Year X781
Today, I woke up knowing it would be one of the most exciting and saddest days of my life. Yesterday, Lamia finally recovered her full power. Which means she is leaving. Today isn't all dreary though, because today is my final test with Lamia as my master. Although that is exciting, it can't stop this deep, empty feeling I have in the pit of my stomach.
Today must be perfect so I pull myself together and swallow my feelings. After I'm done getting ready and warmed up, I meet Lamia in our training field. As soon as I see her I have that feeling again, so push it right back down in my stomach. I can't let her see me like this, I thought. With that in mind, I fixed my face with a gentle smile for her. She returns the smile and beckons me forward.
With a smile she says "you've come ssso far my boy, shall we sssee how much further you have to go."
I shoot her a look of determination and say "don't be surprised when I whoop your ass."
"Boy it'll be 1,000 yearsss before you even reach half my power."
"We'll see about that."
"Alright kid, if you wanna dig your own grave that's fine by me, let'sss do thisss."
Once she finishes speaking, I launch a kick at her face. She dodges effortlessly, but I use the momentum from the kick and swing my fist to the side of her face. She bats me down to the ground with her tail before my punch can connect. When I get to my feet I can see that she's glaring at me.
"Enough playing around boy, fight how I taught you" she sneered
"I was just messing with you master, now let's get started."
I close my eyes and focus as I gather my magic. Soon a bright white aura envelops me, even making my eyes glow white.
"Interstellar Arts: Stars Radiance!"
With my muscles strengthened by stars' radiance, I launch myself forward and throw a kick at Lamia. She dodges, and it misses by mere inches as air ripples along my leg. I land on the ground and take a fighting stance as the grass burns from stars' radiance.
"This good enough."
She contorted her face into a sly grin and said "It'sss perfect Mosss, now hit me with everything you got!"
"Very well" I say, as I raise my hand and focus my star aura into my pointer finger.
"Interstellar Arts: Shooting Star!"
A ball of blinding white light shoots from my finger, and Lamia dodges it fast. Only to be bombarded with 5 more shots narrowly doing every single one. When she looks back to where I was standing, I'm not there.
I used the shots as a distraction so I could get close to her, I knew this would be my only shot at getting close, so I touched the base of her tail.
"Interstellar Arts: Devastation Core!"
I quickly jumped away, now having enacted my plan. Right on cue everything near Lamia starts to gravitate towards her, rocks, branches, leaves, and most importantly, my shooting stars.
I shoot a hail of shooting stars, which she dodges with annoyance evident on her face. "Fine Moss, let's play." She starts to match all my shooting stars with her own. Soon after she deals with all my stars, I stand there panting. Only to feel a shiver go down my spine as she activates her star's radiance.
"No fair" I say with a despairing tone.
"All'sss fair when you're a god." She says as she whips her tail out at blinding speed. It whacks me in the chest and send me flying across the field. I gasped for air as I picked myself up, alright time for plan B.
After I wiped some blood from my lip, I started to bombard her with shooting stars again. She's sneering as she says "I didn't raissse a one trick pony."
I stay silent and focus on my task. First, I gather a ton of magic power into my hand. Then I point it right at Lamia's face, and fire. I can tell she thinks it's just one of my regular shooting stars, but then her face twists with surprise. too bad it's too late, I think to myself.
"Interstellar Arts: Super Nova."
Just like that inches away from her face, my shooting star explodes. I know it won't actually hurt her, but the distraction helps me slip away. As the smoke clears I can see a satisfied look on her face. Followed by a big grin as she realizes I'm gone.
As she was distracted, I used star's radiance to run as fast as I could towards a 50 ft wide boulder that I chiseled out the side of a mountain. Once I reached my destination, I put my hand on the boulder and channeled some magic.
"Interstellar Magic: Zero Gravity"
Just like that, the boulder was weightless. So I picked it up and ran behind Lamia from a safe distance so she wouldn't notice me. I got into an athletic stance, digging my heels into the ground. Then I launched the boulder, aiming it at Lamia's face.
Once the boulder was close enough Lamia noticed it and turned around. She seemed confused that I would launch a giant boulder at her. Considering it probably wouldn't even faze her. So she lifted her tail and smashed it, breaking it into a million pieces. Only to be staring wide eyed at a flying moss right behind it.
I finally got in close range, moss thought. Right before my first attack I channeled stars radiance throughout my whole body. Then I launched a flurry of attacks directly at her face. She was quick to dodge most of them but a few punches met their mark.
Allas, my surprise was too short lived, because she started sending coordinated attacks at me using stars radiance. I could dodge most of them, but it was getting harder. I'm not used to dodging while flying. Since I'm using zero gravity, I'm basically just floating while shooting star fire from my feet. So it is really hard to direct myself.
While I dodged, I tried to besiege her with as many shooting stars as I could. They weren't my most powerful shooting stars since I was focusing on quantity over quality, yet they seemed to get the job done. They obviously did no damage to Lamia but they still probably hurt like little mosquito bites all over her body.
Her annoyance only grew with every shooting star. So much so that an opening to attack would soon approach, I thought. Which turned out to be true as her dodges got sloppy the angrier she got and a loan shooting star struck her in the eye. She yelled in pain and irritation, and I knew this was my opening. So I pulled as much magic as I could into my hand without it exploding and channeled stars radiance.
I pulled back my fist and unleashed a massive strike on the tip of her nose. Her whole head shot back on impact of the blow. That's when I felt it, true terror. I knew I should run but I was frozen in place. What I could only assume is blood lust radiated from every pore of Lamia's body. She pulled her head up and looked me in my eyes, then all I saw was black.
My eyes were halfway open, and I could see a blurry Lamia with a with a sorrowful expression. In a daze I said "Hey Lamia, why are you sad?"
She perked when she realized I was awake. She looked down at me with a look of regret, as I felt a small drop of water land on my face. It startled me so I became alert and fully opened my eyes only to see that Lamia was crying. I couldn't believe it, ive never seen her cry before.
"Child, im ssso sssorry for h…hurting you." I was stunned into silence at her crying face. A tear ran down my face, and overcome by emotion I knew I had to say something. So I put my hand on her cheek and say "please don't cry Lamia. I hate to see you like this, because your the person that made me want to livein the first place. So please stop crying."
She seemed to show a small smile on her face."dear child, I wish you'd live for much more than just me. I raised you because I sssaw sssomething ssspecial in you, but the fact that you don't sssee that truly hurtsss me.
"I don't know if I know what you mean Lamia."
"Mosss sssomeday, there will be people who will ssshow you exactly what I mean. I just hope you lisssten to them."
"Well I guess I'll figure it out one day, but anyways im glad you stopped crying." I say with a smile.
"You alwaysss know how to make me sssmile dear boy."
"Hey Lamia?"
"Yes mosss"
"Your way to intense when we fight"
Lamia burst out laughing "HHAHHAHA yes mosss thats alwaysss been a problem of mine. Many have sssaid it's like I ssswitch to a different persssonality in battle."
"Ain't that the truth." I say as we both burst into laughter.
After our laughing fit I looked at her with a disappointed expression. "So im guessing I failed then." I say with melancholy.
"What gave you that impresssion mosss."
"Probably, the whole getting knocked out thing." I said with confusion in my tone.
"HAHAAHAH child did you think you actually had a chance at winning."
"Well now ive lost all confidence."
After her laughing died down she spoke again "im sssorry for laughing mosss, but I used only around 1% of my power when I fought you.". I was dumbstruck with realization, my mouth hung open in disbelief. She clocked my expression and spoke "Well don't feel bad mosss, you pushed me into using 2% after all."
"Wow that make me feel all better." I said in a sarcastic tone.
"Mosss for all its worth, you are very ssstrong for your age in this world, monsstroussly ssso."
That empty feeling I had started to boil out of me. So with a sad expression, I looked at Lamia "So since im strong enough, that means...you're gonna leave, aren't you."
"Asss much asss it hurtsss me, yesss I'll have to leave. I have much unfinished bussinesss with certain people you could sssay. But mosss I want you to know that even though you'll be sssad for a time, I know for a fact sssomeone like you will find good people to call family one day."
"But I want to stay with you, let me come with you." I said desperately.
With a regretful look she said "Im sssorry Mosss, but my enemiesss are to ssstrong and I could never forgive myssself if sssomething happened to you." now I feel selfish for asking something like that out of her after all she's done for me. Ive grown to dependant on her I need to show her I'll be fine even if she's not around.
So I give her the brightest and most confident smile I can and say "I'll grow so strong that nothing will be able to hurt me, and one day I'll come find you again Mom."
Tears started to stream down Lamia's face "I'll be waiting ssson."
She brought her forehead down to mine, and we just basked in that moment for a while. A moment I'll never forget as long as I live.
Afterward, we feasted, laughed, and reminisced on old memories. All up until she had to go. She gave me a look of happiness reassuring me that she'd be ok. I shot her my most confident glare, telling her I'd see her again.
Then she left, shooting into the sky like a star. Then i was alone once again. That feeling of emptiness started to creep up once again, but it was beat out by the confidence and love Lamia had instilled in me.
"Now it's time to get stronger."