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tenspontaneite · 2 years

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The Ceracurist (Chapter 7/?)

“Rayla,” Ethari started, slowly, after a long pause. “Have you…been mixed up in anything strange, recently?”

She eyed him warily. “…What?”

(Chapter length: 9.5k. Ao3 link.)

Chapter warnings: social drinking.

---

As instructed, Rayla called Ethari the next day – somewhat early in the morning, before he’d have started working – to report on how the party had gone. She expected it to be a pretty straightforward debriefing of the relevant facts, which is to say: she’d had fun, had socialised with people, and did not abort the mission early by turning invisible and escaping. She was looking forward to getting the whole met-another-truthfinder thing off her chest, actually, because what were the chances?

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite go that way.

Ethari seemed distracted when he answered the call, and for all that he said it wasn’t a bad time when she asked, a light frown remained on his face the whole time. His mind was plainly elsewhere. He listened to her report and nodded at the right times, but didn’t watch or question like he usually would have, and so she ended up trailing off awkwardly after not long at all. She stared at Ethari through the screen, knowing that, surely, he’d either tell her what had him so distracted, or just make his excuses and leave.

She wasn’t disappointed. “Rayla,” he started, slowly, after a long pause. Abruptly, she looked at him and understood, oh, this is about me. Her gut twisted with reflexive anxiety. “Have you…been mixed up in anything strange, recently?”

She eyed him warily. “…What?”

He shook his head. “I had a call yesterday – and then another one this morning, from your parents, and…well, I’m not going to mince words about it, Rayla, they were asking about you.”

Her stomach dropped. “Why? What’s wrong?” She demanded.

Ethari’s brow furrowed a little deeper. “I’m…honestly not sure. The call yesterday – that was from the Keeper of Records’ office, said they’d had a request sent in for your files and records. They denied it – it had all the right credentials, but they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, and you know how they get about that.” He shook his head. “And then your parents called today to say they’d received a suspicious call asking about you, which of course they shut down. And then afterwards they were called by the Head of the Katolis Bureau of Information and Security, again, asking about you, and this time it came through with all the right authorisation and codes, and – Rayla, what in Xadia’s name have you been doing?”

Rayla, for her part, listened to all of this and then stared off into the middle-distance behind Ethari’s left ear. Her heart was beating a little too fast, a response to the automatic you’re in trouble feeling elicited by his words, but – but theoretically, she wasn’t in any trouble, right? She knew what this had to be. Surely, there was only one thing that could be responsible for this, but it was astonishing anyway.

…This is about Callum, she understood. And his brother. This is about whoever they are.

“Rayla?” Ethari pressed, when she didn’t answer. He sounded a little stressed, which…she could understand that. From his point of view, suddenly having all these suspicious people calling asking questions about her...

“…Background check, I think,” she said, slowly, once she’d run it over in her mind a few times. It was what felt right. But…the head of the KBIS? What the fuck.

“Well, yes, that was one of my first thoughts, from the information they were after, but – why?”

Why, indeed. Surely, no matter how important his family is, they don’t do background checks on everyone he makes friends with? She thought, and then reconsidered. Ran over several key facts about herself. Moonshadow elf, with largely unknown background, since I’m from a Hidden Grove. Stealth, infiltration, assassination training. Suddenly spending a lot of time with Callum...

It made a little more sense, thinking about it like that. Soren was probably responsible for prompting the inquest, and that made sense too. If she was bodyguarding someone, and he started spending a lot of time with someone who had the precise training and skillset to murder him or kidnap him or both, and that person had a background that made it hard to figure out if there was any motive for them to do that, and her protectee happened to be fairly obviously attracted to said person and therefore likelier to be vulnerable to them, and had had several weirdly coincidental meetings, and was a truthfinder capable of discerning potentially sensitive information and secrets and also security vulnerabilities, and was capable of seeing through illusions one might use to investigate them or monitor them in person…

Yeah, that was a lot of very good reasons for Callum’s security people to be concerned about her, honestly. If she was Callum’s bodyguard she’d have sent urgent reports home to the investigations people too.

Rayla deliberated on this for a good long while, perturbed, while Ethari started to look more and more agitated on the screen. He was subtle about it, but she knew his tells, and he was very bothered. Accordingly:

“Rayla,” he repeated again, tightly, when she didn’t answer.

She sighed, and an inkling of embarrassment finally started to push through her shock. “It’s nothing bad, honestly,” she assured him, which he didn’t seem to find especially comforting. “I just…”

“Yes, Rayla?” Ethari pressed, impatiently.

“I…may have accidentally made friends with someone important?” She tried.

Ethari stared, unimpressed. “Someone important,” he repeated, flatly.

“Someone important enough to rate an undercover bodyguard,” she admitted. “I was already pretty sure he had to be the son of some noble or general or admiral or something, but…Head of the KBIS? Bloody hell.”

Her father in all but blood regarded her with a very tight, pinched cast to his face. “This’d be one of the friends you were telling me about the other day, or…?”

“Yeah. The bodyguard is one of them, too.” She shook her head. “On top of that…there were nine guards at the party yesterday, all wearing full-invisibility illusions. Wouldn’t have been able to spot them if not for – you know.”

“I do know,” he agreed, then shook his head. “By the Light and Shadow, Rayla. You do know how to pick them, don’t you?”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” she complained, and finally he cracked a smile. “It’s just my luck that one of the first people I ever make friends with turns out to be someone important.”

Ethari sighed, and then something else seemed to occur to him. “The Katolis Bureau of – it’s the two humans, isn’t it. The person of interest and the bodyguard.” Her expression told him everything he needed to know, and – apparently – more besides. He took one look at her and groaned. “Oh – Rayla, it’s the one who fancies you who’s important, isn’t it? Of course it is.”

“That’s not my fault either!” She cried, offended.

“New Moon bleeding,” Ethari said, conversationally, as though it weren’t a curse at all. “And you don’t know who he is yet? He’s using a fake name, or…?”

“No, I don’t know who he is, and no, he’s not using a fake name,” Rayla admitted, now grumpy. “I could work it out if I tried, though. Who he is, or who his family is. But he asked me not to. And I asked The Security Question anyway and that was fine, so I’m being polite, and not just looking up a list of all the Katolian nobility and high-ranking military, but ugh. He really isn’t making it easy.”

His eyebrows lifted a little throughout her speech, and she’d barely bitten the last word off before she realised how emphatic and long-winded that had all been, and grew faintly embarrassed. “What was his name, again?” Ethari asked, thoughtfully. “Something surprisingly Draconic, wasn’t it?”

“Callum,” she supplied, and flushed a little. “It’s definitely not a fake name. He’s a terrible liar, I’d be able to tell.” She paused. “He has a younger brother who was at the party yesterday. He did use a fake name.”

“Callum,” Ethari repeated, very slowly, like a weird thought had occurred to him and his first reaction had been, bullshit. Then, plainly, he thought about it some more. And then… “Bloody Moon,” he muttered, almost beneath his breath, but she heard it plenty well anyway. “You really don’t keep up with politics much, do you, Rayla?”

She stared at him warily. “Not so much that I know all the names,” she said, suspicious. “Why? Do you recognise it?”

“I…might do. I don’t know how common a name it is for humans. But if the head of the bureau was calling…” He shook his head again, and for the first time, looked vaguely amused. “But you’ve agreed not to try to figure him out, haven’t you? Maybe I shouldn’t say anything.”

That was a very obvious Ethari-tease, that. She glared at him, and folded her arms.

“Mind you, it’d be surprising if it was, when all the news puts him as off studying at the Grand Duren Academy of the Arts,” Ethari allowed. “So maybe it’s not. Still…” He fixed her with a sudden, shrewd look. “What do you want to do about the information probes, Rayla?”

She blinked. “Er.” She thought about it. The background check coming through clear was probably going to be important to his ability to interact freely with her in the future, right? And, honestly, it wasn’t like she had anything shadier in her history than Runaan’s special forces background, anyway. Not that that would be in the files in the first place. “…Let them through,” she decided, eventually. “So long as they’re from the proper channels, I guess. And not asking for anything super invasive.”

“You sure?” He looked a little concerned. The Hidden Groves had strong opinions on privacy and information security, and it tended to rub off on even the easy-going sorts like him. “Is it worth the information? Being friends with him?”

She rolled her eyes. “Ethari, I want to join a high profile security detail someday, this isn’t going to be my last background check,” she said to him, exasperated. “And besides, I kind of got the idea from the bodyguard that he might know someone interested in hiring, so this could be a step in the right direction, anyway.”

He considered that. “Well. That’s a bright side to the situation, I suppose.”

“Plus, I can’t exactly blame them for getting twitchy about me, all told,” Rayla said, lips quirking. “I’m about as suspicious and concerning a person to make friends with someone’s isolated noble son as there could be. Aside from a known criminal or something, anyway.”

He huffed a laugh. “Well, that’s true enough.” A pause. “I’ll let the Keeper know. And your parents. They’ll want to push back a little to get more concrete proof of who’s asking, but…”

“This all not as horrifying as you thought, then?” Rayla asked, cheeky, and he sighed at her.

“I am much less worried about foreign special forces calling an abduction on you now, yes,” he said dryly, and Rayla was abruptly reminded of why, historically, known truthfinders had tended to keep to the well-protected heartlands of their kind. “I’ll cut this short now, if you don’t mind. Your parents must be going spare.”

“…And Runaan?”

“Out at work this weekend, and thank the stars for that,” Ethari said ruefully. “He’d be half-way to Gullcrest to knock down your door by now if he’d been here for the call last night. You know how he gets.”

“I do know how he gets,” Rayla agreed, relieved. “Make sure to mention the potential career opportunities thing to him, when you tell him about all this?”

“I will, for all the good it’ll do you.” His voice was amused. “Doubt you’ll get out of the lecture. But alright. Bye for now, Rayla. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

And with that, the call ended. Rayla was left staring at her screen, trying to process the last ten minutes of her life.

“Moon’s Dark,” she said aloud to her empty room, not even sure what to think.

She really should have expected a background check, in retrospect. Too, she should have expected that it would be noticed, what with the kind of sneaky and suspicious people she had for family – not to mention the notoriously paranoid municipal government of the Silvergrove. It had probably been overly optimistic of her to expect to keep the Callum-related nonsense out of her family’s notice, and in any case that was well and truly blown now, but she could’ve predicted most of this if she’d just been thinking.

The KBIS, though.

She stared at the wall for a long, long time, and couldn’t quite get past that one. She had plenty enough family background to know that, generally speaking, most background checks were carried out by private investigators hired by the interested party, who’d dig up information to the best of their ability and clearance, via variably legal channels and means. She’d have expected Callum’s family to go that route, once they became aware of her. She’d have expected the calls from home regarding the suspicious callers trying to get at her information. But…

If that really was the bloody head of the KBIS, and not someone just trying to pull a fast one…

Rayla exhaled, slowly.

So, he’s family of a high-ranking general or admiral, at absolute least. Maybe a colony governor. Not less than that. For the KBIS to be involved, Callum’s family had to be…security-of-the-kingdom-important, pretty much. There was no getting around that.

And this was who she had, in all her infinite wisdom, ended up having her first proper crush on.

Ethari’s right, she thought to herself, exasperated. I do bloody know how to pick them, don’t I.

---

She was naturally a little distracted at training that day.

Not so much that she didn’t pay attention to the briefing, though.

“Right, so we’ve a crossover game with the city team tomorrow, as you all know,” said Legata, as Rayla and the other thirteen members of the team crowded around. “We’ve had word from the bellatorium as to scenario – it’s a plain and standard battlefield game. Nice and simple, ten a side. Shouldn’t take much of the day, so they’ve scheduled us in for the afternoon. Questions before we talk tactics?”

“Any roster changes?” That was Orati, quick to ask.

“No roster changes, no new declared spells or specialities.” The captain shook her head, sending her outrageously long braid whipping side-to-side. “Their team should be as it was last time. But of course – if their mages do have any new spells ratified, they’re not obligated to make it public. So keep on your toes.”

“Their mages mostly suck anyway,” Terraya said confidently, fingering the pouch of little jagged rocks she used as the basis for her own spells. “We can handle ‘em.”

“I’m assuming you’re forgetting the last time you tangled with their captain, then,” Stavian said dryly, and she wilted. “Don’t underestimate Siranne either. I know she seems small and quiet and everything, but if you look at the records she’s responsible for nearly as many take-downs as Auriga.”

“Ugh, I know.” The Earthblood mage rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying – they really don’t have a lot of mages.”

“And we have too many. What else is new?” Legata sighed, then shot a glance around. “And on that note – how are we feeling about the Terrible Trio this week?” Silence. “Not exactly encouraged here, guys.”

“Happy to target them,” Rayla said staunchly, finally speaking up. “If you need me on that.”

The captain looked directly at her. “Mortasi and Teshan, sure. What about Soren? He was a problem, last time you two faced off.”

“Not a problem,” she insisted, setting her jaw. “Turns out he doesn’t actually have any way to see through my primal form after all. I’m good to go on that front.”

A light rustle went through the squad. “Well,” Legata said, pleased. “That’s certainly good news. All the same…” She paused, and thought about it. “We’ll try to get some opening hits on them, when the game starts,” she decided. “Stavian, Terraya, Orati – coordinate an opening strike, alright? You three can do some terrifying things together. Rayla – make sure to stay out of range ‘til they switch targets. We don’t want any friendly fire here.”

“Could try to target their ranged people at the start,” she suggested immediately. “That’ll get me out of the way.”

Legata nodded, and didn’t bother to ask if she’d be okay going behind ‘enemy lines’ like that. Rayla was very, very good at getting places the enemy didn’t want her. “Do it. Fiera, you try for the same. Do what you do best.”

The tiny wingborn mage grinned and cracked her knuckles. “I’ll be so annoying, you don’t even know,” she promised. “They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Now…” Legata ran her eyes over the assembled group. “Pacha, Barian, you’re in. Stavian, Septimus, Rayla, Fiera, Orati, Lacrian, all obviously in. Severai, Regius, Sarisa, Faveri, Jalia, Lucien – you’re out this time. Keep rested, and if anyone gets injured for non-game reasons, one of you can tag in. Any questions?”

Some of the named reserve elves didn’t look best pleased, but they didn’t protest. Bloody well train sometimes and maybe you won’t always be put in reserve, Rayla thought uncharitably, then shook the thought away.

“No? Alright then. Let’s do some practice. Remember: Don’t injure each other, don’t get too sore, don’t get too tired. Lightfilms on. We’ve got a game tomorrow, keep that in your skulls. Lacrian, I want to see how your barriers hold against Pacha. Rayla, take Barian and Septimus and rough them up a little. Barian, you’re playing Protect The Medic. Septimus, you’re playing Combat Medic With An Assassin In His Face. Have fun.” She waved them away and with relish, Rayla did as commanded. Behind them, Legata kept calling out exercises for the rest of the team.

It wasn’t at all uncommon, to be put in the role of beating up several of her teammates in the name of training. Legata knew full well how weak most of the squad was to melee and accordingly took pretty much every opportunity to put the fear of Rayla into them. This was probably not unrelated to why everyone found Rayla so intimidating, but she could live with that.

She put the airsheaths on her many blades with perhaps too much glee. “All ready?” She asked her assigned victims, once they’d relocated to a convenient barricade.

Barian activated his lightfilm and lifted his shield. Septimus…well, he just hunkered down behind cover, his own lightfilm glimmering softly in the air. Alright then. She lifted her swords and leapt straight over Barian’s inadequate shield.

They went ten rounds before Septimus confessed he was approaching magestrain, and Barian’s sword arm started to look a bit shaky. Rayla left them to recover and reported to Legata for further duty. “Still fresh?” She asked, direct.

“Fresh enough. Not tired yet, anyway,” Rayla answered, and got an approving nod from the captain.

“I wish I had five more like you,” Legata sighed, then glanced over the battlefield. “…Go chase Fiera down. You could use more practice at catching highly mobile targets.” She cleared her throat, then – in a fantastic example of how to project one’s voice without magic – yelled “FIERA! Incoming!”

The tiny lilac shape in the sky hovered for a second, startled. Rayla…well. Rayla went for her throwing knives.

It was a good time.

---

Callum sent her a message on Sunbeam that evening, but she was too buried in obscure truthfinding coursework to notice until she was about to go to bed. She hesitated, suddenly awash in the memory of the morning and left uncertain in its wake.

Thanks for coming to the party! The message said, innocuous and cheerful. Would’ve messaged you earlier but we were kinda cleaning up half the day. Plus, work. And then another: What’re you up to today? You and Soren have a game tomorrow, right?

Rayla hesitated at the keyboard. Finally, she conceded to respond. No problem. Just been training, honestly. And yeah, for the game. Her battered new Sunbeam module, true to Pava’s engineering, sent it on without any obvious connection lag at all. It was more than a little impressive.

She didn’t wait around for a response, though. After the morning…she was feeling maybe just a little weird about Callum, in a way she couldn’t quite untangle. Something about his identity, something about the security team behind him reaching their hands into her history…it felt strange, and left her skittish and hesitant in a way she didn’t quite have the energy to push past right now.

Besides. She did need to be well-rested for tomorrow. Better not risk a long conversation.

So she went to bed, slept well and without incident, and woke up to a message wishing her good luck in the game, and lamenting that he was working and couldn’t attend. I’ll try to come watch the next one, he’d said.

Rayla read it and reread it a few times, sent back a simple and inadequate thanks, and went to get ready.

The game wasn’t going to fight itself, after all.

---

Her teammates weren’t quite expecting the cheerful reception she had from the other team, when they were all milling into the vast central field of the bellatorium. “Rayla!” called Soren from the other side, looking as cocky and headstrong in his full heavy armour as he always did. “Ready to get your ass handed to you?”

She considered that, then made a very rude gesture across the field. A low, laughing chorus of ‘ooooh’ filtered back.

Those guys have such stupid good unit cohesion, she thought, half-annoyed and half-approving. She supposed them all actually being friends who regularly trained together outside of the bellatorium would do that. Her team, by contrast…

Legata had an eyebrow raised when she turned back. “They giving you trouble, Rayla?”

She snorted. “Nah. I just met a few of ‘em at a party the other day, so now they’re being…like that.”

Not a few of her teammates looked flabbergasted at this admission, as though ‘Rayla’ and ‘attending parties’ were not concepts that they had ever considered might align.

Legata was more practical about it, though. Rayla did like her. “Any actionable intel?”

“They’re basically useless against illusionists,” she said promptly. “No defences at all, pretty much, or none that they mentioned. Not that it’ll do anyone much good except me.”

“Something to keep in mind, I suppose.” She shook her head “Alright, everyone. Get your game faces on. Lightfilms on, airsheaths on. Mind your spells. You all know the drill.”

The bellatorium referee came by Team Auriga and Team Legata in turn, checking them all for activated lightfilms, checking every knife and blade and arrow for airsheaths, and confirming that Rayla’s own special illusionist’s lightfilm was functional. That done, they were all called to their respective sides of the battlefield, with some standard basic defences on each side – sandbags, wooden barriers, but nothing more exciting than that.

She eyed the opposing team evaluatively as they assembled, ears keen on their conversation. “Anything of interest?” Legata asked, lowly. She was plenty aware of how good Rayla’s hearing was.

“They want to counter me and Fiera first,” she said, listening. “Siranne is supposed to focus on shooting her down. They’ve got some strategy for trying to figure out where I am but they’re not saying what it is.”

“Of course.” The captain sighed. “Keep on your guard, alright? I’ll go warn Fiera.”

“Not changing plans?”

“Nah. They know your ears are good, they might just be fucking with us. Keep to what we discussed.”

And, as it happened, that did seem to be exactly what was going on. In those first chaotic seconds of battle, Fiera shot like an arrow into the sky, fingers already on her runes and a shout on her lips, and Rayla could hear Team Auriga’s cursing plenty clearly. So, they’d been trying to discourage their most mobile mage from her usual antics. Shame for them it hadn’t worked out; Fiera wasn’t a powerful mage but she was great at disrupting whatever the enemy tried to do. Sucked for them.

Wonder if they really do have a counter for me, she wondered, even as she pulled on the Moon and vanished from sight. Suppose I’ll find out.

“Amata!” Yelled the opposing team’s captain, as soon as Rayla was invisible and sprinting their way around the edges of the field.

“Right!” The enemy mage – an Earthblood elf – slammed her staff into the ground and shouted an incantation. Her teammates all stopped for a second as the ground rippled out from that point of impact, forming loose and unsteady ripples of dirt over much of that side of the field.

She knew what the point of it was, didn’t have to stop to consider it. They wanted to hinder her mobility, and make her footsteps more likely to show up in the dirt. Wasn’t as good as sand would’ve been, but Amata wasn’t that talented a mage.

Rayla completely ignored the displaced earth, leaping over the first few metres of it and landing light-footed on the top of one of their barricades. Their medic was taking cover behind it, tense, eyes darting around every-which-way. She went through a split-second of decisions – do I take him out now, taking out the medic is always good but this isn’t my assignment and I’ll lose the element of surprise – then leapt over his head and went for the nearest archer. Oho, it was Ligorus, too. She landed behind him and pulled him back by a hand over his throat onto the airsheathed tip of one sword.

If not for the sheaths, it would have been an outstandingly brutal motion, yanking him onto the sword as she stabbed it into him. He’d have been run through, straight through the left lung. As it was, he grunted out a strangled cry of pain at the bruising impact, and his lightfilm flashed bright red for a split second to indicate: incapacitating hit. A second later the red coalesced into the simulated points of damage at his back and chest, beginning to turn purple. Fatal unless stabilised.

She mimed kicking him off of her blade, and he fell heavily forwards to the ground. She heard “Vice-captain down!” shouted by the nearby medic, and for good measure, Rayla turned and chucked a knife at him. It got him in the shin, yellow flashing out, and he swore.

She didn’t waste any time getting out of there. Every melee fighter they had – even the Terrible Trio – was abruptly falling back to protect the medic, and she didn’t want any business of being stuck in the middle of that. In a few acrobatic flips and leaps, she was well to the side of the field again, out of range of both theirs and hers.

A quick survey of the battlefield – Siranne was actually targeting Fiera now, fuck – and she chose a new target. The medic, Soren and Teshan, and the crossbowelf she’d spoken to at the party were all clustering together. The medic of course had to simulate desperate attempts to save Ligorus’ life, and then treating his leg, and he needed cover in the meantime. The only people exposed-

Amata, she thought, and went for the mage.

It all went a bit pear-shaped, because apparently there was a strategy in place for dealing with her, and that was ‘Amata’, and also ‘Soren’, with a side helping of whoever else happened to be in range at the time. Amata, as it happened, had apparently been working on something that let her feel footsteps in magically displaced earth, and once Rayla got close enough-

By the time she’d taken Amata out with a very, very solid killing blow (lighting up purple across her throat in the lightfilm), Rayla had narrowly avoided being comprehensively stabbed on three separate occasions, and had taken a light ‘wound’ to the side of her neck in the process. Her team’s mages couldn’t attack Soren and Teshan and Mortasi from afar, because they were all very obviously clustered around Rayla. Which. Wasn’t the easiest of things to deal with.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. She opened her connection to the Moon so hard it nearly gave her magestrain on the spot. Truthfinding in combat had a way of backfiring, but if she didn’t, she was dead.

“Shit!” Teshan cursed, when Rayla finally managed to flip over his shoulder and get out of the extremely deadly corner they’d trapped her in. “I don’t have eyes on her. Mortasi? Soren?”

Unfortunately, the earth was still very much disturbed, whether or not Amata was around to feel it. A keen eye could spot the footprints she left. “There!” Mortasi shouted, and instantly leapt at her with both daggers outstretched. He was by far the closest to her match in agility on Team Auriga, but not nearly as strong, which was at least a small mercy. Rayla staggered back and, with several more truthfinding-inferences about where he’d attack next, managed to get clear again. “Fuck!” The elf cursed, wheeling around as though that would help him spot her any better. “Does anyone-“

Teshan got smart and started throwing vast sprays of dirt around using his shield. Unfortunately for him, it was a little too late: a clod hit her in the shoulder just as she ‘slit’ Mortasi’s throat, and as the other two reacted to the flash of purple, she struck Teshan with a vicious slash across the back of both legs. It was more than strong enough to ‘cut’ vital tendons. He had no ranged skills, so that was essentially him out of the game.

By that point, her magic was straining uncomfortably close to the point of failure, overwrought by far too much use, far too fast. Truthfinding and Moonshadow form combined…that was a lot. She grimaced, and finally retreated back to friendly lines. Terraya and Stavian were both red-filmed by the time she got there – incapacitated, probably by the enemy mages and remaining archer.

She dropped her magestate at Septimus’ side, and he jumped. “Took a shallow hit on my neck,” she told him tersely, and reached to the side to twist the band of her lightfilm. It went click, and the colours shimmered into place around her just as they were on everyone else. It had recorded the hit perfectly well even while invisible, and the yellow it had initially been was now edging closer to orange.

“Shit,” he said, and “Sit down, in cover. I got you. Lacrian?”

“On it,” said his current guard, and promptly cast his strongest wind dome spell. It was only up for a second before it deflected its first projectile, shot by an opportunistic archer on the other side.

For all that the wound was false, Septimus was obliged to behave as though it were real. Rayla felt the cool touch of the Sky magic in her flesh, easing the ache of the true bruise that was beginning to form there, easing the strained ligaments in her neck. After a short casting, he withdrew and slapped some bandages on her and then sent her back out.

All out of Moonshadow form, Rayla played much more carefully after that. She kept mobile, aware that the enemy was trying very hard to shoot her. Siranne finally managed to clip Fiera with a lightning spell, and Rayla was out in an instant to retrieve her, cutting one of their people’s horrible crossbow bolts out of the air. A second later, she took a vicious wind blast from Auriga, lightfilm going pale green all-over, and that wasn’t simulated – she was thrown metres back across the battlefield, Fiera thankfully still thrown over her shoulder, and retreated back to Septimus with a curse on her lips.

Fiera’s film was red; in terms of triage, Rayla wasn’t even a consideration right now. Pale green was fine. Pale green was you’ve been slowed down, and you’ll feel this in the morning. And, sure enough-

“Rayla!” That was Legata, terse and commanding. She went over at once. “I need you to take out Auriga or Soren, and I don’t give a damn which.” Rayla took one glance to see Barian scowling on the floor where he’d clearly been dragged into cover, virulent red emblazoned over the arm and chest of his film in the shape of a sword-slash. Ouch. No wonder Legata wanted Soren taken out.

Nearby, Pacha looked like he was starting to run out of steam as well, his formidable Heat-Being state almost at its limits. Aside from her, he was the only short-range fighter left on the team.

It didn’t even take a second to decide. “Auriga. If I go for Soren, she’ll bloody have me.”

“Good. We’ll give you suppressing fire. Go!”

Soren was abruptly too busy with all of their mages and archers to come for her throat when she ran past him, now visible for all to see and shoot at. Their spearelf, less so. Rayla succeeded in getting past his guard and delivering two orange-film hits to his hands, effectively disarming him, but by that time-

Fuck, she thought sourly, as all three remaining ranged attackers on Team Auriga focused fire on her. She evaded the wind-blast and the lightning strike, but was less lucky with the crossbow bolt. It impacted her left shoulder and bounced off of its own airsheath, but her shoulder flashed ruddy orange regardless. Scowling, Rayla dropped her left sword and let the arm hang limp; it was too ‘injured’ to use, now.

She fell back to ‘base’. There was no way she’d succeed in the planned assault on Auriga like this. “What happened to ‘suppressing fire’?” She muttered at Legata, ducking down beside Septimus to have her ‘bleeding’ staunched.

The captain had the grace to look regretful. “Auriga happened,” she said apologetically, and nodded to where Orati was now purpled out on the ground.

“Shit.” Orati was their only remaining long-range spellcaster. Legata had her insanely powerful enchanted greatbow, and Lacrian was great for close-range and defensive spells, but…

“Yeah,” Legata acknowledged. “They’ll be moving in on us soon. Septimus, get Rayla functional, we need her.”

True to her word, Team Auriga was now confident enough to send Auriga and Soren in, with Siranne and – whatever the crossbow elf was called – shooting at their enemies whenever they ducked out of cover.

“This one isn’t looking good,” Legata noted, glaring at the approaching heavy-hitters with ire. “Pasha? Lacrian? Think you’ve got enough in you for a good flashbang?”

“I can manage the ‘bang’,” Lacrian asserted, tense.

Pasha looked less sure. His magestate was gone now, and he had to be pretty drained. “I’ll do my best.”

“Then get ready. On my mark….” Rayla was urged to her feet, and lingered behind the barricade’s cover, her remaining sword sheathed for the moment. “Now!”

Pre-warned, Rayla closed her eyes and clapped her hands over her ears. Some five metres from their fortifications, both spells hit true, within a half-second of each other, producing a loud BOOM and searing flash of light at once. That was something they’d practiced, and though the actual severity of it was toned down as per bellatorium rules, it was still very shocking.

Auriga and Soren both cried out, and Rayla couldn’t ask for a better sign than that. Her sword was back out in a second; she darted in.

“Captain down!” Cried the crossbowelf – Vadrain? – from the enemy’s lines, as Rayla took advantage of her opponents’ disorientation to ‘stab’ Auriga through the armpit at just the right angle to reach her heart. She rolled to the side to avoid Soren’s reprisal, and then…

Of course, she thought ruefully, drawn into a bitter one-on-one melee with him. It just figured it would come down to this.

Lacrian threw up a heavy-duty wind-dome, just about large enough to cover Rayla and Soren as they fought. It would deflect Vadrain’s projectiles, but Siranne’s lightning was less of a certainty. She couldn’t spare any focus, though, not with Soren all up in her face. He was a skilled fighter, and she was down an arm and a sword. It wasn’t ideal. She did her best anyway.

Someone’s film flashed an orange just barely off from red; it took a second for Rayla to realise it was hers. A particularly nasty ‘stab’ through her side; would probably get a kidney if it were real. “Fucker,” she cursed, into Soren’s grinning face. And then – because as long as it wasn’t red she still had time – she dropped to the ground and pulled Soren down with her. He yelped in surprise.

As it turned out, his groundwork was shit. She grappled him onto his back using mostly just her legs and brute force, then went for his throat with the closest throwing knife in her bandolier. Purple flashed in the same instant as her side finally ticked over from orange to deep red, and both of them crumpled down in a heap. Whoever won now, it was out of their hands.

“Got you,” she muttered to him, deeply vindicated.

“Got you, too,” he said cheerfully, albeit in a whisper, because corpses weren’t supposed to talk and the referee might tell him off for it. “Mind letting me up now, though?”

“Oh. Fuck.” She disentangled him from her legs and then fell over ‘defeated’ at his side like a good incapacitated bellator. “There.”

“Thanks.”

‘Incapacitated’ and ‘dead’ though they were, nothing stopped them from rolling onto their backs and peering at the ongoing battle as closely as they could. No one came to rescue Rayla, because they were too busy trying not to get killed. Tragic.

Legata, Pacha, and Lacrian against Auriga, Siranne, and Vadrain did not sound like a hopeful match-up to her. And, true to expectation, Pacha got downed by a crossbow bolt, Legata shot said crossbowelf down but then took a lightning strike to the face for her troubles, and Lacrian managed to hunker down in a wind-dome for long enough to make feeble attempts at striking back, but…that didn’t last long, either. Septimus, no fool, promptly surrendered behind his barricade.

“Team Auriga wins!”

---

It wasn’t exactly unexpected for their ragtag university squad to lose against the considerably more dedicated city amateurs, so there was only the normal amount of grumbling as Legata said “Good job, everyone. We’ll go over the match and do a proper discussion at training tomorrow. For now, wash up and rest up.” With no real ill feeling, everyone peeled off their lightfilms and airsheaths, sat around cleaning mud from their weapons, and then headed for the showers.

It being a bellatorium in a Skywing city, there were very few modesty cubicles. Rayla claimed one in short order, emerged damp but considerably cleaner, and was promptly accosted on her way out of the locker room.

“Stabby Moonshadow Girl strikes again!” crowed Soren, arm slung around her shoulder. “That was some great stabbing, out there. Come on, I’ve told everyone you’re coming out with us now and they’re super excited.”

Rayla, who had only just suppressed her instinctive response to go for his throat, twitched. She’d somewhat forgotten about this in the clamour of the game, and now… “I don’t know,” she said, uncomfortable and a little grumpy. “You said drinks, right? Not sure that’s a good idea. I think I need to go home and eat a horse.” She considered it. “Maybe two horses.”

“I dunno about horses, but we’re going to a gastro-bar, there’s gonna be food, don’t you worry.”

“A what?”

“Gastro-pub!” Called one of his sharper-eared teammates from down the hall.

Soren didn’t even blink. “Yeah, that.” He withdrew his arm and patted her heavily on the shoulder. “Team tradition. We always get food after a game. And then drinks. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

She hesitated.

“I’ll even pay,” he offered, and her resolve crumbled. She was, in the end, a student in on scholarship, and that didn’t exactly afford her a lot of spare spending money. She’d only been here a term, but already that most cardinal of student laws had been engraved in her bones: never pass up a free meal if you can help it.

“Oh, fine,” she grumbled, and allowed herself to be cheerfully marched down the hall.

The entire Auriga Team was assembled in the foyer, clutching duffel bags and weapons to their chests or slinging them over their backs. Rayla spotted several people whom she’d ‘killed’ today, as well as five reserves who hadn’t played at all. They all looked pleased to see her, and several even cheered. She stared, taken-aback.

“Don’t mind them, they’re just excited that Soren finally managed to get you to come out with us,” said Auriga, the captain, and the elf whose wind blast had knocked Rayla several metres across the field today. “Damn good show today. Rayla, right? Hope my spell didn’t get you too hard.”

She’d probably ache a bit in the morning, but. “No, I’m good,” she said, slowly, eyeing the assembled elves with consternation. “And…yeah. It’s Rayla.”

“I’m Auriga, but you probably already knew that given it’s all over the team name and all.” She reached out for a wrist-clasp, which Rayla automatically returned, then swivelled to yell at her troops “Alright, everyone! You know where we’re headed!”

A round of cheers went around the squad, and everyone promptly decamped for the doors. Rayla fell in line beside Soren and Auriga automatically, frowning at the size of the group ahead of them. “Do we have reservations…?”

“Oh yeah, don’t worry, they know to expect us on game Sundays,” Soren said with mirth, and waved over an approaching elf. “Ligorus, my man! How dead are you feeling?”

“Significantly less dead than I’d be feeling if airsheaths didn’t exist, that’s for sure,” said the vice-captain, whom Rayla had murdered very early in the game. He seemed in good spirits about his premature defeat though, and flashed a grin at Rayla as he drew up alongside them. He offered his wrist to clasp too. “Damn clean kill it was, too. Never saw it coming.”

By now starting to feel a little flustered, she clasped his wrist and shrugged. “…That was the idea.” She grimaced. “Should’ve gone for Siranne instead, honestly. Your arrows would’ve been much less of a pain to deal with in the late game.”

“Yeah, probably, your teammate’s got some damn solid wind domes,” Ligorus agreed as they recommenced walking. “Still, getting the VC out of the way is always a solid move, right? Wasn’t a bad shout.”

She sighed. “Suppose.”

The walk to the pub involved, more or less, more of the same. Chatter about the game, the various fights, the various take-downs…albeit in not much detail, because their destination apparently wasn’t all that far away. Rayla inspected the sign, painted with a bird and writing that declared it The White Gull, then followed the rest in. The interior was that paradoxical combination of expansive and cramped that seemed to define all large pubs, with a variety of different seating areas and little table cubicles and so on all arranged across an interconnected mess of rooms. But, as large as the floor space was, all the tables crowded in together made it seem considerably smaller.

Team Auriga went straight for the largest table to the back and right of the bar, the door to the pub’s kitchen set along one wall. Rayla was briefly distracted by the sounds of work and conversation through it, but followed along and dumped her kit in a pile in the corner with the rest. Soren pulled him to the head of the table with Auriga, Ligorus, and Vadrain, several other elves she recognised piling in at the nearest seats.

It all sort of turned into a chaotic mess of chatter and about five different concurrent conversations, after that. The dagger-wielding Skywing who nearly matched her speed leaned over the table to praise how decisively she’d killed him, eyes alight and interested, and demanded she come to sparring sometime, because he was sick and tired of not having anyone speedy and agile to fight. Ligorus agreed heartily and became the first of them to try to poach her when he asked “How opposed would you be to maybe betraying your team and joining us instead?”

“Ligorus! Have some bloody subtlety,” Auriga complained, elbowing him in the side. Looking at them, Rayla knew for a fact that they were actually romantically involved, and a stray glance across the table easily picked out the knowledge that an alarming number of these elves were all dating, banging, or otherwise involved with each other. Moon’s Light, she thought to herself, wondering what in Xadia’s name she’d been thinking, agreeing to come out to socialise with a group this thoroughly close-knit. “That is not how we ask a competitor to switch teams.”

“You were planning on it, though,” Rayla said, unable to help herself, looking at the captain and knowing it for truth.

“Well, yes, obviously we want to poach you,” Auriga agreed shamelessly. “We’d be stupid not to. But that doesn’t mean we should be blurting out offers when you hardly even know any of us yet. Here, look at a menu. What do you want to drink?”

Several jugs of water were already being delivered down the length of the table and being attacked by the team members; Rayla glanced at them, glanced back at Auriga, and inferred that she was being asked about alcohol. The drinks part of the outing, apparently, started early. “Uh,” she said, uncertain.

“Whatever you usually have, it’s fine, we’ll cover it,” Ligorus invited, looking entirely unbothered by his partner’s scolding.

Rayla debated lying. Then she sighed, and admitted “Honestly? I’ve never really had any alcohol that wasn’t moonshine. I don’t have a usual drink.”

“Oh, the Moonshadow hallucinogenic drinks?” Piped a familiar Earthblood face from down the table; the mage who had almost certainly been training specifically to counter Rayla.

“…Yeah, that,” Rayla agreed. Soren exchanged a glance with Ligorus, and they both nodded.

“We’ll just get you a nice pale ale and see what you think of it, how’s that?” Ligorus was already standing. Auriga waved another menu in her face. In short order she’d been presented with a pint and everyone was loudly debating the merits of various food items around the table. It was thoroughly chaotic.

Judging by the list, it was all hearty, filling, greasy-looking fare. Perfect after a hard-fought game, honestly. Rayla selected something with battered fish and a platter of honey-roasted vegetables and sent off her order with the rest of them, carried to the pub staff by a volunteer with a spare scrap of note-paper. She drank her pint and found it unappealing, but pretty unobjectionable compared to the vivid burn of moonshine. She reported her antipathy to Soren when asked and he went off to get something else. The second attempt: a pleasingly-fruity cider, the taste of alcohol in it almost masked by the flavours.

“Better,” she decreed, and got a congratulatory slap on the back for her troubles. She finished that drink at around the same time that the chaos of dinner descended upon them, plates brought out in twos and threes by the staff and then fallen upon by ravening bellators. Rayla could hardly judge; she demolished hers in much the same way, and got through another two bottles of the fruity cider by the time they were all done.

“Here, try this,” Ligorus said, planting a smaller glass in front of her and pouring something golden and sweet-smelling in from the bottle he held. “Old Vala’s Mead. I bought the bottle.”

The cider had been nice, but the mead swiftly became her favourite. Between snatches of conversation, the bottle poured out and the daylight followed.

“No, it really isn’t that big of a deal,” Rayla insisted, when asked about her Moonshadow form. “Sure it’s harder in the day, and when Moon’s not full, but that just means it – means I can’t do as long.” She frowned down at her glass, abruptly recognising the fuzzy cast of her thoughts. “…How strong is this stuff?”

“Like, medium strong,” Soren said, dismissively. “It’s whatever. But go back to your Moonshadow thing – I feel like it ran out pretty fast today? Is that because it’s not full moon, or what?”

“Oh.” She blinked. “No, that’s because you bastards had me surrounded and I had to start truthfinding in combat, which sucks. It sucks.” She lifted her glass accusatively at Mortasi, who grinned back. “But you didn’t exactly give me a bloody choice, did you.”

“Your fault for being such a big damn threat we all have to try to murder you at once,” Teshan said happily, having migrated from lower down on the table at some point in the evening. “What’s truthfinding when it’s at home, though?”

That flummoxed her, enough that she couldn’t quite find words to respond. “Bloody Sky, Teshan, how do you not know what a truthfinder is?” demanded someone down the table, and in short order, this turned into Rayla being asked to demonstrate the ability on them.

“Like, how?” Rayla asked, increasingly dizzy-brained. Soren helpfully refilled her glass with more mead. “It’s – pretty bloody invasive, y’know? You need to. Need to make sure you know what you’re asking me to know.” Did that make sense? She wasn’t sure that made sense.

“Who am I dating?” Shouted someone three seats down, the elf with the crossbow whose name she kept forgetting. Her brow furrowed, recalling her earlier unwilling insights about the relationship status of half the damn table.

“Uh,” Rayla said, and pointed. “Her. Him. And them. And – someone else who’s not here? I dunno.” This answer prompted a whole lot of cheers from that entire polycule, apparently.

It turned out truthfinding was a pretty popular party trick. She said “Your favourite colour’s blue, your armour is green because that’s what your – family member? Uncle or something? Whatever, someone in your family made it and your mum is guilting you into keeping it,” and she said “Something to do with – animal husbandry? Hunting? No, pest control, right,” and she said “I can’t tell you exactly what that means, I don’t speak the bloody language, but it’s something to do with airships or something, I don’t know,” and she said “Okay, that’s enough, you’re all going to bloody well give me magestrain.”

Later: “No, but seriously, do you think you can at least join us for training sometime?” Ligorus pleaded, leaning over the table. “You’ve got mad skills, and I want to train with you.”

Rayla considered it, then drank more mead. “Captain wouldn’t like it,” she said finally, and was fairly sure that this was true.

“Bah.”

“She’s going to train with me,” Soren declared, very smugly, and got more than a few envious glares for it.

“Sparring’s different,” Rayla defended, trying to muster the words to explain why. “It’s – if it’s at the bellatorium, with another team, that’s. That’s like. Betrayal? Disloyalty. Sparring’s just…hanging out with someone, right?”

“Is that how it is for Moonshadow elves?” The elf with the spear, one of several she’d disabled in the battle, asked with interest. “That’s how it is in a lot of Sunfire cities. To spar with someone, it is – friendly, yes? A good way to get to know someone.”

“Yeah?” Rayla offered, but waved her hand back and forth. “Kinda.”

“Okay then, will you spar with me if you won’t train with the team?” Ligorus was very persistent, wasn’t he.

She frowned at him. “No,” she decided, eventually.

His face fell. “Why not?”

Far more blunt than she’d have usually been, probably due to the sweet influence of the mead, Rayla said “What’s the bloody point? You’re an archer. You wouldn’t know a sword from your left arse-cheek.” Half the damn table crowed with delight at that, and Ligorus sulked.

“Cheer up, Liggy, she’s right and you know it,” Auriga said, patting him on the arm. “Maybe try out Magnus first, alright?” She turned to Rayla. “Seriously, though, you ever want to come to training with us, feel free. We’d not turn you away.”

“Mm,” Rayla said, now beginning to have a hard time formulating intelligent sentences. Soren glanced at her, evaluating, and the next time her glass ran empty he just passed her one of the water jugs instead.

“You’re not so used to drinking, right? Better stop here, probably,” he said easily. “Have some water. Dunno what moonshine hangovers are like but this’ll probably help a regular one.”

“Bloody terrible,” she muttered, of the hangovers, because those were some potent memories. She obligingly took the water, and drank through about three glasses before people finally started leaving the table. She blinked at them. “Where…’re they going?” She muttered at Soren, and he patted her on the shoulder.

“They’re going home. It’s kinda late.”

“Oh.” Rayla frowned, and for the first time in hours, groped at her Moon-sense. “Oh. Shit. It is late.”

“Where do you live, Rayla?” Auriga asked, looking annoyingly well-composed despite having imbibed an improbable amount of alcohol. “Is it far?”

“Uh. Student dorms?” She hazarded. “Eighth Wing.”

“Wow, really?” Soren frowned at her. “And you walked all the way back home after the party the other night?”

“Yeah, it did kind of take a while,” she allowed, abruptly not best pleased with the idea of confronting that walk again. “Ugh. What a pain.”

Auriga shared a look with Ligorus. “Want to crash on our floor?” Auriga offered. “We’re not too far off. We don’t have a spare room or anything but it’s got to be better than walking all the way back to the Edge district.”

Rayla frowned. Even drunk, she was not at all keen on the idea of bunking with strangers. She opened her mouth to turn them down, but was interrupted before she even managed to speak.

“Nah, screw that, she should come back with me,” Soren put in, and slung his arm over her shoulder. “She’s already been round ours like, twice already. Plus we’ve got, like, kinda a spare room, and the couch, and she knows everyone.”

“She has a name,” Rayla muttered, but consideringly.

“Stabby Moonshadow Girl,” agreed Soren, plainly taking the piss. She elbowed him in the ribs.

“Yeah, okay,” she decided finally. “At least I know the way back from there.” And, she thought to herself, too drunk to obfuscate even in her thoughts, maybe I’ll get to see Callum again.

“Great!” He stood, pushing his chair back. She went to follow, and felt considerably tipsier once she was standing up.

She swayed a little in place. “Bloody Moon,” she muttered to herself. “How far is Oakwing House from here?”

“Like, fifteen minutes?”

“Ugh,” Rayla said, abruptly more than ready to fall face-first into the closest soft surface and sleep. “Let’s get going then, I’m going to sleep for a week.”

Laden with their weapons and bellatorium gear, the walk passed in a timeless blur that felt considerably shorter than fifteen minutes, but also somehow three times as long. Soren opened the familiar door with a buzz of disarming security runes and waved her in. He staggered into the living room and tripped into the conversation pit, leaving her to close the door.

When she found him, he’d shuffled himself onto one of the broad sides of the sofa that lined the pit, and was already snoring. He had care for neither blanket nor the bed he had upstairs, and honestly, she empathised. She empathised very strongly.

Rayla considered it, then decided that he had pretty much the right idea. She collapsed face-first into the opposite stretch of sofa, and it was glorious, and everything was perfect, and she fell asleep instantly.

---

End chapter.

Happy season 4, everyone! This chapter was finished a good while before it hit, so as a note, my wind dome spell (originally created for piaj in 2019) significantly predates the breeze dome and I’ve decided to consider them separate spells with different utility.

I wrote 7/9k of this chapter in one day in a mad rush! It was a good time. The last story section brought to you by my nostalgia for aikido seminars and the inevitable large group meals in the pub afterwards. Also, I got the drunkest I’ve ever been in my life on mead, so.

Next chapter is a scene which, while only moderately important to only one of the mystery plotlines ongoing, has nonetheless excited me more than maybe any other singular scene in almost anything I’ve ever written, for the sole reason of….I like scars. That’s it. Very nuanced person, me. Anyway, upon finishing this chapter and realising that scene is next chapter, I got so excited I couldn’t sleep and then was, of course, too tired to write the scene I’d been so excited about. It do be like that.

Shout-out to the Mass Effect fanfiction The Spirit of Redemption, which inspired Kassa’s naming several years ago, and then upon this chapter for pain of having to conjure nearly thirty characters on the spot, I yoinked a couple more Latin-derived names from the story. (The names Ligorus and Auriga, specifically)

Character list in brief at the end. Many of these will recur, but none are particularly important. Feel free to forget all of the names.

Worldbuilding/etc:

Honour Games scenarios: the actual style, objectives, and win conditions of Games vary greatly, though they are limited to what can reasonably be done with teams of 15 people a side. For most Games, the scenario is determined by the management of the Bellatorium, but in professional Games there is considerable oversight. It is customary for teams to not know the Game scenario until a day in advance at most – with some interesting exceptions. Few scenarios call for the full 15 a team to be used; reserves are called in the event of sickness, non-Game related injury, or other circumstances preventing a teammate from playing.

Spells in Honour Games: Mage bellators must ratify spells – that is, register and demonstrate their safe use – before being permitted to use them in a game. The mage must demonstrate being able to consistently cast the spell in such a way that it won’t cause significant harm to a teammate or opponent. For example, you would have to demonstrate consistently casting fulminis weakly enough to not cause noteworthy harm to be allowed to use that spell in-game. Spells whose output cannot be controlled or that are always dangerous are not permitted.

Lightfilm: Magical item that projects a film of transparent light over a bellator’s body that reacts to hits from spells or objects, cleverly enough to determine approximate lethality of the hit based on force and location. They’re pretty damn expensive, especially the higher end ones that are capable of keeping traceable logs, or that report to Bellatorium officials in real-time to prevent cheating. Lightfilms are most commonly enchanted with Moon magic, but Sun magic films exist as well.

Illusionist lightfilms: Bellators who use illusions or illusion based abilities will be hindered by a normal lightfilm, whose projected film will show up even if they themselves are invisible, or can be used to identify the real bellator in a crowd of illusory fakes. An Illusionist lightfilm behaves the same as a usual one in terms of tracking damage, but will not project it until either intentionally activated or until the bellator takes a disabling hit. These are always Moon magic engineering.

Airsheaths: Anything pointy or with a cutting edge that is used by the bellator must be equipped with an airsheath, which essentially turns everything into a blunt weapon. Airsheaths are also applied to anything on a fortification that could potentially impale someone. The harder the impact, the more resistance the enchantment provides when it meets something, which helps prevent people getting actually stabbed, impaled, punctured, perforated, shot, or otherwise harmed. Airsheaths must also be applied to any fortifications used in a game that could conceivably impale someone. It is extremely against the rules to remove an airsheath from a weapon, unless said weapon is being used for non combat purposes such as climbing or installing pitons in walls.

Lightfilm colours: Pale to solid green – minor hit taken. Yellow – noteworthy hit taken. Orange – substantial hit taken, must see a medic if on a limb to have its use restored or to prevent ‘bleeding’ from worsening. Red – disabling hit, something substantial enough it would incapacitate the bellator; a knockout. Purple – lethal hit. These are more relevant in Games with certain win conditions, or that are scored on points. Airsheaths interact with lightfilms; any hit mediated by an airsheath will be registered as causing bleeding, and its colour will worsen until ‘healed’.

Characters:

Team Legata (university bellators): Legata, Stavian, Septimus, Pacha, Barian, Fiera, Lacrian, Terraya, Orati, Sarisa, Faveri, Jalia, Regius, Severai, and obviously Rayla.

Team Auriga (city amateur bellators): Auriga, Ligorus, Sorvai, Teshan, Mortasi, Aemilius, Amata, Siranne, Vadrain, Magnus, Suasi, Fortuna, Cirrus, Columba, and obviously Soren.

#tdp #tdp fic #rayllum #tdp rayla #tdp soren #the ceracurist #ceracurist au

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