Dark Empathy by Archibald Bradford (inspiring books for teens TXT) 📕

mouth helplessly for a couple seconds, then threw up his hands in defeat and stalked away to yell at another group of startled trainees.

“Something I said?”

In the giant’s mind, her only role was to train Milly and to keep Nameless and her bond-sisters from getting killed while playing at being heroes.

She was a pragmatist after all.

Though as she watched the Valkyrie run circles around her master and bond-sisters she had to wonder who would prevail if she and the golden warrior ever threw down...

She pondered it for some time, watching Volka’s graceful movements, and especially watching how her shield repelled even the mightiest of Milly’s blows.

In the end she decided she didn’t want to know who would win in a fight.

Nina would die before admitting it, but Volka’s glowing sword of light unnerved her to no small degree. She could appreciate a weapon that was solid (or even one that was liquid in the case of the Undines), but one that was formed out of pure divine energy... well, she wasn’t sure how to quantify that, and for the Gigas, being unsure of anything was a deeply uncomfortable sensation.

Today though the angel was wielding a simple baton against her bond-mates instead of her magic sword.

As Nina was admired the golden blonde’s form, she saw that the practice bout was coming to a head, and she shook her head as she predicted who the winner would be.

She was wrong.

Volka knocked Erica onto her back with a twirl and a thrust from her baton, and without the Katje’s protection she easily toppled Nameless with a hard shove from her shield.

But Milly surprised her, and Nina for that matter, by ducking low when the angel turned on her and almost dancing across the floor on her knees in a circle, her padded spear sweeping out and taking Volka’s feet out from under her.

The angel tried to compensate with her wings to recover her balance, but the Minotaur pressed her advantage immediately.

Ignoring the Valkyrie’s shield entirely Milly dropped her spear and wrapped her in a bear hug.

With her arms pinned at her side and her baton lost in the scuffle Volka tried to counter by buffeting her with her wings, but the stalwart Minotaur ignored them and let her whole body go limp save for her arms.

In the end, the ancient warrior was bested not by strength of arms, but by weight of Minotaur, as she was unable to hold Milly up and ended up being dragged to the floor of the training salle.

With her so pinned, Nameless and Erica were able to recover and assist Milly in restraining their quarry so that inevitably Kavanaugh declared it was their victory.

Anyone that was looking at the Gigas when the Minotaur won the fight would have been deeply unsettled by her expression.

She was positively beaming with pride, the broad smile an uncommon sight on her face.

Meanwhile, Volka was... pouting.

“Best two out of three?” She asked hopefully, unhappy with the abrupt loss.

Erica stuck her tongue out at her.

“Sore loser!” She accused.

“Brat!” The Valkyrie threw back, likewise extending her tongue.

Nameless chuckled and Milly covered a smile.

But the instructor wasn’t through.

“That was good, you two. But she was still able to reach your tamer, if it had been a real fight with real weapons, Cadet Armstrong would likely be dead.”

It was as if he believed it was his job to take the fun out of everything.

Volka sighed as she flexed out her wings to adjust her ethereal feathers, which had gotten somewhat squashed by Milly.

“You are correct of course, Aegis. Milly, early on you were holding back far too much. Caution is good, but not if it causes you to miss a given opportunity. Erica, you have the opposite problem! You get too close, too often, if I wasn’t expecting our husband to protect your flank with those adhesive grenades, then I would have taken you out much earlier in the fight.”

Both monsters were attentive as she lectured them.

The instructor had an eyebrow raised; privately he felt a bit put-off that his job had been co-opted by the angel, but he also had to admit, again privately, that she was doing it better than he could.

Volka turned on Nameless then, a slight scowl on her face.

“And Husband, again and again, you hesitate! Not out of caution, as does Milly, but for some other reason I don’t fully understand. More than once you had me dead to rights, tied up as I was in dealing with Milly’s spear and Erica’s antics. Why did you not act?”

Nameless had a sour look on his face as she berated him.

“Don’t like the thought of hitting you with lost-tech.” He admitted sullenly after a moment.

There was a beat of silence as she mulled over what he had said, using her bond with him as well as her own empathic powers to suss out exactly why he felt that way.

She nodded slowly when she came to understand his reasoning.

“I can respect that you worry about me having to deal with the weaponry of humans again, but you must realize that the lost-tech you and the others use pales in comparison to what I have faced on the battlefield? The tools that you now wield are actually much the same as what the slavers of the Divine Republic would employ to subjugate their prey without unduly harming them.”

“That... doesn’t really make it any better.” He complained with a frown.

“But it does!” She insisted, causing his eyes to widen at the emphatic nature of her words; “To see something that was once used for evil purposes turned towards protecting the very creatures they were made to enslave is a good thing!”

At that point, Kavanaugh had given up on his job and wandered off to keep