POV Aron Brightlcoud
We stood in the middle of my private courtyard, finished with warming up I turned to Sephiroth. Not having started to holler and beat me like usual, I gave her an inquisitive glance.
Seeing my perplexed face, she smirked at me. “Have you become so used to me shouting and hurting you that you can’t be without it any longer?”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. Finished with poking fun, she spoke further.
“Now that your body looks not as inflexible and untrained anymore, we can start with actual weapons training. We will first begin with the sword. Later, after you have gained basic mastery, you can decide what other weapon you want to learn next. But remember, your awakening day and the subsequent introduction to the nearest magical school will be soon. It will depend on how much you learn until then, but enough of that. Lets focus on training.
Today I will show you some of the basic moves. After you have practiced them enough, we will control your progress with a brief practice match.”
Having heard the last words while seeing the sadistic glint in her eyes, I already knew that I would not enjoy that “little” sparing exercise.
“Didn’t you imply that you wouldn’t be so sadistic anymore? And now, not even a minute later, I see you smiling in anticipation at the thought of hurting me?”
“What? I wouldn’t do that without a good reason. Harming you has always been a means to educate you better. I would never hurt you because of personal pleasure.”
I watched her as she tried to let her face look honest and pure. I could only shake my head and lament over my rotten luck.
Coughing slightly she changed the topic “Enough time wasted, let's start. As I had said earlier, we will begin with the basic movement and sword techniques. The movement technique I want to teach you looks like followed.”
She moved into a position where she had her feet apart the same length as her shoulders and put one of her legs a little forward and the other back. She bowed her knees a bit and stood on the balls of her feet. Happy with the stance Sephiroth moved in all four directions, showing me how to do it in the most efficient way.
Finished, she told me to hit her to illustrate how the movement would help her avoid my attacks. Following her order, I attacked with a simple stab at her midsection. She used the technique and moved back relaxedly, avoiding my attack with ease. She hadn’t told me to stop, so I followed up with another attack. But this time I cut diagonally from above towards her neck.
It went mostly like the last time, only that after I had missed her she used the movement technique to close in on me and hit me with the blunt side into the ribs. Even though I should have known better, I thought she wouldn’t connect the blow and stood still until the last second. Groaning, I tried to not lose the ground under my feet. She had a lot of power hidden in that deceptive light strike.
I calmed myself. It was very straining to keep my emotions in check. Her gleeful grin on her face didn’t help either.
“Good. Now that you have seen its benefits, try it out for yourself.”
I followed her instruction and moved my body into the right position. As the stance was like the one I had used while training Ju Jitsu it came easily to me. I had barely reached the right position when she attacked me with her sword again. Luckily I had previous experience in fighting and swiftly evaded her slash.
Having missed, she stopped, surprised. Sadly, her wonder quickly changed to anticipation. More attacks followed afterwards. This time it felt like a rain of swords as she quickly accelerated her pace. Soon I had reached my limit. My body couldn’t move any faster. Even though I knew the techniques my body was still not used to the quick directional changes.
I felt the sword land on my ribs. It really hurt. I knew that I couldn’t do anything at the moment, so I proceeded with cursing Sephiroth in my mind. I had to admit that my use of swearwords had rapidly increased since I had started training with Sephiroth.
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My tormentor stopped with a satisfied grin, having accomplished hurting me enough.
“You are already proficient with the movement technique but you need more practice. You will perform an additional exercise every evening for half an hour before you go to sleep. That should solve the problem. Let’s move on to how to use the sword.”
Following that, she showed me different sword attacks before I had to practice all of them. As she enjoyed hurting me a short bout always followed it to check if I could use them correctly. Naturally, every time some of her hits made it through my defense.
At the end, my entire body was full of bruises. I breathed hard and tried to catch my breath.
“Good, I think that is enough practice. Now let's have the sparring match to find out what you still remember.”
Steeling myself, I went into the learned stance. I would push through this! I wanted to thrive in this world and I wouldn’t let a little pain stop me from reaching my goals!
Seeing my focus Sephiroth grinned which changed quickly into a predatory smile as she attacked with an overhand swing. I moved like I had learned and evaded the attack before I started my own. What then followed was an one-sided SmackDown as Sephiroth beat me through the whole courtyard. Trying to get through my blocks and evading techniques, she upped her pace repeatedly.
I fought with everything I had. I needed to use all my previous experience to not get crushed instantly. The reddish tone in her eyes erupted as her fighting spirit soared. She got faster and faster. Hits made it through my defense. Still, I tried to not falter and hang on. I really missed my combat state, it would have made this much easier.
Luckily she hadn’t scored a hit on my vitals until now, but the bruises on my body had gotten much more plentiful. Then, as I had parried one of her swings, she used our near proximity to slip into my guard and bashed her sword pommel directly into my face. With an audible crack, my nose broke.
Half blind from pain, I rolled away to distance myself. She didn’t let me. Coming up a downward swing greeted me. I parried it, but my joy was short-lived. She used our connecting swords as leverage and pushed me out of balance. In the half a second I was unfocused, she slipped a second time into my guard and gave me a brutal blow to the chin. Instantly I fell unconscious to the ground.
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POV Sephiroth
Sephiroth stood next to Aron’s body and scrutinized him in wonder. Aron had used the new moves surprisingly well. She had only knocked him out through techniques which she hadn’t shown him yet. That said, after she had ramped up her speed and power a little she had crushed him in seconds. But what perplexed her was that as long as she exerted the same amount of power as him, he was very proficient in defending against her.
It felt like he had learned some sort of martial art in the past, but she knew from the briefing of his father that that hadn’t been the case. Well, another puzzle aside of his too mature behavior. She looked forward to find out everything about him.
Sephiroth checked the surroundings a second time before she grabbed Aron and hoisted him up on her arms, carrying him back toward his rooms. First She had to clean him up and treat his wounds. It wouldn’t do if his mother and sister found out about his broken state. As the nose was still bleeding, she took out a small piece of cloth and held it with pressure against it. Letting Aron move uncomfortably in his unconscious state for a moment as it had to hurt even while he was out.
As the bathroom door closed, she put him down into the bathtub. First she would heal his crushed nose to stop the bleeding. Cutting open her hand, she watched as her blood flowed over Aron’s face. Immediately the wounds healed, and bones started to mend themselves. Five minutes later his nose looked as good as new.
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