Leaping out of the way of another river of flame — an eye-searing swirl of too-bright red and white, the air tingling with light magic — Lyra let out another breathless giggle.
Just as her feet hit the ground again, skipping a little to bleed off momentum, curses were already falling in at her, thick and fast. Cæciné clearly had a lot of practice using two wands at once, because mind magic was cheating — she had an annoying tendency to cast one spell that could be dodged or deflected and one that needed to be shielded at the same time. That one was a piercing curse, that arc of orange spellglow probably a cutting curse, but they weren't quite boxing her in, Lyra jumped up to the right, around the first and over the second, a sweep of her wand tossing off another elemental blasting curse immediately followed by one of Theo's favourite nightmare curses, before her feet hit the ground. But she didn't have a second to stop, more spells were already coming in at her, Lyra ignored the shield-breaker, deflected a light spell of some kind into the ground, splitting another fire elemental thing she didn't even recognise with her off hand, while Cæciné took her breaking curse on a glittering silvery shield Lyra also didn't recognise — probably with a dissolving filter built in, the elemental curse just seemed to fizzle out on contact — but whatever it was, the vivid pink of her dark curse slipped right through, striking Cæciné in the chest.
Yes! Lyra leapt forward, lightening her weight and yanking at the ground ahead of her to close the distance faster, bludgeoning and disarming and pain hexes flying out of her wand, she—
There was a flare of light magic, intense enough Cæciné's aura visibly manifested for a blink — a brilliant silver-white traced with a deep blue, crawling over her like ghostly fire — breaking the nightmare curse, probably. Ducking under one of Lyra's follow up spells, a dagger-sized chunk of lilin fire was suddenly in her hand, and Lyra abruptly realised she was far too close, enough to see the dark magic was probably burning Cæciné's hand a little. (She'd still picked it up anyway, of course, because Cæciné was serious business, even better than Lyra had expected.) She stood with a whirl, another piercing curse missing her by inches, tossed the dagger, nailed it with a banishing spell, sending it zipping at Lyra, she threw up a shield charm to catch it.
Except, it wasn't coming right at her — Lyra was too close, didn't have enough time to react, she hadn't realised Cæciné had actually aimed somewhere behind her to her right. It must have hit more veela fire over there somewhere, because there was another shuddering explosion, the force knocking Lyra off her feet again. She was upright long enough to notice it'd caught Cæciné too, sending her staggering, but then Lyra was tumbling forward, rolling over her shoulder, her feet coming under her again, and—
Lyra slammed face-first into an invisible wall, hard. She fell flat on her back, the breath knocked out of her, her chest and her shoulder and one knee aching — also, her face, had she just broken her nose? Ow. She was dazed enough from the impact it took her a couple seconds to recover. Just in time to spot Cæciné standing over her, both wands fixed on Lyra's chest, an instant from casting.
Reaching out through her knife in a wide-angled summoning, Lyra was dragged across the ground, the rough dirt scraping against her back, a force whip cast with her wand catching Cæciné around the ankles as she slid, yanking her off her feet, one of her wands bouncing out of her hand as she landed awkwardly on one side. Lyra tipped up on her knees, yanked on her wand, Cæciné was dragged gracelessly on her back toward her, a severing curse flew from her knife.
Cæciné only had an instant to respond, only a couple feet away, but she still managed it, parting the wide-angled curse with her bare hand, somehow. (Lyra had had high expectations, but she'd still managed to underestimate her.) Since that hadn't needed her wand, a bludgeoning hex was immediately coming in, right at Lyra's face, she barely managed to deflect it out of the way, twisting the motion into one of Cygnus's favourite pain curses (which might be against the rules? oops?) but Cæciné deflected it, responding with another light stunning spell which Lyra deflected, countering with another elemental blasting curse (which would probably hurt from this close) which Cæciné deflected, the nearby explosion throwing dirt and bits of rock over both of them, not enough to hide the incoming pacification spell, which Lyra ignored entirely — getting hit with the light magic was unpleasant, but it didn't actually work, because god-given occlumency — giving her time to cast a more complicated multi-stage stripping hex (which might flay Cæciné a little, but only a little), but she hadn't noticed Cæciné's other wand had found its way back to her off-hand, and it was already pointed at—
The banishing spell tossed her into the air, wind dragging at her hair and robes, she started forming a spell to stop herself, and—
She slammed against something hard and rough, the texture stabbing at her through her clothes, her head knocking back against it. After a second she slid down to the ground, her head spinning, struggling to breathe. Was that...a tree? She hadn't realised they'd gotten so close to the edge of the clearing. Huh.
Also, ow!