Lyra ducked underneath a curse — an orangeish shimmer slashing across the air, probably a cutting curse or something of the like — snapping back with a stripping hex and a heart-stopping jinx, Cæciné deflected the first and stepped aside of the second, her knife carving out another lightning-based blasting curse, throwing extra power into it this time, the arc thick and long, one end dragging against the ground causing a line of rapid-fire tiny explosions, the soil poofing up and scattering. Cæciné already had a shield up to catch it, her other wand moving to do something.

But Lyra wouldn't be sitting around waiting for it. She slipped her knife into a shadow-pocket, and in the instant before her blasting curse landed she stepped through shadows, stepped out right behind Cæciné, a little to her left. Her curse landed with a steady stream of thumping and crashing, the impact spread out across Cæciné's shield, the ground to their left, a few nearby trees, the air filled with smoke and debris, Lyra's ears ringing with the harsh snapping of lightning, the discharge tingling against her skin. Cæciné had felt her move, of course, but she was pinned in place for just a second, blocking Lyra's big spell, and a second was all it took. Lyra grabbed Cæciné's left hand, cutting off whatever she'd been casting (the interrupted magic seeping back into the environment hot and too light), slid a step closer, even as her curse finally dissipated yanked at Cæciné arm, her hip pressed against Cæciné's acting as a lever.

Cæciné let out a brief groan of pain — probably wrenching her shoulder a little bit — as she was whipped around, sent staggering for a few steps, her hands splayed to keep her balance. Shaking out her off hand (she'd felt something in her weakened wrist pop, probably shouldn't do that again), Lyra took careful aim, and shot off a narrow severing curse at Cæciné's wrist.

That might be powerful enough to cut off Cæciné's hand — she doubted it, more likely it'd cut down to the bone, severing tendons, leaving Cæciné with only one usable hand. And if it did cut off her hand, that was fine. She didn't use a dark curse, so any competent healer should be able to reattach that no problem, and the damage would be enough Cæciné would probably be removed from the field. And she was too busy not falling over, the attack fell too quickly for her to react.

But Lyra missed. The curse instead passed through one of Cæciné's wands.

Not her primary wand, the one she'd presented to Ollivander, no, the other one. Lyra had gotten a couple good looks at this one over the course of their duel, and there was something...weird about it. She didn't think it was made of wood. Which wasn't impossible, any material made through an organic process could be used to make a wand just fine — in fact, it was thought the primitive foci that eventually became modern wands had been carved of bone or horn. But it didn't look like bone or horn either, instead almost...stone-like, a creamy off-white streaked here and there with faint pinks and blues, little twining chains of rosettes carved along its length, with a shiny luster to it she didn't think could be gotten from bone or horn, no matter how polished and processed it was. It kind of looked like pearl, maybe? Lyra had heard of pearl wands before, but they were incredibly rare, since pearls large enough to fashion into a wand were almost unheard of. She'd certainly never seen one before.

So she almost felt bad when her curse sliced the pretty thing in half.

The wand's enchantments unraveled violently — first with a burst of light, a painful crackling of disorganised magic on the air, and then a flash of white fire, Lyra cringed away from the heat and the force of the intensely light magic, stumbled back a few steps. She tried to blink out the spots in her vision, Cæciné should be retaliating any second now.

Also, what the hell was that? There was no way that had been a normal wand...which Lyra had already figured out on her own, so.

Lyra felt the magic coming before her vision quite started cooperating again, couldn't tell what was happening, so she just threw up a shield — whatever it was slammed into the surface with a heavy whump, and hard, the force carrying through the magic to send her staggering back. Quick enough she lost her footing, but she rolled with the fall, tipping over her shoulder and then popping back up to her feet. She'd managed to pull something in her neck a little with that maneuver, ow...

Her vision was finally starting to clear, so she could see Cæciné had gotten hit by her wand going up worse than Lyra had: her left sleeve was streaked with scorch marks all the way up to her shoulder, the back of her hand already darkening from a burn. And she was absolutely furious, silvery Seer eyes seeming to flicker, the air crackling with incandescent light magic raging out of control — which was fair, Lyra had just destroyed one of her wands.

Lyra let slip a thrilled little giggle. Oops?

Cæciné's wand snapped up, and a blueish curse of some kind sprung out, Lyra deflected it — and grimaced at the stinging of light magic left in her hand just getting that close to it, fuck — quickly followed with a torrent of red and white flames curling down to crash over her head. Lyra shadow-walked around it, coming out a few metres behind Cæciné, her wand spitting piercing and pain curses as she reached into her shadow-pocket to retrieve her knife. Cæciné didn't bother blocking the incoming spells, slipping between and around them, or even firing back, her remaining wand pressed against her free arm, the remains of her sleeve stripped away, and...cutting runes into her skin? What?

A slash of her knife cast another breaking curse, a stripping hex and a nightmare curse from her wand, Cæciné called up another blast of calōre vindicāns to disrupt the breaking curse, deflected the stripping hex and just ignored the nightmare curse — right, mind mage, forgot — her free hand coming up above her head, swaying back and forth...sparks of bright yellow light gathering around her fingers...

And now Cæciné was casting elemental sunlight wandlessly. Awesome.

That wasn't sarcastic, Cæciné was great, this was the best fight ever, she never wanted it to—

Another painfully light curse was falling in on Lyra, she stepped into shadows, appearing in Cæciné's rear-left quarter again — she only had one wand now, this was her most vulnerable angle — gathering a lightning-based incapacitation spell on her wand she stepped up to slash in at Cæciné's hip, and—

Her knife was slapped aside by a blade formed of condensed elemental sunlight (bright enough Lyra's eyes stung), knocking her off-balance, the tight green burst of lightning skimming past Cæciné's shoulder. Some kind of spell was lancing at Lyra's heart, she leaned back and pushed herself into a roll over her head, as her feet hit the dirt again a heavy weight slamming down over her head — not a physical weight, this was a legilimency attack. Cæciné was putting a lot of power into it, so she could definitely feel it there, clawing and scrabbling at the edges of her mind, but Lyra wasn't worried, there was no fucking way she was getting in. It kind of tickled, actually.

But it did distract her for a split second, which was probably what Cæciné was going for. Before Lyra could react she was right there, Lyra barely deflected it in time, parried a stab from Cæciné's fucking elemental sunlight sword (how did she even...), skipping a step forward and to the left, hopefully getting inside Cæciné's range, a cutting curse coming down on her shoulder, but Cæciné ducked around it easily, slashing in at Lyra's leg in the same motion. Lyra slapped it away with her knife, started to cast another stripping hex but Cæciné had absorbed the block easily, just turning her elbow and came in again higher up, the magical blade falling in toward Lyra's shoulder. She stepped out of the way—

But her legs didn't obey her, held from moving by impossibly stiff cloth — Cæciné must have cast a freezing charm at her clothes, when the fuck had that happened?! She did tip back, her effort to move unbalancing her, which saved her from the worst of it...but not all of it. The elemental sunlight sliced through the edge of her cape and the top of her dueling robes like they weren't even there, a line of piercing white agony carved high across her chest, her collarbones practically on fire.

Lyra let herself fall into shadows, took a second to breathe. The cut didn't look that bad — she was bleeding a little, not enough to really worry about in the short term — but it fucking hurt, light magic burning at her in a band much wider than the cut itself. Apparently, getting cut with elemental sunlight wasn't healthy for shadow-kin. She felt a flare of light magic from the other side, before Cæciné could draw her out stepping out of shadows several metres away from her.

"We're definitely sparring with blades later!" By how easily Cæciné had redirected and repositioned a moment ago, she must have been trained in fencing too. Lyra couldn't help an ecstatic grin at the thought — hardly anybody in the Noble Houses was taught that anymore. It'd been necessary once upon a time — obviously, duels with magical nobles would be done with wands, but using magic in a duel with a muggle noble just wouldn't be sporting — but since Secrecy it'd quickly fallen out of popularity. The Blacks still learned it, of course, and a tiny number of Dark families back in her time, but here the only person who would play with swords with her was Sirius. Variety was the spice of life, and all that.

Some kind of curse was flying straight at her heart, rather than dodge or deflect it Lyra cast a dark shield charm, overpowering the hell out of the thing — she didn't need to, but the excess dark magic flooding through her body chased away (most of) the lingering burn from the cut. She dropped the shield, quickly deflected a light hex of some kind — stunner, maybe? — Cæciné was a lot closer than she'd expected, must have started moving as soon as Lyra dropped out of the shadows, she stabbed at Lyra's cutting curse with her wand, doing that thing from before where it dissolved into sparks with a quick pop pop pop pop pop — she needed to ask Cæciné about that later, she'd never seen anyone counter a curse like that, it was so neat — and then her ridiculous elemental sunlight sword was slashing in at Lyra.

Lyra turned the blow aside with her knife, cast a stripping hex — which was annoyingly difficult to aim, since Lyra's knife was so short she'd had to turn her left shoulder forward to deflect Cæciné's eye-watering blade, awkward — but Cæciné had seen it coming, neatly side-stepped the hex, and more fire was springing from her wand, Lyra dove to the side, rolling over her shoulder, reaching to slash at the back of Cæciné's knee, but she was already turning, her knee pulled away as her sword came spinning around at Lyra's extended arm, barely managed to snatch it back in time.

Cæciné blocked a piercing hex and then an elemental blasting curse, in quick succession at point-blank, even as the latter burst apart against her shield darting forward in a stab at Lyra. She caught the blow on her knife, turning it to the side and up, the condensed magic caught between the blade and the guard of her knife — blinking spots out of her eyes, her hand feeling uncomfortably warm and tingly — and Lyra slipped closer, the two weapons sliding against each other with hardly any resistance, trying to dip inside Cæciné's effective range, but she was gladly not that incompetent, her wrist turning and sidling to Lyra's right, turning on her heel quick enough her hair whipped around even weighed down with sweat and blood, a cutting curse slashing through the air at Lyra's rear-left, from far too close, Lyra stepped into shadows.

While Lyra had been in shadows Cæciné had cast more calōre vindicāns, and a lot of it, a wave of searing blue-white flame crashing down at Lyra. Tossing her knife into a shadow pocket, she cast runes as quickly as she could, one two three four, got the spell off just in time. The wall of fire was transmuted to lightning (directed away from Lyra, obviously) with a blinding flash of light and an ear-splitting, bone-shivering boom — fuck, that was loud. Once her vision had cleared, grimacing at the headache she'd just given herself, she saw Cæciné was still standing — which was pretty damn impressive, it wouldn't all have been aimed directly at her but that had still been a lot of lightning, and she would have hardly had any warning at all — a fuzzy flickering shield charm dropped to reveal she was untouched but not entirely unaffected, the loose hairs that weren't too damp sticking up from her skull in a thin blonde halo.

Lyra giggled — she looked ridiculous...

Cæciné glared at her, snapped off a burning light curse of some kind at Lyra (which she dodged), took only a few steps closer before stopping, teetering in place a little, grimacing. The noise must have rattled her worse than Lyra, enough she was dizzy from it. Lyra immediately started laying on her with curses, from both wand and knife, even jumping back and forth with shadow-walking to switch up which angle they were coming from, but none of them fucking landed, Cæciné catching them with shields or countering them directly (which was still so neat) or drunkenly stumbling out of the way, casting more elemental sunlight (her damn glowing sword had disappeared at some point), whenever she had a free second her wand coming up to her head, casting something—

And then she suddenly burst into motion, darting straight at Lyra, her unsteadiness abruptly gone. Lyra had come closer, giving Cæciné less time to react, so she hardly had time to react herself, a fresh blade of elemental sunlight slashing in at her shoulder, she barely managed to duck under it. She slid in on Cæciné's right, but she'd already hopped back to a comfortable distance, the sword coming around again, Lyra slapped the shining blade aside with her knife, and immediately had to block another and another, a quick flurry of blows landing on her dense enough Lyra didn't have time to cast a spell, block block duck parry, try to get a cut in at the back of Cæciné's wrist, too slow, parry, block block block block...

Fighting someone with a sword armed only with a knife was difficult to begin with — their effective range was longer, obviously, Lyra had to close to even attempt to score a hit, which if the person knew what they were doing could be bloody impossible. And Cæciné definitely knew what she was doing, her posture perfect, each movement fluid and natural, feet lightly dancing over the uneven forest floor, each attempt by Lyra to close countered by shifting her stance or just skipping a step back. It really didn't help that elemental sunlight was, obviously, much lighter than metal, the blade whipping around easily with just a flick of a wrist. Not that Lyra was surprised, really, if any Continental noble (or ex-noble) family were to still train their members in old-fashioned shite like fighting with swords it was the Cæcinés, and this might actually be really fun if Lyra didn't have such an annoying disadvantage to work with...and also if her opponent's weapon weren't made out of elemental sunlight, seriously, it was so bright she could barely make out where it was at times, her eyes dazzled with colourful spots and streaks. This was just frustrating, no fun at all.

So Lyra stepped through shadows and snapped off a stripping hex at her back instead. Caught by surprise in mid-parry, the hex actually landed — starting in the middle of her lower back, Cæciné's clothing started dissolving into dust, ripped apart and torn away. Stripping hexes were, basically, a step up from disarming jinxes: the intent was not to just to take away whatever obvious weapon the target had on them, but everything, weapons both visible and concealed, potions or enchanted artifacts, portkeys or the like, whatever. They were often used by the authorities to stop a target from fleeing, or from unleashing some kind of alchemical or potions-based weapon or whatever. (The destruction of the target's clothing was actually an unintentional side-effect, though they were sometimes used as prank spells for that reason.) If overpowered, they could sometimes act as a really inefficient way to flay someone, though it almost never got worse than a light abrasion, like a scraped knee but kind of all over.

Unfortunately, even when Lyra managed to actually land a hit on Cæciné it never actually fucking worked. It started working, Cæciné's bloodied tunic starting to shred apart — Lyra even saw her skin beneath reddening, little beads of blood rising — but the spell quickly weakened, it only created a hole maybe a handspan wide before it ended, nowhere near powerful enough to disarm her, or even really be that much of an inconvenience. She must still have protective spells active on her clothes, dammit!

Whipping around, her wand hand going to the small of her back — holding her trousers up, Lyra thought — she threw her sunlight blade at Lyra. The instant it left her hand it lost its form, cutting through the air in a band of bright gold-white light, rather like a narrow cutting curse. There was no way that was healthy to be hit with, Lyra stepped into shadows — and then gasped as piercing pain slashed through her middle, leaving behind an uncomfortable tingling heat. She checked herself quick, but it didn't seem to have done any actual damage, and the heat was easily chased away flooding herself with dark magic, so.

Still, fucking crazy that it'd hurt at all, but that was elemental sunlight, she guessed...

Lyra stepped out with a piercing hex and a breaking curse, Cæciné whipped around to face her immediately, dodging the hex and blocking the curse, retaliating with a couple searingly-hot light hexes, no idea what those were, she dodged one and deflected the other, firing back pain and cutting curses. They fell into a rhythm pretty quickly, curses tossed back and forth in a steady rain, occasionally broken up with more elemental magics, fire and lightning and sunlight — Lyra had learned her lesson there, if she couldn't dodge them physically she stood her ground and blocked them instead. The magic they were throwing around was dangerous shite — they could accidentally kill the other pretty easily if either of them slipped, though one of the elves would probably get them out right away — but their duel wasn't nearly as energetic as it'd been a few minutes ago, much less running around or creative weird stuff, just trying to blast the other away now.

Lyra didn't know about Cæciné, but she was starting to get tired. Not magically, of course — she wasn't even certain it was possible for her to magically strain herself anymore, what with the Choice and then becoming shadow-kin and then coming into her power and also being an avatar, which she assumed must make a difference (though she wasn't really sure how). But, well, she was still human...sort of. She might not need nearly as much sleep to keep going as normal people, but she still had a normal(ish) human body, with physical muscles and shite, with all that came with it.

So, while the magic was still coming as easily as it had at the beginning, her body really wasn't keeping up anymore. She was sore pretty much everywhere, especially her legs, and also her back for some reason (or maybe that was from being thrown into that tree, hmm), that one hip she'd wrenched getting tossed across the stream ages ago was getting worse the more she used it, stiff, forcing her into an awkward half-limp. She'd cast enough magic quickly enough that she thought she'd done a little bit of damage to her limbs, each time she cast flaring with painful tingles hot and cold, though her left arm rather more than her right — she knew channeling high volumes of magic through partially-healed tissues like this was a terrible idea, but she didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. It probably didn't help that casting through her knife was less efficient than a wand, but she couldn't switch them, she'd never trained with her wand in her left and her knife in her right...which was a terrible oversight, now that she thought about it...

And it was starting to weigh down on her, exhaustion dragging at her limbs, making her slow and clumsy. She'd be passing out immediately after this, she was certain. She couldn't keep going much longer, and by how much Cæciné had slowed down as well she wasn't the only one. But it...

It would end soon, it had to — how long had they been going at it? She didn't know, it was hard to keep track of time in moments like this, but...

She never wanted this fight to end.

(Eris's presence shifted at the back of her mind, seemed amused more than anything, which was weird, usually Eris found Lyra unnecessarily throwing herself at dangerous situations annoying.)

Lyra forced herself to keep moving, to keep tossing off curse after curse — shielding more than she usually did, too slow and clumsy to dodge everything — despite how much it was starting to hurt. She didn't want it to be over, but at this rate, she didn't think either of them had much left in them.

So, obviously, somebody decided to try to interrupt them. Again.

A rustle in the brush behind Cæciné and to the right, the half-destroyed bushes and fallen tree branches shifting a little, attracted her notice first. Then she caught the faintest tingle of magic from that direction — dark, rising in preparation to cast something. Cæciné twitched, but she was facing away, and was already blocking a curse from Lyra, she wouldn't be able to react in time.

Without even really thinking about it, Lyra fired off a blasting curse at the disturbance. The rising magic cut off, a male voice let out a shout, a shield charm appearing broke some kind of concealment magic, revealing a black-haired boy wearing red. (Good, Lyra hadn't considered the possibility it might be a white shirt.) The spell burst with a flash of light and a crackling of lightning, dazzling the boy long enough for a light hex to slip unnoticed through his shield. The boy yelled in pain as the light magic burned through him, just for a second, before dropping limp to the forest floor.

For a few seconds they both stood unmoving, their breaths thick and heavy, staring at the fallen boy. Then Cæciné asked, "Isn't this one of yours?"

Lyra blinked. A quick step through shadows brought her to him, she tipped his shoulder over with a foot so she could see his face, and— "Oh, shite." That was definitely Theo — apparently he'd decided to try to 'help' her. She broke into breathless giggles, barely managing to choke out, "He's going to be so annoyed at me later..." And she was still waiting for that translation from him too, ugh, he was probably going to be a pain about that...

"You know, you've had my back twice now. Aren't you trying to win?"

She turned to grin at the older girl. Cæciné did look rather amused — under the sweat and ash streaking her face, hair sticking to her skin here and there, bloodstains lingering on her chin and neck from back when she'd been coughing it up from a punctured lung — an exhausted, reluctant kind of amused, eyes tired-looking but lips pulled into a crooked smile. "What, aren't you having fun?"

Cæciné let out a single startled laugh, high and bright. Shaking her head to herself, she started walking off — though she didn't fully turn away from Lyra as she did, probably worried about a hex in the back. "You're mad, Black."

"As the muggleborns are saying these days..." Instead of walking after Caeciné, Lyra just stepped through shadows a bit ahead of her. "...it takes one to know one."

That smile was probably supposed to be that soft, girly, innocent smile she'd used with the press at the Weighing of the Wands, but it seemed delightfully out of place now with how completely messed up she was from the...how long had they been fighting? Her hair and clothes filthy and in complete disarray, pale skin streaked with blood and ash and dirt, marked here and there with scrapes and cut runes and burns. Because, well, by this point, Lyra had the feeling that this girl was, while perhaps not quite as mad Lyra was, definitely not a normal person either — as Blaise might put it, a violent god-touched heathen.

Not really surprised — the Cæcinés were one of the few noble families in all of Europe who'd been able to keep up with the Blacks even after the Covenant, enough that actually getting into a proper feud with them would have been suicidal — but still, this was great! Lyra was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to keep the giddy grin off her face even if she was trying, no matter how seriously exhausted she was by this point.

(Forget never wanting this to end, she was already looking forward to the rematch they were definitely going to have. And the one after that. And the one after that, because unless Lyra was badly misreading her, Cæciné was enjoying this just as much as she was, which made her absolutely perfect in terms of the dueling partner Lyra had been fantasising about for the past two and a half months, and if she had anything to say about it this was definitely going to be a regular thing.)

When the first curses began to fall, their extended duel starting up again like they hadn't been interrupted at all, Lyra could barely get incantations out through breathless giggling.