Artèmi had never been in a fight like this before.
There was the barest warning, an anticipatory clenching of Black's magic, Artèmi was already moving before the first spell began to fly — a pain hex of some kind, an elemental blasting curse, a scorching curse, a dark curse she couldn't identify. (Sometimes Black's spells were difficult to read, overwhelming black magic flooding any sense of contrast.) She ducked the first, tossing off a cutting curse as she went, neutralised the lightning magic, deflected the third, integrating the motion into the gesture for a judgement curse, side-stepped the unknown spell rather than attempt to block it, summoning a feeling of righteous indignation (which was more difficult than it should be), "Calōre vindicō," Black vanishing behind a burst of blue-white fire.
She started casting another judgement curse — it'd go right through any shield Black would cast to deal with the fire magic, and unlike a stunning spell she wouldn't be able to resist it — but she felt a tell-tale ripple on the fabric of magic in the little clearing, Black was shadow-walking. A dark cutting curse was slashing in at her back, Artèmi lurched around, it took her a second to determine which cutting curse it was and by then it was too close to shield, Artèmi gathered up a particular resonance of magic in her wand, stabbed out at the incoming curse, neutralising it just in time. While the spell dissolved around her she cast a final curse, the Lance of Modestus, Black somehow managing to deflect the complex piercing curse, sending it winging across the clearing and into the trees.
And they both paused for a moment, struggling to catch their breath, her legs tingling with exhaustion, the joints from her shoulder to the tips of her fingers burning from channeling too much magic for too long. Artèmi wiped her forehead with a sleeve before the sweat could get in her eyes, beads of blood dripped off the fingers of Black's left hand, and they stared across the few feet separating them, waiting.
She'd never been in a fight like this before, and she wasn't sure she liked how she felt about it.
Artèmi had been in more duels than she could count, had to be thousands by now — not real duels, of course, just practice and competitions. She'd been being trained in combat both magical and mundane for practically as long as she could remember. When she'd been a small child, so young she didn't really remember it herself, she'd begged her father to let her learn, there were plenty of people in the family who could teach her, no she didn't want to play in the gardens or go visit Arle with her cousins, she wanted to learn, please.
Originally, she thought, in an effort to get her mother to pay more attention to her, as pathetic as that might sound. She hadn't seen much of her mother back then, far less than she did now — which still wasn't that much compared to most of her cousins or classmates, she'd noticed. Her mother was mostly either training, working with la gendarmariá, or off in the world doing who knew what, when she was home she hadn't (didn't) have much attention to spare for Artèmi. She suspected, looking back, that her younger self had somehow gotten the childish notion that if she learned to fight too, to be more like her mother, then she might actually love her.
It was slightly embarrassing, honestly, but she guessed being humiliated by one's own past behaviour was just part of growing up.
The ache in her wand hand having diminished a bit, the hot tension in the back of her mind loosened, Artèmi cast a cutting curse, channeling the spell longer than came naturally to draw a sort of curlicue with it — concentrating the output in a narrow space, making it denser and harder to block — following it up with a shield-breaker and a piercing curse. Black caught the curled up length of the cutting curse on a shield, the red-black surface flickering but holding, then blinking out the instant before the shield-breaker hit it, she deflected the piercing curse, immediately retaliated with another unreadably dark spell— by the feel of it, something targeting a particular internal organ, but she couldn't be more specific than that. Artèmi ducked to the side, two quick flicks of her wand casting an incapacitation hex and a judgement curse, and a wave of black lightning was crawling across the air toward her, Artèmi hissed through her teeth, grounding the lightning with a few conjured metal posts. Black yelped in surprise and pain as the magic was carried through the ground to reach her, weakened but not yet entirely faded; the spells on Artèmi's boots insulating her, though she could still feel the unpleasant tingle of dark magic through the holes in the leather.
She made to call more elemental sunlight, but Black had gotten off a curse before her own lightning had gotten back to her, broke off to deal with that, by then Black had recovered, charming the conjured iron against being dispelled, wrenching the posts out of the ground and banishing them at Artèmi. From this close she hadn't time to do anything to respond, instead dove to the ground, her side grinding against the dirt, the posts whipped past overhead, she rolled back to her feet, turning on her heel, summoned them back at herself before skipping out of the way. Black cast another overpowered breaking curse — Artèmi blocked it with a shield, the interference from the clashing magics making her shiver, the flashing lights of the curse explosively releasing itself spotting her vision — and the conjured posts were an instant from skewering Black, but she transfigured them into water at the last second, slamming into her in a long, noisy splash, hard enough to teeter her back a few steps and leaving her drenched, but unharmed.
Artèmi threw another piercing hex, and then a scorching hex, Black dodged the first one — limping a little, grimacing, her feet must be burned from the lightning earlier — slipped through shadows out of the way of the second, another unreadable dark curse arrowing in at Artèmi's heart from behind, she ducked out of the way, deflected the follow-up blasting curse. She retaliated with another judgement curse and a blood-shredding curse (which might be a little bit much, whoops), and Black retaliated with more deadly curses, and Artèmi fired back, and back and forth again and again...
All the while, cursing and dodging and cursing and deflecting, Artèmi struggled to keep herself from laughing.
As much as her original motivation to get into dueling might not have had anything to do with the thing itself, it hadn't taken very long for Artèmi to realise she loved it for its own sake. She'd actually started with blades, since young children couldn't really channel enough magic for wands to be practical. It'd been one of her very first real practice duels, after what'd felt like forever just working on the basics, against Estèvo — a fifth cousin, nearly two years older than her. She'd been nervous at first, but she'd beaten him easily, each round making her feel lighter, and tingly, and... Until she'd been standing over him where he'd fallen, bruised and defeated, and Artèmi had broken into giggling, filled with an intense thrill of...
...power. She'd long been honest enough with herself to admit that was what she loved most about it — directly facing another person and beating them, demonstrating in a direct, undeniable fashion that she held power over them, even if she chose not to use it at any other time. Not that she'd come out and said that, or tried to rub it in, no, she'd realised that was rude, not what one does. She hadn't realised her feelings on the matter weren't normal, shared by everyone in the dueling club at Beauxbatons, until only a couple years ago, when her mind magic properly kicked in...which she supposed just gave her more reasons to follow the proper forms and niceties when other people were watching.
(Gabbí knew about it, because it simply wasn't possible to hide that sort of thing from empaths, but she wasn't particularly bothered by it, which was itself somewhat peculiar.)
She'd never been in a fight like this before, this was the hardest, longest duel she'd ever been in. She wasn't using every weapon at her disposal — the rules of this task were looser than those of the CIS student tournaments, but they did still exist — but she was coming far closer to doing so than she ever had in anything except practice duels with her mother. (And Mother could flatten Artèmi in three seconds if she decided to, so those didn't count.) And even then, she wasn't following the rules quite perfectly, the most egregious case the ritual she'd used to heal her puncture wound what felt like ages ago now. Personally, she thought it was stupid that high ritual was universally considered Category Seven instead of being evaluated on a case by case basis — and that had been high ritual, it'd invoked the Evening Star (her mother's Lady and, well). She'd assumed the judges wouldn't recognise that, would write it off as just low ritual blood magic, and given that she hadn't been disqualified they must have.
She suspected Black was holding back too. Like Artèmi, she'd also crossed the line a few times, breaking the task's restrictions on the magic they could use, quick and minor enough — and to no harm, since she hadn't actually managed to tag Artèmi with any of the illicit ones — that the judges apparently hadn't noticed. She was keeping up shockingly well, all things considered. Artèmi knew she could win, instinctively, she had a sense for these things, she knew she was better than Black, less powerful but better trained and more skilled.
Black threw another brace of unreadably dark curses, Artèmi lurched out of the way of one and deflected another, retaliating with a flood of red-and-white flame — she couldn't summon the proper state of mind to cast calōre vindicāns at the moment — but Black had already finished up with a cutting curse. The fire magic weakened the curse, the spellglow flickering and wobbly, but Artèmi was caught by surprise, stumbled to the side but was still caught with the tail end, carving up the side of her hip. Her free hand reflexively jumped to the wound, pushing light magic into it to chase away the lingering chill of the dark — she hardly felt any wetness against her fingers, the curse had weakened enough Black had drawn blood but hadn't done serious damage. Black reappeared out of shadows, a pain curse lancing in at Artèmi's shoulder, but she ducked around it, a scorching hex leaping out of her wand on instinct as she moved.
Apparently Black hadn't expected Artèmi to move that quickly — the hex struck her in the shoulder, a flash of light and a shout of pain, she was staggering back, shrouded with steam, a band of her clothing around the impact site aflame. She toppled to the ground, a neutralising spell of some kind breaking over the air, the flames guttered out, that felt like healing magic, Artèmi fired off a blasting curse but Black rolled out of the way, the curse burrowing into the dirt and exploding in a burst of flame, dirt and ash flung into the air, Black rolled into shadows to get away from it. When she reappeared a section of her top had been burned away, now hanging off one shoulder, a patch of her skin reddened and blistered, only partially-healed. But Black didn't stop, went right back to casting curses, lips pulled into an almost hysterical grin, her teeth reddened with blood.
Artèmi was the better duelist, but Black was very close.
She truly hadn't expected Black to be this good. She was surprised, pleasantly surprised.
Though perhaps she shouldn't be. She'd learned of the Blacks growing up, mostly before starting at Beauxbatons — they were only on the periphery of Aquitanian history, but they featured regularly in her family's. They'd been allies of a sort a very long time ago, in the final centuries of the Empire, back when her ancestors had been the Caecinae of Narbo and the Blacks had been an influential Gallo-Roman family of Gallia Lugdunensis. They hadn't truly seen themselves on opposite sides of a conflict until the 12th Century, when the Plantagenets attacked Tolosa, and then several more times over the proceeding centuries as France and England found themselves at war again and again.
No matter how many times they'd ended up on the opposite side of a war, though, her ancestors had never struck at the Blacks on their own lands directly, their conflict mostly restricted to their support of their kings' efforts against the other's, only rarely fighting face-to-face. She'd asked one of her uncles about this as a child, and gotten a very simple answer: the Blacks had still been numerous then, and powerful — their ancestors had been worried an explicit, personal feud would inevitably lead to the extinction of both their houses. They'd even had several intermarriages between the 11th and 16th Centuries, just to weaken the possibility of something catastrophic happening.
When a Black, married into the family, had told them about the Covenant, they'd immediately put a stop to that. At the time, it'd seemed the Blacks, recently driven so close to extinction, were once again becoming the respectable, powerful family they'd been a couple generations previously, that their previous ties should be revived. And so they had been, but there were some things Artèmi's family simply couldn't tolerate.
And from there, they'd ended up in a very similar situation to the one they'd been in generations before — opposed to each other, but unwilling to risk open conflict. Due to their recent near destruction, the Blacks had been far less numerous, but their Covenant had left them changed. Modern Blacks were no longer properly human, sharp and powerful and dark and dangerous. The Cecinàs of the last centuries, the generations leading up to the Statute through her grandparents' generation, had been confident of their chances in a feud against practically any European magical family, but not these new Blacks. They were enemies, yes, now more than ever before, but not one they could risk direct conflict with.
Artèmi had known all that. She'd even warned the rest of the team to treat Black with extreme caution, to leave her to Artèmi if at all possible. (Despite many of them not liking her much, they'd taken her at her word without question — it was possible she had something of a reputation already.) But even so, she hadn't thought... Well, she was only one girl. And given the circumstances, regardless of the effects of their Covenant — which must still be in effect, the more peculiar things about Black couldn't be explained by a personal compact like Mother's — she couldn't possibly have been raised as a Black. Artèmi had been trained since she'd been four years old, training Black couldn't possibly have gotten. As powerful as she obviously was, no matter her family's reputation, Artèmi had expected Black wouldn't be able to keep up.
She was glad she'd been wrong.
"Do you want to maybe—" Black ducked under a judgement curse, snapped back with a blasting curse, easily deflected. "—pause a moment to take care of that cut? I'll wait."
Artèmi's hip, she meant — it was bleeding a little, but it wasn't that bad, she doubted Black would last long enough for it to be a problem. Grinning, she drew forth calōre vindicāns (Black's sign of weakness helping put her in the proper frame of mind), Black stepped through shadows again but Artèmi was waiting for that, bent the flames around, a shining river of white and blue. Black pushed the fire away with some kind of witchcraft, giving her time to neutralise it with some more graphic spell-shaping (which was still ridiculous, using that in combat...), barely recovering in time to duck out of the way of a cutting curse, deflecting down a judgement curse. "What's wrong, Black? Having trouble keeping up?"
"You kidding, I can do this all day." Black cast more elemental magic, blasting and breaking curses, Artèmi neutralised all of them, slipping out of the way of an unreadable curse and retaliating with her own blasting curse, Black swearing as it exploded against her frantically-cast shield. "Just, burns fucking hurt, you know, it's distracting."
"Yeah, I know." Her mother liked to use fire magic too. "I'll let you surrender gracefully, if you like."
Black scowled at her, cast a sizzling pain curse. With an expression that couldn't seem to decide whether it was a hateful glare or a gleeful smirk, "Get fucked, Cæciné."
Artèmi laughed.
Curses passed back and forth, the pace far slower than it'd been at the beginning and slowing ever further, both of them exhausted — and Black injured, worse than Artèmi was. Despite how damn tired she was, her flesh half-seared from channeling so much energy for too long, sore and stiff, she could feel the grin on her own face.
She was better than Black. She was going to win, she could feel it in her bones, she knew it, with that familiar instinctive certainty she had for these things sometimes, but it was close, very close. As the end inched closer, they could hardly go on much longer than this, her excitement only increased, a heady thrill racing through her with each spell, each time Black stumbled or hissed in pain or cursed under her breath. Artèmi practically vibrated with anticipation, making her wand-motions rather sloppy — it made little difference, of course, but she was certain she'd be sat down and given a critique of her form later — her mind and magic flaring with each spell, dominating the clearing, reveling in the last moments.
And she could feel the Morning Star's attention on her, the presence of burning white magic — faint, hardly noticeable folded into the fabric of the environment, perceptible only to those who knew what to look for — at the edge of her awareness a sense of amusement, of vicarious glee, undercut with low-simmering pride. This was hardly the first time Artèmi had noticed Her watching her, which she normally found sort of unsettling — she had extremely ambivalent feelings about her mother's Lady, only grown more complicated these last couple years. But this time, she found she hardly minded at all.
In fact, it was possible she was showing off a little bit, especially earlier with the elemental sunlight — she could have set a trap for Black and tagged her knife-arm immediately upon losing her wand, there hadn't really been a good reason to use such elaborate tactics. She did have friends and family and teammates and instructors (and Gabbí) in the audience, but having a literal god looming over one's shoulder was an extra bit of motivation to put on a good show.
But Artèmi was hardly thinking about Her anymore, to be honest. She was focused entirely on Black now, each spell cast, each slight repositioning of her body, each bead of sweat on her neck and blood dripping from her fingers. Artèmi was going to win, she could feel it, and it was...
Well. Winning felt good, obviously, she'd discovered that as a small child, but defeating a much weaker opponent was hardly any fun. Most of the people she fought really weren't so impressive — few of the competitors she'd faced even in the CIS tournaments had started learning to duel before starting at academy, as talented as some of them were they simply hadn't gotten the sort of training she had. And Black was powerful, more powerful than Artèmi herself by no small margin, and while her technique was crude — her form practically non-existent and absent of any coherent style or strategy, just raining down destructive and painful spells in an effort to drown an opponent in overwhelming force (and the way her magic filled the air around her Artèmi wondered whether she were even familiar with the concept of focusing exercises) — she was quick and well-educated enough she managed to mostly pull it off. And she was a vicious little thing, certainly, some of the spells she was using were serious business.
Of course, Artèmi had no right to judge on that count. This judgement curse she was using was rather harmless on ordinary people, but as intensely dark as Black was she might well be laid up in hospital for a week if one actually hit her. Artèmi still used them anyway, but she was well aware she was also a vicious little thing sometimes.
And, despite how long this had been going on, how exhausted Black must be by now, the distraction of the fight itself, Artèmi had never once gotten the slightest snippet of feeling or thought from her. She'd never encountered anyone with occlumency like this before — she was hardly the most experienced mind mage in the world, but even so. She wasn't surprised Gabbí found it somewhat unnerving, this perfect mental silence must seem viscerally unnatural to her kind, uncanny. As Gabbí had (semi-seriously) joked, like Lyra Black were nothing but magic pretending to be a person.
And all of that only made the thought of actually beating Black all the more exhilarating. Indisputably demonstrating her power over any opponent was satisfying, yes, but over someone like Black...
She wasn't certain she liked the feeling, honestly. Well, it felt good, obviously, but even as distracted by the fight as she was, Artèmi still had the attention to wonder what it said about her own character. Nothing good, she thought. It might not bother Gabbí (the only person she'd ever actually talked about this with), but the enjoyment she got from fighting, from winning, from holding power over people (even if she didn't actually use it, just the proof that it existed), the thrill had an almost sexual element to it — no almost about it, really — and she was aware most people would think that's kind of fucked up. And more than a normal fight, the seeming inevitability of her victory over Black was...intoxicating.
(She now knew why she felt like this sometimes, there was a reason for it, but that didn't make her any less uneasy about it.)
Because she'd never been in a fight like this before. And when she finally won it would be, quite possibly, the best moment of her life thus far.
(And that was just kind of fucked up.)
They'd been fighting for what felt like hours, the rest of the task had to be nearly over by now, she could feel the end approaching. Curses were passed back and forth almost lazily, neither of them dodging much anymore, too exhausted, spells bursting against shields instead, filling the air with intermittent flashes of light and noise and fire and lightning. Artèmi was tired, yes, slowing down, but Black had accumulated too many injuries, she couldn't keep going much longer, her wand arm shaky, spells still monstrously powerful but more unfocused than before, some even badly-aimed.
And Artèmi could feel it coming, they were standing right on the edge, the knowledge that this was it keying up her excitement even higher. Black stumbled from the force of a blasting curse, hardly managing to keep to her feet. (She felt a flicker of magic light and dark somewhere nearby, but it carried the hot gleeful tingle of the People, nothing to worry about.) Artèmi pressed on with piercing curses and judgement curses, a little bit of a swagger to her step — this was it, Black was almost done, this was it — Black managed to deflect or shield all of them, so Artèmi called elemental fire — impellēns, she couldn't summon the fury necessary for vindicāns right now — the red white flames roaring into existence to crash down over Black's head. Before they landed, Artèmi shot a shield-breaker through the wall of fire, then a stunner—
There was a ripple through the magic in the clearing, Black had dodged it. Artèmi prepared an elemental blasting curse, waiting for Black to reappear— There, a glimmer of dark magic that way — much quieter than normal, Black must be trying to be subtle. She still wasn't managing to hide her presence entirely, but still, apparently she actually was familiar with the concept of focusing exercises. Artèmi whirled, firing off the curse, immediately following it with another judgement curse.
There was another ripple of shadow magic from a different direction, as her curses flew a nauseating spike of shock and fear from that direction — it couldn't possibly be Black, then. Er. Oops?
A girl, maybe a little older than Artèmi — she was definitely taller, but it was hard to tell for sure at this distance — her head shrouded with a halo of frizzy brown hair. Oh, Artèmi realised as her curses fell, that was Granger, Black's girlfriend. Coming to tell them the task was over? Yeah, oops.
Her heart leaping painfully into her throat, Artèmi scrambled to force a compulsion on Granger, making her duck — the girl wasn't moving to block the curses at all in the bare couple seconds she had, seemingly frozen in shock. The blasting curse was aimed at the centre of her chest, it would definitely kill her if it landed. Granger's occlumency was actually rather decent (though not surprising, she was attached to the Blacks), but Artèmi's panic had her lancing through her defences like they weren't even there, and Granger started to move, but Artèmi had acted too late, come on, she—
In another ripple of ambient magic, Black appeared between them, a pale orange shield charm popping into existence at the last possible instant. The blasting curse exploded, both British girls vanishing behind the flames, the judgement curse right on its tail slipping through and out of sight. There was a sudden flare of intensely dark magic, crawling and crackling at the air, intense enough Artèmi grimaced, a choked groan of pain cutting through the noise — Black must have gotten hit with the judgement curse, it should have sailed straight through that particular shield.
When the flames cleared a moment later Black was, somehow, still standing. Dark magic roiling off of her in searing waves, quickly giving Artèmi a headache, her shoulders were hunched and hands fisted at her sides, shivering hard enough Artèmi could see it from here. Teeth clenched, Black glared across the clearing at her, fury slipping into the character of her magic enough Artèmi could actually feel it for once, eerie black-violet flames flickering over her skin, an unnatural blue sheen coming over her eyes.
Was she...resisting the judgement curse? That shouldn't be possible, pulling more dark magic into herself should only worsen the effects...
The dark magic flooding out from Black pulsed even more intense — impossibly so, for a human — and then, abruptly, vanished, the air seeming to warm fifteen degrees in a blink, Artèmi staggering a little as the weight lifted. The soulfire guttered out and Black's eyes went dark again as her aura settled back to normal, and she went limp, falling to the scorched and pitted ground, seemingly unconscious.
Artèmi didn't move, still holding her wand on Black — she was a devious little thing, after all, this could be a trick. But it...really didn't look like it. Granger had dropped to her knees at Black's side, gingerly turning her over onto her back, head lolling and arm flopping, no, she was down. That was it.
That was it, and...
...Artèmi hadn't even done it on purpose, it'd been an accident! Maybe if those two curses had actually been aimed at Black, just as she came out of shadows, the same thing would have ended up happening, but she couldn't know for sure. Their duel — the best in her life, she'd never been in a fight like that — had ended by complete chance, a fluke.
That was...disappointingly unsatisfying.
As she realised the fight was over the adrenaline dribbled out of her, dizzying weakness sweeping in in its place, and Artèmi fell to her knees, unable to even stand anymore. In fact, even just kneeling she was disorientingly dizzy, so she tipped over to the side, rolled over to her back. Her half-healed injuries pounding with each beat of her heart, muscles tingling and twitching with exhaustion, her head still spinning even lying down, Artèmi gazed sightlessly up at the cloudy British sky overhead, trying to blink the grit out of her eyes.
Well. That had been a thing.
Artèmi giggled, making the dull pain rather worse but she couldn't help it, so dizzy and tired she thought she might be half-delirious — fuck, she could really use a nap...
(There was a last pulse of almost affectionate amusement on the air, hot and sharp and bright, and then the faint presence of the Morning Star's attention was gone.)
"Arte? Are you okay?"
Two people had appeared kneeling over her while she hadn't been paying attention — hair golden-blonde and fire-red, magic light and bubbling both light and dark, a veela and a lilin. It took a moment for Artèmi to recognise them: the lilin was Éliane, one of Fleur's friends, and the veela was...shite. One of the Delacours, she was pretty sure, there were so bloody many of them...
"Arte? Maybe we should get her to a healer..."
"I'm alive." A smile twitching at her lips, Artèmi blindly reached for Éliane, snagging her arm. "Hey, Éliane, did you bring a nap?"
"...What?"
"Do you have a nap on you? I could use one, you see."
While confusion and concern sparked on the minds around her, Artèmi breathlessly giggled. She thought she was funny, anyway...