon, of any of you, knows best how I feel at this moment. I wish to breathe fire, and yet I am choked by the duty I have to myself, and to you, not to.”

I frowned as Nana and Raimen glanced my direction. It was obvious to anyone that I knew something of breathing fire. Master Mikhail knew I had no hope of holding it back!

“Does that mean you’re angry with us?” Raimen spoke this time, his hands searching with poor aim for his pockets. He, more than any of us, had reason to fear that! Had Master Mikhail noticed his excessive reading habit at last?

Master Mikhail shook his head. “I fear I have been angry with you for the last time, my students, and that is what troubles me so. Had I known, I would have made it count.” Our full attention rested on him, then, and on his words. Even Nana no longer looked beyond him.

I was the first to recover from the shock. “What do you mean, last time? We’re barely into our training, you can’t just leave us! We’ve come so far…” Had we at last pushed his patience too far? Myself, with my foolish challenge? Raimen, with his clandestine practices? Nana, with her lack of participation?

His eyes clouded over with an emotion I could not place as either grief or rage. “Rest easy on that, at least, my Dragon. I would never leave you by my own choice. Your weaknesses, though they are many, make me love you all the more. But the world will not see them that way. It is the world that must see them now.”

The door opened behind us with a loud creak, and Master Mikhail’s hand jumped to his blade’s hilt as the three of us whirled to greet the intruder. I did not need to glance at the others to know that they shared my immediate and intense dislike of the stranger. He was tall but muscled, twice the width of Master Mikhail, and the thick, greasy manes of black hair and black mustache he wore served to make him look bearlike. His clothing was simple but well made, in the familiar blue and gold of our own Kouda Empire, and bore a great many complicated designs and badges on the shoulders. Whoever he was, he was high-ranking military, and where he walked, oceans trembled in his wake. He did not deign to hide it from us, children that we were, let alone from Master Mikhail.

Master Mikhail greeted him, if his words could be called a greeting. “I believe I requested some time to inform them, Master Grimm. I have had but a moment.”

Master Grimm sneered beneath his mustache. I imagined I could smell his foul breath between his yellowing teeth. “A moment is all you need. You were always long-winded, Mikhail. Maybe if you’d talked less, they wouldn’t be here now.”

The absence of the “Master” honorific when addressing Master Mikhail could not be mistaken for anything other than an insult. I bristled, and Raimen took a step forward, but Nana made no motion, her veiled gaze now locked dead with the stranger’s face. He was not immune to her charms, teenager though she was, and it was with clear disgust that he looked away from her and back to Master Mikhail. “Taught this one to make eyes at gentlemen, have you, Mikhail? That’s bad for her, pretty thing as she is. Where they’re going, I won’t be able to babysit her like you do.”

Again, Nana surprised us all by speaking. “Baby me at your peril.” We stared at her, stunned by the offensive comment to anyone, let alone a powerful military officer. Was this the same Nana who had ignored us for years?

Master Grimm laughed, a loud, obnoxious bellow that made us all want to punch him just to remove the source of the noise. He moved toward Nana with more speed than we had expected from such a hulk of a man, and his grubby hand shot out to grasp her pale, skinny arm. When he pulled, it was like pulling a child’s doll off of a bed. Nana stumbled and fell, Master Grimm’s power the only thing keeping her aloft. Her lashes ceased to veil her eyes then, and the look she gave him delved deeper into hatred than any of us had reason to see before. He himself paused, uncertain, before smiling a gap-toothed grin at her. “It would seem, missy, that your Master hasn’t taught you to respect your elders.”

Master Mikhail’s sword was halfway out of its scabbard by the time Nana stumbled. When he spoke, there was an edge of warning in his voice that went beyond the ones we had heard as punishment over the years. “Master Grimm. Your orders are clear, and I will obey them without question. However, invading my home and mistreating my students is an abuse of power that will not go unpunished. I came here to do as you wish. Unless you want further trouble, I suggest you allow me to finish. This will take far longer, and will be far more difficult, if you do not.”

“Is that a threat, Mikhail? You must keep plenty of blackwine in that cellar of yours. You’d have to be drunk on something, to challenge me after so many years nursing babies in the forest.” Master Grimm laughed, and thrust Nana away from him as if she were no more than a sack of meal. As the only one not in the immediate path of the brewing storm, I found myself forced to catch her. She did not want my help; she pulled away from me as if my touch burned her, and stood tall and proud before her attacker again. I knew what it was like to feel the heat of my anger manifest, but for the first time in my life, I felt as if I could hear the wind howling like that of a monsoon storm, enraged and proud, ready to destroy everything it touched. If I weren’t still pretending to know better, I would have called it proof that the Voice of Nature did indeed have multiple Voices.

At last, I found my voice. “Get out!” Nana’s anger, and Master Mikhail’s, were becoming infectious, and I wasn’t about to be the last one yelling at this oversized monster! “I don’t know who you are or what you’re here for, but Master Mikhail was trying to tell us something important. Those marks on your sleeve are pretty, but standing in line is something that we all do, not just those of us without uniforms.”

He glowered at me, and might have resorted to violence again, had Master Mikhail not stepped forward and blocked my sword arm with his body. “Silence, Dragon.” He did not look at me; his eyes were for his fellow Master alone. “That goes for you all. What I have to tell you concerns Master Grimm, and now it has become even harder to tell you.” If looks could kill by themselves, Master Grimm would have ceased to concern us in that moment. “Master Grimm, wait outside until I have done what I must. I will keep you waiting no longer than necessary. If you suspect me of treason, so be it, but I will not have you entering my home like a common criminal, whatever your rank may be. If you leave now, the Emperor will not hear of your misconduct this day.”

Master Grimm shook his head and turned his massive back on us all, heading for the door. I half expected him to walk through it, reducing it to so many splinters, but he did not. Something about his face when Master Mikhail called me “Dragon” seemed to change, but he did not allow me more than a moment to notice. With no further word, he opened the door, took his leave and then slammed it behind him, the force of the slam making our heads ache and our bodies tremble. Beast though this Master Grimm was, the power he commanded had to be envied; at least I thought so. The others were glad to be rid of him, and little else.

Master Mikhail sighed, at last resigned to his duty. Before a moment had passed, he found the strength to continue his speech to us.

“Master Grimm, as you can see, is very high up the chain of command in the Empire’s military. He and I are of equal stature, in fact, though he lives at the side of the Emperor and I choose to live here in the forest with you as my students. He has trained a great many children in the Way, just as I have. Most no longer live. The ones that do are great warriors, destined for the blessings of the Gods.”

He paused. “You know that my teachings are not what other Masters expect. They have run counter to the Emperor’s expectations for a great many years. It seems the time has come for my incorrect teaching to end.”

“Incorrect?” My voice was louder than I expected. “We’re the best! Sure, we make mistakes, we’re nowhere near a team, but… but…”

“You are behind.” The sadness in his voice betrayed him at last. “Or so they would have you believe. You know that other children your age have seen their first war, and still others have died in it. The world is a fearsome place, and with each day that dawns, new enemies come to our great Empire, seeking glory or riches. They believe that battle is the only thing that matters. I wanted…”

His voice broke, and it frightened us all more than anything he could have said at that moment. “I wanted you to know you were not alone in the world, before you had to face that reality. On each other you must rely to survive, not just in battle, but in life. That is why I held you back, why I never pushed you as hard as the Emperor demanded. Now, you must survive in a world that will not look kindly on you for my choices.”

Raimen’s hands were shaking. I watched him clench them in his pockets to ward it off. “So you will no longer be our Master. Instead, we are to go with that man.” It was not a question, it was a statement, and Master Mikhail could do nothing but nod in affirmation. “He will fix the mistakes he sees in us. What then?”

Nana answered him, but in her usual, emotionless way. “Then we go to war, with the enemies of our Empire. We destroy them so that we may live.”

Master Mikhail’s voice was growing more quiet by the moment. “Nana is correct. They will ask you to fight, and die, for this Empire that you love so well. As followers of the Way, they will expect you to have powers that you do not, and skills that you do not. They will teach you all that you need to know in how to kill a man, or a woman. For Anri, and for Nana, these days will be dark indeed. The Emperor knows that war games are not for women. I have indulged you too far, by his eyes. You must prove to him that you are worth training.”

At that moment, I realized that everyone’s eyes were on me. Uncomfortable with the sudden attention, I tried to figure out if I had spoken out of turn or moved to follow through with some action. Instead, I realized my cheeks were wet with tears. Embarrassed, I dragged my sleeve across my face, but the wetness remained. I had to admit, if only to myself, that I was terrified. Not only were we losing the man I adored as a father figure in my life, but chances were good that we would all be separated. Raimen, the last person I would have chosen to stay with, and Nana, the strange girl that I would never understand, were not friends, but they were all I had known in life. To lose them was to lose all that remained of my history. I still had so much to learn; I wasn’t ready to be on my own! And it was obvious that Master Mikhail’s heart was breaking as much, or more, than mine was. But what could we do? The beast still lumbered outside, awaiting his call to take us away, and Master Mikhail could no longer keep us.

“They won’t take us.” Raimen’s voice was harder than I had ever heard it, and looking up at him then, I caught a glimmer of the man I had seen the night before, when he healed the wound in my hand. The foolish boy was gone, and in his shoes and clothing stood a man of no small power and no small intellect. I could not sort out in my mind whether his voice made me want to hate him, or to follow him to the ends of the earth. “We escape, of course. That brute looks to be all strength. Most of us here aren’t. There must be a way to get free and follow our own path back here.”

Master Mikhail was a man divided at these words. At once his face shone with pride, and then fell in an instant back to despair. “If you choose that path, my Breaker, know the dangers you face. They will hunt you. They will always hunt you. The war they lead you to will rage, with or without you, and your hands will not be able to join them. Right now, you may not believe there will be a reason to fight and to die. That may not always be true. War is always the last resort, but there are things in life that are worth fighting for. Joining the military after such an act will be impossible.”

“Then we fight alone.” I wondered if Raimen had lost whatever remained of his mind when he chose to continue his argument. Despite the fear we could all see in him, he was not to be dissuaded from his newfound goal. “The three of us. We’ll make it work.”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, and at the sound he flinched as if I had struck him the way I’d wanted to for years. Frustration won out in the end, however, and he rounded on me with every ounce of courage he possessed. “What choice do we have, Anri? Either we get caught up in this trap that’s been laid for us, or we run and try to find our own way. Neither option is best, but do you want to be a slave? If they control us now, they control us the rest of our lives. I can’t imagine you a slave for long.”

He was right about that! The future, however, I had not stopped to ponder much beyond the eventual necessity of needing to form a team under Master Mikhail. The things that were being spoken of – war, control, death in battle – had never been concrete ideas in my mind until now. The tears on my cheeks were more than enough proof of how terrified I was; I needed not tell Raimen the truth when my heart betrayed it for me. The other option, though, was to trust my life, such as it was, to this boy, this Breaker, whom I could not look at without consequence; or the girl that seemed never to see me at all. Even now she looked through me, as if trying to hone in on a tiny speck on the wall somewhere behind me. What she was looking for, I would never know, but if I placed my life in her hands, I would have to help her find it. I had enough problems of my own!

“Consider this as well, my students.” Master Mikhail broke our silence for us, which was just as well; I had not formulated a response that suited me yet. “The Voices that speak to each of you have not done more than whisper as yet. You know this as well as I do. Without training, the first Words She speaks may destroy you, to say nothing of your own first Words.” His eyes rested on Raimen then, which made both of us shift in place. Raimen had a sudden urge to scratch his head and look downward while doing it. He knew! “You grow in power every day now, but without proper guidance, you may not live to use the full extent of your abilities. Under the Emperor, you might.”

A thought came to me then, a dangerous one that I dared not speak aloud. If we learned to use our powers, could we not then use them to put an end to those that forced our hands into such decisions? If the Emperor wanted us, he could have us, in a blaze of fire.

“No, my Dragon.” Of course, Master Mikhail knew what I was thinking! “You may think this is the Emperor’s doing, and it is, but he acts for the good of us all. He is not your enemy. The world is your enemy; this world full of fear and suspicion and danger between men, women, children, animals and even the ground you now walk on. His path is to find unity between them all, and what he does, he does to this end. Right now, his hand has put you all in a dangerous place, and I suspect he knows not the full extent of what he has done, but this is not aimed at us. I cannot believe that, not while I know him and serve him.”

A voice interrupted our thoughts from outside – it seemed Master Grimm had tired of waiting again. “Finish your goodbyes, Mikhail, or I’ll finish them for you. I’ve been more than patient.”

“We have to decide.” Raimen’s eyes, blue as the ocean, were as black as a stormy sea. “We can’t stay here any longer.” Before Nana or myself could react, he knelt down on the cabin floor in front of us and bowed his head. “Master Mikhail has taught us to stand together in the face of danger. Whatever we decide, we must decide it as one. What will you do? Anri? Nana?”

I bit my lip almost in two. How dare he put all the pressure on us? How dare he insist that we were to choose? It was true, he’d given us all his thoughts already, but still, how many times had he played the “older and wiser” card, or the “man chooses” card in our past to his benefit? Then I knew, and the knowing came deeper than it ever had before; the time for childish games was over. This was not Raimen the boy, taunting us, pulling hair and threatening to marry me for the billionth time. This was Raimen the growing man, reaching out to us as equals, as partners, in a moment of weakness. He was right – if we didn’t stand together, we had no chance and no choice in what followed. I would never follow him for the sake of following him, I would sooner die; but could I, should I, follow him because he was right? Or was there another way that none of us had seen yet?

I had thought Nana would flee, if forced to rely on either of us. She had not given us any indication that she trusted us or would protect us, if need came. Neither of us had expected much from her, once we had graduated past Master Mikhail’s influence. Yet in the end, she was the first to reach down and rest one of her dainty white hands on Raimen’s head without so much as a flinch. “I will not give myself to a man like him.” We knew she meant Master Grimm, even if she would not speak his name herself. “I fear no Emperor, but if he wished my consent, he would not send such a man. Perhaps in time he will understand.”

It was the largest number of words I had heard from her. In her own way, she was as serious as Raimen was now. That left me, and I had yet to find my own answers. Master Grimm’s heavy breathing on the back of the door, and the movements of his giant shadow beneath it, seemed to mark each second of my indecision. It wasn’t that Raimen or Nana’s arguments lacked sense. It wasn’t that I thought they were wrong. It was the finality of it all; the saying farewell to the only man I had ever trusted, and walking away into the sunlight as my own woman. I was only thirteen years old, and the others not much more than that! What had happened to the peace we so cherished, the time we had to learn and to grow, as Master Mikhail promised us? Somewhere, the world had changed, and robbed us of that. In our solitude, we had not known until too late. Even Master Mikhail knew it, from the look on his face. He had lost us far sooner than he meant to; he had failed.

At those thoughts, I understood, or at least I believed I did. Master Mikhail had told us that the world was our enemy. The enemy that controlled the Emperor’s hands, and Master Mikhail’s, and even Master Grimm’s, controlled ours as well. Whatever had happened, we needed to discover it, and choose for ourselves what to do about it.

The door burst open then, and Master Grimm thundered in, his massive sword drawn and clenched in his giant fist. “Time’s up. Hand over the brats, Mikhail, or…”

I acted without thinking, much as I always did. A kitchen knife from the morning’s breakfast still lay on the table nearest us, and I almost grabbed the blade end first in my haste. Master Grimm’s onslaught paused just long enough for him to register the small drop of blood trailing from the new glancing slash across his bicep, and then come face to face with the impetuous brat that caused it – me.

Master Mikhail looked furious; Raimen looked stunned. Nana, I could have sworn, wore a hair’s breadth of a smile. I glowered at the towering Master with all the ferocity of the Dragon I had been named for, and stepped forward, putting my friends and former Master behind me. Though I was not sure, as Raimen was, that we could make this work between the three of us, I was not willing to hand myself over to the horrid man in front of us any more than Nana was. He stood in the way of the time we all needed most, and for that, I would delay him further.

“We choose, together,” I growled between my teeth. “We choose Master Mikhail.”

“No.”

The voice behind me was Master Mikhail’s, but it was quieter and sadder than it should have been, after such a statement. Master Grimm, trembling in rage from my insolence and the injury I had dealt him, prepared to put me in my place, but Master Mikhail put his hand on my knife arm, and I found myself powerless to lift it again. I tried, straining all my might against it, but my arm refused to obey my orders. The knife, useless now, clattered to the floor beneath me. It occurred to me then, for the first time, that I had never known what Voice Master Mikhail heard. From the looks on the faces of the others, neither had they. Until now, he had never had reason to use his power against us, when he could manage us so well with mere words.

He forced me backward with a gentle but firm sweep of his arm, and stood between Master Grimm and the three of us, radiating a silent authority that not even Master Grimm dared to interrupt. Then, when we were well behind him, he drew his own sword. Master Mikhail never, ever drew his sword unless he intended to fight and die, just as he had the night I challenged him. The sight of it left all of us breathless.

“You have chosen, my students. I am proud of you, though I grieve for what must come now. Be strong. Find in each other the strength you found in me. Know that my teaching, and my heart, will follow you as long as you keep them in your memory. You have been all that I wished, and hoped.”

He set his jaw then, and the rage that filled his face and his body forced me to look away; Raimen pulled me close and I did not even think to stop him for the first time in my life. Even Nana took an involuntary step toward him for protection. Master Mikhail wasted no time on customary battle preparations or honorifics; he held his blade at the ready.

“Go now, make your choice known to the world! My choice, in this matter, is to give you the chance to do so.”

Then, with a deafening crash of steel meeting steel, Master Grimm and Master Mikhail began to fight. It was a good thing that Raimen held me close; my head thundered not with the mere sounds of battle, but of two Voices. The familiar one spoke in heated, raging letters of fire, but the other was unknown to me. Almost silent, it spoke in deep echoes, but the strength therein was louder than even the power of Raimen’s crashing waves or Nana’s breezy whispers. I could not understand the Words themselves; they were another language, from another time and place, perhaps a billion years before my own birth. They called to me as if I were a child, but refused to answer the questions that built in my soul.

The building pressure on my mind and in my head grew in rapid bursts as the battle continued. I felt Raimen lift me onto his shoulders at the same moment that I began to fade in and out of consciousness.

What followed was a blur of scenes that all seemed disjointed and random when I tried to recall them later. Trees and time flew by us unnoticed. We stopped, in a dark place, alone. There were panicked flights from the beasts of the wild. Nana, with bleeding gashes made by something’s claws. Raimen, cooking something over a fire.

Last but not least, a larger fire that swept over the forest sky, in the distance, engulfing everything it touched. I remember only the scream of fury unleashed by the Voice of Fire; though Her exact Words eluded me, the intent could not have been clearer. It was this Voice, and this fire, that began my journey into the future.

The sinking feeling in my gut from Raimen’s newfound art of healing, and the embarrassment of walking into a large number of his little games designed to inform me of how much choice I had in our relationship, left me in a foul mood.  I practiced for several hours in a haze of frustration and anger, barely stopping to acknowledge that girl when she at last showed her face to bring me my lunch from the cabin.  I had not seen Master Mikhail all day either, but his absence was more noticeable than hers.  I wanted to ask her where he’d disappeared to, but as usual, she paid me no attention and wandered back into the cabin, lost in some trance, hearing music or seeing ghosts that none of us could or would.  I didn’t even need to wonder how long it would take her to return to her room.

She was a strange one, and I’d done my best to avoid her; a sentiment she seemed to share in regard to the rest of us.  She had come under Master Mikhail’s tutelage more recently than Raimen or myself, thus giving us seniority.  Though Raimen and I had not become fast friends quite in the way that Master Mikhail had hoped, this girl was a different matter.  We were not enemies, but we were not friends.  In fact, it was safe to say that she noticed us only in bursts.  Master Mikhail had been making excuses for the better part of two years, claiming that her shyness kept her from communicating well, and that she would just take time to come to terms with all of us, but we had decided between ourselves that she must have been, to quote Raimen’s usage of the term with me, a dummy.

Still, for all the unawareness she seemed so content with, the girl was gorgeous, and a talented fighter on top of it.  My own looks were nothing to consider for very long, or so I thought, but that girl – her name was Nana, I thought I remembered – could have been a princess based on her face alone.  At fifteen years old, she was head and shoulders taller than me, and could almost look Raimen in the face if she had ever wanted to.  She ate and drank little, unlike the rest of us, and the lack of “excess” showed well in her figure, but less so in her strength.  Still, when it came time to practice, she could do impossible things with her blade, things the rest of us had yet to consider, and she did them with such accuracy and speed that they put even Raimen on the defensive.  I wanted to believe that maybe he had such trouble with her because of her wide, haunting pale blue eyes or her long blonde hair, but he ignored all such hopes and suggestions toward that end, of course.

To top it off, the tale of her life before coming to live with Master Mikhail was, if anything, more complicated than my own.  Where I knew nothing of my own past and could not have told anyone had I wanted to, Nana did know, but refused to speak of it.  Anytime family or parents were mentioned, or anytime things in the cabin got too cozy, as if we were all a real family bound by blood, she got even quieter than usual and disappeared into her room again, refusing all visitors, including Master Mikhail.  To add to the strangeness, this behavior he accepted without question.  If Raimen or myself had done any such thing, I had no doubt that he would have been in our rooms within the hour, but Nana he seemed to leave alone with an awkward but acceptable grace.  Her secrets were her own, and would forever stay her own, it seemed, since he was unwilling to shed any light on them for the rest of us, who might have been interested in getting to know our house sister.

Though Raimen and I knew it was cruel, we had created a game between ourselves to see which of us could get through her fog enough to produce some sort of a reaction.  She had spoken to us perhaps a handful of times in the two years she’d been with us, and all of them were short bursts, free of discussion or extrapolation on anything.  If given an order, she would obey it and then return to doing nothing; if asked a question, she would answer and fade into the background, or shrug without words if she didn’t know.  She did all the things that most normal people do – eating, sleeping, basic hygiene – but beyond that, she was in a class by herself, a class where nobody spoke and everyone stared into the distance as if there was something very interesting there all the time.

A soft voice behind me – Nana’s – brought me to the realization that the subject of my thoughts had come back outside to join me.  I looked at the ground rather than into her perfect face; it was painful at best to pretend she was normal like the rest of us.  “Anri.  Master Mikhail says to work on your form.”

My heels dug into the ground.  “Thanks.  I’ll tell him how much that means to me when I see him next time, if I ever see him again.  Is he even watching us?”

I watched her shadow shake its head.  “No.  He’s gone.  He got a summon this morning.  He left that in a note for you.”

“Note?”  I blinked.  “I didn’t see any note.  Who did he go see?”

She shrugged, pulling a practice blade from the bin between us; I took that to be all the answer I was going to get about Master Mikhail’s whereabouts.  “You didn’t see the note because Raimen put it in the fire this morning, before you woke up.”

“Figures.”  I spat in the dust, ignoring Master Mikhail’s warning about doing so from days ago.  It somehow gave me courage to fly in the face of expected behavior around this strange, ethereal ghost of a girl.  I had always believed that girls needed to be twice as strong as boys, in order to be their equal and surpass them, but Nana seemed to disagree.  Her mannerisms and behaviors were all delicate and polite, even when fighting.  It made me want to hurt her just to see if she could get dirty.

As I expected she would, she stepped around the place where I spat and onward toward her training dummy on the other side of the field.  Just like that, our conversation was finished.  She couldn’t even say goodbye or “I have to go” like any normal person would.  The urge to trip her or break her sword or something just to get her attention was beyond difficult to ignore.  Sighing, I returned to my own practice, stray thoughts swirling about in my head as they always did.  I was going to have to work on my focus, first and foremost, if I ever wanted to beat Master Mikhail!

The most difficult part of living at the cabin with Master Mikhail, Raimen and Nana wasn’t that our differing natures made it hard for us to co-exist in peace.  It was the knowledge that we, the students, were supposed to be more than just strangers to each other.  Master Mikhail had chosen us, out of all the students interested in practicing the Way, because he felt we were the brightest and the best, with the most potential.  At some point, we would have to stop being children.  By the estimates of some Masters that Master Mikhail made acquaintance with, we had been children too long already.  They looked down on him for letting us grow and learn as people, not to mention the fact that he had not forced us into a team yet.  That team was the problem, as far as I saw it.

The training that Master Mikhail put us through was designed to make warriors out of us.  Only Raimen, I thought, had taken this to heart.  I loved to fight, and to win, and Nana – who knew what Nana thought?  Raimen, on the other hand, was learning things like tactics, and skills that did not rely on his blade alone.  As I had said before, he was the eldest, and that meant that he was a step ahead of the rest of us in realizing where his responsibilities and expectations for the future lay.

His parents, both respectable merchants in the nearby city of Kino, had given him to Master Mikhail hoping that some of his headstrong behavior would be removed by the time they next saw him, and also that he might find a respectable wife to help him carry on the family tradition.  I knew what he thought of the former, but it seemed as if he had accepted the latter without further discussion or argument.  Still, I had met his parents once or twice before, and come to the immediate conclusion of what they would think of his intended bride!  Women, of course, did not belong in the Way.  If not for Master Mikhail’s reputation, training Raimen with the intention of introducing him to a team with two females in it might well have ended his time with us years ago.

A team of students seeking the Way spent their lives together.  They learned to guard each other’s backs, make up for each other’s shortcomings, and work as a perfect, cohesive unit to handle anything that came their way.  The very idea of this as a future made me want to giggle, and it was an urge I could not fight in the end.  Nana did not even glance at me, which just further confirmed my amusement.  How Master Mikhail expected us to even tolerate each other, much less defend and protect each other through death and beyond, was beyond me.  It might even have been beyond Raimen, though he had never said as much near me.

In my eyes, we had an un-winnable combination.  A headstrong girl with no memory of her past and no hope of ever getting it back, a boy more interested in books than fighting, and with enough clout in his life to get whatever he wanted with minimal effort, and a girl that nobody knew or understood enough to guess at what she might be thinking – these things would never make a team!  But then, Master Mikhail had chosen us.  However hard he worked us, and however strange his methods might have been to outsiders, he was the only one of us that could avoid the title of “dummy.”  He was amazing, both as a teacher and as a person, and we would have done anything for his praise, anything at all.  My failure would not have been so crushing if this were not the case.

In light of this, we tried.  We had had very little training as a group, and most often each of us acted on our own instincts.  I was the one that got us into the most unexpected trouble.  Raimen wanted to end everything in one strike and go home for dinner.  Nana rarely even noticed she was in trouble until the blades started flying, and after that her opponents didn’t last long.  I wanted to believe, somewhere inside me, that Fire, Water and Air could combine into something more powerful than each of them alone, but the reality of such a task seemed impossible.  If anyone could do it, Master Mikhail could, but could it be done?

Just as I had stopped laughing and returned to my training, leaving Nana behind me, the silence of the cabin and the surrounding forest was interrupted by the sound of frantic hoofbeats.  Master Mikhail, on the back of his favored horse, arrived out of a gathering cloud of dust, a dangerous frown on his face.  He wasted no time in arriving at the cabin, dismounting, and ushering his horse into the small adjoining stable that he kept for our mounts.  We all had them, but only Nana ever did more than ride hers; she even talked to the things as if they were human!

Master Mikhail turned away from the stable and looked out at Nana and me.  His eyes were serious and sad in a way that I had never seen them before.  If he hadn’t been our esteemed teacher and someone worthy of at least some respect, I might have asked if his best friend died, or perhaps his dog.  It worried me more than I cared to admit.  He was always the firm one, the calm one in the face of anything.  What could have happened?  Where had he been summoned, and what grave news had he received there?  Hadn’t he just accepted my failed excuse for a challenge with grim amusement just two days prior?  To look at him now was to see a man aged ten years in a single day; no, a single afternoon.

The feeling of despair that had started with Raimen’s careless healing and worsened with thoughts of how we were ever going to band into something approaching a team was getting stronger.  When Master Mikhail spoke, it reached newer heights again.  “Anri, Nana, I have something you need to hear, and the sooner you hear it, the sooner you will be prepared to face it.”

I went inside, with no argument, and Nana followed, moving as fast as I had ever seen her move before.  It was the least I could do for a man I respected so much, and who had tried, at least, to humor my selfish need for attention via a challenge I should have known I could never win.  Whatever news he brought was grim indeed, and I wanted to be sure that I was the first to hear it for myself.

The fire’s warmth spread across my body, lifting both my heart and my spirit into realms unseen.  It crackled and burned, whispering messages that I had only begun to comprehend since coming to live with Master Mikhail; it would take me a lifetime, if what he said was true, to learn to understand them in full.  Still, I listened to each word, each syllable, as if it were the last one I would ever hear.  No matter what it said, the words themselves brought with them such a sense of comfort that I could not ignore them.  At the same time, the dual nature of the flame raised its head – fire could burn as well as heal, and threatened to engulf me, unmake me into the dust I had come from.  None of the others, save for Master Mikhail, knew this as I did.  They couldn’t, of course.  It was not in their nature to know, and they had knowledge of things that I could not, too.

Master Mikhail called it the Voice of Nature.  According to him, the Voice could speak in any of four tongues, and each ear that listened heard Her in a different way.  With this understanding came intimacy and trust within a given worldly element – those who heard the Fire’s Voice, such as myself, could learn after a fashion to embrace all things born from Fire.  The sunlight of a fierce summer’s day or the raging heat of an active volcano all spoke with the same Voice, and could be heard by Her chosen.  There were other Voices, too; of Water, and Air, and Earth, but these I had never witnessed beyond the insistence of others that they were real.  It was only fair; they didn’t believe me, either.

Thinking of the others – Master Mikhail, and Raimen, and our third housemate, the other girl, that I had yet to see for the first time that morning – began to pull my attention back from the dancing fire and into the visible world once more.  I regretted the interruption, but there were exercises and studies to perform if I wanted to undo the shame that I had brought upon myself the previous day.  Master Mikhail had said nothing to the others about my failure, and this omission was perhaps more painful than any truth he might have told.  To have tried and failed was bad enough, but to have tried for nothing?  There would be no recognition, no praise for my brave, if foolish, attempt.  Had I not at least found the courage to continue, after Master Mikhail had brought real blades to the challenge?  Had I not at least done well for the first half of the fight?  He knew, and Raimen knew that I had failed, but beyond this, it would be as if nothing had ever happened at all.

Raimen was the first to notice my return.  He was lounging in one of Master Mikhail’s armchairs, reading his ever-present book of advanced studies.  I had thought often, to my own great satisfaction, about what he might do if I were to steal that book while he slept, or twist it out of his grasp and (accidentally on purpose) drop it into the mud.  It had taken me a few tries to figure out where he kept it when he did sleep, and the unfortunate realization that it resided beneath the small of his back during nights had left me pondering how best to snatch it for the future.  It seemed as if he were married to it, sometimes – if only that were true!

“I thought you looked a little less dumb than you did a minute ago.  Your jaw was hanging open.”  He didn’t even look up; he might have been talking to the book rather than to me!  “Drool isn’t very attractive for a girl your age.”

My hands were on the book before I realized what I was doing.  “I don’t look dumb, and my jaw wasn’t hanging anywhere.  It looks to me like you’re reading this with your eyes half closed, if you can see all that from across the room and still read.”  I tried to tear the book out of his hands with every ounce of strength I had; of course it was like trying to tear a single brick from a built wall.  I knew that he heard the Water’s Voice, on Master Mikhail’s word, but more often it seemed that Earth would have been appropriate!

He didn’t laugh or return my insults as I had expected him to.  It only occurred to me after the searing pain in my left palm dissipated why he did not.  Damn my foolish injury!  Until it healed, so much would be difficult – taunting Raimen, planning how best to get a reaction from that girl, and finding the time to challenge Master Mikhail again.  Next time, it would have to be public; I would have to make sure that everyone attended.  Of course, that meant I would have to be sure not to fail again, too.

A growl in my throat, I let go of the book and turned my back on Raimen.  “Fine, keep it.  One of these days I’ll just burn it, you know.  Then where will you be?”

“Get back here, dummy.”

I paused at the new tone in his voice.  He wasn’t angry or teasing, this time.  Turning, I found his face to be unreadable, much as it always was.  He had the gift to change his expressions and thoughts so fluidly that they were unintelligible to anyone who did not hear the Water’s Voice – though I refused to give him an inch on my belief in such things, the concept fit him without a doubt.  Raimen was serious quite often, perhaps more than any of us, but the timing on this bout of it was strange indeed.  He was the eldest, it was his right to be serious when he pleased, or so he reminded us at least once per day.  Still, I knew that Master Mikhail watched him, and that he wondered at what thoughts swelled in Raimen’s unreachable depths.  I had not yet determined whether he feared that Raimen’s advanced training would someday be the death of him, or whether his interest was just that of a surrogate father concerned for his child.

Sighing, I turned back to face him, my hands on my hips – with my left hand just a little gentler than my right!  “You didn’t listen when I said I wasn’t dumb before, did you?  Why should I listen to you now?”

“Give me your hand.”

He wasn’t kidding.  Deep in my chest, my heart started to pound harder than I had ever heard it before.  Touch him?  Him, of all people?  I did my best never to be closer than a mile to his presence, and he knew it.  Even the other girl got closer to him than I did.  He loved to taunt me with it too; sitting on benches together when we had no choice resulted in the worst fights between us, when his knees “accidentally” bumped into mine, or when his hands “accidentally” pinched where they shouldn’t.  He was three years older than me, after all; expecting innocence from such a deep thinker was foolish on a lot of levels.  Master Mikhail never interfered – not because he approved, I knew that, but because I had agreed to this when I agreed to study the Way.  As a girl, I would have to fight and choose my own battles.  My name was only as good as I chose to make it.

He sighed, impatient.  “Just give it to me.  I didn’t mean that way.”

I had to think for a moment before my brain caught up with his, and the resulting comprehension made me even more flustered than I had been.  I hadn’t even considered he might have been asking about THAT!  It was one of the many reasons we didn’t get along, Raimen and me; even when taunting me, his mind was at least three years ahead of mine, and sometimes it felt more like thirty.  He could run circles around me, and make me feel like even more of a fool than Master Mikhail could, if he set his mind to it.  The less time I spent in his company, the better I felt.  It was clear from his expression that he’d assumed at least as much as I had; he thought I had been worried about the meaning of his words on a different level, not that I had just hesitated for the obvious reason.  Not for the first time I wished I could just walk away and leave him unanswered, but I knew that would never happen while he still lived.  It was a shame, really.

Gritting my teeth, I stuck my good hand under his nose, and was compelled to use it to slap him.  From the flinch I noticed at least halfway through the motion, I held off, realizing he had already expected something like that.  Always a step ahead, Raimen was… one day I would catch him off guard, and savor the moment like the most delicate of gourmet feasts!  “I suppose you want to spit on it or something?  Look, Rat-man, I have things to do…”

On any other day, at any other moment, the insulting nickname that I’d used for years would have irritated him into some sort of response.  Instead, he shook his head – and sprung into action.  Before I knew what had hit me, he held both of my wrists in a death grip and he was on his feet.  The instincts to fight or run were at war within my head, but he gave me no time to consider either option.  He was so strong, and so fast, and I was helpless against anything he might have chosen to do.  Maybe he’d decided not to wait for marriage… If only I’d learned faster, thought faster, if only I hadn’t been such a failure, in front of Master Mikhail and everyone…!

My eyes were closed so tightly that I could see spots of light hovering at the edges of my vision.  I felt him slide his hand from my left wrist to my left palm, and his touch crossed the line where my skin was covered by a thick bandage.  Unfortunately, he didn’t stop there, and brought his full palm to rest over my injury.  The pain was instantaneous.

“What do you think you’re doing?  Stop it, Raimen, you know that hurts, don’t you?  You saw me get it, you know what happened, don’t play me for a fool…”

He was ignoring me.  From the lack of other motion, I realized that I wasn’t in danger of being taken advantage of, at least, and my eyes began to slide open again.  I had not wanted to believe he would do such a thing, but I couldn’t trust him, couldn’t read him, not with so much water in the way…

At last he spoke.  “I wanted your other hand, not the one you gave me.  I’ve been reading a lot, as you noticed.  There’s something in here I’ve been wanting to try.  You can be my test subject.”

“What?”  I think my voice hit an all-time high at that moment.  “Don’t you dare test anything on me!  Did you run this by Master Mikhail?  Does he know what you’re about to do?  Is this even safe?  You know I don’t trust you…”

I started to pull on my hand, trying to free myself of his grasp, but it worked about as well as it ever had in the past.  His grip tightened on my palm, bringing the pain to new heights.  Unbidden tears came to my eyes, but I would sooner have died than let him see them.  Instead, I lifted my foot and stomped down hard on his bare toes.

He howled in pain, dropped my hand and fell backwards into his chair, wincing as if I’d broken his nose in the same movement.  His hands went for his foot, exploring through the pain to see if I had broken anything.  The scowl on his face when he looked back up at me was the Raimen I had come to expect; the sullen little boy that I’d known for years rather than the thoughtful, curious imitation of a man that I’d seen mere moments before.  It comforted me more than anything else had, perhaps even the fire, that day.

“You’re so stupid, Anri.  I wasn’t going to do anything bad!  I know we don’t get along, but I’d never…”  He trailed off, one hand scratching at his messy hair.  “I’d never… you know, hurt you.  On purpose.  Unless I had to.  Or you wanted me to.”

“Why would I ever want you to hurt me?  I think you’re the dummy here, Raimen, not me.”  I stuck my nose in the air and turned to head for the door.  “Next time find a different test subject to play with.  I’m not your toy any more than I am your wife.”

He smiled, and this of course made me frown.  That statement should not have in any way brought a smile to his face…

“In that case, you might have a look at your hand.”

I looked.  I had to, because I couldn’t feel anything wrong anymore.  The bandage was still tight and unsullied around my palm, and the bloodstains from before still dirtied the white cloth… but I knew before I even unwrapped it what he had managed to do.  With a sinking feeling in my gut, I went through the motion of unwrapping it anyway, just to prove to both of us his expertise.  I couldn’t wait to give him one more reason to gloat over me.

As expected, the wound on my palm was as if it had never existed.  There was a rough scar in its place; whatever Raimen had learned, it was not the kind of complete healing that Masters practiced, but that was to be understood.  After all, Raimen was not supposed to be practicing anything out of that book without Master Mikhail present!  He was no Master – he was too young, even if by some miracle of nature, he had managed to find the talent!  I half expected it to reopen with too much provocation, but the only way to do that…

Then his comment registered at last, and I felt even worse than I had after failing my challenge.  He knew it, too; the look on his face was somewhere between triumph and agony from having his toes crushed.  Disgusted, and finding nothing to say that would not make the situation even worse, I decided to do what I had intended to do all along and leave.  I stalked to the door and left without so much as a second look at him.

As the door slammed shut behind me, I could hear him say one thing, and one thing only.

“You’re welcome, Anri.”

“Master Mikhail.”

I stood before him with my head bent, in the manner he informed me was respectful.  The amusement in his blue-gray eyes fueled my ambition more than anything else had, that day.  I’d thought once about turning back, but now that he was laughing at me, I wasn’t going to harbor the thought.  I waited for him to ask me what I wanted, but a smile broke out across his angular face instead.  “You want to test your skills, do you not?”

I flinched.  Of course, he knew!  He knew everything, because he’d taught me everything.  My own speech was a mirror to his own; my thoughts were a reflection in his ocean of musings.  However, if he knew, that was even more reason to go through with my plan.  “That’s right. I want to see if I can…”

“…defeat me.”  The smile faded for a moment as he put a large hand on my shoulder and thrust me away to arm’s length, looking me over from top to bottom.  He paused to hold my eyes with his; I never looked away.  His own lessons had taught me that to look away from an enemy was to court death, and it wasn’t my time to die.  At last, he was the one who broke the stare, though I knew his guard wasn’t down by any means.  “You always were the stubborn one.”

I smirked, pointing to the barrel nearby that was filled with wooden practice swords.  “If you insult me, you insult yourself, sensei.  After all, it was you who taught me.”

“Indeed I did.  But it isn’t yet time for the student to become the master.”  The faint dimple in his left cheek shone despite the slender smile he gave me.  “That time will come only when you learn not to challenge your enemies.  The Way is meant to be discipline for your mind, not a way to bully your enemies.  It is not a trial, my Dragon.  It is a way of life.”

Scowling in his direction, I once again met his gaze with my own.  “So you’re backing down?”

His chuckle was a whisper on the wind.  “No.  I said that the time would come when you learn not to challenge others.  I didn’t say not to accept a challenge when it comes.”   I watched as he turned on a graceful heel and made his way over to the barrel, his face unreadable.  After a moment, he ran a hand through the dark strands of his hair.  “Speaking of a challenge… if you challenge me, we fight on my terms.  We will use real blades this time.  If you’re old enough to confront me, you’re old enough to handle a warrior’s tools.”

My throat went dry.  Real blades?  I’d practiced with wooden blades for years, but I could count on one hand the number of times I’d handled a true sword.  “Sensei, it isn’t fair.  You learned the sword.  I haven’t.”

“Are you backing down?”

It seemed my own words were coming back to haunt me.  Removing my boots and cloak, I set them aside and pulled a wooden blade from the barrel right out from underneath his nose.  He opened his mouth to object, but I held up a finger.  “Nowhere in the rules did it say I couldn’t make a few practice runs first.”

That singular, knowing smile came to his face again.  “Of course not.  Take all the practice runs you want.  But I will still beat you.”  Leaving me to swing at my imaginary sparring partners, he disappeared into the cabin; the same one he had lived in for years, and the only home I had ever known.  I knew his arsenal of arms was kept in the cellar under padded lock and key, but to open that door meant hours of labor and training beyond what I cared for.  It was better to let him do the choosing.

I was still as skilled with a practice blade as I had ever been, and I smiled with satisfaction as the wooden stick slammed through the straw head of a practice dummy.  Not only was the strike excellent, but the passes had been near perfect as well.  Spinning, I thrust the blade into a second dummy, grinning as it pierced just shy of where the heart would have been on a real human.  Perhaps I wouldn’t be so handicapped in the challenge.  Maybe I knew more than I thought.

“Your form needs improvement, Anri.”

I whirled around, glaring with every ounce of dignity I had at the boy who’d just come out of the cabin and was watching me practice.  A smirk played across his scrawny face; his dark hair fell haphazardly into his eyes, which were making fun of me long before his words ever were. “Shut up, Raimen.  Nobody asked your opinion.”

He shrugged, turning his back to me.  “Suit yourself.  I just don’t want you to get beat too badly by the sensei.  If you do, I might not want to marry you.”

“Good!  Who would want to marry a pig like you anyway?” I spat in reply, pointing my wooden practice blade at him.  “I’d kill you before I even thought about it!”

Before I had time to retaliate, he’d pulled a blade from the barrel and countered my clumsy strike so fluidly that my own blade was torn from my hand and stuck upright in the soft dirt.  A chuckle escaped him as he thrust his blade back into the barrel and walked off.  “Next time, be careful who you challenge, Dragon.  You may be Master Mikhail’s favorite, but I still have more training than you.  Doubt you’d be able to kill me if I asked him for your hand.  For your sake, be glad I haven’t.  You know all I have to do is ask, and you’d be mine.”

“When pigs fly,” I muttered as he left.  He was beginning to get arrogant, with all the time he spent practicing and reading out of Mikhail’s more advanced books.  He’d just see if I married him after all.  Nobody would tell me who to love, not even Mikhail himself.  Ignoring the strains of flute music from the trees where Raimen had gone off to sulk, I returned to my assault on the dummies.  First one, then another fell to my stick, and I grinned when I noticed Mikhail watching through the window.  Maybe he was scared of me now; maybe he thought I was a worthy opponent.

“Work on your form, Anri!” he called from inside.

I wanted to strangle him.  However, it wouldn’t have done any good to get angry.  No matter how angry I got, the Way commanded that I keep control of my wits.  A fighter without his wits about him would fall quicker than a calm, alert warrior.  Granted I was no man.  Perhaps that was the reason all of the lessons about anger management never worked on me.   I once again turned to the dummies and made a point of being as graceful and perfect as I could.  I wasn’t about to let him or Raimen see me slacking off again.  They were both right, however much I didn’t want to admit it: my form needed work, and a lot of it.

Finally, I heard the door to the cabin slam shut, and I wiped the sweat from my brow before turning to greet the glint of twin steel blades that Mikhail carried.  He watched with interest as I pointed off in the direction Raimen had gone.  “Did you send that out to bother me, or is he just being annoying as usual?”

Mikhail shrugged his slender yet muscular shoulders.  “Hard to tell with that boy.  He does love you though.  I sent him out here to empty the trash.  Anything he said to you wasn’t my doing.”  When I spat in the dust, he frowned.  “That’s hardly ladylike, Dragon.  If you expect to get married, you’ll have to learn to be more graceful.”

“And if I don’t expect to?”

He smirked.  “You will.  It’s just a matter of time before it happens.  You’re too young yet to know how much fun it can be.”  I opened my mouth before I could even think of a fiery retort, but he covered it with his hand.  “Silence, Dragon.  There’s a time for breathing fire and a time for thinking fire.  This is one of the latter.  When you think fire, you hurt only yourself.  When you breathe fire, all around you is damaged.”

That managed to get me thinking.  He was right.  Who was I hurting by failing to control my words?  I already knew Raimen had his eye on me; it was no secret.  I also knew that should he ask Mikhail for my hand, that I had no say in the marriage plans.  That was the destiny of a female inducted into the Way.  Even though he was arrogant, and fully aware of his power over me, he truly did care for me.  Maybe that was why I didn’t like the idea.  I had only just passed my thirteenth summer; it was too soon for marriage, in any case!  Yet, I hurt him when I got angry, even if he didn’t show it.

“Here.”  Mikhail took my silence for an answer, and tossed me one of the silver-hilted blades he carried.  I caught it, making a few test swipes with it as I continued the downward motion.  “Let your fire guide you, but the Way is not to burn your enemy.  It is to awaken the fire within him, and let him burn out.”

Nodding, I walked to where he stood, stopping a mere ten feet from his spot.  He laid his blade on the ground before him, and I did the same, laying mine across his to form a cross.  The challenger’s blade always covered the challenged in a formal duel, and this was no exception.  The steel-hard look in his eyes told me that he was taking this very seriously, and that meant that I would be wise to do the same.  He didn’t waste his time on beginners, and I had the distinct feeling that if he didn’t think there was a reason to continue the battle, he would have called it off.  He knew something I didn’t, as usual, and there was a lesson to be learned, somewhere.  I would have to find out where.

In unison, we brought our hands together and bowed to each other, then touched our palms together in the traditional respectful acknowledgement of the enemy before backing away and lifting our blades from the ground.  Only a breath passed before that instant and the next.

With a great crash of steel and silver, our swords met each other.  He spun away quickly, jabbing back toward me, but I stepped out of his way, smiling.  “Too soon for mistakes, sensei,” I whispered to him.  He nodded in response, and swung hard toward my hand, intending to disarm me.  Ready for that trick, I jumped high, bringing my blade down to meet his.  The impact thrust his blade downward as well, disabling the strike.  He seemed thoughtful for only a moment before launching into the Crisis Moon attack we’d spent countless hours working on. I counted with him as he moved.

One, down, two, up, three, lift, four, stop, five… block!

Right at the moment his sword swung down in a sharp arc, I slammed a strong attack of my own up to greet it.  He blinked as vibrations shuddered up both blades, but spun into a retreat by whirling backward.  I moved forward, following him; as he’d taught me, the best defense was a good offense.  It was easy to see our styles were growing closer, and I found myself fascinated by it.  That was why Raimen always believed I was Mikhail’s favorite; he’d never been able to approach the smooth look of Mikhail’s battle technique.  He always relied on his speed and strength to win battles, much as he had with me just a short time ago.

Beads of sweat broke out on Mikhail’s forehead as he circled me.  No longer was he using simple tricks and games to fool me; he’d decided he would have to work harder to defeat me.  Without warning, he crouched, then sprang toward me, blade set to impale.  Stunned at the violent attack he’d told me never to use, I barely had time to duck and roll out of the way to avoid meeting my death.

Panting, I glared up at him.  “What are you doing?  You told me never to do that!”

A soft smile lit his face.  “Not all of your enemies will do what you’re expecting them to do.  Be alert, Dragon, and you’ll get much further.  The Gaia Slice is only the beginning of the tricks a trained swordsman might use on you.”

“But…you said…”

He shook his head.  “I’m not your teacher now… or did you forget?  I am your enemy.  I won’t pull any punches.  So strike me down… if you can.”  He stretched out his free hand in my direction and made a quick beckoning motion with his fingers.  Feeling my anger rising, I let it fill my body before launching into a series of spinning attacks, each of which he blocked.  While I tried to recover, his attacks seemed graceful and planned, not clumsy like mine.  He wasn’t angry; he was fighting with a calm mind.

Awaken the fire within him… let him burn out…

His words echoed in my mind, and I stepped back, thinking.  At the same moment, he attacked, snaking his sword around mine and thrusting hard.  I had only a moment to gasp as the point of his sword pierced my palm and my blade fell from my hand to clatter on the dirt below.  My eyes widened as blood streamed from my palm, and I looked up at him, angry.  “You told me to think before I attacked, and this is what happens?”

He shook his head, hooking his blade onto his belt before walking over to me.  “Think, yes.  Step back and think, and allow your enemy an opening?  No.  You must think while you act, Dragon.  Even when the enemy appears to be weak, think as you act.  A desperate man will do anything to win, anything at all to save his life.  Not all men follow the Way, and they will cheat.  You have to be ready for the cheaters as well as the honorable.  Your enemy isn’t going to allow you a recess to come up with your next move, my girl.  You did well up until that point.”

By now, my hand was stinging, and tears welled in my eyes.  “You weren’t supposed to hurt me though!”

He sighed, easing an arm around my shoulders.  “Sometimes, pain is the best way to learn a lesson.  I’m sorry, but you had to be shown.  If I’d told you to pay attention, would it have had the same effect?”  He smiled down at me.  “I don’t think it would have.  Knowing your temper, my Dragon, you would have scoffed at me and continued to make the same mistake.  This way, I know you learned.  You know you learned.”  A chuckle escaped him, and he used a gentle thumb to wipe away a single tear that had escaped from my eye.  “Come now, Anri.  Are these tears because of your pain, or because you lost your challenge?”

“Shut up, just shut up!”  I curled my bloody palm into a fist without thinking, ready to give him a broken nose if nothing else, but the pain inflicted by the steel blade was too much.  Gasping, I unclenched my fist to see that I’d only widened the gash.

“Do you see now what anger does to you?”  His voice was gentler when he spoke.  “It cost you your train of thought, then the battle, and now it’s making things worse.  You won’t win a battle until you can put aside that anger, Dragon.  It will be difficult for you… but you must do it.  Even a true dragon knows when it’s appropriate to get angry.”

As he led me up the stairs to the cabin to be cleaned up, I noticed Raimen emerging from the trees.  He crouched by the spot where my blade had fallen, and I watched him frown as blood from the hilt where my hand had been coated his curious fingers.  He glanced up at me, and I turned away before he could comment.  He was probably happy; his prediction had been perfect.  I’d been beaten, and now he was probably ashamed to admit he loved me.

To tell the truth, he wasn’t the only one ashamed of me.  I would have to work harder, or risk losing all faith I had in myself.  The next time, I would be better. I had to be.