Chapter 7:

Phoenix POV:

Today our watches, through an electric shock, woke Scar and I up at 4 am. Underneath a top bar on the watch display that read '100pts (what the Crescent Moon medallion for Skill was worth) CONFIDENTIAL (I had opted not to show my name)' there was a e-mail like message that read:

From: Colonel Futon

To: Private Phoenix; Private Scar

Subject: Training

Gentlemen,

Report to the mess hall at 0415. Dress in fatigues. Today is strength and endurance testing followed by power training.

V/R

Colonel Futon

Scar looked down at his own watch, noticed the time and swore. 'Better get moving,' he said.

As we reached the mess hall at 0414, I profusely thanked my enhanced eyesight. We would have hit the walls or gotten lost without it many times on the way to the mess hall. I looked over Scar and straightened his uniform whilst he did the same for mine. We entered.

Colonel Futon was sitting on the table closest to the table eating a bowl of cereal and reading a newspaper. We walked over to him and saluted.

'Private Scar and Private Phoenix reporting for training, sir!' we said.

'At ease gentleman,' he replied,' eat up. We will be leaving in 15 minutes.'

We scrambled to our seats. The magic of this room must have somehow known we were going to have to use a lot of energy today because it gave me a plateful of scrambled eggs and bacon. I ate it quickly before drinking a glass of some green shake that tasted surprisingly good.

At 4:25, Lieutenant Cleave walked in, cheery and smiling. He greeted Colonel Futon whilst Scar and I stood at attention.

'Up early again sir?' he asked,' and who are these two Privates?'

'Oh you know me,' chuckled Colonel Futon,' and these two are my new trainees.'

'Trainees?' questioned Lieutenant Cleave, slightly disbelieving.

'Yes, that reminds me,' Colonel Futon heaved a positive mountain of files onto the table from the floor beside him,' these are all yours. Trainees, let's move out.'

Cleave's jaw dropped, eyes bulged – the true incarnation of shock. In sync with the Colonel, we turned and left the mess hall after him. Once outside, Futon broke down.

'Di-d y-you s-see his f-face!' he exclaimed.

We were at the parade ground. On the screen it read:

'1…100pts…Anonymous…Colonel'

'2…80pts… Anonymous…Lieutenant'

'3…50pts…Corporal Forest…Lieutenant'

I winked at Scar. Colonel Futon noticed the wink and saw where I was looking.

'Ah yes, Initiative Ladder. I will be helping you two in it – getting the best missions and so forth. While I cannot directly give you awards, I will guide you and help you achieve them. Now, onto testing,' announced Colonel Futon.

He led us through a series of stretches then told us to run around the entire field as many times as we could. The field was very large, easily a 3km perimeter. I was able to do the first five laps easily, legacy of a life spent running from monsters. By the 10th lap I was wearing out. By the 13th lap, Scar dropped out and I was going at half my initial speed. At the end of the 15th lap I had to stop. Colonel Futon gave me a bottle of water and a square of ambrosia.

'Well done,' he praised,' 45km in two and a quarter hours is very good for someone who has never been in formal army training before.'

Next he gave us 50 kg weights to carry as long as we could. Since I had already used a lot of energy in the running, I was tiring since the second minute whilst Scar looked fine. However, something that I had learnt over my years as a demigod was that when you felt drained, you probably were only halfway through the tank. Nevertheless, I was tired and collapsed at 15 minutes 23 seconds. Colonel Futon gave me more water and ambrosia.

It was now just past 7am and soldiers were walking by, looking curiously at the now struggling Scar, then in shock at the leader board. Scar eventually dropped the weight at a very impressive 21 minutes 16 seconds. He grinned at me – 'Muscular strength is very important on Fount.'

Colonel Futon walked us to an arena that had sand as the floor.

'What is the most important asset to be coupled with your powers?' he asked us.

'Power?' I replied, unsure of what it was.

'Skill?' replied Scar.

'It is neither power nor skill,' replied Colonel Futon,' the most important thing is imagination. Why is this? Because, no matter how powerful or skilled you are, there is always a counter for every move, every attack. How you can win is by being able to counter an opponent's every move and being able to throw moves at them that they cannot counter. Many believe, including some of my colleagues, that the solution for stopping an attack from being countered is more power. That is not always true – for example, it may require more power to get an attack through than the damage the attack actually causes, a Pyrrhic victory, or you may face an enemy who is more powerful than you. There is always someone stronger, faster, better than you. Remember that. Those who know his weaknesses and can play on them can beat even Chaos himself. Therefore, whilst knowing all the known skills and techniques and their counters is important, it is just as, if not more, important that you are able to create your own counters and attacks. The idea is to create moves, chains that cannot be deciphered or understood in the time it takes to complete them.

Millions of years ago, the only use of shadow powers was for projectiles and shields until a female assassin tried and discovered that travel through shadows was possible. During the time that no one knew how the ability worked or how to stop it, the assassin managed to kill enemies far more powerful than her, even in straight combat. That is the kind of skill I wish to, and I wish for you to, create.

However, in order to create your own skills you must first understand your powers and how they work. You must learn the skills that others have created and master them; create your own variants first. While I teach you these skills always keep in mind that the end goal is for you to create your own one-day.

Today, I am going to teach you shadow melding. It is a skill with many branches including shadow travel, involving the user and passengers to become one with the shadows. To do so…'

Colonel Futon continued on his speech, with me listening carefully. Reach for the darkness within yourself, join it and command it to do what was needed. He told us to shadow meld and run from one side of the arena to the other. There was an unbroken line of shadow along the right side from the stands. Down the middle was a row of chairs giving a broken shadow but apparently they were unrelated. I managed to join the shadow on my first try. It felt similar to when I had previously shadow travelled with Nico, but at the same time more comfortable and welcome, due to my blessing from Erebus. However, I felt a bit lost and exited, stumbling out of the shadow in the same place.

'Well done,' applauded Futon,' now why did you come out?'

'I felt lost and did not know which way to go,' I answered, feeling ashamed.

He smiled,' that's okay – you just have to command the shadows to guide you where you want to go and then trust their directions. If you do not, then trust any other senses you may have – you have water powers correct?' I nod.

'Then you can feel the water around you to tell where you are and how far you have gone,' lectured Colonel Futon.

I had never tried that before, but now it seemed like a fairly obvious skill. I suppose that's what happens when one only uses hurricanes and tidal waves all the time as a trump card. Colonel Futon said that his advice applies to all powers. Whilst I had never exclusively trained with my waterpowers before, my connection and understanding of water and the oceans was strong.

By lunchtime, we had covered another skill – shadow moulding, which was basically shaping opaque shadow into tangible objects. Colonel Fotun started off with weapons then onto clothes. He said as the caster becomes more skilled the created objects would be longer lasting, more elaborate and stronger. I could only create a simple grey t-shirt whilst Scar had created a jacket with the sign of Erebus emblazoned on the back. After finishing his grilled meat (I didn't know what it was) salad, Colonel announced that we had the rest of the day off as he had Colonel duties to attend to. However, he had a 'gift' for us.

'These two wristbands have magic to make your body feel as if it was 10 kg heavier. Each day, starting from today, it will gain 10 kg in weight. This will help you build up strength and endurance. Keep it on at all times – I will know if you take it off. You two have the day off, but I would like it if you continued to train,' he told us as he began to walk away.

Scar and I looked at each other in horror. The first three or four days would be okay, but then it would be hell.

Scar has decided to go to a weights training room to get used to the weights that we will soon be carrying. I opt to train my powers a bit, returning to the arena. I begin with creating a rock out of shadow and putting it through a hammer machine to test how much power it would take to break. Once it reached 40 hammer blows for a crack to appear, I focused on changing the colour. This was possible through the fact that colour was just a reflection of light and my shadow powers could determine which colours were reflected and which weren't. Then I returned to shadow travelling. I tried to build up endurance by shadow travelling multiple times. I soon hit a problem – I became very dizzy very quickly. Sitting down to think about it, I realised that, while I did imagine the location in my head, I did not get my body and senses ready to accept it. This would require me to imagine a location by sight, but by hearing, taste and smell and touch as well. However, I couldn't imagine them as quickly. I came up with another ingenious solution (my old friends would be dying of laughter right now – Percy… ingenious? What a riot) – to get my senses to record all the information about a place so that once I imagined how it looked like, my senses would automatically know what they should sense. I tried this with locations around the arena, drinking in as much as possible for a few hours. By the time I was onto my 250th location, I could record everything in less than a second and even how it would be like from another angle. This would give me incredible spatial awareness, I realised. When another soldier stepped in on the other side of the arena, I could sense the change with my senses despite me looking the other way. Now I was ready. I looked down at my watch – 4pm – only took me over 3 hours.

I sat down heavily in one of the chairs running down the arena, stared at the broken shadow they made on the floor. I wondered if I could shadow travel through each one from one side to the end extremely quickly. I tried it and it worked. Interested, I grabbed a sword from a rack in the corner, not a well balanced as mine, but good enough. Every time I popped out of a shadow, I let my arm extended and swung out. Seeing as this was still easy, I arranged 6 chairs in a tight circle and placed a dummy in the middle. As I shadow travelled between chairs, I struck at the dummy. Seeing the potential of this, I timed how many strikes I could get in 10 seconds. I counted over 50. At one hit per travel, no flit, that was sure to be a new record. This new technique would be called shadow flitting (PJ2015©)(AN: Percy is 22 in this story – he was born in 1993).

But for now, I really need to eat dinner and go to bed.

Hope you like the story so far. Many thanks to all those that have reviewed - your support is greatly appreciated. SR52.