The Seven Archangels

13 - The Sixth Sense - Percy

We decided to go outside even though we had our own training room inside the tent. You can't really beat the refreshing feeling of training outside. I wore the same cloak I had seen on the dream. I figured it would be better if I trained with my cloak if I was to fight with it also. I had no armor on since it would only slow me down and knowing Aurelius, he would not hold back on me. He was also lightning fast, quite literally.

I had also taken my bluish sword which had writing near the base of the blade. It said Archángelos Rafaíl, Archangel Raphael in Greek. On the other side, it said O Okeanós eínai mésa sas, The ocean is within you, also in Greek.

Aurelius had his white cloak on and his light sword drawn. He hovered a foot above the ground, his feet bent backwards slightly. All in all, he looked pretty dangerous and epic. "That sword was a gift from Gabriel," said Aurelius. "You named it Fotiá, fire, to thank her."

This sword was a gift from Gabriel? For a moment, I wanted to just put it away, maybe frame it, and use something else. Aurelius must've seen my face because he said, "Don't worry, you cannot break it. It's made out of a mixture of celestial bronze and stygian iron, reinforced with iridium. You literally cannot break it or even scratch it even if you tried. I should know, I helped Gabriel make it. She provided the heat to liquefy it and I used light to make the mold. The metal is called thermoitium, named after the Greek word thermótita for heat. It is the strongest metal ever created and requires too high temperatures for even the gods. It cannot be reshaped and once it has cooled down it cannot be reheated to liquid form again. We used that to create all of our weapons. No second batch was ever created."

"Does anybody even know that this exists anymore?" I asked. Aurelius shrugged and said, "No idea. Gabriel and I came up with the idea and Jophiel supplied us the iridium so we didn't even get the idea from somewhere. Hephaestus might have heard a legend of this metal but otherwise, no."

"Beware!" shouted Aurelius. I raised my sword just in time to meet his blow. Aurelius became a blur, dancing his dangerous dance around me. Wherever his feet came close to ground, a small shock wave of light would emit. He moved gracefully and there was no imperfection in his stances. As soon as I saw a possible opening, he would move slightly and the opening was gone. His movements were also completely unpredictable.

I was struggling to defend myself against him and I still knew he wasn't even trying. If this was a real fight I would've lost a long time ago. Every time his sword came close to my skin he would just stop the attack and take the sword away.

Twenty minutes into the fight, I knew I had to do something. He was no doubt the best swordsman I had ever seen and I knew I couldn't fare against him in skill. I brought my sword up in front of my face to block a strike aimed to slice me in half. As I pushed the blade away, I saw the word O Okeanós eínai mésa sas carved into my sword. I got an idea.

I remembered what Aurelius had said about the human sensed being too slow, disturbing our true potential. And Aurelius was just too fast for my normal senses. I tried reaching for the moisture in the air. I narrowed my eyes in concentration and extended my senses. Suddenly, I could feel everything around me. I closed my eyes but I still could see, in a way.

I didn't see colors but I could sense every detail, every nook and cranny, within about 30 feet. Aurelius had retreated a few steps back, his head tilted to the side and he was smiling widely. He knew my eyes were closed but I could still see. He used his left hand to gesture for me to attack. Obediently, I did just that.

I advanced at him. As I was a couple of feet away from him, I saw him bring his sword down towards my neck. The move was quite straight forward but I could sense his muscles tensing differently than they would've if slicing my neck was his only intention.

Suddenly he spun around really fast. If I didn't have my enhanced vision he would've easily cut me in half along my mid-section and I wouldn't have even registered anything. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion, I saw the direction of his movements and knew exactly where his sword would hit.

I twirled my sword around in my hand so that the flat of the blade was pressed against the back of my arm. I spun to meet his strike, pressing my right foot behind me so I wouldn't fall back from the force of the strike. Aurelius' blade hit my sword with a loud bang and bounced back. I still stumbled back a little but not enough to break my balance.

Before he had enough time to recover and strike again, I sliced at his waist using the water molecules to accelerate my sword. I was still holding the sword in reverse grip. My sword made contact with him and he burst into light the moment I would've drawn blood. I scanned the area around me but found nothing, so I opened my eyes. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see through the bright sunlight. I still couldn't see Aurelius.

After a couple of seconds, a thick beam of light fell from the sky and hit the ground in front of me. Aurelius solidified from the beam, grinning like a madman. "That was one hell of a trick you did there! That seeing-with-water was definitely a new one. You couldn't do that before, at least I never saw you do it," Aurelius said.

"What exactly did I do?" I asked. I had a hunch of what it was I did but I wanted to be sure. "You could think of it as your sixth sense. The water is inside you, it is a part of you and therefore you can call to it. I would be cut in half right now if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't be killed. If I was injured I would just turn my body into light and reassemble my body within seconds. You could do the same but you required a source of water. I saw you do that quite a many times when you played with Gabriel. You would turn into water in front of Gabriel and create dozens of water copies of yourself. It was quite amusing watching her trying to figure out which one of them was actually you," Aurelius said. When he told about Gabriel and me playing I blushed furiously.

Aurelius laughed. "Your reactions to us teasing you and Gabriel hasn't changed either," he said. I opened my mouth to respond, about to say something about Sierra and Aurelius staring at each other lovingly when the other one didn't see, but I was interrupted by a loud thunder shaking the skies.

Aurelius looked up, concern written on his face. "Zeus has called a meeting. I think we should use this time when they're busy arguing with each other to travel farther away," he said. I nodded and took our tent with us. It was surprisingly easy to shrink since it used the same mechanism as the hunters' tents.

"Where to now?" I asked. Aurelius tilted hishead and said, "Have you ever been to Scotland?" I shook my head in response."Hopefully you have packed your umbrella," said Aurelius before touching myshoulder and dissolving us into light. We shot up into the sky.