"You're going to trip. Center your sense of gravity...never lose it. Let's get that brain of yours overclocked~!"
Swish!
From a couple of meters away, a neon purple sword suddenly elongated in a tightened arc. Slicing through the crooked trees, finger-shaped grass billowed up in the air as Teret stumbled in his ascent.
One step was made, and it was as if the world was folded over!
Walker reappeared a couple of inches away from Teret, his Sheathed Effigy cleanly slicing upwards. The ground underneath was marred by a long slashing expanse, the reddish skeleton only barely evading the blow.
Only because Walker let him. If this was a real fight, Teret would've been extinguished with nary a chance to even consider his own death. Instead, each strike was deceptively made, seeming sloppy yet tightening up when Walker's adorable little apprentice took the bait.
Working downwards, each advance prompted Teret to try new ways to avoid the extending blade made out of The Stained Ginnead's energy. Attaching the long qi-strings to trees, he would take advantage of his light weight to fling himself to and fro.
Sometimes he would wrap the qi-strings around the branches, consuming even more energy to affix his frame onto the tree. Hiding in the boughs, it only made Walker more aggressive.
It wasn't long before the poor skeleton was forced into head-on combat.
Shing...!
"You need to be a lot more attentive than that! Why run if you don't have a plan...? You can't always escape~."
An arc of darkened violet glare streamed past Teret as Walker finished speaking. Their eyes met, only separated by a few inches.
"Case. And. Point."
Teret careened his head backward as he used the qi-strings that were waving from his frame to pull himself up. The strings coiled and shot upwards, allowing Teret to narrowly dodge a roundhouse slash!
A fuscia pink shade outlined him in thin wisps as he pivoted freely, almost able to visibly dash in the air. It went as fast as it came, the wisps lingering in the atmosphere.
When Teret landed on the floor, he hucked the qi-strings attached to the dagger! Like an arrow and bow, it wound back before pushing forwards at an impressive speed.
"This again, huh?"
Walker fluidly reversed his grip, the Sheathed Effigy's blade standing directly in the path of the nicked dagger's striking edge.
Teret felt triumphant.
Why? Because his master revealed a look of consideration. Sending it out via his qi, it was random that the skeleton chose to grab the string with his hands when it had a more accessible alternative...
That was...until the blade's trajectory changed! Rotating along with Teret's heel, the world spun as the dagger was forced to redirect its course.
"Impressive...but you're wide open."
Stars appeared and split past space as a net of sword slices waved towards Teret like a net. There was enough of a gap in between the sword slices for the skeleton to escape...should he work for it hard enough!
Mortisim billowed along with the artificial breeze, some qi-strings retracted back into his bones. Then, legs arched, he hopped rearward and rotated in the air with the help of Djinn Float, lithely spinning and turning as if he was a toy-top.
Contorting his body into the most clenched ball possible, a thin mist fell from Teret's sockets as he briefly lost control over his energy. Unable to fully handle the pin-point precision and management of his every movement, he weakly let the waves of energy collide against each other.
Walker whistled, a hand above his brows, and his eyes lit with interest. A glow settled over his eyes as he watched the energy collide, watching the pattern displayed before his piercing gaze.
"You're close to it. The rhythm. Let's see if you can make a 'flow' today..."
Teret extended a single tendril composed of all of his qi-strings, the energy's condensation enough for him to step on it for a prolonged amount of time. Three seconds were enough for him to redirect his momentum, walking as if he was a trapeze artist lacking their bar.
Plopping down on the ground, the impact on his bony feet traveled upwards through his marrow. A semblance of a headache erupted in his cranium, making the world before his sockets shake and whirl.
A distorted grin engulfed his line of view, a blazing dark purple blade twirling through the air. Wrist slanted, the wind was both blown and sliced through.
It created an almost deafening noise, and yet Teret rolled his spine as he lowered his stance. The beam blade went over his head by a trace amount as the skeleton looked at where he left his dagger.
A tree was pierced by it, the force of the velocity enough to bite through the bark. Teret already knew he couldn't defend with his pitiful macabre arts, as Walker purposely struck fast enough to shatter his bones.
It even went through the grim energy's defense it provided; this buffer was not nearly enough. The Demon of Norheim was merely playing around, yet even the Reapers in the trees felt their long cloaks flutter against their faces.
Avoiding his dagger for now, he had already learned his lesson from the times Walker had forced it away during the earlier training sessions.
(If you make all your moves obvious like that, I'll kill you. A battle is equal parts strategy, mind games, and action. To be skilled, you must know the perfect ratio to blend these tools to your situation.)
These words blared loudly in Teret's head; the casual bluntness his teacher had said it with had instead served as an urgent shout.
Teret felt his qi weaken and instead chose to funnel his mortisim alone to his feet. The Whisper Steps were partially displayed as his movements became irregular, his image seeming further than it actually was.
Without a peep of sound in Teret's hearing, he moved. Knees bent and flourishing along with his spinning ankles, each step looked like a practical dance that soldiers would display on the battlefield.
Each twist and turn was carefully coordinated, suddenly bending his frame at just the right time to avoid the blade lengthening right towards him. The edge was always in his vision, his movements considering the speed needed to dodge the strikes.
Sometimes slow, sometimes bursting with all the power in his body. This was but a fundamental to the step of whispers, one so effective that not even the wind would repulse anyone adept in its art.
It was a pity that Teret was a beginner. Yet he still succeeded.
Scuttling across the floor in a rolling crawl, the skeleton planked his body in a split second and then hopped slightly in the air. The fuscia pink outline surrounded his frame in a transparent glow once again as he redirected, now on top of his feet.
"How magical. It's almost another movement art. But you're a little too early in your training to be stacking those..."
Walker's grin widened as his pumping heart could be heard outside of his body. Then, bringing the Sheathed Effigy's spindly hilt to his side, he hunkered down his stance as his feet sunk into the ground.
The feeling of an unavoidable attack washed over Teret's senses as soon as Walker exhaled, steam emitting from his tall body. Panic gripped him in a hurry as he looked around, swiveling his neck here and there to search for something.
Anything.
Coincidentally, he was near the tree where he lodged his dagger. Leaning forward so quickly, he overextended his torso and messed up his balance...
As his bony hand flailed in the air wildly, another miracle happened. The handle was easy to pull out due to Teret's mortisim-coated digits, and the skeleton hastily corrected his posture.
Elbows bent, knees bent. His waist was locked ramrod straight, his spine loose. His left hand wasn't enough. The skeleton tossed the dagger, fixing it into the rightmost grasp.
His wrist at an oblique angle, he raised his dagger up high. The wind proceeding the supersonic speed jab blew his skeletal body back, though everything except his arms were locked into place.
Holding the dagger in a reverse grip, Teret was greeted by a playful wink from his teacher. The back of his wrist was tightly affixed to the side of his jawbone, the dagger's blade drawing a horizontal line as the tip wavered beneath the other side of his skull.
A mid-length royal purple energy blade wiggled, sparks spewing before the skeleton's sockets as the collision raged on.
Withdraw, 270-degree turn. Turning on his heel as his sandstone orange hair lashed at Teret's face (albeit purposely harmlessly), the assassin began attacking at odd angles once again.
As if the edge could bend. That was how fast Walker was maneuvering, staring straight into Teret's sockets even through the rapid spinning.
The area was awash with purple as Teret let his inhibitions go. Something synchronized at this moment, waves crossing and amplifying as sparks fired in his brain.
"This is a game of life or death. Enjoyment can only be reached when you understand that all fighting is...is the act of striving for higher. As assassins, we want to grow higher and further no matter what. Valor? A plaything. Honor? A toy. For our goals of snuffing out even the stars...we will struggle and riot at any moment. Yet even this deadly heat must carry a deafening chill. We are not weapons. We are weapons. We are both and none. Struggle. Writhe. Climb. Empty your mind of all your worries, for that is a war tackled after you survive. Do you understand this? My dear apprentice."
Salvo after salvo occurred as Walker forced Teret to run, pushing him in every direction possible. Sometimes he would open up a gap, and sometimes that gap would be a fake. The Demon was testing the skeleton's ability to pay attention and respond to pressure.
Teret was locked in the conflict, each swish of his dagger or qi-strings vibrating across his whole body. Unable to notice how Walker had softened his blows by a huge margin, he got used to the sensation of continuous impacts as he tightened his grip.
[The Black Gigantomonarch sighs. Was he really going to kill his apprentice? He asks.]
"Of course he was. Don't tell me your senses don't work through your Observer Wisps. Can't you feel that chill...?"
Kiva shook his head as he played with his earrings. He was at the frontmost of the watching Reapers, despite being at the very back of the crowd before.
Murmurs sounded as the Reapers fussed in tandem, all talking about how they felt as if they had to retreat! And so they all backed up nigh simultaneously, all perching upon even further boughs with deific haste.
[The Scorned Tatters scoffs mercilessly. He proudly says that only someone with potential can handle this killing intent.]
The wisp representing Baron Criminal unfurled a tendril, pointing directly at the skeleton.
Although its bones cracked, jostled, and buckled...it still fought. Driven up and down the massive expanse of The Wettened Woods, Teret bravely grasped this opportunity for growth without hesitation.
Could he have run away? Yes, actually. Walker would have let him go, saddened at the lack of battle intent his apprentice had. Yet those bones that shambled back to an upright position, no matter how much mud, dirt, and grime clung to his skeletal body...
The determination to take to the sky when there was no more ground left to tread caused Walker to be quite shocked. This was a tool he couldn't have taught at all--it was something you were either born with or created after a grueling, longstanding effort.
Frivolous laughs filled the sky as the feverish clacking of teeth whistled in the updraft. The Reapers were witnessing this all with narrowed eyes, unwilling to miss a moment!
The birth of an aberration wasn't shunned by this world. Instead, many Reapers would remember this and laud it with applause.
"O'Fallen Babel..."