Goba nods and grabs a stick, a rather thick one. It can't brake after a hit of course. And he stands ready, stance lowered and looking at me, waiting for me to start.
This is annoying, it starts just as that fight. If Goba was weilding a scythe too I feel like the fight would have gone exactly the same, but I wouldn't win.
I dash forward, staff pointing in the same direction while I keep it on my right side. Just before my staff is in striking range of his stick he dodges to my left and strikes a horizontal slash from my left to my right. I know I can't get the bud of my staff hitting his stick so I turn the blade up and the bud in the ground and dodge to the right.
The stick hits the staff of the scythe that's standing upright on the ground. The hit still stings my hand from the hit, even now that the biggest part of the hit went into the ground.
As Goba hit the staff with the stick that he wields in his right hand his left side is left open, so I move forward to plant a palm on his chest. Before it hits his free left hand deflects my hand and it hits air as Goba moves back a few steps to open up some distance.
"Your fighting is good, your instincts are good, but your strength is still weak and your speed is still slow. If you had throwing weapons you could have used that moment to injure the opponent, but a palmstrike with great technique would be good too. But if it fails and you lose your balance you'd leave yourself in a dangerous position."
Goba speaking so much still leaves me a bit uncomfortable, my mind tells me that nothing could have changed his speech so much in such a short time. But it isn't him that changed, it is me, and the scary part is that my mind can't realise that changes happened to it. Honestly, I prefer learning things myself, even if it takes longer.
I nod at Goba and rush at him again, this time with the bladed side of the scythe on the front, if he swings his stick now I can deflect it more easily.
But this time Goba rushes at me too just as I started running, he goes just as fast as I am going. He swings his stick at me and I move my scythe as fast as I can to catch it, and I do catch it before it hits me, but the flexible stick bends beyond me and hits my arm. With my arm unexpectedly hit I forget to use the momentum to swing the scythe around. This time I fall back.
"Hey Goba, in the dream, the older me wore a cloak, a grayish green one. Didn't you say your cloak used to be green?"
He can't help looking at his cloak with a painful expression, then he looks at his masters mansion, probably because he's why Goba can't even clean the cloak.
"Did the older you say something about me or the cloak?"
I never heard him ask while sounding so small, his scowl looks sad and slightly... Afraid? He doesn't think that actually is a future version of myself right?
"He didn't say anything other than the words I told you. Oh right, he also had lines on his body that were almost the same as the flow through the body you showed me yesterday. Even though I changed it slightly."
The last sentence is also just a whisper, after the hit on my arm most of my annoyance is gone away, now it just hurts and I want to ask Goba about those things. But he didn't seem like he felt like talking too much this time, he looks up at the sky to guess the time.
"Let's continue sparring first, tonight we'll talk, and I'll tell you what I think about your test. But now, let's practice!"
This time he starts with the rush and comes at me, I don't have time to think too much as we're fighting, and so the events of the night before leave my mind a bit. At the end I truly do feel better... Even though my body is hurt.
~~~~~~~~~
When I finally sit in the shed I start thinking about the flow that I should make. The me from the test had a flow going, it even glowed on his skin. But after seeing that it had the same flow as that I had envisioned I want to change it.
As I've seen that the 2 eyes do something, I don't want to change it. The red evil eye and the golden vertical eye. So the thing I must do is make the more complicated, and I have an idea already.
I let a spot of light touch my hand, and I imagine it going through my body, through my arm, my leg, up to my chest, and instead of just first half of the eye I make it the right side of something I always see in the centre of the city, something people always pray towards. An altar. It's just a crude picture of an altar, but it's the thought that matters.
So with the right side of the altar done and the entire vertical eye done I let it flow up again, and this wil be a bit of a tricky part. What first was a circle with a single eye in the centre now becomes an eye with many other eyes inside of it. It is a tricky thing to do, and I failed numerous times. But after I succeeded once it became easier.
And even though I can do it now it still feels empty, unfinished. After some thinking I notice the double circle in my heart, that must be it. I changed all the shapes besides the heart.
But what does my heart represent? It is what drives my body, and that also does make sense with the other 2 places. My head for my mind, my centre for my soul and my heart for my body.
And I think that my heart should be a flame, cause when I do anything that makes it beat faster I get warmer. So I should make the flow in the form of flames.
With this extra shape sorted out I start practicing again, and what amazes me is that it's way easier like this, it's like it's specially made for me. Maybe it is because it is partially made by me, but who knows. After trying for around an hour I can do it about every try, and so I start thinking about the spar.
The spar went pretty okay, at the beginning I kept on making unnecessary movements, and I probably still did at the end. But it was less at the end. What I've learned about scythe wielding so far is that the easiest way to wield it is by using the force of my opponent to make the scythe go faster. I only need to give the initial push and steer it to keep control.
I really could use a shield on the back of the scythe though, hitting a stick in mid-air with another heavier stick is pretty hard. And maybe a spear point at the end, cause the only hit I got on Goba was with the bud of the staff, I ran at him and practically threw the staff at him just before we'd start our normal routine of deflecting attacks. But if I'd missed I'd have been almost defenceless.
Ugh damn, I forgot to continue letting the flow flow. It's still hard, let's try again.
Like this it continues until the last spot of light disappeared from the shed. But Goba hasn't returned yet, so maybe I should just think of other ways to wield the scythe.