Lyra Vane fought like weather.
Not in a poetic way. In the extrely literal way that a person with a wind class summon who had spent two years learning to move with it instead of just directing it tends to fight. She did not stand still. Ever. The wind entity moved around her like a permanent current and she used it to extend her own movent, stepping into gusts that pushed her sideways faster than footwork alone could manage.
It was genuinely impressive.
It was also genuinely annoying to fight against.
We were ten minutes into the cross-training session and I had redirected Seraphine four tis, adjusted my own positioning six tis, and still had not managed to close the distance to Lyra in a way that was not imdiately undone by the wind class pulling her sideways before I got there.
"You keep committing to the angle," Lyra said, not even slightly out of breath. She was three ters away and might as well have been thirty. "Every ti you pick a direction you go all the way into it. That is the problem."
"Useful feedback," I said.
"Your summon is faster than you," she said. "Why are you not letting her close the distance while you hold position?"
"Because I am trying to develop my own movent," I said. "Not just stand behind Seraphine and point."
Lyra tilted her head. "Pride?"
"Developnt," I said.
"Those are sotis the sa thing," she said.
Fair point. Annoying but fair.
Seraphine was at my right, her position steady, and she had been very quiet through this session in the specific way she was quiet when she was being professionally cooperative and also watching Lyra with the full depth of her awareness.
"She is right about the angle commitnt," Seraphine said to .
"I know," I said.
"You want to try the half-step feint," she said. "Commit enough to draw the wind response and then redirect off it."
"Show the timing," I said.
What followed was one of those monts that happened occasionally in training where the theory and the body mory clicked together in real ti. I feinted right with enough weight that Lyra’s wind class pushed her laterally to cover it. Seraphine moved left simultaneously pulling the wind entity’s attention. I redirected off the feint and went straight.
Closed the distance in two steps.
Stopped with one hand flat against Lyra’s shoulder.
Training touch. Not a hit. Just contact.
"Oh," Lyra said.
"Half step feint off the wind response," I said. "Your entity is fast but it responds to committed movent. A partial commit still triggers the response."
Lyra looked at with the open evaluating expression she used and sothing in it had shifted from the professional interest of the first day to sothing warr. "You learn fast," she said.
"I have good instruction," I said.
She looked at Seraphine.
Seraphine looked back.
The look again. The two-second exchange that had several things in it that did not need words.
"Your summon," Lyra said to , still looking at Seraphine, "does not like ."
"She does not dislike you," I said.
"She is watching the way my cat watches birds through the window," Lyra said. "Present and very still and thinking about sothing."
Seraphine smiled. The pleasant version. "I am thinking about the wind entity’s response radius," she said. "It is approximately two and a half ters. If you step outside that radius during the response cycle it overshoots."
Lyra blinked. "That is accurate."
"I asured," Seraphine said.
"During the session?" Lyra said.
"During the first three exchanges," Seraphine said. "It has been consistent."
Lyra looked at with an expression that had landed sowhere between impressed and unsettled. "She asured it in real ti."
"She does that," I said.
"Is that normal for Ancient Class bonds?"
"I think it is normal for Seraphine specifically," I said.
Seraphine looked satisfied with this characterization.
We ran the session for another forty minutes. Lyra was a good training partner, genuinely. She pushed hard and adjusted when she needed to and called her observations directly without softening them. By the end I had the half-step feint working about sixty percent of the ti which was better than zero percent at the start.
My back was also reminding loudly that yesterday’s sword impact had not finished making its feelings known.
The session ended and we were gathering ourselves when Lyra looked at with the direct attention she used for real questions. "The Hollow Compact," she said.
I went still.
Not outwardly. But sothing in my internal register shifted with a suddenness that the fusion channel would have picked up.
Seraphine was beside in one step.
Lyra noticed the movent and held up both hands slightly. "Not what you think," she said. "I am not connected to them. My family had an encounter with them four years ago. I know the na because we spent two years dealing with the aftermath of their interest in my father’s summoning line."
I looked at her.
She looked back with the open expression that I had been reading for a week and finding consistently honest.
"What kind of interest," I said.
"Recruitnt first," she said. "Pressure second. My father refused both. The complications that followed affected our house standing for three years." She paused. "I heard the na ntioned in the faculty administrative corridor two days ago. By soone who did not know I was in the adjacent room."
"Which faculty mber," I said.
"Senior Instructor Rael," she said. "He was speaking to soone I did not see. I only heard Rael’s side of the conversation. He ntioned a first year assessnt profile. He ntioned the Sovereign Mark."
My na without my na.
"He knows they are watching you," Lyra said. "Whether that ans he is working with them or just aware of them I cannot tell from what I heard."
I processed that.
Rael was a na I knew from the novel. Background faculty, rarely ntioned, present in the early academy Chapters as an unremarkable instructor figure. The original story had not flagged him as significant until arc three.
Reviews
All reviews (0)