Dragon Horse

The first technique Aroon's grandfather teaches her is how to take a hit. The only way to strengthen a sword is to keep beating and beating the blade. His knee slams into her solar plexus, sucking all the air out of her lungs and squeezing enough tears out of her eyes to blur her vision in one swift move.

Khao Chiang, the diagonal knee strike.

Aroon backs up against the white and blue ropes on each side of the black square arena.

"Know this, Aroon," he says as he advances on her. "The sky may bear witness for you, but it will not save you."

"My comrades will," she coughs out. She holds her fists up, one in front of her face and one at chest level, but her grandfather’s punch weaves through them and strikes under her elbows, right in the ribs.

Mat Yaep, the jab.

When Aroon lowers her hand to grab her bruised intercostal muscles, his knuckles crash into her chin.

Mat Tawad, the hook.

Aroon trips over her own feet and tumbles to the foam floor. It stinks from her sweat and sticks to her palms because of the blood dripping from her broken nose. Its metallic tang mixes with the salt of her tears as she wipes it off with the back of her wrist, smearing it all over her cheek. Over the years, the sting has become her best comrade, but the warmth still sickens her.

"And if they are too late to stop the enemy from taking your weapon as a trophy," her grandfather shouts, "from taking your life?" Every word hits her harder than his knee, fist, elbow, shin, or foot ever could. "Stand up."

His shadow seeps into the corner of Aroon's blackened, swollen eye. She blinks, and it transforms into that of a woman dashing towards a wounded Arctolean soldier. Only to step on a pressure plate and shatter in a landmine's smoke.

Then, her grandfather's knee slams into her solar plexus. Again. And again. And again. Her sides scream, but not as loudly as he screams at her.

"You think your enemies will give you time to get up?"

She squeezes her eyes shut, forcing the picture at the epicenter of her hippocampus to clear. A body bag. Her hands, not yet calloused, unzipping it. Her father’s mandible, smashed in by the butt of a Sub-Equatet’s rifle, and his skull is blasted open by their bullet.

"Stand up, now!"

"You're right," Aroon grits out, hooking the shadow's leg with her heel and dragging him onto the ground. "The sky won't save me."

"It didn't save my mother, and it didn't save my father —" she rolls onto her feet and stomps down on the shadow's side, his stomach, and his head "—but know this: the sea won't save the subquates from me!"

She staggers away from her grandfather, every inhale a whistle, and every exhale a wheeze.

He slowly sits up, muttering under his breath.

Aroon leans back against the ropes, her brow furrowed, his words blurred by the buzzing in her temples.

"What was that, old man?" she snaps, cracking her knuckles. "Didn't I hit you everywhere but your larynx? Or did you shout yourself hoarse?"

"Your father..."

Aroon's shoulders loosen.

"...his codename is – was Wukong."

Sun Wukong. The Monkey King. Strong. Wise.

At the epicenter of her hippocampus, the combat medic pulls up the zipper of the body bag, the white plastic rippling over what used to be her father’s face.

Unkillable.

"It's a stupid codename." Aroon pulls her elbows in and raises her fists.

"It fits you, too." Her grandfather gives her a grisly, gap-toothed grin. "Clumsy, reckless, no respect for your superiors, and always making the same mistake."

"And what's that?"

"He could knock me down, but he didn't have the nerve to knock me out." He leaps to his feet and lunges at her.

So, Aroon shifts her feet slightly wider than the span of her stiffened shoulders, sucks in her stomach, and braces for the next blow.