I need to keep on running, there's a big kid running after me, screaming at me what he will do to me when he catches me. I can't even remember when I returned to the city, I was listening to a story Goba was telling me right?
Is Goba even real? Maybe he was just a dream, something that came from this headache I have right now. But I'll think about that later, I need to run first.
When I turn another corner I see a graygreen flash passing by me, I look back just quick enough to see the bigger boy being cut in half by a scythe that the cloaked figure wields. He turns around and looks at me, what I see scares me even more than a guard would've.
I see me, and a monster. He looks just as me, just a little taller, and he has a red third eye on his forehead. Or so I thought, but it's just a glowing outline of an eye. But still, it looks scary. He gives me a grin, this doesn't make him any less scary, so I keep running. It feels as if I'm going even faster now.
He stays behind me even though I know he can catch up to me at any moment he wants, so I need to face him if I want to do anything. I rerun in my head what I've learnt this day and at that moment I notice I've been running with a scythe in my hand all this time... I think?
So I turn around, and the other me also stops and looks at me, he doesn't speak and neither do I. Words aren't needed when you're facing each other with weapons drawn. And even if they were I wouldn't know what to say.
I need to move first, take him down before he has the chance to attack. So I rush at him.
The staff of my scythe pointing towards him, he only lowers his stance a bit. When I get close he moves his staff towards me and I deflect it, but before I could attack him with my blade I see his blade moving towards me. He used the force of my deflection to power his strike, and the only thing I can try now is mimic him. So I move the staff as fast as I can towards his blade but it missed.
His blade cut into the staff but it didn't cut all the way through, and the only thing I thought about was pushing down on the staff. The other me didn't expect this and was pulled out of balance and as he stumbled forward towards me I reflexively punched him in the face.
I pull my scythe up as he's stumbling backwards, the point that he cut into broke off and I let my blade fall down as the broken tip moves up and misses his chin as it's shorter than I expected. But I let the blade move on and goes up again, and when it goes up it cuts right into his belly coming out of the back.
Seeing this I stumble backwards, I look back at him, at me. His cloak opened and I also see a vertical eye in the centre of his chest, but inside the eye is a golden part. But the scythe in his belly distracted me more, I felt an urge come up and I vomit. There's something about cutting yourself down, if he didn't underestimate me as he did I'd have died before I had a chance to do anything.
"This is only the beginning, steel your heart to move on."
I hear him whisper before he falls down, after that there's a flash of light and I find myself laying on a stray bed in a little shed, there's a little light coming in, so it's dusk or dawn. If I remember the directions correctly it is dawn. Only now the smell of sweat and vomit hit me, I quickly want to stand up but I fall back right away due to the worst headache I've ever had.
"Rest, you've learned new things and went through a retaliation of the world. Only stand up when you feel you can do it."
This definitely is Goba's voice, but the sentences are perfect. But I think it isn't Goba that changed, it's me. The words that he said before are still there, but the weird sounds in between suddenly make sense. I think that Goba sounding fluent and my massive headache is connected. But as its just a headache I can stand up, and so I stand up, although I need to do it slowly.
Goba helps me by giving me a shoulder to lean on.
"Goba, I want to clean myself."
I really don't want to talk about what happened right now. So I just want to wash the sweat and vomit of my body and cool down, think about what I learned before I talk about it.
Goba just nods and we walk outside, he helps me get over the fence and we move to a creek that's on the border of the plains that the city is on, and the forest that's next to it. I've moved here a few times when I really couldn't find any water, but monsters do live in this forest so I really didn't want to come here too often. But with Goba here there's nothing to worry about, and there are no dangerous fish in this water.
So I just laid down in the water, floating in the water with my head on the side of the creek. The water flows past my body, taking all the filth with it.
And as the flowing water is cleaning my body slowly I think about what happened, about what this world is, about what monsters are and what humans are.
Now I understand why most monsters attack humans even when they don't gain anything from doing so.
Also the dream that followed right after, it was so weird, why would another self help me before wanting to attack me? And how could I have won? It was like it just wanted to test me, test me if I could fend for myself, if I even had a chance to becoming strong.
"Goba, what happened?"
My question comes out even weaker as I expected it to do, but that doesn't matter now. I hear Goba taking in a big breath behind me and making a big sigh. He breaths in again and starts talking.
"The story I told you was a story that we tell the kids, they first need a day of training, and then they here the story, this solidifies their training. The process of solidifying the training is harder depending on how much potential one has, but also their race. Even the weakest of rabbits have their training solidified, but their process is less hard, as they don't learn as much. But you, you have your years of survival training on the streets of a hostile city, the scythe training and your training to do multi visualisation training. This all gives you one of the hardest test one ever had before. But great tests come with great benefits, you will notice when we start training later. And tell me about the test?"
He was quick enough with his question to prevent me from disagreeing with training later, I can barely even stand on myself. But now that I've soaked in the water and cooled down a bit I feel like I can handle myself again. And about my test... How can I put it in words properly?
"I fought myself when I'm older, but that me was arrogant and underestimate me."
That's what I'll leave it at for now, maybe I can find a better way to describe it during the afternoon training, but I don't really care at the moment.
"Fighting oneself is known as the hardest tests there is. One needs to be able to cut down oneself, be able to win against one who is just as strong and just as experienced as oneself. Fighting someone who's stronger than yourself in every way is close to impossible, how did you win?"
Ugh, Goba doesn't seem to get that I don't want to talk about it.
"He was arrogant, underestimated me. He even said something to me in his dying breath, something in the lines of: 'Steel your heart cause it'll only get worse.' but I don't care too much. How could a stupid illusion of myself know the future."
After flailing my arms around for a moment, shaking out all the annoying, complicated things, I stand up. Splashing around a bit, but Goba doesn't even react at any of the droplets hitting him, he looks like he's drowning in thoughts. But as I don't feel like waiting for him, and do feel like swinging the scythe, I just walk past him.
"Come Goba, you said you'd teach me, teach me to be better, teach me so I can be stronger than I was yesterday."
Goba just follows me without saying anything. Arriving at the fence I feel like I can jump over it, and so I do. And it isn't that it was easy, but it certainly went way better than I'd have believed doing yesterday.
I grabbed the scythe turned around and looked at Goba.
"Can we spar today, after the test I feel like sparing works even better than the training against an imaginary opponent."
I know I would never stand a chance against Goba, and I know that I could never land a proper hit om him, and I know I'll be way more hurt than he will after this fight. But still, he threw me in this without a word of warning, and even though I will still see him as my brother, I really feel like getting a hit in.