Nend Ardhon Chronicles - Complete

Chapter 23.1 – Gymnastics swordfight – part 1.1

Nayima joined the other students and sat on the ground against the wall at the right, wondering what all that mockery between those two was. There is no way they were going to fight while blindfolded; no one does that.

The Teacher went to the back wall, and from there, he brought two long swords made of wood and two dark bags that he quickly emptied and put on Byia’s and Guyi’s heads, binding them around their necks really tight.

He guided them to the middle of the Gym and made them do a couple of turns before releasing them. The Teacher went to join the other students, and at his order to ‘Start!’, Guyi slowly turned around, trying to sense where Byia was, while Byia was completely still with her left side facing Guyi.

When no one was expecting it, Byia shouted, instead of remaining silent, to hide her presence, “Come on, this is getting boring! Do something! I want to hit you!”

Guyi smiled under the bag, and with a powerful push of his tail, he went straight at Byia, who was still facing the other way. Byia easily avoided a straight s***h by just tilting her head sideways and made a straight attack to Guyi’s belly, making him do a twirl to the left to avoid her sword. It was useless because he got hit on his forehead by Byia’s tail, making him back away completely dizzy.

He shouted, a little angry, making the other students wonder how he knew what hit him. “Hey! Stop that! I know your mother taught you that using your tail to hit someone in the head with such strength is rude!”

“Shut up and come here, you!”

Byia dashed straight forward, going to his head. Guyi made a back twirl and kicked her snout, making her back away and rub it a little annoyed. “You brat, you kicked me, didn’t you? All right, enough fooling around; you asked for this!”

A fast set of straight slashes with her sword, mixed with kicks to his chest and tail whips to Guyi’s head, made him work hard not to be hit with too much strength. He managed to hit Byia a couple of times, but his head was starting to hurt with so many tail hits.

Every time he dodged one kick or one s***h from Byia’s sword, he would get a tail slap. Over and over, for several minutes, tail slap after tail slap was making a tool on Guyi’s endurance. He finally backed away to get his breath and shouted, “Stop that! My head hurts! That’s it! You are f*******n to use your tail!”

“Meanie! You know how much I like to hit you with it! Okay, punches will have to suffice! Come here, you!”

Guyi threw a side s***h, only to be fended off by her sword, which made him go to the right side along with his sword and get a strong punch directly at his nose. A second punch on his chest was followed by a hit by Byia’s sword hilt and a downward s***h that he had to quickly defend by placing his sword horizontally and grabbing it with both hands, leaving his chest wide open for another punch, followed by two kicks and another hit by Byia’s sword hilt in such quick succession that even the Teacher had problems following it.

Nayima gulped at the strength those two were putting into their fight and the realization that their speed was way above hers.

The Teacher spoke when Guyi managed to avoid another s***h at his head by backing away: “She is fast! If Guyi wasn’t so good, he would be knocked down already, only by Byia’s first strikes! And if they were using real swords, there would be a lot of blood here! Those two are dangerous! Nayima, you better not have another idea like this, because next time I won’t help you, and you will be the one in there being massacred!”

Nayima slowly nodded, not only with the realization the Teacher noticed what her plan was but also by seeing such a scary fight that could very well send her to the Hospital if she were the one fighting against any of them.

The noise of the swords clashing against each other made Nayima look at Byia again, and she saw her tilting her head to avoid another s***h and punching Guyi right after, straight to the middle of the bag that was covering his head.

A quick succession of punches, kicks to the chest, and hits from Byia’s sword continued hitting Guyi, and he was doing his best to avoid it.

Suddenly, Guyi threw his sword to the side, grabbed Byia’s sword with one hand, and pulled her in, bumping hard on her head with his. He then grabbed his sword again and went behind her, squeezing his sword against her neck. She immediately stopped struggling and shouted, “Argh! You fooled me! You pretended to be losing just for me to lower my guard! I hate you so much right now!”

Guyi let her go and removed the bag from his head. He was all smiles, with his face covered in blood that the water was washing away, and an eye closed with a nasty cut. His face was a mesh of wounds, cuts, blood, and broken teeth, but he was smiling, “Gotcha! You still have a long way to go, my dear student! It was foolish of you to go against your Master! Bow to me and pay up!”

Byia made a serious face and made a deep bow that surprised the other students. “Thank you, Master. This was a good fight. You won fair and square. Here, let me heal you… ‘slànachadh’… and here too… ‘slànachadh’… Put your teeth in place, will you?”

Guyi quickly searched the bag for his teeth, and while placing them in his mouth again, Byia used her Magic to glue them in the holes in Guyi’s gum.

The Teacher approached them and used his paws to push the blooded water away while asking, “Are you alright, Guyi? Your face was a complete mess! You won, but you looked like you lost really badly, and if those were real swords…”

“Yeah, now you see why I said real swords would be dangerous? Byia gets a little crazy with a sword in her hands; that’s why she normally doesn’t use any weapons. She is dangerous enough, completely unarmed and only with her Magic, but with a weapon, she is deadly. I only won because I made a desperate move; she was about to knock me out. I almost passed out when I hit her with my forehead, and it was only by luck that I didn’t faint. It’s rather funny; Nayima keeps underestimating Byia, and she is always trying to make a trap to get her. Stupid fool, she really doesn’t know who she is dealing with, does she? I thought her last loss in here or the fact that her uncle was plundered at the Principal’s office was enough to make her realize how stupid it is to go after Byia, but I guess she is only pretty, and her brain doesn’t work very well.”

Nayima opened her mouth to speak, but Guyi interrupted her, making the other students muffle their laughter. “What, you are going to invent an excuse right now? Everyone saw that you were very happy with the chance to fight Byia with a real sword! Don’t tell me you don’t see how lucky you were to not fight her! Damn, you sure are stupid, aren’t you?”

Nayima turned away, going to join her two friends who were always following her, and even those two had to disguise their smiles. Guyi tilted his head and mumbled, “Stupid spoiled brat. She is rather beautiful, and it’s a shame she is such a moron. So, Teacher, wooden swords for everyone? Who shall I fight now?”

The Teacher stopped throwing wooden swords to the other students and glanced at him while grabbing more swords from the wall. “What, you are not tired after all that? Weren’t you almost fainting a few moments ago?”

“Yeah, but Byia’s Healing Magic is very powerful, and I am not tired now. I could fight with Lodon for a while; he needs to learn a few moves with a sword.”

The Teacher gave one sword to Lodon and said, “That’s okay with me. Less for me to do. Byia, do you mind teaching some moves to your classmates? I could take a time off right now because watching your fight was nerve-wracking.”

“I suppose, but I don’t know if anyone wants to learn with me how…”

Before she could finish, a bunch of young males were near her, and a few girls were near Guyi, asking him to teach them. Only Nayima and her two friends didn’t budge, and Guyi winked at her. “Come on, Nayima, I won’t bite! Who knows, I might teach you one or two things so that you can last more than a couple of seconds on your next fight with Byia without losing one arm!”

Nayima spoke with so much anger that she almost spat, “I am not as useless as you may think! I trained with a bunch of fighting instructors! They all said I was very talented! I could easily hit you a couple of times without breaking a sweat!”

Guyi stared at her with his mouth wide open. After strongly shaking his head to wake up, he asked, making the other students burst into laughter, “No way, after what you saw right here do you still think that? Man, you sure are stupid! What is inside that pretty head of yours? I don’t believe such a beautiful female like you is so stupid! I fought with Byia, blindfolded! Can you at least imagine what I would do if I could see properly? I was fighting only by hearing her movements and feeling the movements of the water! Did you ever try doing that? I bet if it were you, you wouldn’t even find your way out of this Gym! Get away from me! Your stupidity makes me feel dumb!”

Guyi faced Lodon without believing what he just heard: “This is strange; why is she still so full of herself? She is crazy, or is she just unbelievably stupid? She is even worse than you!”

Lodon pointed at the red-faced Nayima, making everyone around laugh again. “Hey, don’t compare me to her! I may be less smart than you, but I am not stupid like her! At least I know I am not good with weapons, and I want to learn! By the way, is it just me, or have you said a few times that you think she is beautiful? Guyi, do you like her or what? Ask her out; maybe she likes you too and becomes your pretty girlfriend!”

“Are you nuts? Do you really think I like her? Even you can very well see that she is beautiful, like many young males in this School who are always staring at her but saying that she is beautiful and liking her are two different things! Especially after finding out how dumb she is!”

While the students were laughing, Nayima bumped her tail on the ground a few times, really annoyed, and began to shout, “Stop calling me dumb or stupid, you piece of manure! You would be very lucky if I ever let you be near me! There is no way that I would like you, especially not after you called me dumb so many times!”

Guyi quickly approached her and stopped very near her face, with his lips almost touching hers, and spoke with a sweet voice, “Don’t say that, beautiful Nayima, or you will break my heart. Who knows, I might make you extremely happy, and you could love me forever and ever!”

Nayima blinked a few times and turned bright red, unable to say a thing. Guyi backed away and looked at Lodon again. “If I liked her, I could do things like that, right? Maybe with a kiss or two, right? Did you see me kissing her, you dumbass? How can you say I like her? I would rather kiss you! Let’s go. I want to hit you a few times. Your mocking smile is annoying me so much that I just want to hurt you!”

Guyi went with Lodon to one free spot of the gym with a few females following them, and Nayima stayed near her two friends, unable to take her eyes from him and feeling her heart pumping as if it were trying to come out of her chest.

She couldn’t understand why she was unable to avert her eyes, nor why the other girls near Guyi were annoying her so much. Nayima kept practicing a few sword movements with her two friends, glancing at Guyi and his group once or twice. Byia was on her right side with a sizeable group of males and a few females, showing some defensive maneuvers, and she made a slight smile when she noticed Nayima glancing at Guyi.