I feel the force of the blow before the clang of metal reaches my ears. Heavy harsh claws scrape against the metal of the axes. Wither is going to give me hell for using them as shields, but it’s not like a low threat Echo has any chance of damaging them.

I push back against the claws, letting me get a good view of my opponent as it stumbles. It looks a bit like a bear, but skinny with its ribs showing, rattlesnake-like vestiges on its neck that makes it roar thunderous, and a visible bone spine on its back. And as an Echo, its existence is covered in an ethereal shimmer, like looking into an ocean reflecting distant lights off its surface, and its eyes empty.

These aren’t creatures. They’re parts of the past, fractured by the end and its sole purpose to bring everything else to the end with it.

Which is why I feel no remorse in using it for practice. Eyes follow me from the outskirts of the arena, the area we use for dueling simply a deep dirt pit that gives enough room to maneuver. I spot Wither out of the corner of my eye, her hand on her hip. I get the feeling she’d rather cross her arms, if she could.

With the monster stumbling back from my shove, I step a heavy foot forward. Swinging the ax with my left hand would take too long for it to have any proper windup, so I drop it and just punch the damn thing. It feels like I pressed my fist against a thick solid wall of molasses, and for a fraction of a second I can feel my hand slip into it. A spike of cold numbness spikes through my knuckles as the echo gets knocked back with a new dent in its chest. The feeling fades as quick as it came, thankfully.

This time it recovers quicker, being a bit smarter than the other echoes and capable of some mild learning, it seems. I twirl my body as I duck under the swing of its claws. As soon as its foot lands it goes to bite me, which provides the perfect opportunity. Finishing my twirl that provided plenty of potential force to my ax, I swing it up with both hands.

The head of the monster is nearly bisected as my weapon goes from cutting its neck up to its head, forcefully shutting its jaw with the force of the swing and my momentum only just stopping at the top of the skull. Disappointing, I wanted a clean kill. But the brutality has its own charm anyway.

Rather than bothering to pull the ax out, I just wait a few moments. Sure enough, the echo’s shimmer starts to fade, along with its physical presence all together. After a second or two, it's like it never existed in the first place. Back to the void.

I pick up the other ax I dropped and throw both of them onto my back again, making my way out of the pit. Quite a few were watching the fight, a few of the older members of the security force and a number of newbies. Actually there’s been a lot of recruits recently. I frown, only just noticing that, but it’s none of my business anyway. Whatever their problems are, it’s their problems.

I don’t taste anything that could give me a clue anyway. The notes of awe and excitement from the trainees who watched the fight does boost my ego a bit, but mostly it’s nervousness from the ones anticipating their turn, probably fighting something for the first time in their lives, and the analytical moods of the instructors.

Willow looks at me passively as I approach her, the mix of approval, thoughtful, and disappointment leaves a weird aftertaste that makes me swirl my tongue around in my mouth. “Just get it over with.” I tell her, ready to hear all of her criticisms.

She wastes no time. “Your choice to stagger it was good. Usually I’d have choice words about leaving a weapon behind in a fight, but you clearly had a plan when you did so. The duck was sloppy, I saw you practically guess where that thing was swinging instead of really looking. And your form on the upswing was bordering on sloppy, you were using almost only your spine instead of your whole body.”

Stolen novel; please report.

I just sort of zone out as she prattles on. I do, like, half listen because I’m not an idiot. Fighting these things is life and death and all that. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. Besides, the little taste of frustration I get from Wither as she notices feels like a win.

“Alright. If this is so boring, let’s get to something active.” Blech, smugness and spite tastes awful when you’re on the receiving end. Like an orange soda that went flat and had some grass mixed in. “To the gym, move it.” She gives my shoulder a shove to get me moving, to which I respond by glaring at her and flipping the bird as I move my feet. I do contemplate walking overly slowly to annoy her, but she’d just keep shoving me or worse. Not worth it.

Although I stop when the taste of fear spikes onto my tongue and I stop, turning to the arena and licking my lips. Oh, someone is having a bad time. “Can I at least watch a few of the fights before we go?” I ask in my sweetest voice. I don’t get treats like whoever the dude in the pit is very often.

“No.” She says completely unmoved. She just grabs my arm and shoves me forward again.

“Bitch…” I mutter under my breath, which just gets me a thwack in the head. Damn, her fingers are like wooden clubs.

The gym is obviously nearby all the other training facilities, and it’s very well equipped for a security force on a frankly small shard. That’s mostly due to miss one armed menace personally investing a ton into it. Woman really can’t stand bad gear, this place is basically her baby. Which means it’s really easy to get her upset by just throwing weights on the floor or something, but I eventually stopped because she dangled me over the edge of the shard when I ended up denting a weight and cracking the floor.

That was the day I learned you need to push someone to just below their limit instead of past it.

The next hour and a half is a grueling regimen Wither overlooks every step of, her satisfaction of my suffering making me want to spit. Deadlifts until my thighs are jelly, planks until I feel like my core is going to eject itself from my body, running on a treadmill with an incline so high I feel like I need rope and a harness. Boxing until my knuckles are bruised and red, the sadistic elf yelling at me if I’m not punching it hard enough.

She is definitely holding a grudge for that comment about her sisters earlier. I can only taste hints of it, her control of her emotions good. That’s why I’m in her care after all. She’s the only one who could handle me.

It turns out, no one wants a kid who can tell when you’re lying. I’ve never had much tolerance for bullshit, even when I was young. Some of my earliest memories are adults having full on screaming matches with me because I called them out.

And so I kept doing it, because it let me taste their anger. That delicious spice I want for every meal. I was a greedy guts back then and didn’t know how to pace myself. Went looking for more at every opportunity. The amount of people who would tolerate me dried up by the time I was 5.

Wither is just about the only person left who willingly interacts with me anymore. And I do have a begrudging respect for her. She’s never tried to bullshit me. She just straight told me my father didn’t want me. That she’s only caring for me because she has to. And that I’m never going to feel like I’m going to belong.

The honesty was refreshing. And she also taught me that other people can set me off too.

Seriously, I fucking hate yoga, it’s so boring. And I swear she’s making this take twice as long just to fuck with me. Her slow counting is agonizing while I hold these stupid poses. She can’t even do half of them normally because of that missing arm.

“5…6…7…” The dark elf amazonian slowly drones on.

“So, like, you usually have their center of balance in their core, since normal people are symmetrical and all. But do you balance your hip or something?” I ask an inane question to pass the time and annoy her.

“1…” She starts over. “...2…” It hangings in the air for a good ten seconds. “...3…”

Bitch.