White Washed

Chapter Twenty-Six | Stronger

"Faster!"

A swirling ball of blue flames went sailing by me, barely missing my head, a trail of heat left behind it. 

"You're going to have to do better than that!"

Another ball of fire flew at me, and I ducked. And then another, aiming towards my knees. I jumped to the left. I was huffing and puffing and barely dodged the fire.

"Come on, Amelie! Do you want to get burned?"

Cass threw another ball of fire and a second one right after it. I dodge the first one and the ball seemed to slow down as it went by my head, catching the end of a stray piece of my hair and burning it off. I turned and tried to duck and go the left but the ball of fire hit me square in the back.

I cried out as I fell. It had knocked the wind out of me.

"That's enough." Someone said, saving me from Cass' torment for a minute. I looked up, Alix had come down into the training room. Who knows how long he'd been standing there watching. I'm sure I looked pretty pathetic.

I rolled over and twisted to examine my back. The enchanted suit that I was wearing was fire proof and would stop me from being burned. Although, it sure felt like I'd been burned.

Cass walked over to the stand and grabbed a bottle of water. I shot him a look and he laughed. "You've got to learn to move quicker."

"I'm trying." I snapped out. This was the fifth time I'd been burned.

Alix came over to me and picked up a lock of my hair between his fingers, twirling it around. "You came pretty close to being a baldy there." He smirked. I pulled away from him, my hair slipping out of his fingers.

"You need to stop thinking about it." Cass said, coming back over to take his place on the small square he'd been standing on. "You need to stop trying to figure out what to do and just trust your instincts."

He made it sound a lot easier than it actually was. When a flaming ball the size of a beach ball was coming at you, it's pretty hard to stop yourself from freezing up. We'd been at it for an hour and I had significantly reduced my reaction speed but I was not convinced that I could ever train myself to react first and think second. It just seemed natural that I analyzed the way the flaming ball was coming at me and then decided how to move. 

"We'll take a break for a minute." Cass said. "You can train with Alix for a bit."

I looked up at Alix, surprised. He was going to be throwing balls of fire at me?

He smiled wickedly and pulled out some white tape, handing it to me. "Wrap your hands."

I looked down at it. Wrap my hands? He saw my hesitation and sighed, coming over and showing me how. After he was done with my hands, he wrapped his own. I just watched him, confused.

Cass hit a button on the wall and the pentagon of white lines on the floor rumbled and rose out of the floor as I stared around Alix and I in amazement. The white lines turned into a white padded fencing that encircled us. It came up to the middle of my back.

"What are we doing?" I asked, looking from Alix to the fence and back.

I didn't realize what kind of training we were doing until he crouched slightly and raised his hands. I backed up until I felt the fence hit my back. "Oh no." I said, raising my hands, palm out, in a surrender.

He grinned wickedly and advanced towards me. He couldn't possibly be going to hit a girl!

He did. He walked right up to me and smirked down at me before he punched me in the stomach. It didn't really hurt. I gasped in shock and stared at him.