One moment, she was midair, charging, springing--she couldn't quite remember, and wouldn't, in retrospect. "It was all a blur" was such a cliche but it was truth. The adrenaline-shot battle took all sense and reason and replaced it with fleeting impressions and sharp sensations.

The impression: the skull-face of the Sentinel turning, his eyes catching hers, his arm coming up--those wicked blades on his arms slashing for her. The realization, too late, that her momentum would carry her directly into his strike.

The sensation: pain, as she flinched away, the jerk of her face saving her eyes but still, those spikes ripped straight across her skull, her jaw, her neck and chest. Searing heat tore at her flesh, and she felt the hot spill of Oil-blood down her front.

Words--retroactively heard and recognized--piled in on top of it all, and she paused to blink and take a breath as time seemed to catch up with itself.

Shit, she thought--this lesson had taught her, all in a rush of sudden, fight-ending violence and pain--that she was not nearly the fighter that she'd thought she was.

She reached for her magic, again--to draw it back, to press it into her wounds, to knit the worst of it with the searing touch of her own corruption. She could feel it working, if weakly and only briefly, as she stumbled back.

"Done," she agreed, fighting the pain that was quickly escalating into agony. She'd never really been wounded, before, and this--this new heat tearing at her face, her scalp--she hated it.

It frightened her.

Teal eyes lifted to the Sentinel, stunned and wide, and she took another step backward, away from him. Tongue lashed out, caught beads of black dripping down her teeth, swept them back into her maw. "It-..." she began, hoarsely, struggling to regain her composure past thumping heart and rasping breaths. "-was useful."

Round: 9/9
Attempt: Recover
Defense:
Injuries: Torn/bruised face and chest

Character: The Sentinel Age: +9 (9th Cycle) Magic Level: +5 (Transcendent Brawler) ROUND 1 Attempt: +13 Penalties: - ROUND 2 Attempt: +6 Penalties: - ROUND 3 Attempt: +1 Penalties: - ROUND 4 Attempt: +2 Penalties: - ROUND 5 Attempt: +9 Penalties: - ROUND 6 Attempt: +16 Penalties: - ROUND 7 Attempt: +18 Penalties: - ROUND 8 Attempt: +9 Penalties: - ROUND 9 Attempt: +12 Penalties: - Total: 100

Character: Obieth Age: +3 (3rd Cycle) Magic Level: +3 (Pupil) ROUND 1 Attempt: +18 Penalties: - ROUND 2 Attempt: +5 Penalties: - ROUND 3 Attempt: +3 Penalties: - ROUND 4 Attempt: +7 Penalties: - ROUND 5 Attempt: +19 Penalties: - ROUND 6 Attempt: +5 Penalties: - ROUND 7 Attempt: +13 Penalties: - ROUND 8 Attempt: +4 Penalties: - ROUND 9 Attempt: +10 Penalties: - Total: 90

WINNER: The Sentinel

He came upright fully, and assessed himself.

Bruised. Sore. But not truly injured. And Obieth-?

He took quick visual stock of her, of her flinching cringe and her dripping blood, and decided that she had come off worse by far. "It bears advice," he informed her, "if she would hear it."

The Sentinel was, even as Obieth healed herself, reaching for his own magic: a magic he had learned after the damage to his ribs, after much practice in the attempt to mend them. He touched upon it now, again, half-requesting that it mend his mild damage.

"Lessons, however, learned. It was convinced," he added, peering at her keenly, "that she would flee left. Yet she did not. Was this her doing?" he asked, and for now, at least, he had "her" down pat.

As he spoke, the worst of his pain faded--the bruised ribs knitting just a little more. His gemstone hadn't chipped, at least--lucky, given how he'd landed; he supposed it was a little tougher than whatever the floor here was made up of.

He was smarter than she'd thought.

She'd underestimated him three times, now: once when she'd tried to grip his mind, again in their spar (she hadn't expected to win, easily or otherwise, but his speed and savagery had still surprised her) and now, when his observation struck truth.

"It was me," she confirmed, and then hesitated--he had threatened her, told her not to use her magic on him. That hadn't counted in the spar, right-? She hadn't even thought about it-...

"I'll take any advice." This, blurted quickly, to forestall any anger about her magic. It was truth, too. She would take any advice, though not necessarily at face value--she'd turn it over and examine it, and take to heart anything genuinely useful.

She was realizing, though, a little glumly, that she didn't hold the same level of power as some others had--hers was a magic of chaotic control (not even reliable) rather than true destruction. She didn't bear flames or electricity or the shattering of earth underfoot to swallow whole and consume her enemies--she could only banish them, suffocate them, crush them to the ground, blind them--convince them, even, not to fight. But simple death-?

It would be... difficult.

She would, she finally resolved, need to learn to use her claws--and for that, she would need practice. If she'd had that, she might not have leapt for the Sentinel's rising arm-blades.

He picked his halberd up off the floor and turned to face her, settling back into his familiar stance.

"It did not do... enough," he began. "The Sentinel does not know if it" (they were back on "it" terms now, apparently) "failed. Or if it did not try. But gaps of time, filled with nothing, could be filled with death."

She had given him too much time to act: time he had spent running to close the distance between them, time when her magic should have lashed out and torn at him with violent abandon.

"It requires practice. The Sentinel suggests that it spar with many. Its responses were slow. Clumsy. It is still learning. It must learn more," he went on. It had been clear from her bumbling fighting--her unfamiliarity with how to react to something so simple as a charging opponent--that she had not been in many fights. "When it has been in a situation, it will learn it. Adapt to it. Know how to greet it should it rise again."

He paused.

This was, for him, bordering on a real speech: rarely did so many words tumble from his skull-like maw. The Sentinel was thinking back over the fight, trying to imagine anything else specific he could point out to Obieth, to help her to improve.

There were good points; he ought, he thought, to address those as well.

"It was wise to use the stone as cover. What lies around it may aid or hinder." He wondered, briefly, if his faceplanting over a rock had also been her doing; had she raised it into his path? Blinded his mind so as not to even see it? He didn't bring it up--it didn't matter now. "To take the Sentinel into the Void is wise. It used this power well. He was taken away, drawn from this realm into another, just before he struck. It is good. It may be better. Claws or flame or holes beneath where it will emerge." He, himself, bore this magic; he'd used it in a similar way against Master Vargas in a spar.

He paused, again; considered.

"It can think of nothing more," he finished.

She fought to pay his words full attention past the pain. And she did find value in them--at least, what she could understand of them.

"Failed," she answered curtly, and then offered a bit of elaboration. "It is as Overseer Cain has said--my magic didn't always come." The words were spoken with grim disappointment: she'd hoped that, with practice, she would simply never fail. If that had been the case, she'd have crushed the Sentinel to the ground and kept him there, and that would (she assumed) have been that.

But--spar more, for experience. He's right on that. Use the terrain, she added to herself, taking mental notes. Learn more traps to ready for when they're in the Void.
Yes-... she could do those things. And spar more. If there was one lesson to take away, it was this one; the most basic of attacks had left her scrambling for a response. If she were to be a truly useful bodyguard to Aethril, she'd need more than instincts to rely upon. She'd still need those, of course; as Cain said, there was too much magic out there to learn to prepare against it all. But she still needed some known, practiced answers to at least common sorts of attacks.

Like how to deal with a giant brute charging at you, she reasoned, wryly. Well--there was always the Void, for that, and if she were using her terrain correctly (assuming it wasn't wholly hostile), it wouldn't be as bad an issue. But she wouldn't always be able to pick her battlefield, either, she knew--particularly as bodyguard.

That, at least, came back to another lesson Cain had taught her--to know her surroundings, inside and out. It wouldn't have helped much here, but she was starting to see how the various pieces tied together into a cohesive (combat) whole.

"...Thank you," she said, a little reluctantly, "for the pointers. And the lesson," she added, this a little bit more heartfelt. "I need to return home." For her Hand, her duties--and for water, the thirst now pulling at her more urgently than before, particularly with the loss of blood. If there were water here, I could've drowned him.
That thought lingering, she gave the Sentinel a nod. "Is there anything else? Before I go."

The Sentinel considered.

"When it has learned more, it should return. The Sentinel will spar with it. It will gauge its improvement." With that, he gave a nod; that was all, from him.

He paced past Obieth, sedately making his way back toward the tunnel mouth, where he'd stand guard. She had only taken up perhaps ten or fifteen minutes of his time, but he had to get back to his duties, nonetheless.

But already he was forgetting her; his mind was roving over the spar, and the Valkhound herself, but the transient nature of his thoughts already had them drifting sideways.

He was thinking about Oil, and about food; interspersed with his mental critique and review of their battle were thoughts of the shifting Black Spire and the chrysalises lying in wait up ahead. It was always difficult for him to keep his corrupted thoughts in check--but they were done here, regardless.

exit The Sentinel

His suggestion (the "it"s aside) was reasonable enough, and she dipped her head in acknowledgement. "She will-" (hell, that shit is catching)-"I will." Her tail flicked behind her, and she fought not to grimace at her own pain--an expression that would only twist the shallow wounds tracked across her face.

There was a moment's hesitation as he simply--turned away. It felt an awkward closure to the conversation--but then, he wasn't exactly the most socially fluent creature she'd ever met. "I'll come back," she repeated, and then--again, awkwardly--followed him to the Aperture. He didn't speak to her, again--he simply resumed his post, staring out down the tunnel.

She paused a little ahead of him, glancing back, but he seemed already lost in his thoughts--puzzling, that. He's a little mad, I think, she concluded.

Well, he wasn't keeping her here; she had to return to Aethril--and to water. And it won't hurt to clean these damn wounds, she thought bitterly.

She really had performed poorly--but it was a good thing, in retrospect. The spar had highlighted just how poorly prepared Obieth was for an actual fight--and how much work she had left to do.

And, padding down the exit tunnel, she was already planning on how to rectify that.

exit Obieth