How I Accidentally Built a Kingdom

Those words had barely fallen before a massive, very hot fireball was speeding toward me.

Apparently her rules of ’everything goes’ included surprise attacks.

Which was good to know.

When I looked at the size of that fireball I knew that the water wall I used that morning definitely wouldn’t work again.

So obviously the next choice would be to fight fire with fire.

Right?

Why would I use something like an Earth wall to keep a massive fireball away when I could use a massive wall of fire.

So that’s what I did.

Before me a wall of flames erupted from the ground, which of course meant that I lost sight of the incoming fireball, and also of Cat.

In my mind that was a good thing.

If she couldn’t see me, she couldn’t fire any more fireballs at me.

Which would have made sense if I hadn’t been stupid enough to keep standing in the same spot.

If any of you had ever heard the sound effects that animation studios on Earth used for bombs dropping from planes, then you would have understood what I heard as dozens of fireballs started flying over my wall of flames.

But that wasn’t all, they didn’t just come over the top of the wall.

No, no, no, that wouldn’t be enough for Cat.

She even sent them around the edges, curving them to the last spot she had seen me stand.

How in the hell she could control so many fireballs to that degree I had no idea.

I mean she was curving them around like that one guy was curving bullets in that one movie from Earth.

Now if any of you have ever been attacked by a shit load of fireballs, which seemed to have some sort of homing system in them you’ll know that there isn’t any time for you to stand around pondering what your enemy’s next move is going to be.

I was still dancing around, evading most of the deadly projectiles, and sending out waterballs, or fireballs of my own to intercept those I wasn’t evading.

When in the next moment a blazing person burst through, my still burning, fire wall.

What do I mean by a blazing person you ask.

What I mean is that she was literally a blazing ball of fire at that moment.

Apparently she could use flames as a sort of shield around her.

Which made her look like a human torch.

Hehe, I know you won’t get that one, but it was still good.

I was still a bit busy trying to evade or destroy all of her incoming projectiles, and now I had to deal with her too?

In a split second she was on me.

Now, I had to dodge fireballs, evade her sword strikes, stay out of reach of her still very flaming body, all while I couldn’t reach her to land any physical blows.

Pretty easy battle, right?

Definitely only a sparring match.

I leaned to the left to evade a fireball, only to lean right into her incoming scabbard.

Winded by the blow to the ribs I retreated a few feet away, attempting to create some space.

I just needed some sort of breathing room, to be able to gather my thoughts.

But apparently that was against her principles to provide for me, because as I retreated she kept following.

The swings of her scabbard became faster, and more erratic, and yet they still seemed to be controlled.

Since our match had begun I had never had the opportunity to launch one counter.

At that moment I had simply been surviving.

Eventually though, her magic attacks became less, and less.

The flames that had been surrounding her since the moment she had burst through my fire wall finally disappeared.

I assumed that her magic power had started to deplete.

Which meant that I could finally focus some more on attacking, and a lot less on defending.

I ducked under a wide swing of her scabbard, twisted into her reach, and threw a jab at her body.

Yes you heard right, a jab.

I still didn’t own a sword after all.

Which apparently also didn’t matter to Cat, since she had been using hers since the beginning of the fight.

Just before my jab could make contact, I saw her sword from the corner of my eye.

She had changed the angle and trajectory of her previous swing impossibly quickly.

It was now heading toward my arm at a rapid pace.

I had a decision to make, land a hit at the cost of my arm, or retreat.

Which according to me isn’t a very hard decision to make.

I immediately pulled back my punch, and twisted around again.

I felt the wind from her sword pass behind my back as I twisted my arm out of its path.

I had just started to feel proud of my insane reaction time, when a boot made contact with my back.

I stumbled forward, losing my balance and faceplanting into the arena floor.

"You’re focusing way too much on physical attacks, and ignoring your magic." I heard Cat say as she slowly dropped her foot back to the ground.

"You have an affinity with all of the elements," She said, approaching me slowly, doing a few practice swings with her sword. "Use it."

Once again she launched her attack right after those words fell.

She suddenly started to sprint toward me.

I hurriedly got back to my feet, and turned to face her.

When she was only a few feet away, a sudden and very unexpected fireball appeared next to her, and shot toward me.

Obviously my assumption that she was running low on magic power had been completely wrong.

Which meant that once again I had one of two choices.

Dodge the fireball heading for my face, and take a sword to the ribs, or dodge the sword, and take a fireball to the face.

It was at that moment that I decided to never play chess against Catharina.

And also that a sword to the ribs would be a lot better than a fireball to the face.

As the fireball sped past me, I felt the heavy impact of Cat’s blade to my side.

I dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Completely winded.

Extremely exhausted.

Absolutely defeated.

"Good, now let’s discuss our first session." Cat said as she came to sit down next to me.

"First session?" I heaved out.

"Of course," Cat nodded, a very unsettling grin on her face. "You didn’t think we were done, did you?"