I took another deep breath, and that time Ifeltlike my arm was twisting to the side, just as I felt the pain I’d pushed at the breeder. I physically turned my arm to get the feeling right, and then pushed that into his mind. Master Aki’s eyes widened, and his hand quickly dumped the contents of the hot tea all over thetray.
“Whoop!” I shouted and jumped up, doing a little improvdance.
When I spun around, my mentor didn’t even look fazed. He simply poured another cup of hot tea and held it over his other hand. “Now try it with my absoluteresistance.”
I sank into the ground. If I got him to upend the tea, it would scald his hand. Which meant he would fight like hell againstme.
“This is going to be a long day, isn’t it?” I askedhim.
He just gave me a sadisticgrin.
Great.
* * *
Over the next two hours,I fought the man with the mental fortitude of Fort Knox. Nothing was getting past him, and he had been right. I was tired, near tears, and on the verge of hatinghim.
“If you want me to learn, then help me!” I shouted athim.
He’d resorted to propping his hands over his knees, because he couldn’t hold them up anymore, and simply met my eyes. “You know how to do this. Find my walls, push them down and assert your will!” hesnapped.
Argh!I wanted to smack that tea out of hishand.
I stood, fists clenched, and stared down at him with all the frustration I could muster. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and started to probe his energy. It was walled up and tight, keeping meout.
Screw that. No more niceKit.
I pulled my energy into myself, letting it grow, thinking about the act of him spilling that damn tea all over the place, and then I lashed out. With a scream, I opened my eyes, and pushed my energy at him. His eyes widened and his tea hand went up in the air, causing the cup to sail over my head and smash into the wall behindme.
He stood with a grin and gave me a smallbow.
“Good, now we can move on to lessontwo.”
Oh my God.“No, I need a break. I just made you chuck a teacup across the room. That’s seriously badass, and you’re not even excited. Don’t I get a gold star, a high five, orsomething?”
He gave me the same look you’d give a petulant child, then held up his palm as I high-fived it. “Now lesson two. Sensingdimensions.”
I groaned. “Sensing whaty whatnow?”
I needed coffee for this, and chocolate, and possibly mild painmedication.
“The prevailing theory is that the Dream Wars exist directly on top of us. Right now, in this room, there is probably a sentry eating a human and we can’t senseit.”
My face scrunched up as I looked around the room. That was actually super disturbing. I tried to stay away from all of the scientific theories, and just focused more on staying alive. But I was aware of theidea.
“Okay, and you think I’m going to be able to see it or something?” I was having a hard time with Master Aki’s newfound admission that he ‘saw’ things. I wanted to know everything about that. What kind of things did he see? How long had he been seeing them? And why the hell couldn’t he have toldme!
“No. You’ll do much more than that. For now I just want you to sense them. Feel the two different dimensions if you can,” he stated with absoluteseriousness.
I waved my hands out in front of me and closed my eyes, stumbling forward like a blind man. “Nope. I feel nothing. Let’s call food delivery. I’m hungry,” I told him, peeling my eyesopen.
He was giving me that sad, wounded bird look that got me everytime.
“Hey. No. No! I’ve tried your training and I want a break. You can’t make me feel bad for that,” I scoldedhim.
“Okay, Kit. Take a break if you want, but time is growing shorter by the second, and you’re the only one who can stop it,” he claimed, face stoic without a hint of humor in thereanywhere.
His words shook me. “What do youmean?”
