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Tauri advanced on Iskondra, who waved her blade in two quick passes at his outreached hands, forcing him to jerk them back.
“Interesting,” Tauri said.
“What, exactly, is of interest to you in this our present situation?” Iskondra asked.
Tauri lashed out with a high and wild swipe, which Iskondra simply stepped aside from. He used the momentum from it to spin around and lash out with his tail, which she leapt over. He charged, twisting aside as she thrust her blade at him but still coming on, claws out. She jumped aside herself, but wasn’t able to evade his claws completely. She turned about to face him, her arm bleeding from three gashes.
“Very interesting,” Tauri said. “Something different this time.”
Iskondra, grimacing from pain, threw a quick at the book in her hand. She started to lower her arm like she would drop it, but then she thought better of it.
“Less glowy with full hands,” Tauri said.
“I assure you, if I am unable to repel your attacks harmlessly with mystical signs, I’m more than capable of enacting a more permanent solution to your hostility with my blade,” Iskondra said. “I therefore warn you one final time, do not press me.”
“One blade,” Tauri said. He brandished his clawed hands and swished his tail. “Many weapons. Quick, but Tauri quicker.”
Snarling, he charged, waving both of his hands in front of him. Iskondra shoved the book at Jace and then spun away from Tauri, her now empty left hand working furiously in the air. Tauri’s fingers swiped through the space where Iskondra’s body was, but she twinkled and faded momentarily away from view, leaving his claws nothing to catch on. She twirled about as she regained her solidity, and her sword flashed with silvery light.
“No matter how hopelessly outclassed you are, you just keep insisting on making things worse for yourself,” she said. “You had no chance of defeating me without my magic, and yet you goaded me into bringing into play all the same.”
They came together and fell apart several more times, Iskondra weaving a wall of glittering sparks to turn Tauri away one time and the next causing her image to split into two identical copies, stepping sideways away from each other. Mostly she simply interposed a glowing green shield to defeat his attacks. Still, for all her arcane effort, he managed to inflict three more sets of grazing claw strikes while she did nothing more than slap him with the flat of her blade in passing a couple of times… a painful strike, but one that was perhaps out of proportion with the situation.
“Noticed something,” Tauri said.
“Yes, well, you may want to notice that the same weapon that inflicts a stinging blow upon you could just as easily be cutting you,” Iskondra said. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that my mercy is inexhaustible. If you continue to annoy me, scurrilous varlet, it shall soon run out entirely.”
“Before or after blood does?” Tauri asked. He grinned. “On subject of things that ‘run out entirely’: was not talking of mercy.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?” Iskondra asked, then with a horrifying realization she twisted her neck around to look at where the boy had been standing when she gave him the book… it seemed that he had, indeed, run out entirely.
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