Chapter 17

Day 2

"Hit me," she said, suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"It's a test, to see how well you've learned. Now give me your best shot. You can take as much time to prepare as you like."

I grinned, "I hope you don't regret that too soon." ' "Oh please, little girl, a bicorne can't possibly make me worry even a little bit."

Her confidence amazed me. But then again, being one of the four Angels of Prostitution since the beginning of recorded time, she probably had already seen everything. I decided that I'll give her such a shock that she won't ever look down on me again.

With that thought driving me, I slowly channeled my powers to my right fist. Drawing power from deep within my soul, I could feel it traveling through my nerves, veins and arteries. As more power were drawn from myself and my surrounding, I could feel my senses became alive while ethereal energy danced and arced on my skin and around my body. It felt like I was back in Tartarus, still under the influence of Uriel's brew.

It felt wonderful, being able to carry this much power at my fingertips. When it started getting heavy and unwieldy, I thought that it was enough and charged at her. The ball of ethereal energy started to change and eventually turned into a globe of frigid cold air. As I ran, the tail of cold air following the frost orb in my fist left a trail of ice behind me.

I closed my fist around the orb in my hand, crushing it and spreading the icy breeze up to my elbows as I got close. I threw the punch as hard as I could at her and probably could've caused a serious injury, if she didn't block my attack at the very last moment. The impact wave threw me far back away from her. I heaved a satisfied sigh as I saw that she was pushed a step back while half her body was covered in ice. I think maybe one day, a couple of years in the future, I can become something like Milen.

"Pretty good. Don't get too comfortable though, Dinah won't give you the time to prepare," she said as she disappeared and reappeared at the same spot, causing the ice to fall and break on the hard ground.

"Way to go with breaking my mood," I grumbled.

"Oh do cheer up. Today we'll teach you how to do a proper backstabbing."

"Oh, I can backstab. I did that sometimes in high school."

"Funny, aren't we?" she said as a formless black hand, that appeared to be made of shadow rose up from the ground in front of me holding a plain looking black dagger, "Try it if you can."

I took the dagger, holding it firmly in my right hand and ran toward her. Just as I was about to reach her, I raised my hand and blinked behind her. With a quick footwork, I turned around to attack her spine. Imagine my surprise when I felt a knife in my flank instead.

"That is the weakness of the normal blink, child," she said while pulling the knife out of my side, "you will always face the same direction when you blink." I didn't even realize exactly when she blinked behind me.

"I just need to turn faster, that's all," I said, flinching while rubbing the stab wound on my flank.

"There is a much faster way. I'm going to teach you Vector Stab."

"The what?"

" ... Some people call it Blink Strike."

"Ah."

She pointed a finger to the direction that my back faced. "Let us assume that is north. I want you to stand here and then blink into this circle," she drew a circle on the ground with her right foot, "facing north."

"That's not possible! You said it yourself!"

"No, child, I never said it was impossible. I only said that you will always blink facing the same direction."

I mumbled about how the wording made all the difference.

"You need to change your perspective. Think of everything in the world in the form of mathematical equations."

"Goodness! You're going to give me a lecture on Applied Math?"

"You're really exasperating, you know that? Just do what I told you to do and we'll see how it goes."

I tried it once, it didn't work. I ended up facing 'south' after I blinked.

"Hard, isn't it? No matter how much you willed yourself to blink north, you will still blink facing south. Well, we don't have time to let you learn it on your own, so I'll give you the secret. Stand facing south like before."

So I stepped forward out of the circle and stood next to her.

"You are familiar with the term latitude and longitude, yes?" I nodded.

"Good, imagine yourself as a globe. Now you're standing still. So you can consider that the direction you're facing is 0 degrees longitude and 0 degrees latitude. Are you with me so far?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Good. Now, the primary principle of Vector Stab is not to magically change the direction, but to twist your body into the desired direction."

I stopped her. "Okay, I lost you there."

She bit her lower lip a little. "Okay, imagine you're standing still. In front of you, a very angry beast is preparing to strike. Now, you know you can outrun this beast, but not if you have to run backwards. So, you slowly twist your right foot so that the toes point to your right and slightly to the back. Then when the beast got distracted, you turn your whole body to the right, twist again to the right, and run away like you were chased by a horde of hungry Legions. It's the same principle here. Instead of just twisting your foot, you are twisting your entire body."

I frowned. "How do I do that?"

"By using the longitude and latitude you've established earlier. The way to do this is by focusing your perception on your initial direction - in this case, south - and almost without thinking it, turn your body to 180 degrees west by the latitude and longitude. You know what, let's do a bit of a practice. You're going to turn 45 degrees west," she said as she instructed me step by step through the process.

It was very confusing, having to focus on the direction I was no longer looking at and then snapping back into my real-time vision facing the new direction. It felt like my brain was snapped every time I did that. By the end of the day, my brain was so exhaustingly squashed that Eisheth had to heal me herself. I'll never get used to having all 24 hours to train and not a single second to sleep everyday.

Thank goodness I was able to master the technique two days later. But the road to there was terrible.

Day 5

"I noticed that you have a very unique weapon there. Summon him, you need to familiarize yourself with your weapon if you are to defeat Dinah. While she's not the best fencer at any rate, she has 86 different weapons artifacts which she often use at the same time. You don't want to be subjected to her Steel Rain without a chance of fighting back."

"Weapon?" I looked at her quizzically as I was unaware that I was wielding any weapon. See, I've already returned the black dagger to her earlier today.

I almost jumped when Florian's heavily accented voice sounded in my mind. I believe she was referring to me, Ilyse.

I asked the ring, You're a weapon?

Yes, I am. A sword actually, haven't you paid attention to the vow I made when you picked me up? I am Florian the Sword, and I mean that literally.

Okaay ... how do I summon you then?

I could sense that he was raising his eyebrows as he said, Just call for me to appear. You will be surprised at how many complex instructions I can process at any given time compared to the average lilim artifact.

Okay, I decided to give it a try. "Florian, appear". I would've felt foolish if he didn't appear. Thank goodness he did.

He was a beautiful sword. If I was asked to give one word to describe him, I would probably choose 'gleaming'. Even in this shadowy world, where direct light is lacking, his gleam never fade. In fact, the more I admired him, the more gleaming it became. I wondered if it was his way of showing his pride. I noticed that the steel wire that made up the wire hilt was assembled in such a fashion as to make a pattern eerily similar to the goat head-on-a-shield coat of arms that was on some of Mom's many velvet and silk jewelery cases.

"That's a nice sword you have there. You can accomplish much with him in your hands. However, a sword is only as good as the handler. If you treat it like a relic and never practice using it, it will feel as alien to you as having fishsticks as your fingers."

I looked at Florian, sighed, then looked at her. "So, what should I do?"

"I'll teach you some basic moves with a sword and we'll see how you get along with him."

After half a day's worth of 'practice', it appeared hopeless. "I can't do this, I'm as clumsy as a drunken ox. It's like I'm trying to kill a cockroach with a submachinegun."

"Relax. It has only been a day. I assure you that even those gifted fencers had to train years to become good enough."

I protested, "But this is not about practice. The sword feels wrong all over, no offense to you, Flo. See this handle? The grip is too slim, I kept feeling it slip from my hand."

I can fatten up the grip if you like. It was only slim because I was originally customized for Sarai's use. Her hands were small, because her true form was that of a 13 year old girl.

You can change yourself? Why didn't you tell me that earlier?

You didn't ask. I thought you knew.

I felt the grip fatten a bit under my fingers. I swung it a couple of times and was impressed with the difference. Much better. Can you elongate the blade too? I don't feel confident with using a blade of that length.

No problem. It's done.

I felt much better as I practiced more with my personalized rapier - oops - degen, hehehe. Anyway, by the next day, I was already proficient enough with the basic moves that Eisheth decided to teach me some shadow weapons play as well.

Day 6

"You'll need Florian for this lesson, so raise him high and try talking to him," she said after healing the sores I had after being beaten again and again in mock combat yesterday.

"Umm, what should I talk about?"

"Anything you like. Your life, his former life, your dreams and other unrelated things."

I looked at Florian and feeling slightly stupid, attempted a conversation. What's your favorite food? I asked.

To which he answered, Bread

Then I felt his mood go cloudy while the sword in my hand started to vibrate slowly at first but gradually increasing in intensity. In the end, I had to stab the point to the ground and used both hands on the handle to hold him steady.

What the hell was that, Flo? I asked after he calmed down a bit.

I don't want to talk about it. Suffice to say that she reneged on the deal.

Was that why you refused to do her bidding 50 years ago?

From his silence, I deduced that whatever Mom had done, must've been so terrible that it caused him to rebel against her. I wondered what it was that Mom did back then.

"Seems like you two will need more head to head talk, eventually. But for now, that should be enough. Will Florian work with you now?"

Florian in turn, reassured me in his heavily accented voice. Don't worry, Ilyse. My issue was with Sarai, not you. I'll aid you as best as I can.

Thanks, Flo.

"He will cooperate," was my answer to her question.

"Good, because until you learn to turn yourself into a weapon, I don't mean that literally, you will need him to perform this technique."

"What technique is that?"

"Shadow Claw."

"What does it do?"

"Imagine that your enemy is a hundred feet in front of you. You want to kill him, but between you and him, there is an uncrossable moat. Consider that flying is not an option. What do you do?"

"Use ranged weapons or spells," I answered.

"A good solution, yet what if you only have a melee weapon in hand and you don't have enough strength to throw it that far? That's when you use Shadow Claw. With Shadow Claw, you can cut anything in front of you and its power won't diminish even a bit for as long as you supply it with power. Watch what I do," she said as a rock was pushed out of the ground a hundred feet away.

She then crouched on the ground, produced a crooked black dagger from the void and stabbed it into the ground. I saw something that looked like three stripes of shadow appeared from the ground under the dagger and sped towards the jutting rock. I was amazed to see the three shadows cut three neat valleys in the rock as if it was tofu.

"When you finally turn yourself into a weapon, you will be able to do this without a weapon," she proceeded to press her five fingers to the ground and managed to achieve the same effect as before, then she continued with, "but until then, you need Florian or any similar weapon."

Then she told me everything, starting with the theories, practice, and execution. I was only able to shoot one shadow edge instead of three in the end, but it was way cool.

Day 9

Earlier today, Eisheth had summoned a Wight as my sparring partner. At first glance, she looked like one of Tolkien's Hobbits, except that she was much slimmer and dark skinned. I say dark skinned loosely, because sometimes her skin changed color from deep black to slightly grey and sometimes almost silver. But one thing that never changed, was that her body was very translucent as if she was made from the shadows itself.

"Put your back into it! I feel like I'm looking at children brawling in the playground!" she yelled through the clang of swords hitting each other.

I kicked the Wight away and stumbled back for a breather. "I'm doing my best here!" I yelled back just before the Wight's sickle hit my blade. Apparently the Wight didn't need any rest.

"If that's the best you can do, I'll kill you myself right now to spare us the embarrassment of having to see you die in the first 10 seconds in a real fight!"

I knew she wasn't bluffing. If she said she will kill me, then she will most definitely kill me. I decided to avoid making gambles and just finish this quickly. So I casted Haste, the spell she taught me yesterday that was meant to improve my speed and reflex for the duration of its effect. The difference was amazing. I moved twice as fast and countered twice as efficiently but I was unable to do anything about my senses. It appeared that Haste only improves my speed and reflex, not my perception. I found that to be a disadvantage.

When I told Eisheth about it, she dismissed it as just me requiring more simulated fights. That was why she summoned one of her Wights to help train me. I must say, that even with the Wight instructed to fight at low skills, it was hard for me to keep up. She was like a phantom!

Eventually, Eisheth called for a stop and dismissed the Wight. Then she started talking about some techniques that could help in my fight after asking me the difficulties I was having with the Wight. Two techniques that drew my attention was called Amalgam Slash and Fade.

Amalgam Slash refers to a technique where the user of a weapon become one with the weapon, sharing each other's strength, mind and power. With proper execution, the damage can be increased up to tenfold, which was impressive in my opinion. The only problem was that to a newbie, it might take a long time to reach the level of synchronisation needed to pull it off.

Fade was basically a variant of Blink. Though instead of popping here and there, Fade allows the user to fade out of existence and reappear anywhere the user wants, silently. Eisheth told me that it was also the only spell she know of that can overcome the warding spells put by all princes and princesses of Sheol on their own borders, specifically the warding that prevents people from Blink-ing in and out of their domains. The downside is that unlike Blink, that happens quickly, users of Fade will disappear gradually over a few seconds. Which means enough time for someone to drive a sword into one's heart.

We spent the next several days practicing and going over those two techniques.

There was another technique that she thought I could use, Shadowmeld. It was basically a variant of Invisibility spell, except that it wasn't a spell. Invisibility spells, while seamless, could be detected by someone with 'the sight'. Shadowmeld couldn't be detected at all. If anyone looked at a Shadowmelded person, they just see shadows. I recalled using this same technique in one of my dreams and after demonstrating it, Eisheth agreed that I needed no more lesson on that.

Day 15

"When was the last time you fed?" she said suddenly after I graduated from her Shadow Whip lesson.

"Umm, a day before I come here, why?"

"You're looking too tired for just 15 days. Your last Shadow Whip couldn't even hurt the wight. Have the lessons really wear you down that much?"

"Yes, I'm very tired. Not being able to sleep made it even worse. I know you told me earlier that I don't need sleep, but I would really love a rest," I replied, rubbing the sore spots on my arms.

"Unfortunately, we don't have time for you to rest. Maybe we'll let you go out and feed after your lessons are done," then she looked thoughtful, "But we can't go on like this. If we are to continue the lessons, you need to be at your full strength."

She looked at me curiously and then gestured me to come close. "Perhaps we can use a different method to give you more strength."

"What do you mean?"

"Do not repeat this to anyone as knowledge of this technique is too powerful to be public knowledge. It is one of the forbidden techniques used by the princes and princesses of Sheol, including me, Naamah and your matriarch Lilith," she said warily.

"What is this technique?"

She bit her lips. "Okay, you are aware of the lilim needing to feed from human men and consume ethereal energies in insufficient quantities, yes?"

I nodded.

"Well, ether is only an element, but not a source of power. To exist in Assiah, you need two sources of power: Light and Darkness. Light is often referred to as 'God's gift' which gives life to all living beings on Earth, and it is the basic building block of angels. Darkness, or void, is the most basic unit of power that binds everything in the universe together. People in Assiah calls it 'zero point energy'. While light is the more powerful of the two, darkness or void is more numerous and eternal. I will teach you how to utilize this power of the void."

She looked uncertain and a bit worried, so I asked her, "That sounds great, but there's something bothering you, isn't it?"

"This ... knowledge is too dangerous for a mere lili. Apart from giving you tremendous power, it will also destroy your body if your body proves insufficient to contain the power."

"But without it, I will have no chance of winning against Dinah?"

"Correct. While overfeeding will give you enough power initially, it will be drained quickly as Dinah has been storing her power in something similar to battery cells for the past 400 years. Without this technique, the only way you can win is to finish it in 10 minutes with all your strength, but that's impossible by itself. Continuous use of this technique will give you an unlimited power of which Dinah can't hope to match."

"So I really have no choice, don't I?"

She looked at me sympathetically. "You always have a choice, Ilyse."

"Then please, teach me. I shall decide if I need it or not."

She patted my head, the way that Mom used to do when I was a child. "Very well, but the training may be quite painful."

I shrugged. "It can't be that bad."

I was dead wrong. It hurt so bad when she pushed a Void Orb into my mouth. I could feel the globe split into many tiny pieces to open all my veins, arteries and nerve endings. As the void fragments burrowed into my brain, I realized that not even the torments in Ashmedan were as painful.

Day 17

"Okay, remember the chants that I taught you? Good. Now I want you to try it here," she said as she disappeared and reappeared a quarter of a mile away.

She must've noticed my puzzled expression because she shouted from afar, "Don't worry. Just do as I taught you, you'll be fine."

Somehow, I wasn't feeling confident, and that annoyed me. Regardless, I formed the words in my head and chanted.

[Great Darkness of the Eternal Void, hear my voice and answer my summons. Inritus Cuspis!]

Well, suffice to say it didn't end well. I was blasted far away in many separate directions in many disjointed parts.

Day 19

"Urgh! This is not going to work," she groaned, "this realm is not suitable for learning Inritus Cuspis."

"Why? What's wrong with it?" I asked, slightly tired. Since two days ago, I've been obliterated, dismembered and emboweled by the Void Point, a technique to harness the power of the vacuums of space and molecules. I wasn't a happy camper at all.

"The time difference is what's wrong. You can only gather as much power as you can in Assiah."

"I don't get you," I said while rubbing the point where my left arm was reattached after if flew away during one of my dismemberment phase.

She looked at me through the corner of her eye. "Assume that 20 days here are equal to 1 day on Earth. Assume also that in one day on Earth, you will gain 20 units of power. So when you come here, you will need 20 days to gain 20 units of power."

She groaned again. "How could I have forgotten the limitations of mortals?"

"So ... training here is actually a waste of time? I can accomplish the same thing with the equivalent time on Earth?"

"No, the reason Naamah and Agrat chose this place was not to get you to gather energy, but to gain perspective. In a place like this, your mind gets extra time to think and to understand something. However, your power levels will remain the same, probably even reduced gradually because you only consume small amounts of ether each day compared to when you were in Yenne Velt."

She sighed, "The Void is unrestricted by time, but there is a constant in time which is aligned to Assiah."

"So what now? Do we continue?"

"No, not this one. I've taught you the theories and the practices, but you must learn it on your own from now on. I do however have a technique which might be similar but equally or perhaps even more dangerous."

"Will it work?" I asked, not wanting to explode again.

"Oh yes, of course. You will only be using your own power, fused with the wild energies of Sheol and amplified by your own suffering."

"Amplified by my own suffering? I don't like what that implies."

"There is no other avenue. Without this technique, you have no chance of defeating Dinah."

I yelled in protest. "Why do I always have to suffer? You enjoy bringing me pain, don't you? I don't need to do this, I don't need all those painful lessons. You said I always have a choice. Fine! I choose to walk out of here. I'll apologize to Mother and everything will be just be FINE!"

She glared at me, but I couldn't help but feel like she was unconcerned with my protest. Instead, she said, "Conjure a ball of fire."

"Weren't you listening to me? I said I choose to leave."

"Pain is the strictest teacher. While you can learn some things without pain, some sacrifices must be made if you are to be good at what you do. Now, I'm not going to repeat it again, conjure a ball of fire."

I grudgingly acceded her command and snapped a finger above my left palm.

"You don't need any incantations for this technique. However, you will need a slight practice to fuse it with your soul."

"My soul? What do you mean, my soul?"

"Your soul will act as a catalyst. The ball of fire will engulf your soul and create a vacuum in your immediate surrounding that consumes fuel, in this case, ether into your body. Your soul will be the key to this vacuum, continuously turning fire into energy, much like a petroleum power plant on Earth."

I winced. "That would be very painful, I bet."

"Of course, but you need to learn it. I'll walk you through it step by step, so there wouldn't be any accidents."

"Oh joy..."

Day 20

"Let's do it differently," she said after I nearly scorched myself with the fireball again.

"How much different can it be? I'll still be the one in pain, won't I?" I replied, annoyed. Since yesterday, she had been carrying me step by step through the technique. Since yesterday my body kept combusting.

"I admit, I may have used the wrong method. I've never done it myself, really. It's inspired by Agrat's retelling of how the souls she tortured in Gehenna actually gained some strength and resilience from having their souls burned."

I didn't know what to say to that. My mouth simply opened to a big 'O' as I realized that I had suffered through a technique that nobody had used before. A technique she invented out of thin air.

"I want you to gather power, just like you did on the second day you were here."

"This isn't just another made up trick, is it?"

"Saturate yourself with the energy. Get the power to flow freely in your body."

"Are you even listening to me?"

"We don't have time to listen to your ramblings. Do it now."

I was very annoyed and almost decided to leave instead, but I decided to give it one more try instead and do as she said. Closing my eyes and calming myself, I slowly and constantly pulled and sucked the ether from all around me. Through my horn, into my brain, down to my heart. From my heart, the energy flowed through my veins into other parts of my body. Sometime later, I felt myself bloated with ethereal energies as the energies seeped through my pores and arced over my skin.

I opened my eyes when she started talking. "Good, now focus all that energy onto your right palm. Recall the time when you charged at me and the energy turned into frigid air. Recall how it felt, how you reached that state. Do it now."

I tried to recall that second day. That morning when she asked me to attack her with all I got. That time when I was blinded by madness that the energy turned into ice and my body charged forward like a woman possessed. I slowly focused the energy onto my palm and slowly but surely, a whitish ball of air formed over my palm. It was cold even for me.

"Condense it. Try to change the state of the air into liquid by pure pressure alone."

"Easy for you to say!" I shouted right before the ball of condensed air exploded, encasing everything in a small radius, including me, in ice.

I was only released half an hour later as Eisheth decided that I should learn how it felt to have my own power backfiring on me. She said that I needed to remember the feeling and use that knowledge to make the Soul burn work, that it was necessary for me to have a feel for my own power. I told her to stop throwing her pile of bullshit around. She didn't take that very well.

After having to fight off two of her Wights at mid skills, I caved in and told her that I surrender. It seemed like she wasn't very good at controlling her temper. I can say that for sure because even after I surrendered, she let the Wights pummel me up for awhile longer before sending them back to the shadows.

She had to heal me before the lesson could continue, though. I had numerous broken bones and some very nasty wounds that would've killed any mortal. Thank goodness I'm immortal, so it was harder for me to die. Those tiny, shy Wights can really throw a punch, though. It took them only about 10 minutes to beat me into submission. I shudder to think what a couple of Wights at high skills can do to me.

Once I was back in one piece, she instructed me to repeat the steps that I'd previously attempted before being frozen by my own power. It took awhile to gather enough power, became almost unwieldy at some point, but I did it nonetheless. Then she told me to compress it just like before.