I knew what I wanted even before he finished. It wasn't what I needed, really, because I was already closer to believing him implicitly than I was to distrusting his word, but rather what I wanted. Seeing is believing, they say, and I wanted to see just what this aura was good for, what it could be used for, and, most importantly, how this man used it. It was almost a reflex. I wanted to know if this aura of his made him better than me.

I had beaten him once. With this aura, with this outpouring of strength that he tossed at me without so much as a second thought, could he overpower me? was he so much faster, stronger, more agile, or resilient, that I became less than he was? I knew for a fact that my technical skills were at a more practiced level than his. I knew that I was naturally more suited to real combat than he was. Now I found myself wondering whether he had found a way to bypass the hard work I had poured into my skills, the mental training I had forced onto myself to condition myself for combat.

The rasp of titanium heralded the second time within so many hours than I drew my sword.

"Show me what your power can do. You can prove I have it afterwards, but I want to see your limits first."

What I kept to myself was the reason behind my wanting to see his limits. I wanted to see them, yes, to know them, but I also wanted to test them. More than anything, I found myself wishing that he was better than I was, stronger and faster and more agile and more enduring, simply to find out whether or not that made my abilities less. I wanted to test his limits, to see if, once he reached his limits, I would be able to force him to reconsider how far he was stretching himself. A dragon is a powerful beast, but a single missing scale in the impregnable armor plate would render it weakened and take its life.

"Show me," I said, a challenging smile on my lips, "Just how good you are. Don't hold it back. I want to see it all. Everything."

Dying was the worst that could happen, and it had never been proven that dying was such a bad thing. For all I knew, dying could be like sinking into a warm bath. I reminded myself that it could also be like sinking into a bath of red-hot coals and readied myself to fight. Best case scenario, I would stay alive. I put my focus on that, brought up my second sight, and gripped my sword.

"Come on, Zorlo. Let's see your aura."

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[Graphics by Me.]

"Get your facts first, and then you can
distort 'em as much as you please." ~ Mark Twain