[Shield Bug], [Sword Bug]. Entoma gave the order and like the clash of hammer on metal in a smithy, a sword was in one hand and a shield in the other. The shield was a leaf green oval shade and shape, the short sword with a straight edge where the blade was the wings of the bug that made it.
She sprang forward, deflecting two more arrows before she could close with the vampire.
[Blood Shield], [Toxin]. Inta cast the spell and the sword he brought up in his hand became a sickly green, while on his forearm a round red liquid shield formed.
The blows began to rain like water, blood spattered away from his shield, cracks formed in the carapace of the green shield, the crowd was on its feet.
[Blood Mask]. A mask of blood took form on his face, concealing his red eyes, she understood his intent too late, his head connected with her mask and Entoma staggered backward.
[Centipede]. She summoned the bug and before Inta could follow up, he was wrapped in a crawling insect that began to constrict itself around him like a python. Her stagger however, became a series of backward flips that began to see the crowd to a rumble of appreciation.
"Giving up!?" She shouted.
A series of dark lines formed around the body of the bug, and it burst to pieces, falling around its former captor. Inta brushed off the fluids and chunks off of his dark sleeves. "You'll have to do better than that!" He exclaimed, his blood mask was gone and his fangs were on full display.
More familiar and common martial arts were activated.
"I will then!" Entoma shouted back and struck a low sprinter's pose with her sword bug out. [Bullet bug], she called out and raised her other hand.
Inta felt himself collapse on one knee as pain hit him in the thigh. The crowd began to roar.
To her surprise, it didn't stop him, he sprinted forward and as her sword thrust forward, he caught her wrist and yanked her forward, spinning in the air before a cheering horde. [Armor bug], she summoned another and a series of sleek and shiny pillbugs wrapped around her body, his sword skittered away from the chitin armor that had come from nowhere.
[Bloodsucker Swarm]. Out of the air a swarm of buzzing insects engulfed the vampire.
[Bloody hurricane]. The insects worked their toll, biting into his body, but the blood mage was surrounded by a spinning shield of blood that scattered the swarm a moment later. Still, the crowd was hushed as they beheld what had happened, Inta was covered with marks, like ten thousand cuts over his flesh and blood seeped down beneath his armor to drip onto the mat of the ring.
[Blood sword], [Blood armor], [Unliving Strength]. He uttered the spells and martial art, the blood flow stopped and 'sealed' his wounds if not healing them. Trickles of red moved over his body and took a steady red shape in his free hand.
[Bug Speed Boost], [Bug Strength Boost], [Bug Nest Trap]. Entoma uttered yet more, and a pair of bugs descended to her body, bearing great wide wings, very slender bodies, and what seemed to be long stingers. But rather than advance on her opponent or attempt to protect her, their stingers thrust into Entoma's back, the silent crowd, awed by the display, could hear the crude pumping sound over the stillness.
Entoma felt her strength and speed potential rise exponentially. 'Blood magic is far more potent than I expected.' She begrudgingly admitted, 'Battle casters really are something else.'
"This has been… incredibly fun. But this will be it for me." Inta said, "That swarm did quite a number on me, and I never saw it coming…"
Entoma nodded with respect, "I understand. Let's make it a good one then."
They charged at the same instant, the red sword and green sword of the duel wielding caster were blurs of color that Entoma avoided or blocked while counter attacking with her armored bug hand. Dodging and weaving around one another at close range, it was a peculiar and lethal dance that blurred the lines between 'exhibition' and 'murder attempt', and yet they matched it speed for speed, thrust for thrust. Her chitin armor deflected both his swords when she couldn't block, and his runecrafted armor was built to absorb and neutralize blows.
It was not lost on her that, as close as she was to him, his white tooth with its bloody drop had gone from being fairly small to much, much larger at such close range.
But she began to take a toll on him, and then she lept backward, he stepped forward.
And felt pain in his foot. He looked down, the crowd gasped, his ankle was caught in a pair of jaws.
"Try to dodge now!" Entoma said as the realization hit him, she saw it on his face, and her bug sword cast his toxic blade aside to skitter out of the ring and embed itself into the grass, which died immediately around it, turning a sickly shriveled brown.
Inta let out a shout and brought down his red sword, only for Entoma to call out [Shield Bug], and a fresh shield clanged into being around her fist, deflecting the blow, and she jumped forward and up, hitting him in the face with her bug mask, and knocking the trapped Inta down onto his back.
She held her sword bug over his torso, and he went limp, conceding to her win.
The crowd went wild, a roar of approval that was like the sound of a great ocean wave crashing on the shore.
She raised her bug sword in the air, stepped away, and then dismissed all of her magic. "The Entomancy Department will be accepting students in the coming semester. Bear that in mind." Entoma said, and then the slender elf woman slipped catlike back into the ring.
She approached the victor and shouted, "That's it! We have our winner! Now you know what Entomancy can do!"
Entoma's sharp hearing caught excited chatter from the students among those who found themselves intrigued by the promising new school of magic. 'I think that takes care of any worries that I won't have any students to teach. That was fun.' It wasn't until she thought about how much she'd enjoyed it that she noticed that she had not felt any of the earlier fear or nervousness. 'Once you do it… embrace it… what's to fear?' She mused and bent over at the same moment as the elf woman to help up the fallen Inta.
The two women were bent over him at the same moment, each offering open hands to the defeated warrior, and he looked briefly confused. "I've got this." Entoma 'almost' hissed to the elven woman.
Inta chuckled and held up both his hands, clasping each of them and allowed them both to pull him up by the wrists. "Ouch." He winced and glanced at his elven friend who's name Entoma was still struggling to recall.
"Go grab him a healer, would you?" Entoma asked her, and before the woman could protest, the heteromorph pointed out, "We might have overdone it."
The elf woman swallowed, nodded, and made her retreat.
"So… how do you feel?" Entoma asked, looking the battered and cut up vampire over.
"Like hammered shit." He said with a sheepish laugh, "That really is powerful magic." He rubbed the back of his head when he laughed, and she snorted at the unexpectedly crude response.
"So, you said you were going to tell me after the match? What was that symbol for?" Entoma reminded him.
His face became serious. "I was fighting to be what I wanted, who I wanted, and so everybody else could have the same thing. I killed a lot of people long ago in the Draconic Kingdom, it was the only way to live. But I never liked it, nor did my sister. But what else was there? When I realized what everything happening really meant? What the Pope was truly trying to do? I realized we could all have what we wanted, a place to be part of, to make our own lives out here. That's what this meant to me." He touched the bloodstained tooth again, "I'm not a soldier anymore, not a great commander or leader of men, and I probably won't ever be again. But I'll never forget that."
He looked around, the crowd was dissipating, mostly gone.
Entoma was trying to think of what to say in response to that, when she heard the voice behind her.
"You were amazing."
Entoma whirled around, away from the wounded vampire and found herself face to face with Bertra.
"Bertra?! How… how can you be here?!" Entoma asked with dismay as the elven woman approached and embraced her.
Bertra squeezed the maid once before Entoma could return the hold and do the same, then the moment passed and their grips broke. She pointed past Entoma toward Inta.
"Him, actually." Bertra said.
"You know each other?" Entoma asked with surprise.
"No, not at all, but he reached out to Keeno, who in turn reached out to me, then I went to Queen Zesshi to ask for a favor, I got in a few days ago, and I'd have come to see you, but I wanted this to be a surprise." Bertra wore a big, toothy grin on her face.
Inta returned to rubbing the back of his head when Entoma turned to face him and cocked her head at him with a questioning look in all her eyes from behind her mask.
"Well… you're not well known here… I'm pretty popular as a teacher, and… so I just didn't think it would be right if you were here with nobody to cheer for you. But I didn't know how else to go about it, so this was the best I could do." Inta explained and trailed off.
"I… I don't know what to say… th-thank you!" Entoma exclaimed with absolute and utter happiness.