"Are you done packing?" she asked to which I answered with a resounding 'Yes'. We had the smoked meat and fishes packed then tied into a leather bag on Gilgamesh's scales ready to go. It was a present we would offer to her family before the battle plans commenced.
Like I said earlier, the training we had undergone was intense giving us more power and arsenals to add to our collections. I still knew little about the woman but even with her mysterious nature she still amazed me.
Unlike the women I had come across, she had raw unadulterated strength. She might even be a goddess and I would not argue with that fact. During our training episodes, she had destroyed mountains with punches, lifted heavy trees like they were nothing and ran faster than the eye could see making her a deadly foe to contend with. Amongst these basic powers, she had the ability to create invisible shields which could protect her or anyone around from explosions or attacks, fly into the air with less difficulty, control fire and create storms. She was a powerful warrior but a great teacher.
"The problem Xerxes is that your power output is great but your focus is weak," she had observed one time during our training session. "You're trying to hit your enemy with the sun's power without caring about what you're hitting."
"I don't get it," I moped. "The reason we have godly powers is to show it off and overwhelm our enemies with it."
She shook her head with crossed arms, "Look around Xerxes, what do you see?"
Following her gestures, I answered without thinking, "We are in a crater I had created with my fist, all the trees are down and some still burn from my fire blasts earlier."
"But did you hit anything in particular or you just lashed out at the environment for no good reason," she went on to which I hung my head in shame.
"I lashed out," I mumbled.
"Exactly!" she exclaimed. "Imagine this to be a town, you've killed the same people you came to protect without landing a single punch on your enemy."
I dropped onto the barren land to rest a bit, I was exhausted.
"Your control is weak. You won't go anywhere if you keep blasting away your forms to destroy and not to subdue," she levitated into the air. "Watch me hit that tree."
Moving from side to side, she blitzed the tree with precision, giving it exact punches destroying the targets she had set for me which I had missed. I watched the burning branches fall to the ground as she descended from the air gracefully gliding until her feet touched the sand.
"Focus on your targets Xerxes or else you won't be an asset to us in the field, but a liability," her words pierced through my heart like a knife stabbing a stake. Reminiscing over what I had learnt from my father and Petra, bigger and spread out attacks meant more effective attacks, however, that was not so in her case as smaller and pierced attacks meant hitting your targets.
When we were done packing and feeding Gilgamesh, we hopped aboard the green beast as he took to the blue skies heading for her family.
***
The sea below glistened from the rays of the sun with birds scampering out of our way to avoid colliding with the dragon. I sat behind her with my hands on her waist holding on for dear life — I was still not used to the dragon flight thingy. I used this opportunity to look at her closely, her dark hair which grew to shoulder length flowed in the wind. Her thick blue veined hands gripping the reins, she looked at the boats below with bright black eyes.
"What's this?" I pointed to the iron bands on her right arm.
"An identification band our clan members use," she nervously replied.
"Was that where you learnt to fight?"
She did not reply immediately making me understand that the subject might be too hard for her, "Yes. My mother taught me everything I know about battle."
"That's nice," I responded dryly.
"What about you? Who taught you that horrible fighting style?" she joked as we laughed in unison.
"A Xaj taught me that horrible fighting style," I chuckled. "The rest I learnt on my own by trying to avoid getting hit."
Gilgamesh soared into the sky breaking apart a flock of birds to which they responded by quacking out loudly in protest. The show put before us was hilarious and we could not stop laughing at it.
"Easy boy," she chuckled rubbing his belly amidst growls of satisfaction.
"I'm pretty sure everyone would be excited to see you," I remarked but she laughed scornfully.
"To be honest Xerxes, I ran away from home," she said looking back to see my reaction.
"But I thought you said..."
"Forget what I said," she broke in. "I didn't want to be a part of the war so I left with Gilgamesh to have peace."
"But you know peace cannot be attained without war."
She turned to look at the skies in front of her with her face long in thoughts, "My mother always said that to me. But I always argued with her on that point."
Shifting my weight from the left butt to the right, I stretched my arms above my head in a tired way.
"I tried to believe that war was not the only solution, but boy was I wrong when I left my little hometown and ventured into the world. Filled with vile men and evil creatures it disgusted me to see that no one was good. Even the good were people who did evil things in secret to appear good in public," she spoke out wrinkling her nose in disgust. "Of course I tried to help the poor with my powers but they did not want my help, no, that's wrong, they didn't need my help. I took permission from my mother to fly to a lone island to train promising that I would be with her in time for battle. But when I came to that island, the serenity and peace it gave off grew on me and I stayed there."
Her tales had me emotional for a minute until the sky darkened rumbling with thunder and lightening.
"But why are you going back if you don't want to fight," I asked.
"It's because of you Xerxes," she said looking back at me again. "You gave me hope that there was good in the world. You didn't do things that humans or greedy creatures would do, you were different."
I felt pride swelling up inside of me making me smile at the compliment.
"SOMETHING IS COMING," Callipso bawled inside of me as a lightning bolt crackled towards us.
"Look out!" I let out before tossing her off Gilgamesh creating a bolt of lightning as a defensive counter. The green beast growled, swerving to the right with its aim on an island full of people. Six creatures sped towards the mountains where Kenzie must have dropped as I tried to fly towards her. The dragon spiraled in the air dodging another lightning bolt as I blew a barrage of flames towards the genesis of the attack.
More demons I thought, preparing myself for the worst as the beast crashed onto the earth below. Waiting for the smoke to clear out, I saw a huge man with a trident levitating in the skies above as a vampire sped towards me with murderous intents. Dodging its attacks effortlessly I kicked it to the side with a powerful hit simultaneously swerving away just in time to avoid getting stabbed by a spear. The owner of the spear stood about a mile from me with his arm still outstretched from his body.
I sized up my opponents — the vampire I had kicked, the warrior who had tossed his spear and the demon floating in the skies and I knew that the latter was the biggest threat of all.
He pointed at me with his trident, "Shall we?" before releasing bolts of lightning obliterating stalls and craters in his path.