Immortali: The Rising

Chapter 9-Getting Even

Hey everyone! Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Here's my gift to you!

"You need something else," Raina told her.

It had been a few days since the sparring incident, and Pyra had become a student to Raina.

Luckily, the Phoenix hadn't lied; she did know how to fight. Not very well, but she could throw a punch and use her whip. But...

She needs a weapon she can use at close quarters.

Raina knew that in a fight, a whip wouldn't exactly help if you were fighting someone up close. She needed something like a knife, a dagger, a sword, something.

They'd practiced with the punching bag for a day, but all that showed was how much Pyra enjoyed hitting things.

For the rest of their time, they'd concentrated on going through all of the sharp looking weapons in the room.

They'd tried knives. That had ended disastrously with Pyra accidentally stabbing herself in her own eye.

Next, they'd moved onto swords. The first one they'd tried—a broadsword—Pyra hadn't even been able to lift off the ground. Then, when she could finally do that, she kept trying to hold it with only one hand, like a character in a cartoon or a movie. After explaining that that wasn't really how people used broadswords, they'd moved on to rapiers. This, also, was useless. Pyra couldn't stop calling it the 'stupid, needle sword', and, as a result, was so distracted, she impaled herself.

Currently, they were trying to use a staff (or, as Pyra called it, 'the glorified stick').

Pyra looked up at her. "Are you sure that I can't just use the whip? I think I'm very comfortable with the whip."

Raina shook her head. "Nuh-uh. If someone was really close, you wouldn't be able to swing it properly. You need something you can use at close quarters."

"Or... I can just not let anyone get that close to me," the Phoenix said with a smile.

Raina rolled her eyes. "Right, because that's reasonable."

"It is; you see these skills? No one's going to come within a one-metre radius of me."

At this, Raina locked eyes with Pyra. The Phoenix was confident, but she was always confident. However, she did seem to genuinely believe what she said...

"Ok, tell you what, if you can beat me in a fight with your whip, I'll let you use it." She didn't miss Pyra's grin as she said it.

"Sure, sounds simple enough."

In a flash, the fire whip appeared in the Phoenix's hands.

Raina reached behind her back and pulled her katana swords out of their sheaths. Pyra had never seen her fight before, and boy-oh-boy was she in for a surprise.

Immediately, Raina felt a rush. The swords were like a warm, familiar memory in her hands. She embraced them, enjoying the sense of comfort they brought.

"Ready?" she asked Pyra.

In response, Pyra threw her whip through the air. Raina watched everything as if in slow motion. She saw the whip attempt to wrap around one of her swords. Moving out of the way, she ducked and instead launched herself at Pyra.

The phoenix missed her first blow.

Well, at least she's intuitive.

That was one thing about Pyra: she'd been in enough fights to know when a blow was coming.