The Shadow Priestess: Part 3: War

Chapter 2

   Fighting Niklaus was not as fun as I had imagined it would be, even less so with the burden of four sixty-pound weights. Before I could land a single hit, he would block it and knock me off-balance. This continued for several hours straight, for three days in a row until, on Thursday morning, he shook his head at me.

   "You are not ready for full combat yet," he told me.

   I kept quiet.

   He taught me different kinds of fightings stances - similar to those taught at the Academy, but more advanced and much more effective - punches, kicks, how to hold my sword, backflips, somersaults, how to get out of certain grips if an opponent trapped me and how to avoid attacking altogether, which would be used to tire out a dim-witted opponent ... like Aurora.

   He focused on teaching me these things for more weeks. The rain became worse as time wore on, but my combat skills improved with every day that passed.

   After three weeks of this training, we resumed with normal combat. Now that I had his fundamental knowledge of effective little tricks that one can use, dodging his hits became much easier, although I knew that he was still holding back.

   During all this time, I contemplated on how I was going to proceed once Niklaus felt that I was ready to take on Mordax. How was I going to get a hold of him, now that I could not rely on the Shadows? What was he up to? Was he still experimenting? Was it easy for him to Summon Trigger? If it was, then I did not have much of a chance. One day, after training, I decided to ask Niklaus upfront about the thing that was bothering me.

   "Did you get a chance to look at Mordax's pet wolf?" I asked him. We were sitting on the window-sill underneath an open window, looking out over the forest and the lake beyond.

   "He was my opponent before your father saw you," he said.

   "What's up with his hide?" I asked, "How would one get past that?"

   "Simple," he replied. I turned to stare at him. He smirked. "My lady, I would think that you would be able to figure something like this out by now. If a person experiments with living things, and the person passes away, all the creations he created using his blood will die, too."

   "Who's to say Trigger has Mordax's blood?" I retorted.

   "Any living creation needs its creator's blood, otherwise it will be near impossible for them to become animate," he replied, "However, if a case should arise ... should I rather say, should it come to the conclusion that Mordax did not inject Trigger with his own blood, then there must be some other weakness."

   "What do you think it might be?" I asked.

   "His insides, of course," he replied, "Any rookie experimenter makes that mistake. They create a perfect hide, but get into the animal's intestines, and it cannot survive. From what I saw, Mordax does not dedicate much time to experimenting: it is evident in the shape of his creations, not to your eyes, but to a practiced one such as mine ... I think it is almost a guarantee that the way past Trigger, is into his mouth."

   "If you were faced with fighting Mordax right now, how would you deal with that?" I asked, curious as to how Niklaus would act in a serious battle.

   "I hope you do not ask these things because you are planning on leaving shortly," he tells me, looking at me strangely.

   I shake my head, "Until you think I'm ready to take him on, I won't. I'm just trying to figure out how I would get past that mutt once I get the chance."

   "Hmm ... Well, the first thing I would do is to make replicas of myself, or after-images. It is such an amateur move, the little brat would think that there would be some trick behind it. I would confuse the mutt by running in every direction around it: it might be intelligent, but every member of the dog family has a basic instinct: chase after the nearest object. This would distract it for a few seconds while I sever Mordax's head from his body and ... battle won."

   I gaped. The simplicity of his battle tactics was slightly scary.

   "However, what I suggest you do once you are in a similar situation, is to target Trigger first. Find some way to get a lethal weapon, either containing poison, or that would explode and release a wave of spikes, into Trigger's mouth, and to do so swiftly. Mordax is not as dim-witted as I often make him out to be. If he realises what you are doing, then you will lose that battle."

   "And once Trigger is taken care of?"

   "Once Trigger is out of the way, then there is nothing for it but to fight Mordax as I am teaching you now," he replied, "The fighting style your are growing into now is different from that which I taught him. It focuses more on defense than attack which is, essentially, the most important thing. After all, you will not be able to kill him if you cannot do0.dge or block any of his attacks."

   "How far do you think I am from being ready?" I asked.

   He gazed at me once again, "Not as far as you might think."

*

   More days passed in which Niklaus trained me. I was surprised at how little I saw any of the other warriors, but Claude informed me that most of them were either training in the rooms provided, or at the lake.

   Niklaus's training became more demanding by the day. I realised what he had meant by saying that  the fighting style I was learning now was different: it did indeed focus more on defense.

   Three weeks after our conversation about Trigger, I managed to dodge an attack from him completely, which he was so surprised by that he allowed me the rest of the day off.

   I had figured out what my next move would be, but I delayed it because I was afraid of it. I waited until the rain was accompanied by hail, and gradually joined by snow.

   Finally, after a full three months of training with Niklaus, I decided that it was time. After the day's training, I packed a large bag of essentials, grabbed a quill and wrote a letter:

"Dear Niklaus,

I have decided what I need to do. I am going to track down the remaining Shadows, and urge them to join me in my quest against Mordax. I believe that I am ready to take him on, and I am sure you know it too, even though you would not admit it. Even if I am wrong, I have the angels to train me in anything else I might need to know.

This will definitely not be the last time you hear of me, but I need to do this.  I hope you'll understand.

Kind regards and many thanks,

Victoria."