"Attack me.""Brother, I don"t think…"
"Don"t make me repeated myself."
My brother looked at me with puppy eyes, but I kept my eyes sharp and a scowl at my face. He came to me slowly and hesitant, and seen me not move or say anything he sighs and slashed the air with his paws.
"What are you doing? Is that difficult to aim at an unmoving target?"
This time he hit me, claw marks appearing on my shoulder, and starting to leak blood.
Ding – Bleeding resistance 1
There! It worked! My brother closed his eyes and kept going for it now, so I had to put my paw on his forehead.
"Ok, ok, enough, I don"t need you to kill me now."
"Then why… why did you ask me to attack you?" He asked with a sorry expression, holding of his whines and sobs.
"I was testing a theory out, ok? So we can become stronger."
"Is… Is that so? How?"
I lick my wounds before continuing. "Apparently we can gain abilities by pus.h.i.+ng your limits."
"How so?" He looked at me, confused, turning his face upwards.
"Well, for example, we can only learn how to swim by going in the water and trying until we get it. The same way we can only learn how to speak by trying it out."
"What does that have to do with me attacking you?"
"Because my body learned that it needs to be st.u.r.dier. Now I have bleeding resistance, which means next time I won"t bleed as much or none at all."
"Hm… I think I understand."
"Now, can you show me your Fire Armor? For some reason you have it and I don"t" Probably because he is more focused in magic, perhaps he will learn those easier then I.
"Uhm." He nods.
It has been three days since he got injured, and only sleeping and eating made great amends to his wounds. I was, on the contrary, very tired, having to hunt for the both of us, but gain Fatigue Resistance 1 and Hunger Resistance 1.
That"s where my suspicions started to grow.
My brother stood, and one moment there was only a black doberman standing, next was a dark silhouette on fire, burning up a red fire from the shoulder blades to the back. So… he just puts himself on fire? Doesn"t seem like a proper armor to me, it may protect from some attacks and hurt back at the same time but there are other creatures immune to fire as well; I wouldn"t be naïve in thinking that we are the only ones that can evolve by try and error.
Ok, my turn. I try to visualize it, to copy, to light myself on the fire, but it didn"t work on me for some reason.
"How do you do it? What do you think when you are casting it?" My brother, already back to normal, answers:
"I just think that I need to protect myself, that"s all."
"When did you learn that?"
"After the attack." He completes, pointing at his shoulder, with some fur still missing from the bite.
Form of protection? Maybe because for me it doesn"t look like an armor? Or doesn"t really make me feel protected… Then what would make me feel like that? The scales that mother had? Sure, but only when we mature we can change into our h.e.l.l Form. So how…
Maybe I"m thinking wrongly about it. My brother went for the simplest way of protection, but fire had its flaws and other creatures could trespa.s.s it as well. Then how about… shadow? Not been seen is far better protection then been a fire beacon.
"Shadow Veil."
The words came naturally as my shadow grow, literally, spiraling up my paws and legs, and then I was completely cover in blackness, a shadowy figure that absorbed the light and did not let an inch of my presence pa.s.s through. My brother jumped from the spot, trotting my way with a happy expression on his snout.
"Oh my! That"s soooo cool brother!!! I cannot even see you! But you still smell." He put the paw over his nose.
I snore at that, taking of the veil. That would be a problem, but seems like stealth would be the best suited for me.
"Hha. Just because you brought this up, today we are going to the river to wash away the mud and dry blood."
"Then what brother? What are we going to do? Mother will never find us if we go too far."
Walking out of the cave, I keep my pace, focus on the objective. I didn"t want to bring down his hopes, and call me a coward, but I just said:
"Mother has a great sense of smell, she will be fine, but we need to keep moving, the humans know where we are and we need to become stronger quickly."
He nods at that, lost in thought. I stop and look him in the eye.
"We will be fine brother, as long we stick together. Didn"t we hunt a cow down on our own? We just need to keep training, than everything will became easier in the future, kay?"
He doesn"t answer, but we resume walking. Until we arrive, I was thinking; we are made of fire and shadow, so probably we cannot learn magic oppose to those, such as light and water, but I wonder if we can increase the resistance to those? Furthermore, fire and shadow had their weakness; fire depends on its strength, otherwise even earth can win against it, but shadow has only two, fire and light, but for us only light, proving to be more useful, even though there will always be a shadow even in the brightest place hm...
Hm… So at least we can try to get the resistance up right? I don"t feel that it will be a pleasant experience, considering that to get resistance from bleeding you need to bleed…
We arrived at the river, a little waterfall smoothly going from rock to rock. My dumb brother runs and makes a cannon ball – more like a belly fall - and water goes all over my face. He starts biting the little waves from the water, patting his paws to stay floating. Sigh, such a child.
(Author – But you have the same age though~ ~)
I enter calmly, holding my pace to where I could keep standing, appearing to ignore my dumb brother, but once he gets close enough I burst fire on my paws and throw water at him, making him go under the wave my explosion and movement made.
I start laughing at his expression that showed how he felt betrayed, but once he sees me snorting at him he slits his eyes in challenge.
"You…!"
He starts swimming quicker in my direction, like a lizard trying to walk, and that makes me want to provoke him more. I let a stream of fire hit the water, making a fog cover all the surrounding.
Once we cannot see anything I used my veil and sneak behind him, diving, and once I"m close enough of him I bite his paw and pull him inside the water.
Surprised he almost swallows water from his mouth, but once he sees me he through a fire ball at me, underwater!
s.h.i.+t, his Fire Ball is stronger than mine, retreat!
Once above water he keeps aiming at me, and I keep diving out of his reach. Once I"m far away from him, I let my head go out of the water only to show my tongue at him.
This time he snored, follow by a laugh.
"Big brother, you weren"t supposed to be the mature one here? You"re breaking my world view."
"What, I can have fun to, and provoking you sounds like fun to me."
We played a little longer, earning swimming skills, but once we were done, bathing under the sunlight, I started to think how we can get water resistance, or any elemental for that matter.
Not swimming, or diving… Maybe trying to keep a fire underwater? Like I said, the fire can be stronger than all other elements, if he is hot enough even ice would melt to lava… them… if I can keep a fire under those circ.u.mstances should increase both my attack and resistance, right?
Now that I think about it, can we survive lava? I mean, our Fire Resistance is level 5, is not that high if you think about it… should increase that to, thought that will be easy with my and brother concept of playing.
Thinks to do and think another day, hm.
Tonight, we hunt.