The Nine Bishops
Chapter 47: Strains

In the many months she had spent fighting her father in her dreams, Mika had made substantial progress. She’d learned dozens of new fighting styles and finally could apply what she learned in her dreams to real life. Yet her father always won. Mika was beginning to think she would never beat him.

Somehow, she’d always thought that if she could manage to defeat him, he’d supply answers to her questions. Whenever she dared ask something, the answer was too vague to be of use, or made no sense. So, she stopped asking questions and concentrated on learning what was possible with magic.

She had learned that if she could dream it, she could do it. Mika began to use a lot of her father’s techniques, adapting his fighting style and magic skills to create her own style. When they fought, they usually used Projection, but as Mika got better, her father began to use more complex magic. He was able to do anything Mika imagined was possible.

When Mika practiced the magic in her dreams it was always easy and didn’t sap her energy. But when she trained with Manard and carried out contracts, the magic she had been using continuously in her dreams expended a lot more physical energy than she expected. As with building physical fitness, she had to train hard to become more magically fit, so she could use more taxing magic and build her endurance. She had to replace a balance between what she was learning in her dreams and what she was ready to do in the real world.

Unlike her dreams, it would sometimes take a few days to recover from using powerful magic. When Mika wasn’t sparring with Manard, she would train on her own. There wasn’t a day when she didn’t spend a few hours training, despite its tiring effects.

One night, something had changed. For the first time in her dreams, Mika was the one controlling the pace of the fight. She had trained day and night, and finally, she felt, it was paying off.

In that fight, Mika did what she had long assumed was impossible: defeat her father.

It felt almost unnatural, landing a finishing blow on him. Her father had opened himself too much in their swordplay. Mika saw an opportunity and was able to stab him through where his heart would be. Realizing she’d won, Mika stopped fighting immediately. She anxiously waited for what would happen next.

Her father was very much alive. And he wasn’t finished. Mika stared into his blue eyes as he looked into hers. He smiled, acknowledging her victory, but only for a moment. His eyes began to fade into a new color.

The next thing she knew, Mika was waking up.

She quickly got out of bed and looked into her mirror.

She saw red.

Her eyes were red and so was the stone on her neck. Slowly, they both began to fade into the blue she had grown accustomed to.

From that moment forward, Mika’s training changed. She stopped training to be a mage and started training to be an Arcane.