Inside the Fire

Chapter 25: Education

Fai watches me with curiosity, she has been practicing magic the last couple of days. The majority of her practicing was feeling my power within her. You can craft a spell if you don't feel the thread of magic within you. She compared it to finding her balance, you don't know it until you feel it.
Going to her job and sitting around all day isn't what I call fun. Now that Fai has a handle on using magic, it's time to give her a target. It's one thing to cast, it's another to cast while your life is being threatened. I'm working on not being a direct threat to her, she chooses to be around me and I want to encourage that. There is only one place nearby that has the properties I need. With a little blood to animate, she'll have her sparing partner.
We stop at the ash pit, Fai looks over the empty area, wondering why we've come back here. I step down into it, I bite into a forefinger and draw into the ash, infusing the symbols with my blood. Fai watches me work my way in a large circle, puzzled.
"What are we doing here Jared?" She asks.
I finish the complicated spell, and move onto the reanimated one in the center. This will take quite a bit more blood, nothing to me comparatively, but Fai will be shocked.
"I told you you needed more practicle application of your magic. You would never learn if you don't get a moving target." I inspect the spiraled symbols on the ground, looking for flaws.
"A moving target? Here? How?" Her voice pitches in frustration with each word."
A sense of unease settles into her heart, Fai casts her eyes around the ash pit again. "You aren't going to lure anyone here are you?"
I roll my eyes at her implication, her complaining gave me enough time to notice a mistake, I scatter the ash and redraw the part.
"Whoever I summon here is willing enough." I reply.
If Fai had been able to keep my power flowing through her at a steady pace 24/7, she'd know the rage the dead of this memorial felt. Died for nothing, not considered important enough to bury properly, their remains left to scatter or be trampled on. The souls cry for vengeance and refuse to accept the embrace of their Death Goddess. Idiots. But even idiots can be useful.
"So you're summoning something," Fai mutters to herself, "Wonderful."
"Do you want to improve or not?" I snap.
She swallows, her eyes widen before she clears her throat,
"Yes." The reply comes out as a squeeze.
"Look," I sigh, "I don't know the best way to teach this, what little I know I took from someone else."
"And the only way you are learning this, is because I'm bored. Eventually you'll learn enough to be actually entertaining." I continue, "You have to trust that I'm trying my best, whenever you struggle for a reason why I'd try, please remember that I can and will find other ways to kill my boredom."
My smile is devilish, I want what I'm insinuating to be obvious.
Her eyes narrow,
"Right." The word falls flat.
I contain my anger, barely, I have to keep reminding myself that I don't want her afraid of me. Fai's condemnation is a sign of trust. Trusting that I won't react... badly. My negative emotions leave as fast as they came and I frown, thinking. The spell looks like it should work, summoning, moulding, temporary animation and senses. Can't have a blind golem.
Standing I raise a hand over the complicated rune, and pause.
"Are you ready?" I ask tentively. Speaking of trust, I want to surprise her, not frighten her. Ugh.
"I'm still confused, but-" She shrugs, "The military taught me to be ready for anything."
Hm, good enough. I let my power flow out through the palm of my hand and into the rune, the ash heating up, burning once again. A molten hand reaches out from the circle, grasping at the surrounding ash to help pull itself out. The souls roil in the liquid body, the ash reforming into bones, then flesh. It's eyeless sockets fix onto Fai, she takes a step back, her features freezing in fear.
Shit.
"Wh-what is that?" Her words are verging on panic.
"Your sparing partner." I try to smile to defuse her worry.
"Sparring partner?". She asks incredulously.
"You don't like it?"
"DO I LOOK LIKE I FUCKING LIKE IT?!" Fai shrieks while the reanimated corpse lunges for her.
I shrug waving a hand outward,
"It's this or fighting me, at least you can win this fight."
Fai rolls out of the way of the flesh golem hands, and throws a despondent look my way. "Use magic," I call to her, her staying out of the golem's hands took away from her normal hearing range.
"Normal weapons won't work!"
"How am I supposed to think!" She roars back.
"How indeed." I mutter, chuckling. "Best lessons are learned on your feet!"
She throws some ash at the golem, it leers at her, eyeless. Fai composes a spell with her hands, mouthing the words as she goes to keep track. The golem swiftly catches up to her, bending backwards to grab at her. She stutters on a word and the spell erupts from her hands so violently it briefly blows the tips of her fingers off. My magic surges into her, healing Fai of the painful injury before it could fully register in her mind.
    "This isn't teaching me anything!" She cries, tears pricking around her eyes.
    "You are fundamentally immortal." I yell back, "Take risks, they won't hurt for long if you fail."
    She hesitates for a moment, horror sinking in when she realises causing herself pain might be the only option to succeed. Glancing at me, she knows I won't intercede unless everything I'd started becomes too much of an inconvenience. Relying on only herself is not a new expiriance, but she never expected to be in soany life and death situations so close together. Fai had feared for her life more in the last couple months than she had since she'd served. Serving wasn't as bad as this either, Fai knew as long as she put enough bullets into someone's skull, they die.
    The abomination before her is something new, but maybe the base principal is the same. With enough damage, even this creature should die, right? She let it get it's hands on her then, her teeth audibly grinding as she focuses through the pain of the golem's vice like grip on her arm. She makes a few handsigns and slaps the golems, leaving it incomplete.
    Her hand erupts again with the spell failing, blowing off a chunk of the golem's face. It wretches from pain, letting her go to feel where it's face had been hurt. Fai uses it's momentary distraction to compile a spell that is the equivalent of a flame thrower. The flesh golem screams while she baths it in flame. Fai holds the spell in one hand, using her other to keep it still while she circles the golem and staying out of reach of it's frenzied attacks.
    It's not until the creature is reduced to ash, that she ends the spell. Fai falls to her knees and stares at the smoking pile while it reincorperates back into the surrounding ash.
    "In the future, if you don't think you can handle something I summon, destroy the drawn runes." I inform.
    Her eyes flash, she lurches to her feet and stomps over to me. I see the slap before she delivers it, and turn my head while it impacts my face so she doesn't hurt her hand. To her, it would look like she slapped me hard enough to swivel my face. It's the least I can do after scaring her.
    "Why, you said it's for entertainment, I don't believe you." She fumes.
    "Careful," I admonish, "You aren't making sense."
    I catch her next slap, one is enough. Fai's eyes widen, then narrow.
    "Why?!" She cries, "Why do you apologize to me, why teach me, and did you let me slap you?!"
    I release my grip on her forearm. How to honestly answer this question,
    "I don't know." I say with a shrug.
    "Do you like me?!" She insists.
    "Not particularly." I frown, was that a lie?
    "Argh!" Fai yells, throws up her hands and stomps, petulant. "So many stories passed down through my family, you are supposed to be evil incarnate!"
    My head tilts, confused.
    "Do you want me to be evil?" I smirk, and walk into her personal space. Staring down at her I lean in close, listening to her heart begin to pound, "Should I torture you?"
    I murmur seductively,
    "Or make you watch me murder innocents?" Her eyes are locked into mine, mesmerized and I curl a lock of her hair around my finger. "Shall I give you more reasons to hate me?" I purr.
    Fai gulps audibly.
    Too easy.
    "No, I think not." I drop her hair and step back from her. Eyes glazed over, a soft pink covering her face and neck. "I do think I want more though, and I'm not decided on what that more will be." I shrug noncommittally.
    Eyes filling with tears, she shakes her head side to side, incredulous.
    "You're going to destroy me."
    I frown, what is she talking about?
    "Now why would I do that?" I ask.
    "You already are." She says with a tinge of despaire. "I can't help how I feel, and you keep toying with me."
    The tears cut through the ash built up on her face,
    "My nerves are frayed enough as it is."
    Hm, everything in her body looks functional, is it a mind thing?
    "Should I fix it for you?"
    Anger etches into every line of her face,
    "Like what you did with my memories of my mother?! You do realize you have set me back in my therapy."
    "You're not in therapy." I roll my eyes.
    She huffs, folding her arms in on herself,
    "I was, but I only got the two years following my time in service. I'd like to go back, but they're waiting lists are ridiculous."
    "Why go when I can just meddle a little more? You don't like what I did, what should I do differently?"
    Fai balls her hands into fists,
    "What aren't you understanding, I don't want you in my head! No more editing my life expiriances, I had good memories with my mother too, and now the most I can feel is apathy." She holds a finger up, incase I planned on interjecting. "She was only cruel when she had to be, and she was the most loving mother outside of those moments."
    "I don't want to throw away a childhood of love and accomplishment for those brief moments of pain, understand?"
    Those moments had not been brief, I witnessed how much they had dragged on in her memory. The way her mind had cataloged the memories was opposite to what she is telling me. A childhood of pain, with brief moments of accomplishment and love. This lie is important to her, maybe I can see where I had gone wrong?
    "Why don't we do see your mother then? Make new good feeling memories?" I can hardly hide my grin.
    The blood runs from her face,
    "She doesn't want to see me."
    I strut around her, circling.
    "Oh?" I ask.
    Tremors start from deep within Fai.
    "The sword, I donated it. She wasn't happy." Fai whispers, her brain turning childlike.
    "Your mother wasn't happy you had made a decision without her permission?"
    "No!" Her voice breaks on the word, indignant, "What I did was foolish! Wrong! Obviously, the consequences are literally eight in front of me!"
    "You have me there," I chuckle, "Do you think she'll ever forgive you?"
    Fai's back straightens into a rigid posture,
    "Of course, she's my mother."
    "Of course," I nod sagely, "Who else knows where you live?"
    Face blank in confusion, she blinks rapidly.
    "No one, that was the point of me living in an old house."
    "Then how did you die?" I let the sentence drop like a dollop of cream.
    "I'm not dead." Her voice is puzzled.
    "You would have been, if I hadn't forced a contract onto you."
    I grab one of her forearms and hold her wrist up to her. "Right there," tracing where the deep cuts were.
    "Don't you remember?"
    Her eyes fill with fresh tears and Fai starts to vibrate violently.
    "I'm. Not. Dead." She insists, firm.
    So deeply in denial,
    "Suit yourself." I let her arm go, "But wouldn't you want to know, if she had tried to kill you?"
    Fai wraps her arms tightly accross her chest, trying to hold the tremors in.
    "She would never." Her voice is barely a whisper.
    "We can visit, she doesn't need to know it's us." I say gently.
    "We?" She breaths.
    "That's what I said."
    "How? She'll recognize me immediately." Fai murmurs.
    "Fai, I am not a human, but I look human. Do you really think I can't disguise us both as different humans?"
    "She'll know." Fai shakes her head, defeated.
    "We'll see about that." I smirk.