Velvet Redemption

I sat on the couch with Lisa. My left arm was around her, and she was snuggled next to me. I could smell the strawberry shampoo she had used in the shower she just finished. She had a bowl of popcorn on her lap, and we sat on our purple leather sofa with a patch over some of the cushions because they were worn. The couch came from Goodwill after all. Lisa hated it, but I saw a bargain and went for it.

The theme song on the television played as I closed my eyes trying to forget the earlier work day.

“I’ll be there for youuuu,” the song played.

There was some faint howling in the background. . . but I didn’t pay any attention to it.

God I hated this show. . ., but she loved it. She loved to say lines from the show, but stop to let me finish it. Throughout the day I’d hear lines like, “Him? Him Ross?”

Then, I’d have to finish the line with, “No, Hymn 253, His Eyes are on The Sparrow!”

The program followed the lives of six buddies in New York who regularly hung out at a coffee shop, and I guess it was original enough, but I really only watched it to make her happy. Lisa had all ten seasons of the damn show, and that was what we did most nights. She would shower, I’d pop some popcorn, and we’d sit down to watch it.

I was never a very traditional or religious guy. Lisa was more into the “faith” thing than I was. . . she went to church, believed in God, and did all that stuff. Everyone in my Bible-thumping family kept asking when we were going to get married, and I had to often say, “We’ll get married when we’re ready.”

Honestly, I didn’t see the point in marriage. We’d talked about it on occasion, but Lisa was very patient with me. I guess deep down I was just too lazy to get married. There was so much to do, so much money to spend, etc. But, I didn’t want Lisa to think I’d never do it, so this particular night I was getting a feeling for where she was.

It was ironic, too, because this was the episode where Chandler revealed his plans to propose at the end. Like I said, I hated the show, but I’d seen every episode at least twenty times with Lisa.

“So, we’ve been together for three years now. . . we live together. . . are your parents still pestering you about living with a guy you aren’t married to?”

Lisa pulled even closer to me and said, “Justin, you’re a big boy, you propose whenever you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

That was it. It was our shortest marriage conversation to date, and I didn’t say anything after that except, “Oh. . . well okay then.”

I kept hearing that faint howling in the background, but I still didn’t acknowledge what it was. Eventually, the howling got louder but changed to snarling. I still had no clue what it was.

That was one week before the car accident, and I honestly was at least looking for an engagement ring, but I still had no urgency in me. Why would I? She said to do it when I was ready, and I was in the process of getting ready.

If I had known that I wasn’t going to be ready in time. . . I might have hurried. I never had any doubt she was the one; I just didn’t realize that she was wrong. She said she wasn’t going anywhere, but that was a lie. She was gone, and it was my fault.

My time with my wife was interrupted by several wolves leaping onto the couch from all directions and attacking Lisa and myself, tearing into our flesh. Lisa screamed first, and I awoke with a jolt, screaming myself.

My wings were spread out behind me as if I was ready to fly away from danger. Since I’d had the wings, that fight or flight thing had become more literal. Coming to my senses, I recalled my last battle with the wolves. Demons, angels, a war that I had to stop, a demon woman who held my soul and supposedly had my best interests at heart, and a blade that used to belong to the archangel Michael. . . yeah, my life had taken a weird turn.

Looking around, I saw that I was in a motel room of some kind. There was a thin brown carpet on the floor, and a few appliances like a TV, a fridge, and a microwave. I looked on the nightstand next to me, a dark wooden piece that looked pretty heavy, and I saw Velvet laying there.

Picking up Velvet, I was reminded of my previous battle. The wolves, the blood, the insanity of it all came screaming back.

Putting it back on the table, I went into the bathroom to shower. The hot water felt good, even if I had a spirit body. . . or whatever.

The shower was small and had a sliding glass door, which I thought was odd for a motel, but I didn’t say anything. The hotel soap smelled like some kind of wildflower, and the shampoo also had some weird description, typical motel stuff. I undid my braid so I could wash my hair. It took a while. Lisa often teased me about having long hair but not being able to handle it very well.

I heard the door open while I was in the shower, and then I heard Lilandra’s voice say, “I got you some clothes.”

“Great. Thanks,” I said.

She left, and I got out of the shower and dried off. She had found for me an olive green long-sleeve shirt and brown cargo pants. Underneath them, she’d found a long dark green London Fog brand coat.

Lilandra obviously had the same feelings about Goodwill that I did. I recognized the tag on the shirt.

Walking outside, I saw Lilandra sitting on the bed watching television.

“Fox News? Really?”

“Say what you want, but I like Bill,” Lilandra said.

“And what do you like about him? What factors make him likable?”

“I delivered him into this world. I saw his soul when it was pure. Back on September 10, 1949, I was there. I was the doctor present when his mother gave birth to him. No matter how much people make fun of him, I’ve kept track of his career. His heart is in the right place,” Lilandra said.

I started to fumble with my hair, trying to braid it again.

“You used to be a doctor?”

“I’ve been many things in my long life. Come sit down. I’ll do that a lot faster than you can,” Lilandra said.

I went and sat down on the corner of the bed. The bed looked like the cleaners had already come in and fixed it.

“You made the bed?”

“I’m a bit of a neat freak,” Lilandra said.

It felt weird having anyone else but Lisa braid my hair. I sat and waited patiently until she finished. When she was done, I turned to her and said, “It’s time to answer some questions.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Lilandra said.

“Where are we?”

“It’s a safety zone I’ve spent years creating in Oregon on the Columbia River. We are in a town called The Dalles.”

“How is it a safety zone?”

“I’ve spent years carving Enochian symbols into hundreds of rocks along the bottom of the river, so if you’re within a quarter mile of the river on either side, demons and angels cannot sense you,” Lilandra said.

“What are enochian symbols?”

“It’s part of a language, both written and spoken. The Enochian language is a special one that angels use. It has mystical properties here on earth because the words are so potent,” she said.

I got off the bed and walked over to the window. Looking outside, I saw that we were not too far from the shore of the river. I could also see the highway from the window.

“Where . . . what. . . do I have to do now?”

“I need to train you on how to use Velvet. You did a good job fighting the demons a week ago, but you got by mostly on the sword’s abilities.”

I didn’t believe what she was saying, “How has it been a week? Did Velvet thrust me into the future?”

“No, you passed out from overusing your abilities. That last move with the lightning manipulation was probably too much for you to handle right away. Your spiritual body can be damaged by spiritual beings and weapons, so your body will show normal signs of injury. Physical weapons cannot touch you, though you can interact entirely with the physical realm like a normal human can.”

This was a lot of information, and it was making my head spin. I honestly felt like I should be writing all of this down. On the other hand, I was surprised at how well she was making me understand everything.

“How did you get a motel room? I thought nobody could see you except when they were close to death?”

“That is a little more complicated. What I told you was the truth, but there are extenuating circumstances to that rule. Normal humans can’t see demons. There are some humans on the earth who are a little more spiritually gifted than others, and they can sense demons. Some can even see them. Any demon that wants to can make themselves visible to the naked eye with the right magic,” she said.

“And whether you can be seen or not, you can interact with the physical world like normal?”

“Correct.”

“Last question for now.”

“Shoot.”

“Where is Lisa? One of the demons said something about when I learn the truth about her-”

“Lisa is in Heaven, Justin.”

I don’t know how this made me feel. I guess I felt better since I knew that she wasn’t burning for eternity, but I was also curious about pulling her back to earth. Would she even want to come back? Wasn’t Heaven supposed to be paradise?

“How do we get her back from Heaven?”

“If you stop the war, I will take you to Heaven so we can rescue her,” Lilandra said.

I stopped looking out the window, and I walked over to Lilandra, looking her dead in her red eyes.

“What is stopping us from going and getting her right now?”

“This may sound cold, but we had a deal. If you stop the war, then you get Lisa back. You can’t sell your soul to a demon for nothing. There are strict rules that state there have to be two sides to the deal,” she said.

“How long until I’m able to stop this war?”

“You better get used to the Columbia River as your training grounds. You’re going to be here in the safe zone for five years.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! There was no way I could wait five more years to see Lisa again!

Angry, my wings became ruffled.

“You have to be strong enough to fight demons, angels, and anything else that gets in our way. We have one shot at this, Justin. You need to be trained in everything I can show you. That takes time.”

“Who is to say the war is going to wait five years to start?”

“The war won’t start before then.”

“Why not?”

“Because Lucifer won’t start a fight against Michael before he has a blade to fight with. He made that mistake once, and he won’t do it again.”

Inexplicably, I became a little more calm in Lilandra’s presence when I looked at her. I couldn’t believe she was a demon. I shouldn’t have felt at ease in the presence of a demon, but I did.

“Okay, let’s get started. The sooner I can get this training done, the better,” I said.

“It won’t be easy, Justin. I’m going to push you to your breaking point as you discover your real potential with Velvet. And you’re going to have to put that coat over your wings before we leave.”

“Why? Nobody can see me.”

“That’s not true. You’re neither an angel or a demon, so your spiritual form is very much visible to humans. And if they see your wings, they’re liable to get freaked out unless it’s Halloween.”

I did my best to bring my wings to rest behind me as I put the green coat on over both Velvet Redemption and my wings.

“You’ll get used to that feel,” Lilandra said.

We left, and I went out a back exit. When we made sure no one was watching, we flew up into the air over the Columbia River. It was dark outside, but I could somehow see perfectly.

The two of us headed toward my future training grounds.

As we flew toward a destination unknown to me, Lilandra took the lead. I wasn’t the best flyer yet, and it showed. Things were still kind of new to me, and why shouldn’t they have been?

It was a week ago when I picked up a sword and was charged with stopping a war between Heaven and Hell.

I still didn’t know how that was going to be possible, but Lilandra told me I had at least five years to figure it out during training. I had an idea that Lilandra wasn’t telling me everything yet, but I guess I trusted her enough at this point to develop a plan for us to combat both Lucifer and his brother Michael. I’d always heard advocates of peace say that fighting wasn’t the answer, but clearly here that wasn’t going to work.

I’d fought a battle with demons, and it was fierce. They didn’t appear to be very negotiable individuals. I couldn’t imagine the angels being much better after exiling Lilandra for leaving Heaven to fix her mistake.

So, it was going to take some amount of force to keep these two sides from going to war and making earth their battlefield. How one sword, a demon, and whatever I was were going to make a difference was beyond me, but right now I just had to learn how to fight with Velvet Redemption.

Lilandra and I flew for another hour until we came to an island in the middle of the river. It was around midnight when we landed on the island.

It was probably a quarter of a mile long and half of that wide. It had some trees on the edges, but for the most part it was sand with some grass.

Velvet pulsed on my back, and I felt it like a heartbeat. It knew what we were here for. The sword wasn’t stupid, and it was clearly conscious of what was going on around it. Whether it was conscious through me or independent of me was beyond my ability to figure out, but it was aware that we were getting ready to start training.

Lilandra was about thirty feet in front of me when I hollered, “What now?”

“You need to learn some sword basics first. Tonight, we learn about form and position.”

“Tonight? You’re going to teach me how to use a sword in just one night?”

“No, I’m going to teach you how to use a sword in one month. I will have to be strict and hard to get this done, so be ready. This will not be easy,” she said.

“A month?”

“Sit tight,” Lilandra said.

She reached into her pocket, and it was at this moment that I took notice of what she was wearing. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed before, but she really was quite beautiful. She was pale under the moonlight, and she wore a tight blue shirt that left her belly exposed. Over that, she wore a darker blue jacket, also exposing her belly. Her skirt went half way down to her knees, and was the same shade of blue as her jacket. She had a simple gold necklace around her neck, and she wore some kind of sandals on her feet with laces that went up wrapping around her lower legs all the way to her knees.

Around her skirt she had some sort of thin belt with even thinner large pockets attached to it. Reaching into her right pocket, she pulled out something. It was too small for me to notice. Holding it to her lips, I could barely hear her muttering some kind of incantation.

With a very loud pop, the stone began to glow purple and sparks flew around it. Throwing it into the very center of the island, the stone glowed even brighter. It hit the ground once and did not bounce. The light only grew brighter until it projected a field around the island. It looked like a thin purple dome. Then, the light dimmed, and the dome stabilized into a transparent light around the small island.

Amazed at the beautiful lights, I asked, “What is that thing?”

“It’s a transdimensional stone that can remove a certain space from our dimension for a set period of time. It’s a powerful magic that will last for a month,” she said, like this news did not phase her.

There was no way I could accept what she was saying with apparent ease, “What are you saying? That we’re now stuck on this island for a month? What about food, air, and-”

“You’ve got a spiritual body, Justin. You don’t need to eat, breathe, or shit. It’ll be tough, but for the next month, you’ll learn everything there is to know about swordplay. We’ll be training for every hour of every day. That’s 744 hours. So stop whining, draw Velvet, and come at me,” she said.

Shaking my head, I reached back to draw Velvet Redemption from its sheath.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Velvet will try to hurt you. In its eyes, you are a demon and an abomination,” I said.

“Do it,” she said.

Running at Lilandra, I moved as fast as I thought possible. I swung the blade for a wide slash to the right. Lilandra ducked to avoid the swipe and came up as my right arm was fully extended. She slapped her palm into my right wrist hard, and I dropped Velvet. She then swept my legs out from under me and at that point, all she had to do was gently push me to the ground. She held a hand to my neck.

“The war has just started, and you are dead. You have failed to uphold your agreement. No

Lisa for you,” Lilandra said.

“I thought you couldn’t fight?”

“I can defend myself. I just can’t take any offensive action. Disarming and tripping you is

the extent of what I can do. Now, get up, grab Velvet and stand up straight,” she said.

I got up and grabbed Velvet and did as I was told. Lilandra immediately went to work setting me in a defensive stance.

“I can’t train you in the art of offense very effectively, because I cannot attack anyone. What I can teach you is how to defend yourself as I have for thousands of years. I will teach you how to react to any attack that is thrown at you. When I’m done with your training, you won’t be foolishly rushing your opponents like you did the wolves. Rather, you’ll let your enemies make the first move and react based on what they do. Then, try to get in a position that’ll allow you to use whatever they throw at you to your advantage. You’ll also conserve energy that way,” Lilandra said.

The first few days, I ate a lot of dirt. Each time, she told me to get up. She wasn’t the same Lilandra I’d originally met. She was much more strict, but she wasn’t a drill sergeant. I would be more accurate to say that she was just very firm. There were never any insults during training. When I messed up, and I did frequently, she would simply tell me to get up and try again. I noticed her patience very often.

Toward the end of the first month, I felt like I was finally beginning to grasp how to use Velvet. I definitely didn’t feel ready to stop a war, but there was something to be said for the guy who spent a lot of time on the ground.

“Get up. We only have a couple hours left until this stone wears down, and you still haven’t been able to strike me once. I have taught you nearly every bit of swordsmanship I know. You know how to attack, defend, and survive. What you don’t know how to do apparently is apply it all in a battle. Now, come on and land a blow!”

Running at her, I noticed she looked annoyed. This was what she had spent a month attempting to teach me not to do.

I’d gotten much faster with my forms. I was able to move slightly faster than the naked eye could detect now for short periods of time when dashing from one area to another. I zigged and zagged across the island getting closer to my target. I’d spent a month doing the same thing, and hopefully it was about to pay off when I tried something different.

Appearing in front of her, I saw she had no surprise within her expression. Instead of swinging my sword at her though, I brought my foot up and slammed it down hard, shooting up sand between the two of us.

Closing her eyes, she dropped low and tried to trip me. The only problem was, I was no longer in front of her.

I had flown up into the air and was now coming down for a vertical strike. She sensed me coming from the direction in the wind, I guess. She leapt back to avoid my strike, and in response, I stopped right before the ground and did a backflip of my own in midair.

Lilandra did not expect me to give up ground so easily. She had her eyes open now, and she saw me fly backwards with my flip. When the toes of my left foot had barely touched the ground though, I shot forward with blinding speed.

Finally a little surprised, she moved to dodge backwards, as if I were going to swing across. I did not. I drove the blade forward with a powerful thrust. Even she was not quick enough to dodge it completely, and I barely cut the top part of her left shoulder.

We froze there in place, until she gently moved Velvet’s blade out of her skin and let it fall to the sand.

I was breathing heavily. That backflip and forward thrust had been a lucky gamble, but

stopping so fast and starting again was tiring, especially to someone who hadn’t slept in a

month. This was one reason I was glad Lilandra had forbidden me to use anything but the blade itself. If I’d tried to summon lightning or something else, I’d have burned out much sooner.

Lilandra was healing herself as I sheathed Velvet.

“Not bad for one month of training,” she said when she was done.

The stone made another loud popping sound like it did when kicked on, and then it

shattered.

The dome vanished, and once again, it was night around us. I could feel fresh wind from the surrounding river blowing on my skin.

It felt great, and I was exhausted.

“I think you’ve earned a day off. Let’s head back to the hotel,” Lilandra said.

I didn’t realize the true extent of my exhaustion until I walked back into our hotel room and I saw the bed covers and wrinkled pillow I’d slept on the night before. In reality, it was the same night we’d flown to the island. Essentially no time had passed here while I trained. My body told me a different tale, though. It was one of being sore, having exhaustion, and . . . nope, that was it, being sore and having exhaustion.

I lay on the bed, and right before I could fall asleep, Lilandra poked my side.

“Scoot over,” she muttered.

I did as I was told, and the last thing I noticed before closing my eyes was that the “do not disturb” sign was no longer on the nightstand next to the bed.

Damn that girl thinks of everything, I thought.

I didn’t sleep very much the rest of that first year. I also didn’t realize just how much training we would be doing. Those periods of one month training sessions quickly turned into half a year. Lilandra had a seemingly endless supply of those little stones. I never figured out where she got them, either.

The first year saw me learn how to use the sword, then how to tap into the sword’s energy supply, known as “aura.”

Apparently, every spiritual being and object has some form of aura. Demons have a darker aura, and angels have a lighter aura. She taught me how to sense the difference between the two and use my own aura to fight.

Although aura couldn’t be used to do things on its own, it was used for many other things during combat with an opponent. So, I couldn’t throw my aura at someone, but I used my aura to summon lightning to my blade. Then I could take that lightning and fight with it.

During one of our sessions I stopped to ask Lilandra, why lightning? She never was able to give me a straight answer other than, “It’s an evolutionary blade Justin. It changes based on who is wielding it.”

The second year was much harder than the first. I had to learn every aspect of how I could interact with the lightning. Basically, it boiled down to two ways I could use it. I either had to generate it with my own aura, which was very taxing to my body, or I had to find an external source to pull it from. Lilandra taught me that should always be my first plan when using lightning-based combat. I should always use my aura to pull lightning from an external source rather than generate my own.

The only real advantage to generating my own lightning was that it was a bit faster to summon, and I had a little more control over what I could do with it. That next year went by painfully slow. I didn’t draw Velvet much during the entire year. It was all about the lightning.

One night in March, we were both on the island in the middle of the Columbia River under the dome. I wasn’t fighting with Lilandra, but rather, working on technique.

The first year had gone by with her teaching me as much swordsmanship as she knew. No lightning or other abilities for the first whole year were used. Lilandra wanted me to start fresh when she trained me on my lightning skills after the battle with Dega and his wolf demons.

So, there we sat. I’d not been able to form anything out of lightning, and she was being patient with me. There was no drill sergeant in Lilandra at this moment.

“I’m not going to sit and yell at you, Justin. I can’t beat the lightning manipulation skills into you. You’re going to have to master it using what I’ve taught you, and until that happens, we’re not moving onto anything else. Try again,” she said.

I held out my right hand again and focussed on my heartbeat and focussed on trying to sync it with the electricity in my body.

“I’m tired,” I muttered.

“I know you are, but you’ve still got energy inside of you. I can feel it. Now come on, you can do this. Try again. Attempt 764 might be the lucky one,” Lilandra said.

“You’ve been counting? That’s insane.”

“You have not successfully mastered this technique. Aside from coaching you on how to do this, what else am I to do? Now, focus. Make me a knife out of lightning, not a sword, just a knife.”

Again, I closed my eyes and tried to get the electricity flowing. It wasn’t summoning it that was bothering me, it was manipulating it once it was summoned.

When I produced electricity, I just wanted to throw it at my opponent, but Lilandra had demonstrated on me plenty of times that haphazardly thrown lightning could just be redirected away or even back at the original thrower.

It was one of the more painful experiences she’d taught me thus far.

“Justin! That’s it!”

Immediately, I opened my eyes, and I saw a small lightning knife in my hand. It was about the size of a table knife, maybe a little shorter, and I was struggling to maintain it. How I had actually gotten it to form was beyond me, but I’d finally done it!

“There you go,” she said.

“How do I maintain this? This is a huge pain,” I grunted.

“Find the right balance. You can’t do this if you’re straining too much, but you also need just the right amount of focus. I wish I could say it will get easier, but that’s the thing about elemental manipulation. It doesn’t get easier to summon or control; your endurance to the strain produced by these elemental weapons just grows,” Lilandra said.

Veins on my right arm started to appear, and I looked at her with a tired gaze.

“You can let the knife go and take a small break,” Lilandra finally said.

I stopped focussing, and the knife made a tiny explosion of sparks and lights as it vanished.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and fell back onto the sand.

The remainder of that year only saw my lightning manipulation training grow. Within another month of slowed time, I stopped producing knives, and I started making full-size replicas of Velvet out of lightning. Then, I was fighting two handed with a lightning blade in each hand.

The struggle was no longer making the lighting blades, but hanging onto them every time one of them clashed with Lilandra’s wooden blade.

Eventually, Lilandra felt my training of lightning manipulation was more than sufficient, and we moved on.

The third year of training still saw Lilandra educating me in the art of the sword to keep my skills up, but most of that year involved a study of history.

One night, I was sitting in the motel room, reading up on a particular demon attack on a monastery in the 1600s. Lilandra was constantly bringing me literature and lecturing to me about the history of demon and angel skirmishes.

It stood to her reasoning that I needed to know the enemy I’d be fighting.

“So demons don’t really have any weaknesses that the movies seem to rely upon for plot devices, huh?”

“No. Speaking in Latin, quoting scripture, holy water, all of these things do not work. It’s all myth and superstition. When it comes down to it, you typically need an angel to pull a demon out of a possessed individual, and you need some strong weapons and/or tactics to actually kill a demon,” Lilandra explained.

“What happens when a demon dies?”

“It depends on how they die. If a demon is exercised by an angel or a spiritual person who happens to have the divine force necessary, they are sent back to Hell, where it takes them some time to crawl back out. If, however, they are killed by a special weapon or slaughtered in combat, they just dissolve into nothing,” Lilandra said.

“They don’t have spirits or souls that appear when they die?”

“When you ‘kill’ a demon, it is their spirit that you are killing,” Lilandra said.

It certainly was a lot to remember, and my head was tired. I didn’t realize that training would involve so much studying. It made all my college preparation for my graphic design degree look like nothing. My spiritual body not needing food or water didn’t give me any excuse to take a break. Only exhaustion after hours and maybe even days of nonstop work was an excuse for a break. Lilandra was not mean by most standards, but she certainly knew how to drive labor, or in my case, training.

After close to a year of education of demon and angel histories, weaknesses, past battles, and everything in between, we moved on to the final two years of training. Those two years of my were nothing but duels between Lilandra and myself.

So, battle after battle, I dueled Lilandra. Toward the end of the fifth year, it was like someone had flipped on a switch, and I suddenly saw myself five years ago (even though I’d been training with time frozen for much longer than five years). The old Justin made so many errors. My first fight with demons played through my mind so many times. Velvet Redemption pretty much did the fighting for me.

Lilandra constantly referenced that battle and what I should have done during it. Then, just like that, it was time for the final test. Lilandra pulled out what was supposed to be the last time stone and threw it into the center of the island. This one would not run out of energy or stop on its own. I had to nearly kill her to get the stone to stop.

I’d seen what she was capable of in our five years together. She hadn’t changed one bit, but I had grown. My hair had stayed relatively the same, but I’d grown a black goatee to go with the hair. I didn’t understand how my spiritual body grew facial hair, but I didn’t question it too much.

Since I knew what she was capable of, I didn’t think I could really kill her. Velvet would try, but Lilandra did not want me to hold back. She had actually armed herself with a wooden blade like before. When I asked her about it, all she would say was that it “would hold up fine.” It was in the shape of a wooden katana. She later informed me that there were runes carved into her wooden blade that were of the Enochian language. They, of course, made the blade much more durable.

She’d wield it defensively, and my job was to destroy it, beat her within an inch of her life, and in turn, this stone would let us back into the normal space-time continuum.

“This is it. Show me that you’re ready to stop a war. I think I’ve trained you well, now prove it!”

Generating lightning into my blade, I said, “Velvet, this is it. Let’s show her what we can do.”

The dome was higher in the air than it ever had been, so I flew up about thirty feet in the sky and held Velvet to my right.

She waited, watching my every move. I knew that if I tried to throw lightning at her, she’d find a way to dodge, or worse, redirect it. So, I was going to try a different approach. This time, the lightning would not be used to attack her, but rather, to keep her from moving.

Coming down head first, I grabbed Velvet with both hands. Lightning flew down and hit the ground trapping her in a cage, surrounding her by my own manipulation.

As I got closer, she brought her blade up, ready to meet mine. I cut through the lightning and met her wooden sword. It did not even scratch the wooden blade when Velvet made contact.

“I told you this blade would hold up. Is that all I taught you?”

“Far from it,” I said.

Putting the blade in my right hand, I decided to try a technique I’d been practicing on my own. I could only do it with my right hand, but she hadn’t been watching me work on this particular technique. I drew up my left hand and summoned lightning to it. It was going to be my distraction.

Struggling, I generated a sword out of the lightning in my left hand. It took a lot of focus, but she’d never watched me do it before. Veins began to show on my left arm. The lightning blade was becoming a strain, but I began to attack her furiously with it.

I was fast, and she was busy defending every blow. She blocked every strike I threw at her with the lightning blade, but I wasn’t trying to break her defenses with it. Increasing my speed, she was watching very carefully, trying to figure out why I wasn’t attacking with Velvet.

At last, my opportunity came, and I made a quick horizontal strike left with the lightning blade. Then, I kicked her, knocking her back. Her stumbling was my moment.

I threw the lightning blade in the air and it exploded in a dazzling display of light.

She looked up for a split second to see if it was an attack, and that was when I came forward with Velvet in my right hand. Making her my target, I put everything I had into my right arm as it thrashed wildly, but accurately.

My right arm was moving too fast for the naked eye to detect, but I was slicing from every direction. All Lilandra could do was hold up her sword in front of her as it took all the abuse.

I was tiring fast, but I knew I was turning her blade into a toothpick.

“Justin, that’s a nice technique you’ve been developing. It’s furious, it’s fast, and it’s impressive that you can move your arm that quick; however, I have walked this earth for thousands of years! It will take more than that to level me! Fight better, or this war will start,” she yelled.

I didn’t see how, but with one strike, she was able to keep blocking until the last second when she made her move and sent Velvet spinning into the air behind me.

“Fight me as you will Lucifer’s minions! Fight with conviction. You must stop this war. You are the only one capable!”

I was getting frustrated. Five long years of training, and was I no closer to defeating my teacher? No! I refused to accept that!

“Dammit! I’ve worked hard. I’ve fought, trained, sweated, and bled. Goddamn this world if I can’t even put a scratch on you!”

Lilandra was still in front of me, and I summoned lightning to both hands to make two blades. It wouldn’t last long, but I didn’t need it to.

I began to unleash a volley of new attacks fed by my desperation to prove I’d grown much in these five years. If I hadn’t grown, what was I doing? I was wasting my time and delaying the inevitable.

Although this volley of attacks wasn’t any more successful than the last round with my right hand, I did get to buy myself a little time to get my next big attack lined up.

I brought my left arm back and threw the lightning blade in it at Lilandra. While she was blocking it with her wooden sword, I grabbed my remaining lightning blade with both hands and summoned forth the full strength of my aura. I’d crush her in one final move. Lightning grew around me as my blade began to shine brightly in the night.

While Lilandra was still trying to dispense the lightning blade I threw at her, I held my remaining blade above my head and sliced downward unleashing upon Lilandra the massive lightning bolt that I’d been building.

The last thing I saw were her eyes growing wide upon seeing the bolt of lightning. Right before it struck her, she dispensed of the blade I’d thrown at her and brought the wooden sword up to block the bolt.

The bolt hit her, and it pushed her back several inches as she held a defensive stance. Her feet were grinding in the sand. I saw the wood in her blade begin to crack as she backed up to the shoreline. Then, Lilandra brought the bolt above her head with her sword, and she roared as she held it there until the bolt dissipated into nothing.

Breathing heavily, she lowered her wooden blade, which was now charred black.

“Don’t put all your eggs into one basket, Justin. I know I taught you better than that. Although that was an impressive attack, I was still able to-”

I interrupted her by flying straight at Lilandra with Velvet Redemption in my right hand. I met her wooden blade, and sand flew around us from the shockwave of our blades meeting at such force.

Although I had little aura left to spare, this fight was not over. I had enough rage inside of me to finish this duel ten times over, and I would use every last drop of it.

Summoning lightning to my blade again, I put it in my right hand and began my speed technique once more. I built up more fury this time and increased gradually as she just stood there defending at the edge of the shoreline. The ground around us was moving away because I was striking her blade so hard and fast.

As my strikes became more fierce, she was starting to look worried. Then, as if in some kind of climax, I began to yell, “Do you want to know what you taught me, Lilandra? You taught me that the fight is not over until every. last. opponent. is-”

Drawing back quicker than she could anticipate, I brought my sword around from right to left. This time, when it met her wooden blade, it shattered.

She gasped, not expecting me to have this much strength left, but I knew this wasn’t over yet.

Yelling loudly, “Finished,” I raised my sword and brought it down for a diagonal slash. She had nothing left, so she just took the blow.

When Velvet hit the ground, Lilandra was already falling backwards, bleeding profusely. The dome above us cracked and shattered, revealing the starry sky. I heard the pop of the stone as it shattered as well.

Sheathing Velvet Redemption, I leaned down to pick Lilandra up.

In between my exhaustive breathing I managed to ask, “Was that within an inch of your life?”

She hadn’t even started to heal she was hurt so badly. All she could mutter was, “Within a centimeter of my life.”

“Are you going to be alright?”

“Yes. I’ll just need a few days to rest and recover,” she whispered.

“Let me get you back to the motel room,” I said, picking her up. My knees buckled because I was tired, but I was in better shape than she was.

As we flew back to our room (which we actually had to start renting from the motel for our extended stay), I heard her say something before she passed out. She said, “Now. . . you’re ready to stop a war.”