There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She uses it as a metaphor or as a metaphor of speech.
Both friends decided to slit up when training so they don't think about their friendship. They also decided to "pull punches" just so they don't hurt eachother. They get ready to get into the ring leaving all feelings aside. They're in the ring and start off the fight really well.
Answer:
The Inquisition is the historical context that frames Poe’s short story.
Explanation:
The unnamed narrator has been sentenced to death and relates his violent experience, which despite being a fictional account of an unlikely event, it´s an accurate depiction of how violent the Inquisition was. In this sense, Inquisition is a great subject or setting for the genre of horror, given its explicitly violent events, which Poe enhances to conceive a suspenseful story, with only an implicit political agenda to condemn the Inquisition.
