Shaya’s heart soared as her fist connected with Azreon’s nose, feeling cartilage crunch beneath her strength and blood rush over her knuckles. He rolled with the blow to avoid having his nose flattened and teeth cracked, taking away from her pleasure. Unperturbed by his injuries, he stepped to the side as the momentum behind her fist carried Shaya past him, then escalated the encounter.

Azreon’s blade flashed up, the wicked edge of the mythrite slicing through the gambeson protecting her ribs and biting into her flesh. With a roar she spun, delivering a back swing with her sword at his neck. Despite the strength behind her blow, he deflected it up and away from him, throwing her off balance again and leaving her open to reprisal. His riposte opened up another gash on the other side of her torso, mitigated only by how off balance he was after parrying an attack with her strength behind it.

“Finally,” Azreon laughed, dropping his visor into place with a jerk of his head, “the barbarian shows her true colours.”

Stop! He’s toying with you! Shaya screamed at herself, unable to instill any martial discipline to her actions. You can’t beat him with raw strength! Use the cloak for protection or something gods damnit!

Samorn’s music started up again, the discordant song replaced with a soothing melody. The magic washed over Shaya as the sound reached her, a heavy, wet blanket falling onto her rage to snuff it out like a fire. The rational side of her was desperate to open up to the magic and let it calm her, willing herself to be as vulnerable as possible to the magic.

The rage within her had different plans.

It also sensed the calming magic trying to take away its power to wreak vengeance upon Azreon, and this only fueled its inferno.

Still roaring, she took another giant swing at Azreon, which he parried with ease. As his riposte opened a gash on her sword arm, her free hand lashed out and smashed into his helmeted head. The force of the blow staggered him despite the armour, at the mere cost of tearing open all of Shaya’s knuckles.

She went to follow up with a kick to his chest, but her calculating self saw that he had already recovered from the blow to his head, the man’s ability to absorb punishment as unnatural as his speed and strength. His next counter was obvious: side step the ineffectual kick and open her exposed throat.

I lost. She wondered. And he’s wounded, with only one arm.

What is this bastard?

It played out as she had predicted – almost.

With less than a heartbeat to spare, Oraeus crashed into Shaya and sent her sprawling, intercepting Azreon’s blade with his own. The two blades collided with an almost musical ring, Oraeus’ speed and strength supplemented by his potions in order to withstand the other noble’s attack.

“That’s enough, Azreon,” he stated, voice flat.

“I’m fully in my rights to kill her for striking me!” Azreon shouted, moving for another strike, “And any who stand in my way!”

“That’s not how this works,” Oraeus sighed, “you’re both enlisted and therefore treated as equals – you are in the wrong for escalating this encounter and going in for the kill rather than disarming an inferior opponent.”

“Get out of his way!” Galo roared, rushing towards Oraeus with Shaya’s axe in hand.

Shaya’s rage continued unabated by Samorn’s magic, and she pushed herself back out of the muck, more than happy to continue the struggle.

Before the battle could go any further, vines wrapped around Shaya, Azreon and Galo, pinning their limbs against their bodies. They struggled, but for every vine slashed or torn away, another two took its place, dragging them to the ground.

Concern for her friends filled her, providing just enough leverage for Samorn’s spell to start putting out the fires of her rage. Everyone in her lance looked exhausted from the minor injuries they’d accumulated and burnt out from pushing their spellcasting too far, eyes blood shot and rimmed with aether that had leaked from them when their spirits could contain no more. Ren quivered with the effort to maintain the entangling vines, erroneous notes entered Samorn’s music, and Oraeus slumped into himself as his confrontation ended.

Ralus and Apricot rushed over as well, in worse states than the others even.

“Let me go,” Shaya said, injecting as much calm into her voice as she could, “I’ll see to everyone’s wounds.”

Ren looked to Oraeus, then released her vines when he received a nod.

Shaya took one step towards them, then collapsed. Her body was spent, her muscles too torn to even scream at her even with the aid of the invigorate spells she and Ren had been doling out liberally the past few hours. Even magic could only push the body so far, and she was beyond her limits.

Someone caught her, a familiar voice rasping from above her, “That won’t be necessary,” Zaal said, pulling her upright, “you have done enough this day, leave the rest to the professionals.”

Shaya blinked as she faced Zaal, still held aloft by...magic?

“While I would never wish to discourage your experimentation,” Zaal chided, “perhaps live deployments are not the best place for them, hm?”

“Yeah,” Shaya said, face burning red with shame, “yeah, I... justified it due to the pressure, but that’s no excuse.”

“Indeed,” Zaal nodded, then shrugged, “but you lived and, as I said, you found a way.”

“You predicted all of this with your foresight, didn’t you?”

“We shall discuss this further at our debrief,” Zaal assured her, turning to Azreon and Galo, “release them.”

Ren did so without formality, the vines dumping both men in fullplate into the swamp.

“You saw her!” Azreon sputtered, fishing his sword out of the water with his working arm, dragging it out covered in rotting vegetation, “She assaulted me! I demand justice!”

“Don’t you worry,” Zaal said, smiling, “I’ll ensure justice is served, once the debrief is over.”

+++++

The next day, Shaya’s cohort returned to the auditorium. The previous evening had been spent in recuperation from the day’s events, each student examined by skilled Jade mages and given as much healing as their bodies could tolerate. Then they were ordered to eat as much healthy food as they could stomach, given what their bodies had gone through that day.

But nothing had been done for their minds, and Shaya had spent the evening without being able to meet the eyes of her comrades or even friends. Beyond a few parting words to them, she hadn’t spoken the rest of the evening, consumed with what could have happened because she thought she could control her rage. She even spent too much of the night reading the Imperial Handbook of Law, found in each student’s personal quarters, and reviewing the punishment she could expect to face.

The auditorium felt different that morning. Azreon shot Shaya and her group a smirk as they shambled in, still exhausted and their eyes haunted by what they had gone through. Others close to him glanced their way, and Shaya made out whispers of Azreon’s heroics and her going berserk. But the group of lances around him had shrunk. With a start, Shaya realized that, in general, the clear groupings of students had diminished somewhat, with less enmity in the air and more of a spread to where people sat.

As her team moved to their usual spot, they found Apricot and her lance in the seats nearby. Her friend shot her a shy smile, eyes still bloodshot and stained with Sapphire light. She patted the seat next to her, and Shaya sat down next to her, the rest of her lance mingling with Apricot’s.

Shaya was almost thankful that Apricot and her lance smelled as bad as she and her own group. No matter how long they scrubbed themselves in the showers, the rotting swamp detritus still clung to every pore in their bodies.

“Sleep well?” Her friend asked, leaning in close.

“No,” Shaya sighed, shoulders slumping, “I couldn’t stop thinking about the risk I took and how it could have backfired more than it did.”

“Things worked out fine,” Apricot insisted, giving her forearm a reassuring squeeze, “your plan worked Shaya, we destroyed an undead Titan!”

“Yeah, I guess,” Shaya said, still unable to meet Apricot’s eyes.

Apricot went to say something else, but movement from the professors at the front of the room stopped her. Zaal, Bari, and Basillo stood on the stage again, back in their civilian outfits, joined by a fourth professor that Shaya didn’t recognize. The new addition drew every student’s attention, for she was drop-dead gorgeous by any standard even while wearing a demure blouse, pants and jacket that underplayed her figure. The professor was a supernatural mix of curvy and lithe, with shoulder length blue-black hair framing a pale face with soft features and gentle eyes. Her pointed ears tipped off her origins.

“That’s Rea’s wife?” Ren hissed from behind Shaya in utter disbelief, “How?”

“Let us begin the debrief,” Zaal said, drawing everyone’s attention as he tapped the wand on the podium, “First, we’ll go through the operation and show you what happened; second, we’ll take general questions about the operation; finally, we’ll give each lance feedback and deep dive into particular moments that the rest should hear of. I’ll turn the wand over to Professor Cellica to control today’s illusions, with my thanks.”

More students pulled out notebooks than yesterday, coming at their commitments in a more serious manner than before.

Zaal handed the Azurite wand to Cellica, who conjured an illusion of the swamp again, a high-level view with glowing green dots that represented each lance’s position. The detail was sharper than before, and each dot bore the name of its lance’s team leader.

Shaya watched with interest as the operation played out before her at high speed, dots turning amber and red as lances were alerted to danger or in active combat. Apricot’s reserve lance was called into action earlier than she expected, and more often than she expected as well – the little dot jumping to opposite sides of the swamp as the border lances called upon their assistance.

She watched the periphery dots glow amber and veer off to one side before turning red, eyes snapping to the neighbouring lance. That lance usually turned amber and moved into the gap as monsters tried to sneak through the net or outflank the first lance drawn away from their position.

Eyes narrowing, she turned her attention to the vanguard lances. Her own dot blinked through green, amber, and red more often than the other two, and she watched her dot begin to lag behind Una’s ever so slightly. Azreon’s flickered through green, amber, and red only slightly less often, but at a certain point it flicked to amber and stayed that way as the dot’s movement accelerated – as Azreon ignored his duty to eliminate enemies on his way towards the center. After a short period on amber, the dot turned to green and stayed that way as it moved further and further away from the other two vanguard units.

Then Una’s dot went from green straight to red, and stayed that way for what felt like an eternity before Shaya’s lance darted towards it on the map. The two dots at the center went green for a heartbeat before turning amber again, then red. Apricot’s dot arrived a moment later and all three dots went green.

Azreon’s dot had been red for several seconds before this and remained that way until Shaya’s dot appeared in the same location. In less time than it took to save Una and hold out for Apricot’s reinforcements, both dots turned green after Shaya and her lance took out the Ur, the mage, and their undead Titan.

“Overall,” Zaal concluded, “the operation was successful. No lives were lost despite the unexpected enemy numbers. From your faces, I can tell that you all learned many valuable lessons – this is good, you are still young and inexperienced even now, acknowledging your mistakes and learning from them is what will make you powerful in the long run.”

The other professors nodded with Zaal’s comments, Bari firing a glance at Shaya when she thought no one would notice.

“We’ll now take general questions about the operation,” Zaal said, a small smile growing on his face, “I know some of you have burning questions you want answered.”

His sulphureous eyes met Shaya’s golden ones, and she obligingly raised her hand to speak. A part of her was thankful she was exhausted, since it kept her tone softer than it otherwise would have been: “Why a live deployment on such a large scale given the group’s inexperience? It put a lot of lives at risk, especially when the situation escalated further outside the initial expectations due to bad intel.”