“The world spins on. If we’re ready for it or not, the world keeps moving, ignoring the great moments in our lives as though they were entirely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I used to feel a great deal of frustration, and rage, and finally despair over that. 

Certainly my trials and tribulations were deep and meaningful. Certainly my world falling apart meant that everyone’s world had fallen apart.

That, however, is rarely ever the case. The worse day one person has may be completely unremarkable to another and the best day in the life of a third. 

Which is comforting in its own strange manner. Our failures and triumphs, our pains or exaltations, from within the perspective of our lives, they may seem to eclipse the stars and drown out all reason, but the world spins ever on, and so long as we move with it we find that even the great moments are ones that take up only a part of our life rather than swallowing the whole of it.”

-Xindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame, very drunk on the occasion of his 37th wedding

Idrina arrived at the dueling arena without any special fanfare. Her opponent on the other hand, drew a round of cheers (from the Cadets) and groans (from the applicants who seemed to know who he was). He was a blank to me, but the relaxed gait of his walk coupled with the quiet focus he showed in acknowledging and then sizing up Idrina spoke volumes.

For her part, Idrina looked calm and collected. At least to a cursory glance. The subtle shifts of her weight, her measured breaths, the focus in her gaze though? They all spoke to the enormous amount of energy she was holding back.

She wanted this fight.

Everyone else so far had been nervous and concerned, even Nelphas and the others for whom the outcome wasn’t even slightly in doubt. On some level they’d all known that battles were never predictable. The Cadet who’d been paid off to allow them an easy entrance could always have been paid off a little bit more to put them in the ground, or even just humiliate them a little in the process of letting them win.

That wasn’t a concern for Idrina. Not from the stance she took, or the set of her shoulders. We were too far away for me to read her expression but I knew there had to be a fire burning in her eyes. She was too good to not be ready for this. Too good to not have been planning, and training, and striving for this moment for years.

Proctor Jalaren called for the match to begin, and both of the combatants lived up to my expectations and beyond.

Idrina didn’t waste any time playing for points by keeping her distance like the other applicants had done. The same as she’d done in our fight, she flashed forward conjuring a spear as she moved.

Her opponent was ready for that, meeting her rush with a blade just like the one that had carved me up.

I think it may have been a sign of respect, rather than homicidal malice, that he didn’t hold back at all. With an upward arcing slash, he cut the spear in half and deflected it so that it passed to the left of his chest by an inch or so.

With his other hand he unleashed a spell which formed a glowing blue ram. It was perfectly positioned to crush Idrina’s chest and easily would have except for the part where she rolled away from its attack, evading it by a generous two hairs’ breadths.

That placed her directly in line to be split from head to sternum by the Cadet’s downward stroke, but again when the blow landed, she wasn’t there.

Her spears where though, pair of them shooting up from the ground, to catch the Cadet in both shoulders and knock him back a step. He’d been lucky they hit his pauldrons, and losing them in the exchange clearly saved him from losing the arms instead.

Two more spears followed as Idrina coiled up and launched herself at the Cadet before he could regain his balance. The first spear, she stabbed upwards towards the base of his throat. That one he blocked with the strange sword he was carrying but at the cost of exposing his right hand to the other spear in Idrina had conjured.

A hawk made of starlight deflected the second spear before it took the Cadet’s hand off at the wrist and he used the moment it hit Idrina’s spear to land a solid kick to her midsection.

With space open between then, Idrina extended her hand and three more spears flew at the Cadet, one targeting his head, the next the center of his chest, and the last one his left shin.

The Cadet slammed his hand against the blade he was carrying and a pulse of energy disintegrated the spears before they could reach him. That move seemed to cost him though and I saw the sword reconfigure itself, venting steam in the process.

I also noticed that Idrina had pushed him back enough that when she attacked, she was always in either the red or blue zones as was appropriate to the sort of attack she was launching.

So she wasn’t just fighting him. She was dancing across a fairly narrow space to earn the maximum points she could, which made everything she was doing at least ten times harder.

Both of the fighters accelerated at that point and I lost track of exactly what they were doing. From the bits I could make out, Idrina was avoiding all of the sword blows, despite the armor that she wore which should have been sufficient to turn aside most glancing hits.

Then again, a sword like that had blasted Tantarian mail apart and cleaved through the armor Doxle had given me like it wasn’t there, so avoiding hits entirely wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.

That kind of speed came with a horrible stamina cost though. Two minutes in I could see her measured breathing had become ragged and pained.

And that did not slow her down in the slightest.

It did however impact her aim though.

Or so I thought.

With each exchange, she left more and more spears behind. Most flew off into the air and vanished when she conjured them back, but the one’s she used for downward thrusts were left embedded to various depths in the arena and began to impeded her unbelievable dance for points.

The Cadet didn’t fail to notice that either, and pressed in through the thicket of spent spears to force her back into the battlefield where she would have to give up her dance or fall prey to his attacks at last.

This was apparently exactly what she’d been planning on.

With a quick dash to the blue section, she paused, took a breath, and exploded every spear in the dueling arena.

The Cadet got his blade up in front of him right as the spears went off but even the field of force he conjured couldn’t hold up to the pressure wave of the explosion. As his shield broke, the sword was ripped from his hand and went spinning over and off the arena while the Cadet was tossed back and landed a few feet from its edge.

Idrina flew at him in a golden burst of speed, a new spear outstretched to run the Cadet straight through the heart.

Without even rising, he met her charge by raising a hand which summoned a green glow in the shape of a bear. Before she could land her blow the bear slammed her with a massive paw knocking her sideways hard enough to pitch her over the edge too.

Idrina stopped herself with the spear she was carrying, coming to a rest just as the whistle blew for the round.

Cheers went up from the applicants (led by her brother) and at least a few of the Cadets. I couldn’t tell if she heard them though because for a moment she was still.

With how hard she’d fought I might have believe it was exhaustion but when she rose, she did so without betraying any sign of weakness. 

Something was bothering her though. I could see that in the flexing of her fingers and rigid set of her neck.

I would have thought it was because of something the Cadet did, but  her first action was to walk back to him and offer her hand to help him up.

He accepted it and said something to her I was too far away to hear. 

She said nothing in response, which drew a small shrug from him. 

They backed away from each other as Proctor Jalaren returned to the arena.

“This match is ended,” he said, “Are there any who will speak for this applicant.”

It didn’t seem like the right question to ask. ‘Is there anyone who wouldn’t speak for this applicant’ was a better question, even if the answer should have been ‘obviously no, we all want her’.

Despite that though, there was no immediate answer to Jalaren’s question. Two more heartbeats passed before a familiar voice finally spoke up.

“House Ironbriar will speak for this applicant,” Enika said breaking the unfathomable silence.

Part of me wanted to speak up too. 

I had no idea what I would say, but whatever was going on was…I stopped myself. Whatever was going on was not something I had to put my nose in. I could be rational about things. Sometimes.

Idrina nodded in response to Enika’s offer, without any joy or excitement at the prospect. And why would she? Her admittance had been as guaranteed as Nelphas’ had been even though she’d worked a lot harder for it. Had there really been anything surprising here for her at all, or was this whole thing a tired, predictable pantomime? 

I don’t know what drew my thoughts down that line, possibly my brains were still scrambled from the beating I’d taken but, predictable admittance or no, I was surprised when Idrina didn’t float over to sit with the Cadets like the other successful applicants had. Instead she boarded a disc and was delivered to the box Enika was watching from.

“Are you fully healed up yet?” Doxle asked.

“No. That sword did some bad things to me.” Admitting that wasn’t something I would normally have done but I was reasonably certain Doxle already knew what condition I was in and was merely checking if he could trust the self-appraisals I gave him.

“You may want to hurry that along if you can,” he said. “One of your new friends is up next.”

The arena had my complete and undivided attention at that, because Doxle’s meaning was all too clear.

“Next applicant, Mellina Astrologia, report to the dueling circle.”

And just like that I was going to lose someone else.

I watched as the Cadet’s traded out and I could see that the newcomer was hungry for blood.

Apparently my threat hadn’t been clear enough?

Or after a few fights, they’d forgotten exactly what I’d done to the Imperial Cadet?

Which was hard to believe. 

I was still wearing rather a lot of his blood.

People can be stupid though.

Like me.

For thinking that I could trust the Cadets to behave reasonably.

I knew better than that.

This time though I wouldn’t let it go so far.

The gap to the arena was larger than it had been from the applicants platform, but I could still make it if I got enough of my body back in shape.

I closed my eyes as Mellina began floating over and started piecing the messed up bits of myself back into their proper shape. 

It wasn’t great work. If someone dissected me, they wouldn’t be fooled for more than a minute, but I wasn’t planning on being dissected. I just needed the circulatory system and muscles to be able to actually function to take some of the load off my magic.

I thought I’d be able to get everything done in time. 

I can work with amazing speed when I put my mind to it, and I had plenty of incentive to set a new record at it.

As it turned out though, I wasn’t fast enough to finish before the screaming started.