For her morning runs, Val had the pleasure of waking up on her own without any wave crashing over her. Sadly, she also had the displeasure of not having Tavras accompany her on every run. His presence would have been welcome, even if she had to wake up every morning to water being dumped on her unceremoniously. Alas, she was mostly on her own until sunrise.

Very few mornings did Tavras join her on the run before dawn. Even then, he did not jog alongside her like he had on that first day. When he followed along on her run, Tavras more often opted for swimming in the ocean. This required him to cover a greater distance, being farther away from the island’s center than Val, but he had an easier time of this nonetheless. Swimming appeared effortless to him as he became one with the water.

Sometimes he did run, but never on land. Tavras would take each stride over the top of the ocean waters. His rapid steps left a spray in his wake, and he would disappear from view. As a god of water, apparently he could run atop its surface. His hoots and hollers at Val became barely audible in the distance. Like this, he would make it all the way around the island and lap her before she could finish so much as a quarter of her run. From there, he would break off to his own devices after jeering at her.

In her physical training sessions, some days Val found herself more flustered by Tavras than an average day. The more time that she spent around him, the more accustomed that she became in regards to his abrasive personality. This caused her to appreciate his positive qualities even more. Tavras’s cheerful mood never failed, always exuding positivity as he helped her train to reach her full potential.

Divine Judgement grew in strength. She could reliably call upon it to dole out a variety of punishments, making the skill incredibly versatile. So long as something offended her in regards to morality, Val found that she could call within herself to set things right through any means necessary. Augmenting her physical strength to deliver a devastating blow, creating some physical projectiles from sheer energy, or even imprisoning the offending person—all of these were options that she could do with Divine Judgement.

Most recently, she had created a cage of a similar energy to lock up Tavras when he had pushed her past her breaking point, yet again. That cage had held for almost five minutes before he had busted himself out, which made Val swell up with pride as she marveled at her own strength. She could bind one of the strongest gods in the world for a handful of minutes, a testament to how much raw potential she happened to possess with her divine blood.

Once Val had made satisfactory progress with hand-to-hand combat, she turned out to be correct in regards to what Tavras would have her learn next. While not the exact, prehistoric wooden club that she had imagined previously, he presented her with a metal baton.

“You will learn how to use blunt weapons next.”

The baton was not the only sort of blunt weapon that he had her practice with. According to him, Tavras had only given her a baton first since its symmetry would aid her initial learning experience. Soon, she had to use sticks, planks, pipes, all sorts of random and misshapen objects which she may be able to pick up in any environment.

The days passed to weeks which amounted to a month and some.

Eventually, Val was upgraded to her first sharp weapon. Knife in hand, Tavras taught her how to cut and stab. With her fists and blunt weapons, she had needed to learn the sensitive spots in which to strike. Now with knives, Val needed to differentiate between lethal and non-lethal points in the body.

All of this, she paid attention to with great care, especially since she suspected that she would have intense sparring sessions with Tavras just as they did with everything else. While he could always heal himself of course, Val had no intention to hurt him unnecessarily from her own ignorance. Plus, he would probably deal back to her anything wrong that she would do to him. Again, she could be healed from any fatal stab wounds, but they would still hurt as much as fatal stab wounds did.

The days continued indeed, but Val found that her body could not continue. One day on her morning run, she arrived back to the original side of the island where Tavras always waited for her. The sun had been up for almost an hour by now.

“You’re late,” he said, stern and unamused.

“I’m sorry, Tavras.” Val bowed out of respect, a very easy thing considering how she already wanted to bend over to catch her breath.

“Do you have any explanation for yourself?”

Val squeezed her eyes shut. Since the first day that she had begun training with Tavras, she had contained this excuse which floated around in the back of her mind. Rather than whining about her soreness, Val had steeled her resolve and ignored any complaints from her weary body. Now, unable to wake up on time, failing to complete her morning run, and making clumsy mistakes in sparring sessions, Val felt the need to speak up.

“I-I think that I might be overworked. I really am trying my best, Tavras, but my body never stops hurting. Could you heal me? My physical performance should return to normal if you do.”

“That would defeat the purpose of your training,” Tavras said. “If I heal all of the microtears in your muscles, you would no longer feel sore, but you would also not gain any strength either. This is something that your body must repair on its own in order to build muscle and get stronger.”

Val stared down to her feet, shifting in the sand. It seemed that she would just have to continue to endure her training. She was dreading this, at least until Tavras said otherwise.

“What you need is a break!”

“A break?” Val looked up to him with all hope, repeating him to make sure that she had heard him correctly. Never, throughout the entirety of this month had Tavras offered her a day off before.

“That’s right. A break! Come on, let me catch you breakfast for a change.” Tavras ran off to the ocean.

As sore as she was, Val followed him in a slow walk but she grinned the whole while. “Foofy, breakfast!” she called out to the island.

Foofy came running from the trees and followed after her on the beach. His expression drew wide with all of his happy intensity, the look that he always had on his face when food was near.

“We are having a day off today!” While Foofy only tilted his head at her as he trotted at her side, she let a skip enter her lumbering steps. Her first day off since beginning her training with Tavras, Val could not look forward to it more.

Character Update

* New information is marked in cyan.

* All entries are based on what Val knows.

Valentine (Val) Title: None Rank: Demigoddess Attributes: None Abilities Name Class Description

Divine Judgement

combat, tactical

- deals punishment for morally offensive acts

- punishment must equal the crime

- incredibly versatile with regards to type of punishment

Keep the Peace

tactical

- calm agitated creatures

- can sense the baser emotions of others

- works on animals up to the size of dogs, as well as mortal humans

- can manage multiple animals at once, according to their strength

Mind Blast combat - weak, physical blow from the mind

Past Insight

cognitive

- watch a replay of the past

- three pieces of initial information are required

- can stay in the tunnel of time for up to one minute

- real time passes slower in the vision

- can fast-forward through time in a vision

- one day cool down after a failed vision