Ranvir braced for impact, forcing his attention on the hardened space, but it proved unnecessary. While Esmund’s energy landed with a crack of force that sent shivers throughout the plane of space, it didn’t actually break through. It barely did any damage at all.

Ranvir’s eyes widened as he shored up the defense in an instant. Esmund’s energy had faltered until it was just a thin line sending the occasional spark of purple space into the air, though it failed to do more than that.

“Wow,” Esmund muttered.

“Yeah,” Ranvir replied, watching as the two energies flickered against each other. “Kinda sad that your power isn’t any better though,” he gave Esmund the most biggest shittest eating grin he’d ever made.

Es quirked an eyebrow, “Oh really?” he didn’t shift or change his posture, but the energy flared up once more drilling into Ranvir’s shield. Slowly, over seconds, Esmund ramped up the impact, until it was grinding harder than the initial impact.

“See,” Ranvir continued smiling, though, he had to dedicate a bit of effort to renewing the manipulation.

Esmund grit his teeth, putting even more effort behind his attack. Ranvir felt it now, a strain on his powers to maintain the ramping pressure. He started putting real effort into reinforcing the shield, the smile dropping from his face as he was forced to manipulate space at a speed that was almost real effort.

Spark of purple space ripped through the air as Es tried cutting through the wall Ranvir’d erected. Clenching his fist, Ranvir narrowed his eyes and slowly rebuilt his protection to an even stronger form than before, thicker with more interconnections.

Then suddenly, the impact lessened as Esmund seemed to relax. Ranvir sensed his tether-sense roving the area where their powers connected. Ranvir tried knocking it down, but his own weakened sense was unable to penetrate Es’ Veil with enough force to knock his sense away.

Then the cutting changed. No longer was it simply force against force. Now, Esmund seemed to be cutting at the very bonds of the hardened space. The warp invaded deep into the wall, seeming to split the manipulation rather than the bonds themselves. Ranvir grit his teeth, stretching the space to divest the warp of energy, while rebuilding the wall bond by bond. It was grueling, teeth grinding work, and he was still losing ground. It was happening slowly, but surely.

Ranvir hadn’t often seen warp put up against ice or obsidian, but he judged himself to be putting up a better struggle than them. With a headache beginning to crop up again and his legs starting to feel a little shaky, Esmund broke through. Ranvir let the manipulation fall apart as he waved his hand in surrender.

Es let his expression fall a moment later as he slumped slightly as well, though, he looked nowhere near as blasted as Ranvir felt. Whether it was caused by the events earlier or warp was just that effective, he didn’t know.

“Damn,” Ranvir cursed wiping his forehead.

“What are you saying ‘damn’ for?” Esmund said disbelief in his voice, “Not even cutting through a native presence is that hard. Shit.”

“What are you saying ‘shit’ for? You won.”

“Of course I won. What part of ultimate weapon don’t you get?”

“Fucking… I just thought I would be better than you,” Ranvir sighed cursing under his breath again.

“Hey, weren’t you not going to swear in front of your daughter?” Grev asked as he approach with a slow clap, then he said to Es, “That’s was very cool to look at by the way.”

“Thank you,” Es replied touching his chest with a genuine smile.

“Ah shit,” Ranvir cursed looking down at where Frija was trying to climb out of her basket. He immediately closed his eyes, realizing he’d just cursed. “That’s harder than I thought it’d be.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Grev said with a glint in his eyes that told Ranvir his choice of words had been fully intentional.

Ranvir just shook his head noticing absentmindedly that the others were approaching. Though, Svenar had left at some point, probably to go to that Master… something. Ranvir closed his eyes trying to recall the name, but it just wouldn’t come to him.

“That was honestly really impressive,” Ayvir said slapping both of them on the back. “Both you Es for recognizing that your approach needed to be adjusted, and Ranvir for being able to keep up for as long as you did. I’ve not seen many space tethered that could do that.”

Ranvir sighed, realizing that was likely to be as big of a win as he was going to get against someone who split the world on a fundamental level. After that there was some discussion of what they wanted to do.

Ranvir argued in favor of banding exercises, but the others had been doing them pretty often since their advancement and Ranvir wasn’t truly feeling it either, if he was being honest. They were kinda boring and he’d been doing them a lot lately.

In the end, they settled on sparring matches without weapons. Generally, this put Ranvir at a disadvantage since his abilities lacked in direct combat, though, he might be able to use stretching and shrinking space creatively.

The first fight was Grev versus Sansir, which surprisingly, Sansir won. Then Dovar stepped up to fight. Ranvir watched closely focusing all of his scrambled senses on the events before him as they struggled against each other. He’d rarely seen Dovar fight.

Sansir was used to employing his superior reach which made it difficult for him to fight Dovar, though, he was clearly aware of the lack in his own natural gifts against the taller and broader student. Dovar, however, didn’t have the advantage of external gifts since he was both a manipulator and Flesh. Even with rysten and water, Sansir might’ve just been able to seal it shut with his own ice.

Dovar put his superior frame and flexibility and blinding speed to good use, however. He repeatedly outmaneuvered Sansir, forcing him on the back foot despite his advantage in reach, though, Ranvir was starting to realize Flesh wasn’t as much of a disadvantage to Veil or Dagger as he thought it might be.

The blows that did come Dovar’s way seemed to have far less impact than they should have, at least the ones generated by Sansir’s powers. His Discipline must be enhancing the effect of his natural presence.

Sansir drew it out fairly far but Dovar still took the win, ending the fight with a headlock.

Ranvir stepped up next. He didn’t relish having to try his powers against Dovar, but there also wasn’t a much better crucible to attempt them against.

Snow crunched under Ranvir’s feet as he stepped into the arena. Bits of snow had that clear reflective quality he associated with incredibly slippery ice.

“Go!” Ayvir yelled and Dovar burst into both smoke and motion, devouring the space between them.

Ranvir reached into his pocket-space, one he’d prepared watching Sansir’s fights, and drew out two snowballs.

Backing off, he threw with picky precision putting first one ball on a direct trajectory of Dovar’s right eye then the other, using the first to hide the second. He lunged forwards, wanting to capitalize on the moment of blindness from his opponent, shrinking space to take Dovar in the middle with a shoulder-tackle. A thought struck him just as he began, however. I’m trying to wrestle Dovar? Ranvir had literally zero training wrestling and had never truly fought on the ground before.

He abandoned the motion, jumping to the side instead, pulling away from the much larger and much stronger tethered. Smoke rose lazily from Dovar’s form as he approached, more cautiously now.

Ranvir needed to do something to deter him, or stop him.

Backing off as Dovar approached, Ranvir examined the ground around him. He slowly led Dovar towards a particularly slick area of ice, his abilities far better at picking up such details than Dovar would be in the dark.

Ranvir walked carefully, crossing the slippery ice without giving it away, then when the moment was right, he almost ‘slipped,’ dropping his guard and looking away from Dovar. His opponent’s hard earned talents weren’t able to let go of that initial instinct that Ranvir’d sparked in him. Dovar sped forwards, smoke leaving swirls in the air of his passing.

Ranvir’s eyes widened as the enormous student only slipped slightly on the ice, but kept his momentum and then suddenly his massive opponent was bearing down on him. Ranvir raised his guard backing off quickly as he took a left hook from Dovar. Though, he stretched the space to dissipate the force, it still hurt as he took on the meat of his forearm.

Ranvir’s foot nearly fell out from under him from the impact mixed with his retreat, but he hardened space just above the snow allowing him to set off more easily without fear of slipping. Ranvir grinned as an idea struck him, then Dovar tumbled as the tip of his foot caught a barrier of hardened space. The loose construction buckled slightly on impact but held as Ranvir’s opponent stumbled. Though, he tried Ranvir couldn’t quite manage to get another barrier up before Dovar caught himself and got both feet under him.

Ranvir breathed out in relief as he finally got some space to work with. The smoke tethered grunted in frustration, realizing that Ranvir’d gotten away from him.

They had another few exchanges. Dovar managing to close the distance, but Ranvir fumbling him in the last moments and getting away. He could tell from the narrowed eyes and white knuckles that it was getting to his opponent, though, if he gave the smoke tethered even a few seconds he started rhythmically rubbing his thumbs across his forefingers and breathing in a distinctive pattern.

Ranvir didn’t know what it was, but he’d occasionally seen a few other students do something similar. From the sense he got off Dovar, he had a feeling it was an exercise to calm down in the heat of battle.

Which meant, every time Ranvir backed off, Dovar calmed down and started thinking more clearly. Still, Ranvir was gathering the resources he needed to end the fight, and he was getting them faster than Dovar was.

Ranvir dodged back, creating another barrier at Dovar’s feet. With a snarling grin, Dovar lifted his foot higher than expected and pushed off the hardened space taking advantage of Ranvir’s growing ability at crafting speedily and sturdily. Smoke spun as Dovar hurtled forwards reminding Ranvir of a thrown spear almost as he went from cautious approach to full sprint in a moment.

Cursing under his breath, Ranvir eyed Dovar’s trajectory. Watching him close the distance disturbingly fast. Finally, he opened the aperture of the pocket-space he’d been slowly increasing in size. It opened directly in front of Dovar’s fist, the punch slipping inside the space as Ranvir ducked low and compressed space between his fist and Dovar’s chest just below the ribcage.

Ranvir’s enhanced strike caught Dovar perfectly, the jolt carrying all the way to his shoulder as Dovar’s momentum didn’t stop instantly. Flesh tore the aperture apart as he fell, though, he didn’t manage to catch himself as the air was knocked completely out of him.

Ranvir quickly squirmed out from underneath Dovar, glancing at Ayvir as he sat on the smoke tethered’s wide back and reached around to put him in a neck lock. The master nodded and began counting down from five.

Ranvir couldn’t help the grin on his face as he tightened his arm slightly feeling Dovar’s fingers clutch at it weakly. Then Ayvir shouted “Two!” and Dovar’s hand firmed slightly and he fought up to his knees. Ranvir tightened his grip as he clung to the student’s back.

He glanced at Ayvir who shook his head, this wasn’t enough to keep counting. Ranvir cursed to himself and let go of Dovar’s throat. He did not want to be anywhere near him when he got his senses back properly.

A calloused and thick-fingered hand locked around Ranvir’s just before he could touch the ground. He tried the back of Dovar’s knees, but was immediately slung into the air as another hand gripped him around the wrist.

Ranvir’s entire back, stomach, and lungs locked up as Dovar slammed him into the ground in an overhead swing. He wasn’t even gasping for air by the time Ayvir finished counting him down.

Dovar sat down next to him with a heavy thump, which seemed to loosen something in Ranvir and he gasped for breath, everything finally opening up with a deep seated pain.

“Holy shit,” he cursed after a few long moments.

“What a fucking a pain you are to fight,” Dovar replied with a slight grin as he rubbed his chest, right where Ranvir’d struck him. “That should not have been that hard.”

Ranvir was too winded to grin in victory, though, not that he felt particularly victorious. Still, part of him recognized who it was coming from.