"Morning," Cait said.
She fell into step beside them casually. Hot-pink hair down and combat uniform on with her shorter sword sheathed in her left hand spinning it in that casual, unconscious way she always did when she had it with her.
She looked and gave everyone a small smile before her eyes landed on Elayna and that smile became wider with something else beneath it. Elayna found that something to be teasing one day, warm one day and the next day's something was something she couldn’t name.
“Morning,” Elayna said, and felt her ears go slightly warm.
“...We were having a nice thing,” Zyvara said, walking slightly behind them, her large red eyes moving to Cait with her blunt directness she applied to most things and people. “Us four. Until you and Elayna happened and now I have to watch, this every morning.”
“I’m sure Elayna doesn’t mind,” Cait said as she looked at Elayna, then she looked at the rest, “and who said this could not become an even nicer thing.” She added pleasantly.
She said it with a small smile. Casually and completely unbothered. Zyvara looked at her for a moment with her large red eyes and then looked away and mumbled to herself, with an expression not too dissimilar from the expression she'd get when she'd miss one of her orbs in fights.
“Hm,” Kiri said, from Elayna’s left with her small forward tilt.
“Don’t you encourage her,” Zyvara said harshly.
“I just don’t disagree with her,” Kiri added, which made Zyvara’s eyebrow twitch.
Evelyn walked and watched on with an amused expression from Zyvara’s side. She looked as if she’d already observed the situation and come to the conclusion that, she didn’t really mind Caitlynn joining them.
She wasn’t going to let Caitlynn know that though.
They walked the rest of the way to the training halls together all five of them, which had become the natural way of things over the last few days. They walked through the morning quiet of the academy corridors, into the training hall building, and nearly straight into Voss.
He was standing just past the entrance with his usual flat and invisible presence, not blocking the way just occupying it, heavy-lidded dead eyes moving over them slowly as they arrived.
"Courtyard C-seven," he said. "You’re all with Karzen."
Elayna glanced at her friends, she had no idea where that was. Thankfully Evelyn looked at Elayna and gave her a reassuring smile before saying:
"That way," Evelyn said, with a tilt of her head in the right direction, already walking.
Courtyard C-seven was completely different from the ones they’d used before.
The floor was of grass and dirt, but not the worn flat grass of the smaller courtyards, this was very uneven, and naturally so, the ground rising and dipping in small gradients with smaller hills here and there with patches of dirt where the grass had given way, clusters of rock jutting up from the earth.
A few trees stood at irregular intervals and not planted in rows. Their roots had pushed up the ground around them in some places creating ridges, bumps and hollows that would matter in a fight.
The smell was also different. Less of the charged enchantment air she'd gotten used to, more of something that actually smelled like outside. Grass and earth and the faint coolness and freshness of something she could only describe as outside air.
Elayna looked at it for a moment.
It reminded her of something. It reminded her of the days where she’d walk into the training area with Vaelithra, and find her standing there with a different kind of stillness that Elayna had learned to recognize that meant the day's training would be different, more serious. What she felt now as she looked at this courtyard felt somewhat like that.
...I’m so excited, she thought, with great feeling, today we’ll be fighting the second years.
There were already several people in the courtyard.
A large, loose cluster of first years near the entrance with faces Elayna recognized, Zett among them, standing with his arms folded and his lizard-eyes moving across the second years. Nyx was also here, standing slightly apart from the group, her completely black eyes giving nothing away. The earth girl from the ember class that had beat her once was also here, and a lot of others from her year Elayna considered strong.
And then the second years.
Several of them were standing there and looking back at the first years, sizing each other up, they had a year of this already in their bones and it showed in the way they stood and held their weapons. Not dramatically different. They just, looked more at ease and more relaxed.
Elayna's eyes moved across the courtyard excitedly, taking it in—
And stopped.
Further back in a corner of the courtyard, leaning against a large rock formation that jutted from the courtyard floor, stood someone unlike anything she had seen outside of a book.
The scales were the first thing. Not Zett's scales, nothing like Zett's scales. These were darker, denser, looking as if they were harder than most metals. They ran along her neck and arms and the visible portions of her collarbone, and they had a deep iridescent quality that made you look twice, shifting between violet, deep blue and red depending on how the light caught them. Around her head was not quite a ring, not quite a circlet. But a crown of horns, short and defined growing from the top of her forehead and curving back along her skull, looking as mighty as they looked scary, thought Elayna.
Her tail rested behind her, as thick as the her muscular thigh at the base and tapering down to roughly calf-width by the tip, which rested on the ground. A ridge of many rough-looking spikes ran its full length.
Her hair was a deep blood-red.
And she was tall. Very tall, probably even a full head taller than Cait. Eyes closed, arms folded, standing up with the complete casual comfort of someone who had decided this rock was hers, and she was going to relax here.
One eye opened.
Just one, a thin sliver of the draconic iris, purely non-human. Her irises were an intense, burning red with no white in them, and she had a vertical slit for a pupil not too much unlike Cait's. She was watching the courtyard from beneath a mostly-closed eyelid with the lazy attention of someone that was not fully paying attention, seemingly not finding anything worthy of her attention.
Dragon-kin, Elayna thought.
She was aware she had stopped walking.
"Elayna," Zyvara said, flatly but with thin patience.
She didn't move.
"That's a Dragon-kin," she said, to no one in particular.
"Yes," Evelyn said, with the warm patient tone of someone who had already followed Elayna's gaze and understood completely where Elayna’s mind had gone.
"I've read about them," Elayna said. Still not moving. "The scales alone can withstand incredible force... and the fire, their innate dragonfire specifically is categorically different from magic-produced fire, it burns at a much higher—"
"Elayna," Cait said from beside her, warm and slightly amused.
"—temperature, and the horn crown formation—" her eyes moved along the crown of horns curving back around the Dragon-kin’s skull, counting them, "—that's a full crown, twelve horns at least, which hints at a completely pure and ancient bloodline which would mean her dragonfire is—"
"Sweetling."
Elayna closed her mouth.
She looked at Cait.
Cait was looking back at her with those green eyes and an expression which suggested she found this reaction of Elayna’s to be genuinely endearing and cute and wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
"Breathe," Cait said.
Elayna breathed.
Cait reached over and patted the top of her head. Once, twice, gentle and slow, like patting something small and cute that had done something endearing and worthy of praise.
"Good girl," she said, and the smile widened slightly.
Elayna's face went incredibly warm very quickly.
"I'm not!—" she started.
"Mm," Cait said, already looking at the courtyard, the picture of innocence.
From somewhere behind them Zyvara made a short, sharp sound, the kind of sound someone made when they’d witnessed something they found personally offensive.
"In public," she said to no one in particular, with great feeling. "She's like this in public."
Evelyn, beside Zyvara, was looking at the courtyard ceiling with a carefully maintained expression of someone finding this all amusing and was trying to not let it show.
They moved further into the courtyard. More people were arriving behind them, the space filling gradually with the hum of excited whispers of students about to do something new and exciting... Fight completely new people.
Elayna was still looking around at the second years with the curiosity of someone who had been waiting for this moment for days and was now taking full advantage of it. She was studying the way they stood, the weapons they carried, wondering what magic they would use, wondering which ones she'd end up fighting.
She then noticed Kiri next to her tilt her head to the side which she only ever did when she was either confused or looking at something interesting.
Elayna followed her gaze.
He was standing near the far side of the courtyard, slightly set apart from the main group. Impossibly tall, the kind of tall that announced itself by simply standing head and shoulders above everyone else.
His skin was a deep warm orange, darker than anything she'd seen on an Elf before, not the cool pallor of High-Elves and not the white of Moon-Elves, but something richer and warmer, the color of late afternoon light. His eyes were completely yellow, flat and full. Not gold and not amber just entirely yellow the same way a Moon-Elf’s eyes were entirely white. No pupil, no white and no iris, just yellow.
He was standing there with confidence, like someone who'd shown up because it was time to show up and nothing more. No nerves, no curiosity about the people around him. Just a calm intense expression and completely yellow eyes giving away nothing, pointed somewhere ahead.
He's just standing there, she thought. Doing nothing.
Which was true. He wasn't looking at anyone. And yet she felt looked at somehow, or evaluated or — she didn't know. Something. There was just something about him that made her want to stand up slightly straighter without knowing why, made her suddenly very aware of her speed compared to Cait's, her weaker than average strikes, made her think about whether she'd even been training hard enough.
She felt, very quietly and very privately, like she should go train diligently for at least another six months before she could even go and introduce herself to him.
"That's him," Kiri said, still staring straight at him.
"The Sun-Elf," Zyvara said dryly, arms crossed staring straight at him. "One of the top three."
"Hm," Kiri said.
"Oh—oohhh," Elayna said softly, with the excited and awed tone of someone encountering something they'd been curious about for days and found that it exceeded the expectations.
The Sun-Elf didn't appear to notice them looking. He continued looking at whatever he was looking at with that same intense expression, completely self-contained, unbothered by the filling courtyard and everyone around him.
They didn't have to wait long.
Karzen walked to the center of the courtyard and the students settled around him.
He counted all the students in the yard. "Everyone's here," he said. "Good. Let's start."
He looked across the assembled group with calm eyes.
"Same rules as always," he said. "No chopping each others heads off. No destroying each other's hearts. The enchantment handles everything else." He looked across the group. "To start the day, you’ll choose your partners. You have time. I'll start directing pairings after."
He stepped back. "Well. What're you waitin' for?"
The courtyard moved.
Elayna found her sparring partner the way she usually did, by being approached and challenged.
A second year girl with a straight sword and calm assessing eyes looked at her and said simply: "You. Want to go? Name’s Sara."
"Y-yes let’s spar, my name is Elayna," Elayna said with a slight bow, slightly nervous about being asked to spar with her first senior.
Sara was good. Truly, really good, she was a pure physical fighter who had found what worked for her and committed to it completely. Her strikes were clean and well-timed and she didn't overextend. She read Elayna's footwork quickly and adjusted, which meant Elayna had to adjust back, which meant the fight actually required her to think.
She broke a sweat. She hadn't broken sweats except in her fights against the best of the first years.
She’s good, she thought, with genuine pleasure from fighting someone strong.
They went back and forth for a while. Intense strikes and parries, fierce clashes with neither of them giving the other anything easy. Elayna took one hit to the forearm that stung and would have hurt more if she hadn't moved with the momentum of Sara's strike.
She was shifting her stance after a parry, reading the second year's guard, trying to find some gap in Sara's guard—
"Get her baby!"
The voice carried across the courtyard at a significant volume.
Elayna's foot landed wrong.
Just for a fraction and just enough that she felt it, a misplacement that fortunately cost her nothing because she recovered immediately on instinct. She then turned her head and found Cait in the middle of the courtyard with both swords sheathed and those green cat-eyes wide and entirely innocent.
The second year across from her made a harsh sound.
"Stop looking at your damn girlfriend," she said, with the aggravated tone of someone who had come for a proper fight and was watching it be undermined, "and fight me."
Elayna's face went very warm.
The word girlfriend, said out loud by someone else, about Cait directed at her in front of a courtyard full of people, landed somewhere between her ears and produced a small internal crisis that lasted approximately two seconds.
The second year saw what was going on in Elayna’s thoughts on her face.
"Ach!" she threw her sword up with a frustrated arm, and then said with the tone of someone making a logical, practical decision: "Forget what I said damn it, just fight!"
Elayna looked at her. Took a breath. And focused.
Her technique won it shortly after, a combination of strikes and clean parries that found a gap in the second year's guard and inferior footwork, Elayna had her sword at Sara’s throat.
The second year stepped back.
"...You’re good," she said, with the straightforward appreciation of someone who meant it, but had maybe not expected it.
Elayna was slightly out of breath, "thank you. So are you," she said, equally genuine.
She was catching her breath and watching the other pairs, when the courtyard shifted.
"Oi. You." A deep voice said.
A deep voice that didn't carry much volume. Just pure bass, low and heavy. It sounded like gravel rolled in thunder. Deep and bassy enough that you'd feel it somewhere in your ribs before you'd properly heard it.
The Orc was standing in the middle of the courtyard looking at Cait.
He was large in the way that made large seem like an understatement. More than a full head taller than Cait, which meant something given Cait's height, almost twice as wide as her with his ridiculously large and defined muscles. Orcs were generally larger on average, but this was not only the size but muscles of someone who had trained and honed their body relentlessly for a very long time. Two tusks protruded from his lower lip. One scar ran from his shoulder and down nearly to his wrist, thick and old. He had a bastard sword at his hip and his hand rested on the pommel with the ease of long familiarity.
He looked at Cait with the expression of someone who had heard a rumor and had decided to come personally see if the rumors were true.
"You're the first year," he said roughly. And not as a question.
Cait smiled. "One of them," she said pleasantly.
"No. The one they're talking about."
"Probably," Cait said, smile growing wider.
He nodded once, the nod of someone confirming their suspicion.
"Fight me," he said, walking away to a spot on the courtyard without looking if Cait was following.
Cait smiled. The wide one with her canines and all. She drew both swords and followed.
The courtyard noticed them.
Gradually, the way attention shifts when something worth paying attention to has started. Conversations died out. People stopped whatever they were doing and turned their heads. Elayna found herself drifting toward the edge of their sparring area without deciding to.
Cait and the Orc stood across from each other on the courtyard, both settled into their stances.
Then they met eyes and nodded, no words were needed. The fight had started.
The Orc dashed in quick and his first swing generated a shockwave.
A ripple in the air from the force of it, Elayna felt it from where she was standing as her clothes briefly snapped like a flag caught in a sudden gust of wind. His bastard sword was enormous and he swung it like it weighed nothing, and the air around it didn't agree with the sword moving that fast.
And Cait was already throwing herself around that sword, like her body weighed nothing. Dodging and weaving while not getting hit.
She moved through the space around him with her fluid, quick chaotic logic. Her two swords cycled through her endless strike-combinations. She moved faster against him than Elayna had seen her move against any of the first years.
The Orc's size and strength required a different approach and she'd already made it, like the adjustment had happened before she'd even consciously decided on it.
The Orc was good. Seriously good, and ridiculously strong. His swings kept coming with the relentlessness of someone who knew that the force behind them would do serious damage once they landed. Several swings came close enough that Elayna's breath caught while watching.
But none of them landed.
The Orc adjusted further and started to aim his swings at Caitlynn's center of mass now rather than at vital points, most likely in order to put more pressure on her, and this seemed to have been the right choice because Cait couldn't move quite as fluidly before.
After dodging several swings Cait managed to get her shorter sword past and aimed for his stomach. The Orc took an abrupt step forward and intended to meet Cait's lower sword, it was already aimed there but the cut would be more shallow after if he'd step into it, the way you could lessen the weight behind a punch by meeting it.
The Orc then stepped into the cut and let it land, but since this was his plan he also had a well-directed strike with it, a decisive downwards chop aimed for Cait's shoulder. The kind of strike that would have ended most fights instantly.
But Cait redirected his strike with her longer sword, the metal grinding loud and sharp enough to make Elayna wince. And before the short contact between their clashing swords was over Cait’s shorter sword was pulled back from his stomach and flicked out to cut across the Orc's left forearm, cutting clean and deep.
He didn't budge. Didn't even react. Just immediately swung again after getting his forearm gashed. He simply kept coming with more and more powerful swings at an even faster pace like the cut hadn't happened, like pain was just information he'd chosen not to process.
After going back and forth for a moment his next strike came differently, he read another redirection coming this time and stopped his momentum mid-swing, letting Cait's longer sword run across and cut his forearm to escape it, and immediately transitioned into another downward chop aimed straight at her shoulder.
Cait was already sideways before it arrived. The chop passed by her nose by barely an inch.
The shorter sword moved again, so quick you’d barely be able to see it if you weren’t already paying attention to it.
This time to his right leg. A deep cut across the side of the thigh, finding the muscle, precise in the way that Elayna remembered Vaelithra had always described as "not a dramatic cut. A useful one."
The Orc didn't react to that cut either.
Pain was proving to be something he maybe just didn’t understand... but his movement changed. A fractional slowing. Not a limp and he definitely didn’t flinch, this was just the honest physics of a muscle that had been damaged and compromised.
Cait changed the momentum of the fight immediately, increasing her speed even further as the Orc's speed had slowed down.
Her style changed abruptly, and instead of trying to slice or cut with the left sword she thrust it, aiming to stab him with it now. The sudden change in attack caused the Orc’s already slightly sluggish movement to also become awkward. This seemed to be what Cait was aiming for, she went for a stab aimed at his stomach and the Orc twisted his body and tried to strike as a counterattack, but Cait dashed forward under the strike and she cut his left leg as she threw herself in almost a roll past him.
He was slower now. Visibly. He was still swinging those enormous swings with everything behind them, but his stance had changed considerably. He stood completely still, steadying himself as much as he could on his bleeding legs, waiting for Cait to enter his range.
And Cait didn't back down, she went straight inside his guard rather than dancing around it.
She threw a wide strike with her longer sword and he blocked it, but at the same time the shorter sword came up in a familiar motion, in a way that she'd already tried before this fight and the Orc recognized it. It was the setup for a cut that would come from the left, aimed for the throat and at the last moment, Cait would readjust the grip mid-motion, then instead go for the eye—
She dropped it.
A full release before the sword was close to his face. Her left hand already closing into a fist as the blade left her fingers, and by the time the Orc had registered that the expected cut wasn't coming the punch had already landed.
Square. Clean. The sound of something breaking after a hard, blunt impact crossed the yard.
His head moved. His eyes went briefly unfocused, the daze of someone that had been hit hard enough to interrupt the signal between the body and the brain. He stood there for a moment with his weight shifting on his legs.
Cait had her longer sword at his throat.
The point rested there, still. The Orc held very still.
He looked down at it. Looked at Cait who was smiling smugly. Looked back down at the sword at his throat.
His brows furrowed. "...I lost," he said, and dropped his sword.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Against the rock formation, the Dragon-kin straightened.
The one eye that had been watching the entire fight now had company, both eyes were now fully open, her draconic irises bright and alert and fixed on Cait with an attention she hadn't given anything else since she'd arrived. She pushed off the rock with the leg that had been leaning against it and crossed the courtyard with long unhurried strides and stopped in front of Cait.
She looked down at her, she had height on Cait, not much, but very noticeable.
"Hah!" she said, at a volume that carried. "You must be Caitlynn! I'd heard the name and didn't really bother with the rest." She looked Cait over with large, intense eyes and a wide smile.
She let out a short and sharp laugh, “You fight strange!”
"Thank you," Cait said pleasantly.
The Dragon-kin glanced down at Cait and smiled wider. "Name’s Thra’kara! We'll fight later," she said, with the complete certainty of someone scheduling something rather than requesting it. She glanced at the Orc. "You fought well as usual, Gorakk."
"I lost," he muttered grumpily, the grumbling made somehow even more comical by how deep and bassy it was. He stared at the ground with the sulky energy of someone arriving at an unwelcome conclusion. "...Now there’s one more...Tsk."
He said it to himself, in the tone of someone who found this personally inconvenient and wasn't quite done being cranky about it.
Thra’kara looked at him for a moment. She looked at him stare at the ground, kicking rocks with his feet, her expression during being something between exasperation and respect.
"Argh! You’re huge and built like a damn mountain! And a good fighter too!... But you weep like a fucking brat when you lose!" She glanced down at Cait, meeting her eyes. "This pink-haired bitch is strong. What’s so strange about losing.”
Cait's brow lifted slightly. Pink-haired bitch. The corner of her mouth curved into an amused smile, the expression of someone who had just decided they liked this person.
Thra'kara noticed and gave her an even wider smile. "As I said. We'll fight later." she said.
Cait shrugged. "Sure."
Thra'kara then turned and walked back to her rock.
The Sun-Elf, Elayna noticed, was standing where he had been standing ever since he arrived, unmoved throughout any of it.
He was watching Cait with his yellow eyes and that intense unbothered and stoic expression, with the look of someone who had seen something and was calmly deciding what to do or think about it.
Elayna had watched all of it.
She had watched from the moment the Orc had said "you" and Cait drew her swords. Then Elayna had felt those shockwave swings snap her clothes from where she was standing, and then she’d watched Cait move through and pick apart something that large and that powerful like his size and power were interesting little details rather than actual obstacles or problems.
Had watched her wear down the powerful legs with those precise and useful cuts.
She had watched the longer sword go to his throat.
She had then watched him forfeit.
And now standing here in the courtyard, with the noise settling back around her as the fight ended.
Elayna felt proud. Genuinely, warmly, and slightly embarrassingly proud. She felt the kind of pride someone felt when watching a person they care about do something remarkable and wanting very much to tell everyone around them that yes, that one, that's hers.
That, she thought, very simply, is the strongest first year of the top academy.
And she chose me, Elayna thought, which was as close as she could get to finishing the sentence without her face and ears catching fire. S-she's my... my...
She looked at Cait across the courtyard.
...C-Cait, she finished lamely. She's my Cait.
Which wasn't quite the word but felt true in a way that made her chest and lower stomach do something she wasn't going to think about right now.
Cait had her back to her. Picking up the shorter sword she'd dropped. Saying something to the Dragon-kin that made her make a sound that was probably a laugh. The Dragon-kin said something to Cait, short and sharp, with a smile that suggested she'd enjoyed the fight she’d just watched, then turned and walked back to the rock.
Then Cait whipped her head around.
Instant. Precise. Like she had known exactly where to look.
Her eyes found Elayna across the courtyard.
She had a satisfied smile from the fight, then it bloomed into something else when she made eye contact with Elayna. The full smirk. Teeth and canines visible, the smile that did nothing to hide how she was feeling.
Elayna felt heat move to her face immediately.
Felt something else heat up lower, a bit warmer, the thing that had been finding its way a little further down every day for the last four days. It settled somewhere where it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Her heart did something complicated.
She looked at Cait across the courtyard. Cait looked back.
The smirk didn't move.
...I'm so confused... She thought. I need to talk to Evelyn later.
And then Karzen said "next pairs" and the courtyard moved, and Elayna moved with it, and the kind of nice but annoying warmth stayed exactly where it was.