Shooting up, Sadi once again found herself frantically looking around, trying to figure out where she was. Eventually, her brain caught her up with what had happened and she realized that she was in an infirmary with other injured fighters from the fighting ring. She started to get up, but then a large man rushed over and held his arm out to stop her.

“Woah there, missy. Not so quick,” he said. His voice was commanding, but warm, making it very pleasant to listen to.

Sadi snarled at him, still trying to get up, but he continued to hold her in place. “Let go of me, asshole before I tear that arm of yours off,” she growled at him.

He sighed and just stared back at her. “I’m certain you could try, but you are still not fully recovered after your little episode back there, so I would highly recommend staying in bed.” He removed his arm and smirked.

Sadi was about to get up, but then a hot pain shot through her cursed eye. She clutched it, rolling around in pain. “Fuck! What the hell is happening…?!”

The man pressed his hand to her forehead, a wave of calm washing over the convulsing darkness apprentice. She sat up, still gently clutching her burning eye. She looked up at him with a look of both concern and confusions.

“Masters… fuck was that…” she muttered.

“That, it seems, is a rather unfortunate biproduct of your cursed eye,” the man replied.

“What are you talking about?”

He pulled out a clipboard, briefly studying the information on it before beginning to explain to the young girl. “Your cursed eye, if you weren’t aware, pumps a… rather extreme quantity of destruction essence directly in to your brain. It’s extremely dangerous, but it does also cause some… “positive” effects; Suppressed pain receptors, heightened rage, increased power.”

“What about those weird sparking flames?!” Sadi asked, her voice coming out a bit more panicked than she had intended it to.

The man looked through his notes again, but shook his head. “I don’t see anything in here about that, so unfortunately, I don’t have an answer.”

Sadi shook her head and quickly hopped out of the bed, about to storm off before she once again collapsed to the ground, pain overtaking her entire mind.

The man once again sighed, pressing his hand to her forehead once more. “The side effect of so much destruction essence being pumped in to your brain is that afterwards, all that pain comes flooding back through in seemingly higher quantities. You’ve been like this for a few hours now and it doesn’t seem like you’ve gotten all that much better.”

Sadi shook her head, once again trying to regain her footing, sitting against the edge of the bed. “Masters damn this… What am I supposed to do then…”

“Well, the first thing you can do is get back in to bed because you are extremely unwell. Past that, you can try and rest and let me work to stabilize your condition. Is that understood?” the man asked.

“Fine…” Sadi grumbled as she climbed back in to bed.

“There we go. That wasn’t so hard. Oh, and by the way, my name is Marqo.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sadi muttered as she started to drift off to sleep.

-

“Come on, I can take it. Hit me.”

Sadi rolled her eyes at her rather optimistic sparring partner. “Alright, but you asked for this.” She quickly rushed forwards, her arm coated in swirling dark essence. As she got closer to Marqo, her shadow expanded and began to encompass his, a single glowing purple eye opening underneath of him. As she thrust her fist at him, it disappeared and she scowled, stomping her foot, forming a small crack in the wood floor beneath her. “Fuck! Not again…!”

Marqo smiled and gave her a soft pat on the hear, ruffling her hair. “You’re making progress though. Heck, you can maintain your more powerful shadow and Demon Armament at the same time for at least a minute or so now. Just a few months ago, you couldn’t even impose that… extra power on it. What did that one guy call it?”

Sadi rolled her eyes, throwing punches at the air in front of her. “He said it was like being attacked by some kind of primal beast. But what does he know? He was a fucking coward.”

Marqo shrugged. “That may be, but you’ve got to admit, primal power has a nice ring to it.”

Sadi rolled her eyes before pressing a hand to her eye, deactivating her cursed eye. She took a deep breath, preparing herself as the pain suddenly hit her. She winced, clenching her fist and almost drawing blood from her palm as she did. “F-Fuck… Masters damn this… Stupid pain…”

Marqo gave her a somewhat concerned look as he steadied her body and then set her down against the wall of the training gym. “Hey hey… Don’t try to take it all on your own, missy… You aren’t invincible.”

Sadi chuckled softly, coughing up a small amount of purple blood in the process. “Not yet... I’m not…”

“There she is…” Marqo stood back up and smiled down at Sadi with pride. “You’ve come far kid. You better not start slacking off when I’m gone otherwise I’ll end up stronger than you.”

“Masters, you think you’re so damn funny, don’t you?” Sadi rasped.

“I am hilarious.” Marqo paused for a moment. “Seriously though, stay safe and keep practicing. I want you to grow in to the amazing apprentice I know that you can be.”

Sadi shakily made her way to her feet. “Yeah yeah. Just don’t go getting in my way. You don’t want to die.”

Marqo nodded and gave her hair one last playful tussle before heading out of the training gym. Sadi slumped back to the floor and quickly fell asleep. When she woke up, the gym was completely dark. Marqo should have been long gone by now and the only person left was the manager. Sadi stood up and made her way to the manager’s office where he would be counting the earning’s from the night.

Sadi raised a fist, but then shook her head and lowered her hand, giving three gentle knocks to the door. There was a bit of quiet rustling from inside the office before the manager arrived at the door and opened it a crack. When he saw that it was Sadi, he let out a sigh of relief and allowed the door to open completely.

“Sadi, my girl. You nearly scared me to death. I thought you were someone here to steal my money. What brings you to my office so late at night?” he asked.

Sadi smirked and pushed her way in to the office, looking around at the mountains of boxes full of files and the open safe full of money in the back corner. “Oh you know, just stopping by to have a little chat about some things.”

The manager nodded and closed the door, taking his place back behind his desk, his back to her as he continued to count the money. “What did you wish to talk about?”

“I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be leaving your little fighting ring. These last few months, I was really only staying cause I was getting training from Marqo and the fights were helping me practice, but now I’m bored and don’t really have a reason to stick around.”

The manager continued to count the money, taking a moment to think. “I see… Why are you telling me though? You simply could have left and wouldn’t have had to say anything.”

Sadi chuckled softly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I was just feeling a bit nostalgic…” As she spoke, Sadi rose from her seat, her shadow snaking around the desk and climbing up the inside of the safe. All of a sudden, spikes shot out from the walls, impaling the manager. The spikes retracted and the blood dissipated as Sadi walked around the desk. She pressed her heel in to the manager’s face until his body faded, leaving a small glowing red fire. Sadi left it and moved to the safe, securing all of the money inside, all of the earnings from the last six months. She tossed the money in to a bag and slung it over her shoulder as she stepped out of the office, leaving the soul fragment of the manager flickering inside.