The courtyard had barely settled from Cait's fight when Elayna heard footsteps behind her.
She didn't need to look to know who.
She felt Cait step beside her before she'd fully turned, then felt something warm and smooth brush up against the small of her back, slow and soft. That made her turn, quickly, her hand coming up slightly in surprise as she saw—
Cait's tail retreating itself with unhurried ease of something that had already accomplished what it intended to.
Elayna stared at it for a moment.
Then — and she couldn't entirely help this, felt something happy and pleased settle into her expression from being brushed by the tail that she didn't fully manage to hide.
Cait saw it immediately and a wide teasing smile settled on her face.
Her hands went behind her back. Her tail, which had been swaying loosely, very satisfied behind her, slowed and then curved back toward Elayna.
Elayna watched in fear but also anticipation as it came.
The tip of Cait's pink tail found her cheek. The fur of it was very expectantly pleasant, warm and very soft to the thouch. And it moved. Slowly. Very slowly up along her jaw and across her cheekbone, lingering and completely intentional, Cait was watching her face the entire time with those bright green eyes and an extremely delighted expression.
Elayna's brain went somewhere quiet and heavenly.
A small, soft sound came out of her. Involuntary. Somewhere between surprised and something happy, barely audible, the kind of sound that came out of her mouth before her brain had even thought them.
The tail moved away from her face with the same slow deliberateness it had arrived with, snaking back to Cait's side with the satisfaction of a job well completed.
"So," Cait said pleasantly, hands still behind her back, tail swaying with the loose smugness of someone whose whole body was entirely pleased with itself, "how was it? Watching your darling fight?"
Elayna looked at her.
She tilted her head slightly, a small genuinely confused tilt of someone who had heard a sentence and couldn't quite figure out the meaning in it.
"...Darling?" she said. "Who's—" She looked around briefly, just slightly, before looking back at Cait with those wide golden eyes. "A-are you — are you calling yourself—"
"How was it?" Cait said pleasantly, as if the question had been perfectly clear the first time.
Elayna stared at her. Then at the courtyard. Then back at Cait.
"It was — you—" She took a deep breath. Forced a redirection of the subject. Looked at Caitlynn with a fierce knitting of her eyebrows. "How did you redirect his two-handed strike with just one arm that easily?"
Cait smiled warmly.
A familiar teasing expression bloomed on her face "Want to find out?" she asked.
Elayna blinked, and tilted her head again. "...Yes?"
"Well," Cait said flatly, reaching over and taking Elayna's hand with the easy certainty of someone who had decided this was happening, "why don't you feel for yourself."
She guided Elayna's hand to her upper arm and then, completely casually, flexed.
The skin was warm and soft in a way that felt completely unfair given what was underneath it. Because underneath it, when the flex happened, there was absolutely nothing soft about it at all. Elayna’s fingers pressed in slightly and found something that felt closer to metal than flesh. Cait's arm was dense, hard. Completely immovable. It simply refused to give, not even slightly, it felt like trying to push over a statue that was bolted and magically enchanted into the ground.
She added this to the growing list of things about Caitlynn that should not be allowed.
That makes no sense, she thought, looking at the arm and then at her hand on it and then looking up at Caitlynn. She can't just — look like that on the outside and feel like that underneath. That's not how that works.
Her fingers squeezed again.
Once, involuntarily.
The information her hand was receiving didn't travel to her brain. It went somewhere considerably lower. Her stomach, her lower belly, it went there warmly and was received with far more enthusiasm than she was prepared for.
Her fingers squeezed again before she'd decided to.
Elayna felt something like an itch down low.
She made a decision to remove her hand.
Her hand did not move.
Remove the hand! She shouted internally, with mild panic.
Her hand stayed exactly where it was, apparently having formed its own opinion on the matter and was not really interested in whatever Elayna was saying.
It squeezed down again.
She felt something hot in her lower body twitch again. Elayna had no idea what was going on with her body, her hand refused to listen and she was feeling completely unfamiliar things.
Cait leaned down.
"Since you seem to enjoy touching me so much," she said quietly, warm breath against Elayna's ear, "perhaps it isn't too soon for us to get acquainted with each other's bodies after all, or what do you think sweetie?"
Elayna felt her face go slightly numb from the heat.
"Nnnghh—" she... said? "H-haaahh? U-uhnmm — aa-aaahh—"
She stopped. Tried again. Produced another soft exhale that went nowhere.
Her mouth was open. Nothing useful was coming out of it. Her brain had apparently decided that forming words was something Elayna could do without, leaving only warm exhales and dumb incoherent sounds coming out of her.
Cait reached over with her other hand and lifted Elayna's fingers from her arm one by one, unhurried, the way you'd peel something slightly sticky off, and then set Elayna's hand back at her side.
Elayna stood there.
She blinked once. Slowly.
She tried to locate a thought. Found the general area where thoughts usually were completely barren.
She blinked again.
Her face was still very warm. Her hand, now back at her side felt like it was trying to tell her something. She looked at the courtyard, trying to distract herself, and her eyes found the Dragon-kin.
She focused on that.
Cait straightened up and put her hands on her hips with the satisfied smile of someone whose experiment had exceeded expectations.
"Darling can handle herself," she said pleasantly.
Elayna's hand squeezed. There was nothing there, just air, and it felt oddly incomplete. Like her hand remembered something nice and was confused about where it had gone... Elayna wasn't confused about which part her hand missed.
She said nothing, just stared ahead blankly while blushing profusely. The Dragon-kin was after all, still very interesting.
Luckily Elayna quickly found other things to think about. The word went around quickly that Thra'kara was going to fight.
Not because she'd agreed exactly. More because Zett had stepped into her general vicinity in the manner of someone who had walked up to something he had decided was worth testing himself against, and Thra'kara had lazily opened one eye and glanced at him before saying:
"Alright."
They walked to an open area of the courtyard. The people closest cleared around them the way people always did when they understood instinctively that something was about to happen that required a lot of room.
Zett settled into a very low stance, close to the ground, scales along his body catching the light as he shifted. His legs were wide and planted, knees bent low in a deep squat, one hand resting lightly on the grass in front of him while the other hovered loosely behind him.
Thra'kara lazily looked down at him.
She wasn't really in any actual stance. Just standing there with her arms crossed, her draconic eyes were half-lidded, the crown of horns bright and sharp against the light, the deep red of her hair falling around her shoulders. The spiked tail resting casually behind her.
She was tall enough that Zett's low ground stance made the difference between them even more pronounced. He was close to the earth and she was just... up there, looking down at him like she was in no hurry in starting the fight.
She looked like she'd come her today for no real reason. She looked bored, even as she was about to fight.
"She looks so cool," Elayna said quietly, her wide golden eyes already fixed on Thra'kara with undisguised awe before the fight had even started.
Cait glanced at her. Her expression warm and very amused. Then she looked back at the fight which was about to start.
Karzen looked at them in their stances, then nodded once with a smile.
"Begin," he said.
Zett moved first.
He was fast. Incredibly and seriously fast, the speed of someone whose entire fighting style was going in low and ruthless where it would be awkward for his opponent to fight back. He closed the distance in the way that had worked against almost everyone he'd fought before, coming in quick and low below Thra'kara's waist, throwing fast punches at the body—
Thra'kara's fist came down.
Not a wide swing. Just a straight punch, direct and clean, aimed just the smallest distance in front of him where was moving, dropping straight down on Zett. The sound of it hitting him crossed the courtyard, a loud and heavy thud, the sound of something hard getting hit by something harder, several first years near Elayna flinched visibly at the sound of it.
Zett went back. Not stumbling really, but rather absorbing the impact of the punch and redirecting his movement, moving with it and resetting his stance fast. His expression hadn't changed. He quickly went in again from a slightly different direction, trying to get inside Thra’kara’s reach to unable her to swing and punch as she wanted to.
The second exchange lasted longer.
Zett managed to keep up some pressure, moving in and out with his low, fluid attack pattern, his strikes were landing fast and precise, connecting with Thra'kara's arms, legs and lower body with the decisiveness of someone who knew exactly where he wanted to hit.
The sound of his strikes landing was barely audible.
Thra'kara's strikes were very audible.
Every time she hit back the sound carried far, heavy, blunt and immediate, the kind of impact that made the watching crowd's spines go slightly still. Each one pushed Zett back a fraction further than the last, each one of her punches reminding him that she had yet to go all out with her strength. Her expression throughout was the same. Unhurried and almost unbothered, half-lidded eyes and flat unmoving eyebrows. Like she was doing something that barely required attention and no effort.
Zett continued on, moving around her. Staying below her center of gravity where her reach was less effective and less powerful, his fists kept finding her lower stomach in quick precise bursts.
His punches were quick, but still visibly lacking power going by Thra’kara’s very unbothered face. He was fast enough that he landed two punches before she'd fully adjusted to his movement again.
Her fist came down.
Zett twisted immediately. His whole body rotating away from it, the punch passing close enough that he felt the air of it, and immediately reset. Thra'kara threw the follow up straight away, a direct punch aimed at his chest, fast and committed.
He crossed his arms in front of him and blocked it.
The impact drove him back, not stumbling but sliding. The force of the punch was visible, the block he was forced into had to absorb it all head-on. But he used the momentum, letting it carry him into a pivot, one foot planting and his whole body rotating around it with the pushed-back force behind him, coming around fast with a punch aimed directly at her stomach, at a good speed with weight behind it, finally kind of strike with real power—
Thra'kara's fist came up.
The uppercut caught him clean under the jaw.
The sound of it crossed the courtyard.
Zett's head snapped back harshly. He was still standing on his feet but took two involuntary steps backward, and when he looked back at her there was blood running down his lip that hadn't been there before.
He roughly shook his head, visibly needing to reset himself.
"She's just hitting him with her fists," Elayna said, somewhere between awe and disbelief, her golden eyes wide. "She looks so strong. She's so—"
"Yes. She hasn't done anything else,” Cait said beside her, watching the fight with a calm observing expression. "Just fists. Nothing more."
Their third exchange started differently.
Zett came in fast again, much faster than before, the abrupt change in speed that had always caught people off guard, pushing past whatever plan he'd had before and committing entirely to raw speed. He was inside her reach before she'd fully reacted, throwing quick strikes landing clean and rapid on her stomach—
Thra'kara's tail moved.
It happened almost casually. A quick sweep from behind her, the spiked length of it came around her with the reflexive reaction of someone using a limb before their brain had weighed in on the decision. Like someone swatting a bug that just landed on their shoulder.
It caught Zett across the chest.
The sound was loud and sharp, like a heavy whip cracking against the ground. The force behind it sent him through the air. Not stumbling, not falling, but actually airborne before he hit the courtyard ground hard and skidded several feet across the grass.
The courtyard went completely quiet.
Zett lay where he'd landed.
He pressed one hand to his chest. His scales had taken most of it but not all. Beneath his hand his uniform was dark red and wet, and his breathing had become something careful and restrained, each inhale measured like he was deciding how much his chest would allow. Trying to work around something that hurt considerably and wasn't going to stop hurting for a while.
He looked up at the ceiling for a long moment.
Then looked at Thra'kara.
"Why," he said, with the straightforwardness of someone asking a completely reasonable question, "didn't you just use your tail from the start?"
Thra'kara looked down at him.
"Didn't really need to," she said simply. “You’re not exactly terrible, but your punches feel like a kid knocking desperately on a door.”
She turned and walked back to her rock.
The healing enchantment wouldn't activate until the fight was called. Zett knew this, everyone knew this, so he stayed where he was with a hand on his chest, waiting with the patience of someone who had accepted the situation and saw no point in making it worse. His breathing was slow and careful, and he stared at the ceiling with the expression of someone reconsidering things.
"Hm," he said, to the ceiling.
Around the courtyard the quiet broke back into sound. People turning to whoever was beside them with expressions that said more than the words did. Did you see that. Not a question anyone needed to ask out loud.
Someone else just laughed once, short and disbelieving. Nobody had much to add.
Cait, still standing beside Elayna, was watching Thra’kara settle back against the rock the same way she had stood earlier. Eyes closed, arms crossed with one leg bent up leaning against the rock, looking equally relaxed as she did unbothered.
"So," Cait said, not looking away from Thra'kara. "Who do you think wins between us, sweetie? Me or her?
Elayna looked at her. Then at Thra'kara. Then back at Cait.
She thought about all the fights she'd seen Cait in. About how Cait completely dominated the first years. She thought about Cait's arm under her hand. About her fight against the Orc. About the way Cait had redirected the Orc’s two-handed strike with one arm and the sound her punch had made.
She then thought about the sound of Thra'kara's punches, about the speed and power of her tail. About how casually it had moved. About Zett being swept airborne a moment later. About the dragonfire she hadn't seen but knew Thra'kara could use, thought about how Thra'kara should've also had some sort of magic she hadn't revealed yet.
"...I honestly don't know," she said, and meant it.
"Guess," Cait said in a light tone.
"I really, don't know," Elayna said, more firmly while furrowing her eyebrows.
Cait looked at her with those green eyes and an amused smile with something in her expression that said she probably would have been slightly disappointed if Elayna had just answered without thinking about it.
"Mm," she said, and looked back at Thra'kara.
A short pause.
"I think I know," she added pleasantly, looking at the Dragon-kin with a small smile.
Karzen stepped to the center of the courtyard.
"Alright, free choice is over," he said. "I’ll direct the pairings now."
He looked across the assembled group with calm eyes and started naming pairs. Straightforward and without ceremony or any apparent reason. Names just came out. People moved. The courtyard quickly reorganized itself.
He nodded his head towards them or just pointed his finger while he named who would fight each other.
"Hira and Tomas. Nyx and you, Ol’vaak. Malto and you, first-year High-Elf, Caelyne was it?"
"You and you, what are your names."
They told him.
"Right. You two, fight." He moved on.
He knew some names immediately and pointed at others without knowing them, moving through the pairings with the efficiency and practicality of someone who overall, had four hundred students and wasn't going to apologize for not having memorized all of them yet.
The names continued. Around Elayna conversations happened the way they did while they waited for their own names to come up. Observations about fights they'd watched, speculations and thoughts about who they thought they would fight, who they wanted to fight.
The noise of a cross-year group who had watched and fought with each other for a while and was becoming familiar with each other.
"—Gorakk and Eiric."
Two people moved. Not to a random spot, but directly and straight to the center, like they both already knew exactly where to go.
Gorakk, was apparently the Orc Cait fought, the one whose shockwave swings had been felt from a distance. He walked out with the same calm, confident energy he'd carried all day. Seemingly not diminished by losing to Cait. He still looked focused and battle-ready, the bastard sword coming off his hip and he gripped it firmly with both of his large hands.
Eiric. The other one, walked out in front of him.
Human, male. Average height. Short dark hair. The kind of face you looked at and then looked past without really thinking about it. He walked with the casual ease of someone heading somewhere moderately interesting. His expression was normal. His posture was normal. His overall look was, normal.
He looked like the kind of person who, upon being told they were going to fight someone, would say "sure" in the exact same tone they'd say "sure" to being handed a cup of tea or coffee. Not excited. Not bothered. Just — okay. Fighting. Sure.
Nearby, two first years were watching.
"Cait beat that Orc," one of them said, in the quiet tone of genuine curiosity. "But she's beat everyone yet and he looked incredibly strong. How do you think that average looking guy is going to do against him?"
The other one shrugged. "Hard to say. He doesn't really look like much. The Orc will probably win easily though, right?"
Gorakk looked at the guy across from him.
He didn't say anything. Didn't make any gesture or acknowledgement. He just... changed. The confidence from moments ago sharpened into something more, something more real, more intense. His grip adjusted. His stance dropped. The expression on his face became the expression of someone who had decided from the very first moment he stepped on the yard that there would be no testing, no feeling each other out, no gradual escalation.
Eiric looked back with a completely normal face. Not nervous. Not focused in any real way. He was just waiting.
Karzen looked between them. "Begin."
Gorakk's dashed in and swung wide with everything he had.
The shockwave hit the air immediately. The air-ripple that had accompanied every serious strike he'd made today, only this one was felt in the chest rather than on just the uniform, the bastard sword generating force that made some people nearby step back slightly. Full committed force. Nothing held back.
The average looking man, Eiric, wasn't anywhere close to where that strike cleaved.
He'd jumped back with wind-magic, quickly and cleanly, covering distance quickly enough that the incoming swing found empty space. He was now further back at range,.
Eiric raised his hand and aimed forward.
A boulder erupted from the courtyard ground. Not a small one, a substantial one, fast and crossing the distance between them with the speed of offensive earth magic applied with some serious intent.
Gorakk got his sword up.
The impact pushed him back several steps, the grass ground leaving dirt marks under his feet, and the sound of it rang through the courtyard. He absorbed the boulder and came forward again with the same advancing relentlessness he had when he fought Cait.
Another boulder flew at him before he'd closed half the distance.
He punched it.
His fist met the rock mid-air and it shattered, broke apart under the impact with the pieces scattering, and for a moment it looked like the approach had worked, like he'd found an answer to the boulders—
Those fragments came back.
Not scattering away. But coming toward him, a dozen pieces of various sizes moving with extremely intense velocity. He raised his arms and sword but they hit him across the chest and arms and jaw in rapid succession. Not enormous impacts individually, but fast and precise, each one hitting somewhere that he hadn't been able to be cover.
He bled from three places.
He didn't stop moving.
Gorakk launched himself forward. Always forward, with his bastard sword in his hands. Simple bleeding wounds were something he didn’t need to think about. He covered the distance with the furious stubborness of someone who had decided that getting there was simply a matter of continuing, he closed the distance quickly.
But Eiric kept moving with his wind-magic, keeping him at range while the earth gave him many attack options to work with. The well thought out combination of maintaining distance with his wind magic and attacking with his earth magic showed he had been doing it this long enough that every step and decision didn’t require any real thinking, it looked like simple muscle memory or instinct. His expression throughout it all was the same. Which was focused. Focused the way anyone having a fight was focused. Nothing more, nothing truly serious.
Gorakk was fast. He kept blocking or destroying the boulders, getting hit by the fragments but remaining unfazed, all while dashing forward. Almost closing the distance. Almost forcing the engagement he needed.
But each time Eiric adjusted without appearing to hurry. The boulders kept coming, each one bigger and harder to block than the last, he adjusted the attacks again and the earth magic was now reading where Gorakk was moving rather than where he currently was.
Another boulder was launched at Gorakk. And he smashed it. Then he grabbed one of the larger fragments and did a full rotation of his body before throwing the rock at Eiric. This distracted Eiric and he focused on dodging the thrown rock, he didn't direct the fragments from the boulder like he'd done before. And when he'd dodged the thrown rock and turned his head, he saw a huge Orc in a wild dash coming straight toward him.
But still. His expression didn't panic, he reacted fast and increased the intensity of his wind-magic and 'blasted' himself in the side to escape Gorakk's dash for him.
Then his wind and earth magic came together.
A boulder, larger than the previous ones lifted from the courtyard ground, and the wind hit it from behind with the full force of someone who had been conserving this combination until later.
The sound it made crossing the courtyard was nothing like the previous boulders. Those had been heavy, carefully aimed. This one was sharp and immediate, the sound of a lot of mass moving very fast, the air around it announcing loudly that it was being forced out of the way.
Gorakk reacted quickly, already twisting his body to the side to dodge. But it still managed to hit him in the stomach.
The air left him. He bent forward and pushed his sword into the ground for balance. Even a body that had decided pain was irrelevant couldn't exactly argue with that much force crashing into his stomach.
He was still upright. Still gripping the sword. His jaw was set and his eyes were present and locked on Eiric, and he was clearly, visibly trying to convince his body to cooperate with continuing the fight—
A rock the size of a fist smashed into his head.
Nobody saw it leave Eiric's hand.
One moment Gorakk was standing, dazed but upright, still in it. The next moment his head snapped to the side and he was not.
His eyes went completely still. Completely blank in the way of someone who was no longer home. He stood there for one second, two, body upright out of ridiculous sheer will and stubbornness before finally, slowly, toppling straight backwards and hitting the ground hard and loud with the heavy finality of someone that was not getting back up.
The courtyard was very quiet.
Gorakk lay on the ground. His chest moved. Breathing, alive, the healing enchantment already beginning to activate now that the fight was over. His hand was still grasped around the hilt of his sword, even unconscious his body wouldn't fully give up.
Everyone was looking at the average looking man. Eiric.
And he looked back at the courtyard with his normal face, apparently unbothered by any of this, like the fight had just been a thing that had happened and was now the thing was over. He glanced at Gorakk with what briefly looked like genuine mild concern, and after he saw Gorakk's chest moving, back at the room.
"Gorakk fought well, just like always" a second year said nearby, to another second year, in the completely casual tone of someone stating something obvious. "Especially for going up against Eiric."
A first year turned.
"Huh?" they said. "He won against that Orc that easily... who the fuck is Eiric?"
The second year looked at them. Then at the other second years around them. Then back at the first year with the mildly surprised expression of someone who had just discovered a gap in knowledge they'd assumed was universal.
"Huh? It's Eiric," he said. "You didn't know?" A short pause, the tone of someone stating something that should require no further explanation. "He's one of the top three in our year."
The first year stared at him.
Then he looked at Eiric.
And then he looked back.
"HUH?!"
The sound spread through the first year section of the courtyard like something being knocked over. One voice, then another, then several, then almost all of them. The loud collective noise of a shared realization among many people, arriving at different speeds but landing just the same. Completely shocking.
"That one? The completely average looking one?"
"Him?! One of the top three?!"
Eiric, for his part, looked at the courtyard with the expression of someone who found this reaction slightly disproportionate and wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. He rubbed the back of his neck once. A small and slightly self-conscious gesture, and looked somewhere that wasn't directly at anyone.
"It's not that—" he started saying out loud, not to anyone in particular, and then stopped himself, apparently deciding whatver he was about to say wasn't going to help with anything.
He looked at the ground briefly. Then back up.
Then he chose to stare at the lying, still unconscious Gorakk, which was apparently easier to look at than thirty or so first years staring at him.
Elayna looked at him.
She looked for a long moment. At the short dark hair, at the normal face, at his slightly embarrassed and uncomfortable expression, at the completely unremarkable posture he had standing in the middle of the courtyard apparently waiting for the reaction to settle.
She thought about how she had walked into this courtyard and her eyes had found the Dragon-kin immediately and just instantly assumed she was one of the three. She thought about how she’d seen the Sun-Elf and already known he was one of three.
And yet she had completely passed over him. Not because she hadn't looked. Just because there had been nothing there that said look, and so she hadn't. She hadn't really even thought about the third of the top three... she’d kind of forget there even was three of them at the top.
She looked at him now.
He caught her looking, or he caught everyone looking, it was hard to say. His expression didn't change. Just that normal face, slightly uncomfortable or embarrassed, waiting for everyone to move on.
...He seems nice, Elayna thought, simply and honestly.
Then she felt something like awe and respect. He’s one of the strongest in the second year, one of the top three... I just completely didn't notice him.
She felt slightly bad about that last part.