Fire was hemming her in again, the intensity of the light magic almost hotter than the flames — Cæciné liked fire, apparently, she'd been throwing a lot of the shite around. Pushing an overpowered featherweight charm through her knife, Lyra jumped as hard as she could, a weak banishing giving her a little bit of extra height, clearing the incoming wave of fire by at least a metre, drawing out a lightning curse so powerful the air around her wand hand crackled with blue-white sparks, she—
Lyra twitched at the ripple quickly slipping through the air, aimed right at her. Oh, shite...
It didn't hit her directly, she threw a shield up in time, but the wave of physical force slamming against the barrier sent her flying backward — the featherweight charm probably didn't help. It must have hit her at a weird angle, the world was spinning dizzily around her — sky, ground, trees, sky, fire, trees — she started to cast a wide-angled banishing around her, to catch her and maybe slow her down before—
Her foot skipped over the ground, tipping her tumble a bit more lateral, and then she slammed into something shoulder-first — softer than she'd expected, cool and wet, must be the stream down the middle of the field. She was light enough and moving fast enough, at shallow enough of an angle, she didn't sink straight away, skidding a metre or two across the surface before hitching up against the shore, wrenching her leg, rolled a few more times before finally coming to a halt.
Lyra forced herself up to her knees, coughing, waited for her head to stop spinning, or at least slow down a little bit so she could properly stand up. Seriously, this girl liked throwing her around too much...
On her feet again, Lyra stumbled a little — she was still dizzy, yes, but her hip was aching too, she must have pulled something. She slunk past the tree line, trying to break line of sight with the opposite shore as much as possible, sketching runes on the air with her wand as she went, tossed the enchantment off at the ground behind her. And she took a moment to breathe, casting healing and numbing charms at her hip.
Oh hey, the shadows looked more substantial over here, she must be beyond the range of Cæciné's ridiculous elemental sunlight paling. Good to know.
Cæciné was getting closer — she wasn't bothering to keep herself contained anymore, channeling enough hot, vicious, painfully light magic she had to be a sorceress already (which was slightly ridiculous for her age, but Lyra had no right to talk) — she had to be nearly across the stream already. Right. Three, two... "Austre pūniēns, terram—"
Behind her, ambient magic shifted, crystalised, her trap was sprung. There was a gasp, a long pained hiss. Before Cæciné could move, Lyra tipped around her tree, her wand swirling, little shivering black sparks left in its wake, jabbed down at the ground toward the shore, "—perfringe!"
Cassie really was the best Defence Professor — she even went out hunting spiders with her, and was shagging a vampire in Dumbledore's Hogwarts, that was just hilarious. She could be tedious sometimes, too much of a "moral" person to be fun all the time, and she was a different kind of entertaining than Riddle had been, but Riddle also kind of hated her (hated the hyperactive little shites in the school as a whole, really) so wasn't willing to do entertaining things with her (like hunt spiders), and Lyra had actually learned things in Cassie's class. For all that Riddle babbling about the Dark Arts and the Maleficia had been amusing, his lectures had been aimed at first and second-years with no Dark Arts experience to speak of. Lyra had already known most of it, especially the actually useful parts. And Cassie would also talk about the Dark Arts sometimes — though less talking about the theory of how they work and more how to recognise them being used (so the helpless little kids would know when to get the fuck away) — so...
Lyra had known some elemental magic before, though not a whole lot. Most of her dueling spells had been picked up from Cygnus — who used exclusively dark magic, disproportionately pain curses (at least when beating up on her) — or else taught to her by Ciardha, who'd been trying to fill in the obvious gaps in her repertoire, with the conscious intention of defending herself against Cygnus — so, lots of shields and counters, and more damaging curses with physical effects, like blasting and cutting curses, bone-breakers, or boiling blood and shredding or rotting organs, that sort of thing. (In retrospect, Ciardha had actually taught her a lot of very lethal magic, he must have been intentionally arming her to kill Cygnus.) She hadn't spent much time looking at elemental magic at all.
Which was unfortunate, because some of this stuff was really neat.
A fat bolt of energy, shimmering black and blue, shot out of her wand — enough force behind it Lyra's wand hand was kicked back a bit, which was still a little weird, that didn't happen with normal curses. It zipped down in a blink to strike the ground — the impact blowing up a handful of dirt and little tufts of dried grass — but instead of fizzling out it split into three separate bolts — the total power of the spell actually growing, drawing in ambient magic to fuel the split — which leapt forward in sizzling arcs before landing again, where each one again split into three, again and again and again, expanding as it went into a hissing and crackling carpet of magically-simulated electricity, grass and fallen leaves flash-heated into glass or powderised in an instant, rapidly crawling across the shore toward where Cæciné stood pinned.
That shite would really hurt if it landed — she meant, second-degree burns over a person's entire body hurt — but Lyra didn't expect it to land. She ducked back into the trees, curving around to her left. There was an odd echo in the magic around her, a reverberating clang, really bloody weird, Lyra had no idea what the fuck Cæciné was doing. Whatever it was, the crackling of lightning steeply dropped off, not entirely gone but suddenly much quieter — though there was still crackling and popping filling the air, after a moment of looking around Lyra noticed the tops of the trees nearby to the north and the south were aflame, the fliers must have gotten a bit overzealous chucking fire around (not that Lyra had any right to judge) — and once the weird echo carried on the ambient magic of the area cleared up Lyra could feel the concentration of light magic that was Cæciné move closer, a flicker of motion visible through the trees ahead.
Lyra dipped her fingers into shadows, just to make sure. Right.
The second Cæciné came properly into view curses were already falling — blasting curses and stripping hexes and pain curses, whatever came to mind, broken up with wide-angled breaking effects from her knife. But, despite having only an instant of warning, Cæciné met the rain of curses easily, deflecting the first aside, side-stepping the next couple to give herself time to fire off a brace of light hexes at Lyra — her first blasting curse struck the base of a tree, throwing up a cloud of dirt and chips of wood — which she had to dodge, fucking up the aim on her first breaking spell, Cæciné ducked under the tail end of it even while deflecting a stripping hex, following up with a wide-angled light curse of some kind (Lyra wasn't familiar enough with light magic to recognise most of her spells, honestly, she hadn't been dueling with Sirius that long), Lyra split it with her knife while casting another blasting curse quickly followed by another breaking spell, she deflected another curse — her fingers tingled painfully even getting that close to the intensely light spell — her blasting curse had just plain missed, sailing over Cæciné's shoulder and away between the trees, Cæciné stabbed the breaking spell with a wand, the entire thing dissolving in a wave of popping sparks, starting in the middle and quickly spreading down its length — okay, what the fuck was that?! — but Lyra's first breaking spell had apparently cut all the way through a nearby tree, the thing toppling over. A little tug from Lyra made sure it fell in Cæciné's direction, but she saw it coming, a flick of her wand and the entire fucking tree was wreathed in roaring blue-white flame, a charm so powerful Lyra could feel it prickling at her skin from here sent the burning tree rocketing straight at Lyra...
How did she even do that?! Another featherweight charm, another hop, Lyra summoned herself toward a tree to her right, as she fell sideways through the air, clothes flapping in the wind, conjuring a long copper wire, dangling and dancing behind her as it lengthened. This girl is human, right? And she's not a white mage, so she couldn't have asked for something like the Blacks' trade. Lyra stopped herself with a banishing at her tree, a couple careful levitation charms at her wire sending it whipping around over her head, and then slicing through the air straight at Cæciné. So how the fuck does she get off big spells like that? That shouldn't be possible for a fifteen-year-old human.
And normal thirteen-year-old humans don't cast patroni.
...That was a point. Cæciné did have a similar glimmer to her magic as Harry, but Lyra still didn't really know what that meant. Her wire vanished in a wave of red-orange fire, once the conjuration had been burned away twisting into long, narrow tongues, stabbing out toward Lyra, dammit, she threw up a shield to catch them, while holding it dipping to the side out of the way of a potential follow-up curse.
I told you, you have all the information you need to come up with the answer on your own. Didn't you ever count back from your new baby cousin's birthdate?
To his conception, you mean? No... The air around her clearing, Lyra dropped the shield, then immediately ducked a light hex of some kind aimed right at her face, deflected away another curse, countering with a wide-angled blasting curse, rolling out of the way of a severing curse, and another wave of calōre vindicāns was falling toward her, Lyra carved a couple runes in the air and tossed them at the wall of blue-white flames, the light elemental magic dissolving into a rain of sparks and wisps of steam, turning back to toss off a brace of curses at Cæciné, shielding a solo-cast array of cutting curses (which was still ridiculous). No, I really don't have time to puzzle over this right now. Remind me later.
Lyra cast a few blasting curses, not at Cæciné but the ground in front of her, throwing up plumes of dirt and grass. An immediate elemental spell wreathed all the little particles with ice, sticking them together, Cæciné's wide-angled banishing meant to clear the air instead sending her staggering backward. And she didn't get her balance back right away, her teetering steps pained and awkward — her trap before would have transfigured the ground into a bed of spikes, she must have done some actual damage. Lyra's first piercing hex missed, a second nailing her in the thigh — though it didn't penetrate, the defensive charms she'd put up ages ago now still holding — Cæciné tried to deflect a pain curse but, still unbalanced, she missed. Lyra could feel the spell take effect, but Cæciné hardly let out a whimper, as she finally got her feet under her, her shoulders squared and her jaw clenched, fixing Lyra with a bloody glare.
Lyra grinned.
This isn't going to work.
Eris worried too much. What was the worst that could happen?
Another blasting curse flying from her wand, a thick band of crackling lighting from her knife, dancing out of the way of a point curse, a wide-angled one caught on a shield. Lyra's blasting curse was somehow detonated halfway to Cæciné, the lightning caught on a conjured metal pole stuck into the ground — though, spells that looked like lightning often didn't behave like real electricity, the middle of the band caught on the pole but the ends were free to whip around. But Cæciné had apparently expected that, skipping back out of range. After the ends had spun around the pole once Cæciné stabbed out with one of her wands, catching the lightning on the tip, and...um...
Lyra dove to the side, giving herself extra distance and speed with a couple charms, an instant later the spot she'd been standing in pierced through with a blinding flash of white light, immediately followed by a bone-shivering boom, hard enough that, when she rolled back over to her feet, she skidded a little bit, her head spinning enough to fuck up her balance a little. Gods and Powers, had this girl just thrown actual lightning at her? Okay, that's it...
A few more big and noisy curses, elemental breaking curses, whatever Lyra could think of that required an extra couple seconds to deal with. An extra couple seconds to cast too, of course, but Cæciné's return spells thinned as well, giving her more time. And, once she was sure she had an opening, Cæciné stuck countering a thread of lightning splitting apart the dirt under her feet—
—Lyra stepped into shadows, jabbing out with her knife at shoulder height, then stepped back out directly behind Cæciné. High on the right, she wouldn't hit anything vital, but let's see how well Cæciné could fight with a stab wound through her lung and—
A charm snapped into effect, a physical barrier slamming down between them — Lyra's knife arm, extended, was caught in the middle of it at the wrist. And then—
Pop-pop, crack!
It twisted.
Searing pain stabbing up Lyra's arm, a scream was ripped out of her throat, her knife falling out of limp fingers, her knees hitting the dirt just behind it. Bile bubbling up her throat, her vision turned fuzzy and saturated and useless, she could still feel Cæciné preparing some kind of spell, probably a stunner to knock her out. But no, she wasn't done just because of a stupid broken wrist — though this was worse than a simple break, she'd dealt with that before but this really fucking HURT! — Lyra shoved out with her magic, the instinctive wandless spell just making her head spin worse, but it did its job, fallen leaves rustling and nearby branches cracking — and Cæciné was pushed back, by the sound of it tripping and tumbling to the ground.
I told you it wouldn't work.
You're always nervous when I get into a fight, how am I supposed to tell when you actually mean it?! Ignoring Eris for the moment, Lyra cast a stabilising charm at her arm — which was a terrible thing to do without setting the break first, but she really doubted Cæciné would give her the time to deal with it properly. For a moment the pain flared worse, Lyra's vision taken over with white and her stomach churning, whimpers forcing their way through clenched teeth. Once it settled down enough she could think straight, Lyra cast numbing charms, layering them down elbow to fingers — it still fucking hurt, but she'd had worse, she'd be able to fight through this. She forced herself up to her feet — which wasn't easy, with one hand hanging useless and the trees wavering dizzily around her, but they weren't done, dammit — blinked her vision clear.
Cæciné was standing a short distance away — her clothes torn and streaked with ash, her boots splotched with blood in a few places, her hair free from its plait and worked into a tangled mess, a few scrapes on her arms, across one cheek. She stared at Lyra a moment, one pale eyebrow arched. "You should surrender."
Lyra grinned. Her voice strained, shaky, "Like hell. We're not done."
Cæciné smiled. "Yes. We are." She raised one of her wands, the other still held loosely at her hip.
She was probably right — Lyra had barely been keeping up when she'd had full use of both hands — but that didn't mean she was giving up. Lyra raised her wand, her magic flaring, an elemental blasting curse on her lips, and—
Simultaneously, four figures crashed out of the brush to the right, four spellglows already falling on Cæciné — those were some serious concealment spells, where the hell had they come from?! Cæciné twitched, taken by surprise, one wand coming around to deflect, the other twisting to start a shield charm, but she was too late, the spells coming from too close. One missed, Cæciné managed to deflect one, barely, one hit her under her right shoulder, the piercing curse punching out a narrow hole, a thin cloud of blood droplets spraying out of her back, she staggered with the impact, the fourth spell missed.
Lyra turned unthinkingly, her curse tossed at the intruders instead. Her head still spinning a little from her damned broken wrist, her aim was a little off, carving a furrow through the ground ahead of them, tossing up dirt and pebbles, fingers of lightning clawing at their legs, setting one of their trousers alight — none of them were hit badly, but at least they backed off a little, giving Cæciné a second to breathe. Lyra followed it up with one of Cygnus's pain curses, the same one she'd hit Cæciné with a minute ago, it sailed right through the cloud of dirt and smoke to nail one of them in the chest. He let out a shout and tumbled to the ground, which was slightly pathetic — honestly, she'd dealt with this one better when she was nine — but also broke line of sight, ending the curse.
The intruders retaliated, a stunning hex and a fear curse, and then a stripping hex once that one had put his trousers out. Lyra deflected the stunning hex, ignored the fear curse, stepping around the stripping hex — the movement jostling her broken wrist, she grit her teeth — dragging her wand in a long arc, a severing curse whipping out toward the intruders, followed by a blasting curse. The long band of the severing curse was caught on a pair of shield charms, the second exploding enough to shatter one of the shields, the force released sending the three still standing staggering.
The one she'd hit with the pain curse shot a piercing curse back at her, she had to deflect that away, stopping her from following up on her blasting curse. By the time she'd dealt with that, two of the intruders — no red, she had to watch her spellfire, dammit — had shields up, the other two — these were wearing red, good — preparing to toss spells at her over their shoulders like a tiny phalanx. Which, not a bad strategy, outnumbering an opponent that outmatched all of their people one-on-one. It might actually work if Lyra couldn't shadow-walk.
And if she were alone — the intruders' right flank was suddenly aflame, red-white fire scorching the air, while they scrambled to deal with the new threat a light hex sailed through the wall of fire (already quickly fizzling out, only a distraction) catching one of the white-shirts in the chest, sending him to the ground, instantly unconscious. Lyra tossed a piercing curse through where that one's shield had been a second ago, the red-shirt deflected it, but he made the mistake of trying to retaliate immediately, while he was casting her follow-up blasting curse caught him low on the left side, tossing him back, blood sprinkling across the dried and scorched grass — in a blink, an elf popped that one away, taking his shrieks of shock and pain with him.
Cæciné was already trading spells with the second red-shirt, spellglows whipping back and forth to be deflected or shielded — slower than Lyra would have expected, but it looked like Cæciné had lost one of her wands in the intruders' ambush. Which left Lyra with the second white shirt, great. She tossed a stunning spell at Lyra, but her aim wasn't great, Lyra ducked aside and threw a shield-breaker; obviously not recognising it, the white-shirt cast a shield charm, Lyra's spell shattering it an instant later, her follow-up bludgeoning hex catching the white-shirt in the shoulder while she reeled from the backlash. The hex spun her around, flopping down to the ground.
Lyra shot off a stunning charm, but the white-shirt transfigured the dirt up to block, a lightning hex easily tore apart the earthen shield, but the white-shirt had already rolled to the side, conjured darts winging out at Lyra's head. She instinctively dipped under the first ones, the momentum of the spin brought her hand bumping against her hip, she groaned at the renewed flare of pain radiating up her arm, a wide-angled banishing sent the rest of the darts spinning away.
The white-shirt had taken cover behind a tree now, leaning out to pelt her with stunning charms; the red-shirt was shielding a wave of calōre vindicāns from Cæciné, barely holding the shield together under the dissolving effects of the fire elemental magic. Lyra tossed a force whip out at the red-shirt, catching him around the knee, a hard yank pulling him off balance, deflected another stunning charm from the white-shirt — Cæciné tagged the red-shirt with a curse, he let out a shout as the light magic burned through him then fell limp, unconscious — and then Lyra hit the tree the white-shirt was hiding behind with a blasting curse.
She...didn't think that was against the rules? It wasn't like she'd actually hit the white-shirt with it, and the blasting curse had reduced a chunk of the tree to wooden shrapnel, but it was all flying away from her — Lyra even cast a quick physical barrier to protect herself — so it was probably fine.
The white-shirt dove out from behind the remains of the tree, letting out a shout of surprise, the thing was already slowly teetering over — oh, hey, the top quarter or so of this one was on fire, Lyra hadn't noticed, she hopped a few steps to the side to put herself well clear of the flames (grimacing as her wrist was jostled some more). By the time she picked the white-shirt out of the brush again, Cæciné's stunning hex was already falling, the light magic sailing straight through the shield cast to intercept it, and the last intruder was down.
Well. That'd been...easy. They'd probably been hoping to take them by surprise, but still, sometimes Lyra forgot how shite normal people were at this...
The interruption dealt with, they immediately turned back to each other. Lyra watched Cæciné, the light witch icily staring back, their wands held loose but ready at their hips, prepared to curse or shield. There was a sizable streak of blood stretching down from the puncture wound under Cæciné's right shoulder, still slowly spreading as Lyra watched. Cæciné visibly fought a cough and didn't quite succeed, a few droplets of bloody saliva dribbling down her chin to be wiped away on the sleeve of her free hand.
The tree Lyra had knocked over crashed against the ground to her right, the fire surging with a heavy roar as the impact split the wood apart, branches noisily shattering, smoke and ash and embers filling the air. Cæciné coughed again.
...At this point, it was a toss-up which of them would win. They were both down a focus, though Cæciné's missing wand was presumably sitting around somewhere, free to be snatched up at some point. By how gingerly Cæciné had been moving through this last bit of the fight, Lyra's trap must have poked holes in her feet, but Lyra's mobility was also reduced. Possibly worse, in fact — any quick movements risked her wrist being jostled, just a light bump fucking hurt, a distraction Cæciné was definitely quick enough to take advantage of. But that was the only (serious) injury she had, while she was certain that piercing curse had punctured Cæciné's lung. She was obviously having trouble breathing, and the coughing up blood, by the little mist of blood coming out her back as the curse hit, yeah, that wasn't a small injury. (Especially since the Durmstranger hadn't cauterised it like Bella had when she'd been poking holes in Lyra (bitch).) Cæciné would probably have trouble getting incantations out...but she'd hardly used very many incantations anyway, so Lyra wasn't certain how much of a disadvantage that was. It could really go either way.
But she did know it'd be less fun than if she gave Cæciné a chance to heal up a bit first.
Slowly, Lyra brought her wand hand around — Cæciné tensed a little, her eyes narrowing — and pointed it at her own wrist. She ticked up one eyebrow in a questioning look she'd borrowed from Snape.
Cæciné hesitated for a second, and then abruptly plopped down to a seat, poking at her feet with her wand. Right, then.
The detection charms to figure out just what was wrong with her wrist were trivial, but unfortunately it wasn't a simple and easy break. Both the radius and ulna had been broken, but not in a way she'd seen before — apparently, the physical barrier twisting while also holding her arm in place had kind of...splintered them in a nasty sort of comminuted spiral fracture. She was not at all surprised it hurt so badly, or that the muscles between the bones had also been torn in places. Luckily, none of her carpal bones had been broken (though there was a bit of dislocation going on, didn't look right), and while some of the broken edges did seem kind of sharp (especially the splinters, fuck) they hadn't moved enough to cut anything up much. None of them had broken the skin, and all of the major veins and arteries seemed to be intact, which was honestly sort of surprising.
Properly healing this would be extremely tedious, so instead she cheated: she made sure all the pieces of her radius and ulna were more or less where they were supposed to be with tiny, delicate movement charms, and then transfigured it all together. Transfigurations were, of course, temporary, so she'd have to undergo proper healing later — she'd almost certainly have to vanish the shattered sections and regrow them, ugh, she hated Skele-Gro — but this would last at least long enough to get through the fight. Er, unless interference destabilised the transfiguration early, but tying it into a rune quick cut into the inside of her arm, there, that would do. Realigning all the little bits in her wrist didn't take quite as long as that part had — she cheated there too, used a muscle-relaxing charm to loosen up the joints and prodding them back into place with movement charms. Not, of course, a conventional healing technique — hurt a hell of a lot more, for one thing, pretty sure she pinched a couple of nerves moving things in the wrong order — but it worked, and Lyra was practical like that.
Casting a bevy of healing and anti-inflammation charms at abused ligaments and tendons, Lyra carefully tested her work. She had...mostly the full range of movement back, and it did hurt a little but nowhere near too badly. She thought her grip might be a little weak — something in her wrist still wasn't quite right — but it wasn't that bad, she'd be fine until she could get a proper healer to take a look at it.
(And probably get yelled at — Pomfrey didn't approve of these kinds of shortcuts. That was going to be tedious, but oh well.)
She was in the middle of a series of analysis charms — checking if whatever was still wrong with her wrist was an easy fix or she just had to deal with it — when she was slammed over the head with a burst of intensely light magic. Far too hot and clawing at her skin, painfully tingly, her eyes itching as though from smoke, so thick she could barely breathe, Lyra staggered back a few steps, the assault weakening with every inch she opened up. Shaking her head, she flooded her own body with dark magic, chasing away the little bits of the light that had managed to cling on.
It only took her a second to figure out what was going on. Cæciné was still sitting on the forest floor, her shirt cut open a bit and pushed aside, exposing most of her right shoulder, the bloody hole punched all the way through her. Though Lyra couldn't see the injury very well at all anymore — it had been filled with fire, a searingly-bright white, chased here and there with flickers of blue and black, apparently filling the entire length, Lyra caught over her shoulder little wisps of flame rising from the exit wound on her back. Cæciné had clearly done some kind of blood magic, glyphs (now glowing white) sketched in a spiral around the hole in her chest.
It was kind of hard to read the glyphs, with how brightly the symbols were shining, but Lyra was pretty sure it was Roman cursive, which was a weird script to be doing written magic in — alphabets were almost never used, for a variety of reasons. Squinting through the eye-watering light, Lyra made out enough to decide it wasn't in Latin (Etruscan, maybe?), but she couldn't actually read it. If it was Etruscan — which would make sense, the Cæcinés had originally been Etruscan (like in the time of the Roman Republic, still) — she wouldn't be able to read it anyway, that wasn't a language she knew.
It also looked like whatever Cæciné was doing to heal herself was really painful. Hands clenched into tight fists, shaking against her thighs, her eyes were squeezed shut, her jaw clenched, over the sound of the fires still crackling in the treetops Lyra barely made out a long, whimpering hiss. Lyra hadn't gotten that much of a reaction out of Cæciné hitting her with a curse designed to cause pain, or even when she'd poked holes in the bottom of her feet, but then, one of her lungs was currently on fire, so she supposed that made—
Wait a second...
Is this white magic? It was very light, enough it kind of hurt just looking at it, but she couldn't pick out any glimmer of high magic...but maybe she just wasn't close enough, or the overwhelming heat of the light magic being released was interfering too much. Cæciné definitely hadn't invoked Life, if she had it wouldn't be this painful, but healing someone by setting them aflame sounded very much like that cleanse by fire thing certain Light Powers were into (mostly the more fun ones), so it was possible...
Now now, ducky, you know better than that. That would be telling.
Saying that would be telling in response to a yes-or-no question was tantamount to confirming it. Or, maybe Eris knew Lyra's next question would be which Aspect she'd invoked, which was the kind of question Eris usually refused to answer. I'm pretty sure openly casting white magic is just as stupid of an idea as black magic.
Only if people recognise it for what it is — you hardly even noticed from this close, from the stands it should just look like blood magic.
Well, true...
Whatever the hell Cæciné was doing, it only lasted a few moments — Lyra wasn't keeping track, but definitely less than a minute. The white fire abruptly vanished, Cæciné letting out a heavy sigh/moan, shoulders slumping in relief. It looked like the wound was entirely gone, her skin smooth and unblemished, as though nothing had happened...except for the letters now burned into her skin, a shiny angry red, streaked here and there with flecks of white and gold. (Light magic contamination? Lyra had literally never seen that before, stains from dark curse damage were far more common, at least in Britain.) Before Lyra could try to read it, Cæciné repaired her shirt, the cloth over her formerly injured shoulder weaving itself back together with a couple charms. A little shakily — jittery from adrenaline, Lyra thought — Cæciné pushed herself back up to her feet.
And she glared down at the unconscious Durmstrangers, only a few metres away. They were all Durmstrangers, Lyra was pretty sure — she didn't know everyone on the team, but the Beauxbatonnais wouldn't have attacked Cæciné, and she didn't think Beauxbatons even had four humans on their whole team, anyway. (Even fighting on the ground, the People's firewalking thing was a huge advantage, the same as her shadow-walking.) Only three of the Durmstrangers were still here, of course, the one Lyra blasted would probably be in hospital for a couple hours at least. The other red-shirt looked a little scorched from the fire Cæciné had been tossing around, but they were otherwise fine.
After glaring at them for a moment, Cæciné turned back to Lyra, one pale eyebrow arching. In French, her voice sounding slightly breathless, she drawled, "So, want to go burn Durmstrang's fort to the ground?"
What? No! Their fight couldn't be done yet — they were both standing, and neither of them had even won! It wasn't over until one of them was down, dammit. Without a word, Lyra flicked a scorching hex at her, pouting. Even from such a short distance it didn't land, Cæciné's wand whipping up to slap it aside, splashing pointlessly against a nearby tree. "No, we weren't done. Besides, weren't you having fun?"
Cæciné's lips twitched. "You're mad, Black."
Feeling her face split into a grin, an edge of a giggle on her voice, "It runs in the family, you know."
She scoffed, silvery eyes rolling. There was a flare of light magic, and a hex of some kind was flying right at Lyra's chest. She hadn't seen it coming in time, she stepped through shadows behind Cæciné rather than try to deal with it, an arc of lightning cast from her knife and a blood-boiling curse from her wand. Cæciné spun on a heel, dipping around the curse, an orange-white shield charm blinking into existence to catch the lightning, and the space between them suddenly burst into red-white flame, curling up to crash down on her like the waves on the shore in California. Lyra's blasting curse disappeared inside of it, but she was already shadow-walking away again.
By the time Lyra reappeared Cæciné was already reacting, the fires curving around her toward Lyra — forming a sort of bowl reaching out, Cæciné left in the middle, the magical flames throwing thin shadows over her criss-crossing in all directions — she lazily deflected Lyra's stripping hex, Lyra started sketching a rune into the air to dissolve the approaching fires. Cæciné's second wand had apparently found its way back to her hand, swishing in a broad circle over her head, surrounded with glimmering yellow-orange light—
The fires crashed down toward Lyra, but her rune-cast spell was rising to meet them, tearing the light elemental magic apart, leaving only smoke and little drifting sparks behind. (They were still uncomfortably light even decohered, Lyra pushed out at the magic around her, sending them zipping away.) When the air cleared, she saw Cæciné was retreating, darting off through the sparse brush, her back to Lyra — was she running off to Durmstrang? Wait, no, she wasn't going north...
Oh, right, there were three players laying on the ground unconscious over here — Cæciné probably just didn't want to hit them accidentally. Lyra stepped through shadows after her, appearing ahead of a tree to her right, a lightning curse flickering around—
A blurry streak of yellow light darting in at her, Lyra ducked, whatever it was passing close enough she could feel the light magic wafting off of it. Still shuffling, though slowed somewhat so she could face Lyra as she moved, Cæciné was surrounded with a wreath of glowing yellow-orange light, formed into... Had Cæciné condensed elemental sunlight into darts and knives and stuff, like the veela and lilin before had done with their fire? Huh. (She so needed to learn how to do that...)
Cæciné shielded the lightning curse, retaliating with a light hex of some kind (no idea what), a handful of glowing needles zipping straight at Lyra's heart. She stepped into shadows to avoid them — since she was shadow-kin or whatever now, getting cut with elemental sunlight would probably be very bad — reappearing ahead of Cæciné, a little bit further away.
Grinning, she shouted, "Really, isn't this more fun than going off to—" She cut her mocking question off early, slapping a light blasting(?) curse out of the air, laughing as it exploded somewhere behind her, the air filling with smoke and wood chips.
She stepped into shadows again, following the sound of a half-choked giggle, her next curse already on her lips.
Hmm, let's see, notes notes... Nope, can't think of anything, nothing interesting that might need clarification happened in this chapter at all. —Lysandra