I awaken to the sound of chirping birds and crowing. Standing up, I walk over to the sliding door and open it to the training grounds outside. I see Alva and Victoria sparing. Alva punches at Victoria, who nimbly dodges, then attacks back with an uppercut, sending Alva reeling back. But she recovers quickly and sends quick jabs into Victoria’s gut. That doesn’t phase her much as she spins, kicking Alva, who uses her forearm to block it. Alva teleports behind Victoria and tries to kick out her legs. Victoria jumps over them and lands on her hands, then turning into some human top, spins her legs at Alva, who takes a double step back to ensure both feet miss.

Victoria, back on her feet, sends a slurry of attacks at Alva, who dodges and blocks each attack. It’s hard to keep track as each hit is so fast. Alva teleports behind Victoria, wraps her arms under the princess pits, and then falls backward and sends Victoria’s head into the dirt. This ends the battle as Victoria nods at Alva, then Victoria runs over to a well and sips some water out of the hanging bucket. Alva sees me, and I sigh.

“Good morning, Emelia. Drink a couple of glasses of tea and get dressed in your small clothes, not your armor. You and I are going to spar.” I nod, not willing to argue with her so early.

Closing the door, I put on a small red cloth shirt with a black pair of pants. They fit me just snuggly enough to leave some room to move. Then I slip on my boots. Standing up, I walk over to the door again. Alva sits in a chair sipping at a canteen of water. Rene and Levi sit across the way, cleaning their weapons. Victoria is punching at a large hanging bag full of sand. Walking to the tea tray, I grab the small porcelain cup with a floral print swirling across its smooth texture.

I pour a glass of the dark liquid, and the citrusy smell immediately hits my nose and breathes some life into me. Next to the kettle are some sugar cubes, and I grab two of them and drop them in the tea. I sit by this small tree and swirl my tea slowly, watching the curving lines of the tea, wondering if they know an outside force is disturbing their rest. My mind floats back to the past three months before someone plops beside me. My anger flares a bit at the thought.

“You’re supposed to drink it, silly.” Rene pokes me in the head.

“Oh, yeah, you’re right.” I smile at her and take a big sip of the warm and floral and citrusy liquid. It warms my sore and achy body.

“You doing okay, Emmy? I-I know these past few months have been hard for you. I am sorry for that.” Rene moves closer, wraps her arm around me, and lays her shoulder against mine.

I stay quiet, not moving my eyes from the ugly image reflected in the tea.

“I know what it’s like to lose a loved one, you know?” I turn my head to her.

“Yeah? I’m sure you do, but did you watch them get slaughtered in front of you? Watch your entire city burn to the ground!” My emotions are boiling since the chat with Venus, and I am tired of people feeling sorry for me. I am tired of being called a monster. I am tired of everything at this point. But the sad thing is I don’t know why I am yelling at Rene. I just can’t stop.

I know Rene is just trying to help, but the anger is a wall between me and her.

“Emmy, it’s okay. Relax; I understand a part of what you’re going through, but I understand.” Rene stands up and put her hands on my shoulders.

I push her off and then stand up and back away. “Do you? Do any of you understand? The screaming voices in my head they never stop, and I.”

“All I can hear is their screams and wails for my help in my head. No matter how hard I try to make them stop, they won’t!”

Before I can register what happened, I’m sent face-first into the dirt below. Stars swim across my vision, and then I’m picked up by the back of my shirt and put back onto my feet. Turning, I see Victoria with a sneer on my face.

“Fuck sparing with Alva. You’re with me. Now go to the field middle of town now!” Then Victoria walks out the door, slamming it shut, sending crack through the building and up through the walls and ceiling.

“Better get out there, Emelia. If you keep her waiting, she will return and drag you there.” Then Alva disappears in a blink, leaving behind her cup of tea.

Looking at Rene and Levi, they are already shuffling out of the door.

“What the hell is her problem? She has been on me since she joined up with us.” The subtle and shallow voices ink their way back into my mind.

“Mistake.”

“Monster.”

“Make her suffer!”

These voices make my anger go into a calm sense of rage, and I run after Victoria, wanting to teach her to chill out. Why won’t they stop? What can I do?

I reach the field and see Victoria standing in the middle of it. Victoria spots me and waves me over when I walk up to the field.

“Front and center. I am about to teach you something.” She says no emotion showing on her sharp and chiseled face.

Walking before her, I let my aura flare to show her I won’t back down.

She laughs. “Aww, did I make you upset? Did I hurt your feelings?” She asks me between her laughter.

My anger is almost uncontrollable. “What did you drag me out here for? To hear your own voice?” I ask her, and she smirks.

The anger won’t stop. I can’t rein it in. I am a prisoner to this anger. Why!

“I brought you out here to quell this anger of yours.” She says her demeanor changes now. I can feel a soft but cold anger in her aura. It’s like two giant paws with claws gripping me, telling me I’m the okay but she will crush me if needed..

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Beating her won’t be easy, actually almost impossible.

“Do not give up during our fight here, no matter how scared you get. I am sorry about your home and I can see it has affected you greatly. How about you take that anger you have welled up inside you and take it out on me?”

I try to speak up, but she waves a hand. “We are not out here to pity each other with words. We talk through our fists.”

She holds up her fingerless gloved hand and puts up two fingers, dropping one.

“Two rules. One, you need to land exactly. One hit on me to win. Rule Two, do your best to win. Use all the strength you can to defeat me. Without damaging the city.”

”She drops her hands and gets into a battle stance.

“Go!” she says.

In a blink, I’m sent flying across the field. Bouncing across the field, I finally catch myself.

A distressing amount of pain and no air in my lungs leaves my head murky and causes my thoughts to swim around my brain. I try to catch them, but another blow hurls me into the sky. She hits me so fast I can’t even use my powers to keep the air from escaping.

I need to catch up. She is way too fast. Like a game of Pong, I slam back down to the world below. unsticking myself from the dirt, I see Victoria standing a few meters away.

“You think too much,” she says, stamping her foot.

“Maybe, but Lucy taught me it’s a skill to have,” I say, wiping away what I’m hoping is sweat.

“It’s not a bad skill to have, sure. Except you overthink instead of acting. In a life-or-death battle, you have to act. The enemy won’t wait for you to devise a plan.” I stare at her.

“Now don’t think act!” Then she explodes from her spot.

Something in me clicks, then I sidestep, and she misses. But she recovers quickly, pivoting on her foot and sending a punch covered in that royal yellow magic. Quickly, I summon the wind that appears between us and save me from taking the attack. The force from our magic colliding sends me sliding back a meter or two. Then I use the wind to make me lighter, and I go after her, swinging my fist at her face and using the wind to propel my fist. She ducks and kicks out my legs. My aura rises as the battle grows more intense. I summon the wind to form a sphere of wind under me to stop me from going face-first into the dirt again.

Now, lying on the sphere, it slides me back away from Victoria, who brings her foot down where I was. A considerable crater forms, and I blanch she’s trying to kill me! The sphere blows me to my feet, but I quickly break it apart and put the wind under my feet. Now I’m skating around. Floating just centimeters off the ground gives me an agility advantage, thus making me more complicated to hit, hopefully.

Victoria smirks at me. “Alright, Shroud, I will admit you have skills. That’s a start. Now, let’s up the tempo. Show me you can keep up.” Victoria says then, just like Alva, she disappears.

Where is she? I look around the field but can’t see her. Suddenly, I hear a buzzing sound above me. Looking, I see her above me, a smile on her face. She is bringing down some sphere of magic on me. Her hand is in the form of some scaly lizard like claw. I slide back, and the attack ruptures the ground rubble and rocks rain down around me, blinding me for a moment. Then she runs at me and swings rapidly at me.

We go at it, each attack of hers moving faster and faster.

“Keep up Shroud! I haven’t even broken a sweat!” She says through her furious onslaught of fists.

I can’t speak; I have to focus because even while using my wind skates to slide away; it doesn’t keep me away from her. She stays locked on. She is the absolute definition of a predator. I won’t escape. I should just give in to her, the voice sing to me to give in to let go.

Then I remembered Victoria’s first rule: don’t give in no matter what.

Now I understand, I say to myself, then I smirk.

So I don’t give in; I keep swinging, sliding back away for a split second. It lets me summon two wind blades that cover my hand and run down to my forearms. Both arms are now fully functioning swords. Victoria smiles widely.

“Now we’re talking!” She comes back and starts adding powerful kicks into her furious fisticuffs.

She lands a kick to my stomach, knocking the wind out of me, but I quickly stop it from escaping. Sliding away again, I send fifteen wind blades at her, which she dodges and blocks gracefully.

Now she’s cackling. “See, you have what it takes!”

Victoria flares her aura, and I feel that tingle of fear creeping its addictive teeth back into me. Giving in would be so easy. I stop dead, and Victoria flies right by me. She turns and looks at me.

“What’s wrong, Shroud, giving up again?” Victoria asks a big smirk on her face.

“No, you said I need to just get one punch on you?” I ask.

She nods. “Yep, but it won’t happen.”

“Fine, I’ll hit you with this next attack.”

Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, letting the cool wind flow through me. Taking deep breaths like this fuels my magic. I breathe out, and then my aura covers me like a warm cloak. It feels so natural, this beautiful feeling like all the air in the world is mine, and I am in control. My aura grows with each breath in and then out. I feel Victoria match my aura with her own.

With the wind, I feel her fist cutting through the air, ready to hit me, and I duck. She pivots and tries to kick me, but again, I slide back on my wind skates, and she misses me again. She runs me down quickly.

Deep breath in, Emelia, deep breath out. It’s almost time.

“Gotta admit I really don’t like what I’m feeling from your coming from you aura. Very slick.” I hear her say, and then I feel the ripples in the wind from her swinging her fist through the air.

Breath in and out. Then, right before her fist hits me, the Trance takes hold. I watch as the world slows. My eyes open and I can see Victoria frozen. Not precisely, I tell myself, I’ve just become the wind. Walking up to her, I get ready to lay a hand on her, and then I see her frozen face smile.

“You think becoming the wind would stop me? You have so much to learn.” Then she uppercuts me, sending me into the air, and my trance breaks, and my body returns to normal.

Victoria is above me now with the biggest grin on her face. “Times up. Now I am going to beat you senseless, like I said. Let me show you how far you have to go.”

Victoria bounces off some platform she made from her magic flips and sends a gut-wrenching kick to my ribs, cracking five of them at a guess. The ground meets me like an old friend as I crash into it before even the stars in my vision fade. The front of my shirt is grabbed, and I’m thrown hundreds of meters across the field. I try to catch myself, but Victoria is already there. She kicks me backward, basically making me to human Hacky Sack. Finally, I land in the dirt, ready to black out from the pain. Victoria picks me up like I weigh lighter than a feather, and I stare at her through my good eye.

“You have potential, Emeila. You can do so much good. Being afraid is good. It keeps you alive. But you still have to train harder than everyone to learn to conquer it.” Her smile drops.

She looks back up and stares at me with her stormy eyes. They seemed to have calmed, but the power the storm holds over makes me feel so small. Not even when I faced down the woman in blue did I feel this insignificant.

“Push yourself, Emelia. Even if you bleed Keep Going.”

She makes me stare her in the eye with each sentence she utters.

“Even if your world is crumbling down around you, Keep Going.”

“Even if you stare down a God Damn Archdemon in its face. You Keep Going.” She finally breaks eye contact for a moment to stare into the sky. Then she locks her eyes back into mine and smiles. “Just Keep Going.” Her words almost crack saying it. Then she lays me down gently on my back and walks away.

My mind stirs at her words. My anger wants me to move and show her how small she is. I am the predator, but I know how right she is. Janet and Lucy coddled me a lot; I trained with Lucy but didn’t train enough when she was gone. While staring into the endless blue sky, I make a vow.

The Embers will feel my wrath. I will become greater than the strongest of them. Take my blood, my bones, my eyes, anything. I will give it all up to become stronger. My Vow to the World is I will stop at nothing to Kill The Embers.

With that, I pass out.