Sharply attuned senses due to an abruptly awoken mind tensed her muscles and accelerated her blood flow. Essairyn's ears zoned in on the man's every movement outside while she advantageously waited to strike him as soon as he entered. From the tone of his voice, it was obvious that they weren't welcome.

And as if on cue, the grandma started screaming and sobbing, "He's back! I knew he would be back soon; he never leaves for long!"

Gritting her teeth in annoyance, Essairyn muttered soundlessly, "This stupid woman," before springing forward on the toes of her feet while swiftly retrieving her ice sword from her magic cache. It was best to save her magic until she gained better knowledge of their intruder. Although, technically, they were the outsiders here, infringing on someone's property by silent, unexpressed force.

Jerked awake by the old lady's cries, her team that had developed keen instincts at night after having experienced an ambush while sleeping alertly scrambled to their knees and feet. Aispin was the first to jump beside Essairyn as he hadn't completely fallen into deep sleep due to finishing the previous vigil shift. Wordlessly, the group began positioning themselves defensively toward the door just as it opened.

Silhouetted by dusky first daylight, the man overbearingly revealed himself. Sinewy, daunting, wicked. He poised heedlessly in the doorway as if no one could possibly harm him.

Not bothered by his blatant display of arrogance, Essairyn swiftly sprinted forward and jutted her sword-tip at the man's neck. But before it reached inches from his jugular, a blast of heated energy deflected her preemptive blow, sending Essairyn stumbling backward for a couple paces.

"Oh? Not bad." The man emptily praised with a sneer. "But I can't have you killing me too quickly, mage-knight. Let's play a little~"

Alarmed, Essairyn tightened her defensive position and eyed the man who insouciantly walked forward. Various thoughts and conspiracy snippets configured in flashes across her mind. Essairyn gripped her sword handle tighter, agitated by the man's name of address to her. Mage-knight? Her brain flickered to rough memories of Sol'h'meyr's history and the First Mage-Knights of Goddess Cyrienne. She shook the notions away, intent on focusing on the enemy before her. But something ill-at-ease writhed in her gut, whispering incoherent importances.

Aispin deftly made a move during her split-second deliberation. His sword collided with the pompously garbed man's invisible forcefield. But having knowledge of what happened to Essairyn's attack, Aispin was prepared for the bounce back. He dug in his boots, enduring the repellant energy, and adamantly launched a series of sword strikes against the now frowning man.

To Essairyn's great surprise, Aispin had an uncharacteristic bloodthirsty expression strewn across his face. From a bystander's perspective, it would look like Aispin, who was dressed in all black, was the sinister one striking at the richly attired man in that moment. Contrasted against the ramshackle village, the man's noble clothes might lead one to presume that he was being attacked by a bandit town during his travels.

"Fool." The man jeered, almost snarling. "Get out of my way." He flung his left arm straight out, propelling and spiraling Aispin into the air and against the walls. Essairyn shrilly cried out as his shoulders hit the wooden panels, shattering them and kicking up fine dust that crumbled from underneath the wood.

Before she could rush over to help him, he recovered quickly, picking himself up lightly from the debris. Darren hovered nearby on standby to check Aispin's condition as he was the closest in distance and first to react by moving toward him. So Essairyn instead directed her panic-turned-fury at the lavishly dressed man.

Seeing her expression, he laughed thunderously in satisfaction. Then, with a wide smile, he opened his arms and motioned his hands. "Come at me."

Essairyn's left eyebrow scrunched fleetingly in irritation at his taunt. "As you wish."

Two people, both confident in their abilities despite not fully knowing the other's powers, clashed in a torrent of shredded rubble and whipped wind. The air trembled to breathe in-between the opposing energies. Neither gave the other any space or any opportunity.

After twenty seconds of several dozen exchanges, Essairyn detached and blocked the man's incoming blow while commanding, "Move out now!"

Startled, the group who had been trying to follow the less than half minute fight with their human eyes jumped up at Essairyn's order. But they regained their senses immediately and spun around to hitch the horses and ready the carriage. Akari followed them silently after gazing at the two fighters for a moment longer.

Gratified, Essairyn charged forward with a hidden magical attack that she had been circulating within her left arm. She needed to clear the double door entrance in order for them to escape this madman.

Although their opponent easily figured out what she was doing, he made no move to stop her. Instead, he even let the magical attack strike him. Witnessing his complacent, smug mien, Essairyn instantly knew that something was wrong. He had a trick up his sleeve.

And indeed upon the man being hit, Essairyn felt a rebounding force pummel her instead. While she had split-secondly prepared for something to occur, she didn't expect and was certainly not ready to receive the blow of her own attack two-fold. Shock smeared her face as she gasped and held her chest. Slightly hunched over, she glared indignantly at the smirking man.

"What? It hurts having a taste of your own medicine, miss mage?" He flipped a stray wisp of his permed, dirty blonde hair away from his forehead. Due to their close proximity, he had been harmlessly buffeted by an upswing of wind from the reflected attack.

"What did you do," Essairyn growled menacingly, flexing her grip on her weapon.

The man chuckled. "Nothing special. I just graciously returned what you gave back to me in double! I'm so generous, aren't I?"

A corner of Essairyn's mouth twitched. "What the actual f*** of a person are you, you sick bastard." Every curse was enunciated with true venom. This man irritated her beyond all reason and own understanding.

The man narrowed his eyes, clearly affronted by her verbal abuse. But interest also sparked dangerously within the depths of his murky, cochineal orbs. He silently watched the spin of her blade before Essairyn dashed forward to engage him once more. He paid no heed to the escaping crew on the carriage nor the children who had all awoken and shriveled up against their grandma's skirt at the sight of him and the wreckage to their home.

Flares of raw, magical power erupted between their blades. The two energies danced and fluttered away in widening gyres as metal screeched upon burnished ice. Not wanting to use her magical strengths to only have it slammed back into her face, Essairyn persisted with her sword.

But she was quickly becoming exhausted. Never before had she exerted this much focus, power, agility, and effort to parrying another's blade after Knight Hætherin's brutal sparring lessons. Her fighting inexperience and lacking swordsmanship was beginning to rear their ugly heads in the worst scenario.

Must I really have to resort to magic? She frustratingly flipped through her possible courses of actions before settling on magic as the only means to hinder the enemy without getting killed first from slipping up in physical combat. Stepping back while drawing in a deep breath to steady her determination and swell her magic, Essairyn spun her hands in two large yet differently sized circles. Her left hand gestured the smaller one while the sword hand carved out an encompassing circle with the blade tip.

Immediately after her motions, bitter cold chilled the surroundings as if winter had suddenly peeked around the counter to greet the dawning day. Icy mist shrouded her sword and lingered in the circles that she had just quickly drawn in the air.

"Ice elemental..?" whispered the man in disbelief. His confidence slightly quaked at the appearance of ice magic and the possibility of the human girl before him actually being an elemental—perhaps even a royal at that considering royals trained in both physical and magical arts. He wondered if he had deduced wrongly that she was a mage-knight. Upon nearing the building, he had sensed her magical aura, so he knew she was a mage. But when she had demonstrated adept sword skills, he retracted that for a mage-knight.

Essairyn had no idea why the atmosphere became more wintry than usual when handling the ice sword, but she took advantage of his bafflement to speed up her process. Just when he regained his awareness, an array of magic circles materialized and bulleted arrowheads of condensed frigidity at him.

As Essairyn partly expected, the attack bounced off yet again and attacked her. Disappointed, her hopes that the amendments to her magical commands would bypass his reflective abilities slowly began disintegrating. True fear started to well up inside Essairyn. It seemed that not everything in her magic would come true if she willed it. And if she couldn't injure her opponent, then she wouldn't be able to protect her teammates.

Clutching her shirt and fortifying her buckling knees from taking the doubled impact, she panted heavily while trying to slowly regulate her breath. Essairyn couldn't lose her resolve. She was sure that some possibility was slipping her mind. And she only had to steady her mind to think clearly. At the very least, she could roughly calculate the amount of damage she had done to herself since it was based on her own output. If, no, whenshe survived this, she vowed to work on her physical endurance in order to take more hits.

"Essairyn!"

Yanked out of her thoughts at the sound of her name, Essairyn watched with wide eyes as Aispin returned with laboured breath. Ignoring the stinging of her lungs, she screamed, "Idiot!! Why did you come back?! You—"

"—And leave you here alone? Come on, we're a team! Why do you always insist on doing things by yourself?"

"Why—How would you know anything about me to say that?" Essairyn exclaimed with vexation before a bubble of something metallic rose up in her throat. She had retched, half coughed up blood that splattered and pooled in her non-dominant hand.

"ESSAIRYN!!" Aispin hurtled forward, almost stumbling with an outstretched arm to catch the bent over girl. But she took a step back, jutting out her hand in a stop motion. Essairyn refused to be supported, regarding that as a show of weakness to the enemy when she could handle herself just fine.

However, she did vaguely regret her outburst and wouldn't have ambiguously expressed her inner thoughts if it weren't for being in the heat of the moment where Aispin could potentially die for returning. Essairyn could only think of sending Aispin away somehow, and the words departed from her mouth before she could register them. Since she and Aispin hadn't interacted that much until journeying together, in no way would she admit to his judgement of her even if it was true. She clung onto the notion that Aispin hardly knew anything about her. If anyone could understand her in the slightest, then that would be...

"Hahaha! What a scene to behold!" The cochineal eyed blonde held his stomach in mock laughter. "You really thought that hitting me harder would somehow work? Think again, genius!"

A wry smile curved the bloodied corners of Essairyn's lips. "Yeah, maybe."

Confused, the man was about to refute when unexpectedly, a drop of blood trailed down from his forehead, nearing touching his eyeball. Startled, he patted the stream lightly with his fingertips and stared with widening eyes at the thin blood. Quietly enraged almost to the point of shaking, he narrowed his reddening orbs. A voice thick with deep-rooted resentment rumbled ominously in the hushed air.

"I hate people like you the most."