Page 80 of Whispered Warnings: Part One

I shake my head, “No way, I have got questions that I need answered and as excited as I am about getting my blade designed, that can wait. Some of the things that I want to look into can’t. It’s like an itch in my brain currently.” I frown. “I know that sounds really weird but that’s the only way that I can think to describe it.”

“I get that,” Raiden admits.

“Thank fuck for that because everyone else is looking at me like I’m weird,” I grin. “Alright, let’s do this. Don’t laugh if I’m shit.”

“Neith, none of us would do that,” Griff reassures me.

Reed hands me a short sword and holds up one for himself as well.

“I figure the best way to see what needs to be worked on is to see what you currently know and remember, so we’re going to spar,” he tells me. “These are practice blades, but they will still hurt like a motherfucker because we keep our practice blades sharp enough to cut. People have a tendency to get lazy in their practices if there isn’t a real threat of injury.”

“That’s smart,” I reply. “I’m used to practicing with proper blades, I never practiced with blunt or wooden ones. I didn’t really see the point.” I snicker at my inadvertent joke, “ha! Point, get it.”

River snorts clearly having the same level of humor that I do while the others just shake their heads and look amused.

“I like that,” River grins.

Reed shakes his head but has a smile playing around his lips as he gains my attention and tries to get me back on track.

“If at any point, you need me to stop, for whatever reason, just yell stop and I will,” Reed tells me, all amusement dropping from his expression.

I nod, “I expect I won’t get too far into this exercise before I’m needing to stop.”

“I’ll take it slowly and then pick up speed and complexity the longer that we practice until we reach a point where you need to stop,” Reed replies.

“Got it,” I grin. “Let’s do this.”

My smile drops as I focus on the fight. Reed is substantially bigger than me and in a sword fight that means that he has certain advantages over me, although because I’m smaller it should technically mean that I am faster than he is and can’t dart around him a lot easier. That usually applies to humans though and Reed is a strong and powerful supernatural. I have no chance of winning this but then again, that is not the point of this exercise. I’m just really competitive. This isn’t the time for that though.

Reed wasn’t joking about starting slowly. He begins by using the most basic of things that we are first taught. I understand what he’s doing but this is going to take forever if he’s going to start with the very basics.

“How about you come at me, like we are properly sparing and throw more complicated stuff in there as we go?” I suggest as I block another one of his swings.

He stops and frowns, “Are you sure?”

I nod, “Absolutely.”

Reed must see something in my expression because he nods, and without any real warning, charges at me. I grin; this is so much better. I see surprise light up his eyes when I manage to keep up with him, and I have to admit that I’m surprised too, it looks like I’m not as rusty as I thought I was.

Which means Van was right and there is no way that he is likely to let me live that down.

Unfortunately, I let my confidence make me sloppy and Reed manages to get through my guard and nick my arm, drawing that smallest amount of blood. He stops immediately and looks at me with concern.

“Damn it,” I growl, “I let myself get too confident. Again.”

I don’t know what expression is on my face, but Reed doesn’t even bother to argue as he simply lifts his sword and waits for me to attack this time. As we begin to fight again, I make sure that I don’t allow myself to get overconfident. I want this to be a real test of what I am capable of and where I need to make improvements to get better. This time I allow myself to become completely focused on the fight, all other distractions disappear, and I am simply in the moment.

This doesn’t mean that I am completely ignorant to what is happening around me, if one of the guys tried to attack me, I would know, it just means that I am not allowing myself to get distracted by things that don’t matter.

We have been fighting for a while, and my muscles are burning but it’s a good kind of burn, it’s been a long fucking time since I had this good of a workout. Reed hits my sword at just the right angle and with enough force that it flies out of my hand, and I move out of the way before the blade makes contact.

“Watch this,” I hear Van say, “Neith!”

Instinctively, and I don’t know how, but I know that he has just thrown me another weapon, Reed must see it too because he swipes at my leg and doesn’t stop fighting. I flip backward to avoid it, getting quite a lot of air and splitting my legs mid flip so I land one foot at a time, catching the staff with a blade on the end easily as I fall back down into a fighting stance. Reed looks shocked but I don’t give him a chance to regain his composure as I take advantage of his momentary hesitation and use it to disarm him of his sword, spiraling my blade around his and tearing it free of his hand.

“Van,” I call out, as I launch the staff toward the opposite wall. This is a game that we used to play, I had completely forgotten about it.

“Reed,” Raiden says, as he throws a sword to Reed.

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