Chapter Sixteen: Of Sen Part One

Staring unflinchingly at Cain as she heals from the damages that I unloaded onto her, I say with a laugh “An immortal punching bag how lucky am I?” And vicious smile.

She shrugs at my jab and watches me with unblinking severe eyes. It’s somewhat sickening to look at her as she heals, but equally fascinating to watch. I’d be hard-pressed to say I’ve seen anything like this before, wait, wait I fell an old memory surface from the depths of my mind.

The memory brings me back to when I was much younger, though I couldn’t have been younger than ten. I was with my father traveling like we usually did when he wasn’t busy doing more secretive and shady tasks, and decided to leave me somewhere. I don’t really remember where we were head in the long term, but I do remember that my dad decided to make a little trip on the way. And what happened wasn’t pretty.

We ended up traveling for several days till we came upon a huge caravan that must have been miles long and guarded by a horde of guards. I don’t know what was guarded in the caravan but my father wanted, and he was going to get it. And what happened next is not something I’m proud of.

Ya see, my father already had a plan, but he had yet to tell me. That wasn’t very surprising seeing as he likes to keep me clueless, cause he says it makes me more endearing or maybe that’s just what he said to shut me up. So it was only as we got a within spitting distance of the caravan which was setting up for the night, he told me his plan and my part in it. If I could I would have definitely said no to him, but my father is not the type of person you can say no to, not without losing something precious, so I went along with it as usual.

See even when I was young, I was quite strong and well built, with the height and weight of a normal man at least, plus all my baby fat had been trained off so in general, I’ve almost never looked close to my age. So my part of the plan was to carry my dad in my arms and run out of the forest frantically into the caravan camp screaming for help and say that we were traveling part of another caravan and that was attacked by bandits and that I and my younger brother were the only ones to escape

Of course, they were very skeptical of me at first but bought into my act soon enough, when my dad started to play his part. He had them wrapped around his finger in the matter of moments with his innocent child act. Most people would never be able to tell what my father is from a glance or even spending years in his company, in fact, most classers and experts wouldn’t either, not unless he wanted you to know. Even as his son I can barely keep track of him, and whenever he started acting I would find my blood chilling at the way that one of the world's most dangerous men could hide in plain sight as whatever sight he wanted, and this time acting as a child no less.

By the way, my dad had also made sure to wound us both to make it more convincing, with light and mild wounds all over us, and my dad suffering the worse having inflicted the worse on himself with a gut wound.

I then played the part of a desperate brother and begged them for a healer, saying my ‘younger brother’ didn’t have much time left and I had done the best I could since we were attacked. The guards tried to calm me down, and they seemed to be trying their best to get us a healer, but once again my father got them on his finger.

He started playing the part of a dying, cheerful, and innocent child trying to calm me down and saying how things were going to fine since our new friends were going to help us as he slowly pretended to grow weaker and more tired. Not that a mere gut wound in the first place would do anything more than annoy him.

They fell for it immediately and kicked it into overdrive and practically dragged the healer over to us. Who himself all but ripped my father out of my grips and began healing him. At the time I had never seen healing magic before, my father usually only healed me after I was unconscious, and it was fascinating to watch. Afterwards, after finding the ‘bandits’ and dealing with them I and dad stayed with the caravan for about a month till dad robbed the caravan blind when they had lowered their guard and had us fake our deaths again.

Haaaaha, Good times, good times.

Anyway, that dredged up memory reminds of something. That while Cain’s healing seems similar to the way magic heals, her’s is different. Her seems to be more automatic, more complete, stronger even and most of all I don’t think there’s any magic at play here and if there are its magnitudes stronger than magic I’ve ever seen.

Soon though Cain seems to be back at fully fighting strength and standing confidently in front of me. Then she starts to vomiting a dark, and sickly sweet smelling waterfall right in front of her. Why do I even hope?

She keeps throwing up the blood for a good minute till there's a good sized puddle surrounding her.

“So are you ready or…,” I ask, completely unable to read how ready she is.

She nods her head and reaches down grabs something pretty gruesome. She grabs a long piece of bone that looks suspiciously like a rib. And then she raises her hand and bone shards to raise out of her blood gathering around her rib before suddenly they explode into white powder, but then gather up into something the looks like a bone white sword hilt. She examines the hilt with a skeptical eye, but then seems satisfied and tosses the hilt to the right hand and raise her left and all the blood she's throwing up gathers in her hand forms the general shape of a sword. She then moves the hilt towards the mass of blood and soon they merge, and all that’s left is a sword, not just any sword it’s longer than she is tall and with a long dark, thick, and bloody crystal blade…… Sweet, I want one!

Cains waves it around, and test its balance, and so and such. Then turning to me says gleefully, with wide, maniac eyes, and a toothy grin “Ready, to go at it for real? Oh, and by the way are you going to use that tiny blade of yours or are you just going to let hang out there.”

My own insane, toothy grin appears too, and I growl “Haha, I’ll show you how small it is when it’s shoved hilt deep into your guts!” And unsheath my own short sword out of its sheath and felt my blood boil ready to take this fight to the next level.

“Hahaahahaa, time to go all out,” I whisper to myself, but if Cain heard what do I fucking care! It's do or fucking die time!

For a split second, I take my attention off of Cain and focus in on myself. I pull my Aura down on myself and coat myself from head to toe in the shape of my image, layering my body in a protective shadow. I do it again and again till I’ve compressed my Aura as I can while still keeping it in its images, resulting in me being surrounded by a dark, thick honey-colored shadow.

Looking at my Aura and Image with a critical eye for any flaws or weakness and trying to see if there are any more area’s I can strengthen without compromising the image, but as I look some things become clearer. That my image is becoming more solid, more defined, and overall what it actually is, is coming into being.

Then I snap back to reality as my instincts and Aura yell at me to get out of the way, as the gravity of the situation come down on me as Cain is swingings her sword down at me, with it mere inches from me. I barely manage to bring my Aura clad arms up to block her strike.

She hits my arms with the force of an avalanche, my arm guards protect me but the force that transmits through them causes a popping, cracking, shaking in my arms from the inside out with pain bleeding through me. But despite the pain, Cain has given me the perfect opportunity to strike.

With her sword still on my arms her core is unprotected and I launch a vicious, swift kick straight at the center with all the power I can muster.

My Aura clad foot hits her straight in the stomach with the force of a runaway train, lifting her up and away from me with the power of it. She tumbles through the air for a second before gaining control of her descent.

I don’t give her time to land though and run after where she lands. The second before she hits the ground I launch another punch at her core. But she sees it coming and defends with her sword, and it tanks the punch while she is sent flying to the barrier seemingly unharmed.

I take a second to breathe, starting to feel the exhaustion from the fight and the training recently finally catching up with me. My ability might help with recovering, but the more intense the workout the longer it takes to heal. But nothing that’ll stop me from finishing this fight.

I take a deep breathe and recover some of my stamina. I hold my sword forward and my arm out to guard. I watch Cain analyzing me as if to try and find the best way to best me. After a minute or two of watching we blitz back into action, crossing the short distance in what felt like an instance.

She lashes out with her blade the first chance she gets, abusing her extra range and forcing me back to keep from getting run through, but still scoring a cut on my brow. But I don’t let her give without getting, grabbing her sword before she can withdraw it. It bites my hand painfully, but I hold my grip and pull her in before she let go.

Pulling her in I chop my sword down at her and she comes forward, I aim at her throat trying to decapitate her, she could probably survive it, but she manages to alter my course by leveraging the blade with her weight, forcing my blade off course shearing off a gash in shoulder and her ear off.

She gasps with pain and looks me deep in the eyes as I do so, with dark and barely unrestrained emotions. I don’t let it bother me, and prepare to bring my sword back up and bash her brains out with my hilt.

Before that can happen, she lets herself be pulled forward and surprised I don’t stop pulling, then I realize what she’s doing too late. A deep, agonizing pain explodes from my groin and I nearly crumpled beneath it.

I glare at her with anger, and she removes her groin from my knee, then out of fear and desperation, I knee her back pushing her back with a grunt. Then I felt something cold and wet in my hands and notice that my hands are covered in dark, oozing blood, more specifically her blood the one her sword is made of. I contract my Aura to my skin and blast it off my hands, launching everywhere.

She giggles at me entertained and smirks at me. I laugh back at her a few pitches higher and say “Whatcha gonna do you that you don’t have a blade.”

In response, she brought up her bone hilt and it exploded again into a cloud, then reforms into two short, but extra thick clubs that get even thicker at the ends. Oh, yeah she can do that.

Well, time to finish this.

I force the pain out of my mind and we begin to circle each other like to animals. Then we dash at each other with fury in our eyes. Her though seems to be a tad bit angrier, I wonder why?

I strike first with my sword reaching out towards her heart, I wonder how long that might put her down for. But she dodges out of the way like a dancer and slams both her clubs into my outstretched arm, hitting less protected underside. I groan as the forces hit the bone and I feel the fiery pain of it cracking. But, savage smile forms on my lips and I launch my knee into her groin and she gasps like she’s having a heart attack.

We both dodge back, wheezing with pain and exertion. It’s been awhile since I’ve had such a drawn-out fight, can’t say I didn’t miss it.

Then Cain looks at her father, then Rashid, and then at me. A look of fierce determination comes over her face as it rushes into something stoney and cold. She sprints towards me at a breakneck speed, but it’s easily trackable and I can’t help wonder what she’s up too.

Feeling more and more uneasy the closer she gets, the more I watch her incase she does something funny. So I lift my sword and prepare for another round. I hold it forward ready to intercept anything she tosses my way.

Once she gets closer in her charge, she begins to set up a very easily telegraphed attack, and brings back her arms and begins to twist her waist.

Almost within striking distance.

She’s about to strike, winding back her arms, a twist of her foot, a tumble, a stumble, tripping over nothing, and then falling on my sword. Wait what?

She just fell on my sword! I look down in pure shock, how did she trip over nothing?! I’m holding her weight on my sword, but I don’t know what happened?!

Then I feel the pain, a deep fiery and fracturing pain. I gasp with surprise an look down to my legs run through by dark, black blood. I then feel a pull and I’m forced to drop to the ground. I hear a snicker and look up to she Cain laughing with my sword sticking out of her chest. I growl but then laugh too at the scene. But then I sigh, and look at my legs, with spikes and spikes of dark blood running through them and shake my head.

I look up at her and smile, she earned her victory. Haaaaha, if only I pressed my advantage earlier.

She fuses her club together and then swings down, followed by a brief intense pain in my temple and Rashid’s cursing, then there’s peaceful nothing.