TO ONE UNSKILLED IN the warrior arts, their contest comprised three parts poetry and one part improbable ferocity. Their blades clashed and skittered across one another, hurling sparks a dozen feet from each strike, as if they were Felidragons spitting and hissing flame in mortal combat. Ashueli moved with liquid grace, her slender figure always in perfect posture and balance, her strikes blurring in from all angles. The Dark Elf moved like crystal, in sudden flashes of power. When he chose, the power of his blocks and strikes visibly jarred the Princess from head to toe. He flicked her attacks aside as if he had been asked to deal with a swarm of mosquitoes and was thoroughly bored by the annoyance.

Yawn. Krack!

Immediately, it was clear to her that there could be only one result, but this Princess was not one to give up easily. Not at all. For several long minutes, she attacked from every possible angle and some which Allory was not convinced existed except in some mystical warrior realm, but the Dark Elf proved more than a match for her wiles. Twice that she saw, he pulled blows which could have caused her serious injury. Impressive control. Insane timing at those speeds.

Ashueli tried to stamp upon his foot. He twitched his toes aside and let her heel strike half an inch from his ankle.

She hurled seven of her smaller blades at him in a single spray. Tossing his sword lightly into the air, the Elf did something infeasibly amazing before presenting her all seven blades in the palm of his hand – oh, and he caught his own sword with his toes and used that to parry her simultaneous attack.

Sabline let out a dismayed hiss.

Xiximay said, “He’s ridiculously good.”

Raising his blade, the Elf called, “Is this really your best?”

Ashueli flew at him, only to be rebuffed as if the man played with an infant. Her blows found thin air. Her feet and elbows struck nothing.

“Seems that a nuptial contract is your best future after all,” he mocked.

With a scream, she launched into the air, her twin blades a blur. The Elf barely seemed to move, but his counterstrike smashed her backward so hard, she flew twenty feet and landed in a crumpled heap against a tree trunk.

“Enough, Princess? Just one touch. One touch would reclaim your future.”

Shaking her head, she rose upon unsteady legs. She touched the blood upon her lip with her fingertips. “You’ll never own me.”

Him? Intriguing, Allory decided with a frisson of her sparkles, but that could not be it. Surely not? She wanted to cry out, to intervene, for as the Elven Princess gathered herself and strode back out into the open, it was with an expression that mingled despair with the uttermost dignity. She knew she was beaten. She would never give up.

The way the Dark Elf stiffened; he must recognise the same. He knew she meant to die.

Circling the pale, determined Elf, he said, “Are you not faster than this, Princess Ashueli? Are you giving this bout your utmost?”

“Don’t taunt me!” she snarled, slashing like lightning.

He parried with a sound like a crack of lightning. “Is this all?”

“I said, don’t taunt me! I would never scorn your honour by offering less than my best – unlike you! Stop holding back! It’s demeaning!”

The watching Dark Elves made a massed mutter of indignation.

With a low roar, the huge man attacked her with controlled violence. He was a storm unleashed. Time and again the power, speed and accuracy of his blows undid her, but as many times as he attacked, Ashueli picked herself up and resisted. Again. And again. He threw her across the clearing; she landed in an ungainly, gasping heap – yet before he could speak, she rose and faced him with courage, limping but undaunted.

Then, in the same split second as he lunged into a thrust, she threw herself forward.

The Dark Elf dropped his blade, slipping away as close as her own shadow as her sternum touched the blade point – yet without a hand to hold it fast, the tip merely pricked her skin and tumbled onto the grass. She stared dully at the fallen weapon, panting hard. Her eyes rose to her opponent, standing ten feet away, his posture that of a warrior at ease. He seemed as distant as a jungle eagle; as mysterious as the dark crystal of his native element. He would deny her even this?

Allory could not imagine the humiliation. Especially for her friend, who had always prided herself on her martial skills. She had been made to look like a child.

Bending sinuously, Ashueli retrieved his sword, reversed it while holding the point between her crossed vambraces, and offered the hilt to him. “You dropped your blade, asmurimi Sali’karm. Receive it with honour.”

The pulse at the man’s neck leaped. “I did not wish my weapon to drink of your blood, o Princess. Have you nothing more to show me?”

Why did he insist? Allory read the utter bafflement in her friend’s posture as she stood there, sword extended, defeated but unbroken. He did not take the weapon. A sheen of sweat gleamed upon her exposed tan skin. Her opponent looked as if he had just stepped out of a cool shower beneath a forest waterfall. Whatever was this eerie Elf up to? Once more, she sensed the tides of destiny shifting and knew that somehow, she must be part of this moment but in a way which did nothing to sully her friend’s honour.

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Allory floated out between them.

The Ahlumviar held up his hand, clearly a weapon in its own right. “Do not interfere, spirit, or I will order my men to –”

He paused as the nearest trees drew themselves up with a threatening rustling, radiating hostility. The dark eyes returned to her, assessing. Intense. Disturbed? Allory wanted to draw a deep, calming breath, but apparently her new form did not do any such thing. No cute antennae to stroke either.

Most inconveniencing.

She tinkled, “O mysterious Elf, may I consult with my friend? Is advice allowed on this battlefield?”

“Allowed? When you …” He waved a hand eloquently. The nearby branches seethed but appeared to settle as Allory directed a mute appeal in their direction. “I ask only that you do not dishonour this fine warrior by transferring any type of power to her.”

“I shall not. I give you my word.”

Ashueli stared warily at her as the Dark Elf nodded curtly and took several steps back. “Allory … what? I’m sorry, but you are no warrior to offer me counsel. What would you have me do?”

She considered this for the longest time. “Believe.”

“Be – be-what?”

Disbelief. Perhaps ironic, but authentic. A thousand questions crowded into her friend’s lambent green eyes.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I don’t understand either, Ash, but I must offer you what I can, because I sense that this is a matter of the heart. You see, that Elf over there with his stupid overweening sense of honour must, at some level, truly believe you are able to touch him. Why else would he set this ridiculous challenge, this honour bout? For him this is not about the fighting at all. He wants to prove something. It must be that he’s testing you.”

Now, pain and humiliation replaced the questions, followed by a bright flash of anger. “Allory, with all due respect, I thought you’d be the first person to understand how overmatched, how useless I am compared to him. He’s an Ahlumviar and not just that, he’s one of their best, a champion and a leader among these Dark Elves. I cannot even touch a warrior of his calibre. Never. It’s an impossible ask. I can never be enough and if it isn’t painfully obvious to everyone by now –”

“Then why under Middlesun would he demand this of you?”

“I don’t know!”

“Surely, he stands to lose his precious honour if he’s wrong somehow?”

“I said, I don’t know! Allory, please –” she pulled up in surprise, clearly wondering who would be to blame for this loss of honour. Her, for her failure to touch him, or him, for his failure to accurately predict the outcome of his crazy challenge?

Allory said, “I know all about feeling useless, trust me. That’s not the issue –”

“My beautiful friend, my feelings are peripheral in all this. I –” the tall Elf’s face screwed up in a pained expression “– I humbly welcome whatever help you can offer. And I’m sorry if I sound proud and narked and beaten. I’m not. Well, not two out of three anyways.”

“Alright –”

“Alright? This is a ridiculous charade and – there I go again. Speak.”

Folding her arms as a pile of sparkles really was an ineffective gesture, but Allory tried for the effect anyway. Being in this strange form had to be useful for something, right?

“Let’s work with what we do know. I am, of course, the most awesome bundle of twinkly magic you have ever laid your eyes upon, but even humble little me had absolutely no clue I could have a body over there and an elemental form over here –”

“Allory!” the Elf yelped, bringing her half-formed thought to a screeching standstill. “That’s it!”

“Eep … uh, that’s what?”

In a low voice, Ashueli said, “You – you’ve gone and become an Elemental Scintillant. Maybe you always were one. I mean, must be, right? Sparkles by name –”

“Oh, suggids!”

Incredulous shared stares. Ashueli had to be right, didn’t she?

Sparkle-shivers! Dozens of them!

“Definitely the suggids!” the Elf echoed in disbelief, shaking her head slowly. “Although, we’re sort of supposed to be helping me out of a sticky situation here, Little Miss Awesome. Don’t you dare spring this surprise on Yaarah until I’ve a chance to be there to laugh at him practically pulling his own fur off, alright? So, advice from an awesome Elemental … phenomenon … uh, how can you help me do the impossible, since you clearly have the inside track on impossible?”

“Impossible? I mean, is that even a word?”

The Elf puffed out her cheeks, a dawning of realisation clearing the troubled clouds from her eyes. “So, you’re saying …”

Allory silently beseeched Middlesun herself for the right words. When they arrived, it was a minor flood. “You’ve seen people rise from the dead, Ashueli, and you dare, you have the sheer effrontery to imagine that you can’t go over there and rip that fraud’s helmet thingy off his proud head? You believe in your heart of hearts that you can’t touch that chunk of Dark Elf yumminess – eep! Did I just say that?”

One expressive Elven eyebrow-twitch informed her that her statement had indeed landed rear-end square in the nectar.

“Well, I am willing to bet you can force him to kiss your toes. Stop thinking that you can’t. That’s always been your downfall.” Her sparkle-form did not even need to pause for breath as she ranted on, “You’ve run upon raging floodwaters carrying a Felidragon upon your shoulders and didn’t even bother to sink. Take that ridiculous ‘I can’t’ and replace that with ‘I will.’ Trust your instincts. He believes in you. Have faith in me – in my new form I can read that much, at least. He truly believes something about you that you haven’t been able to measure up to as yet, so I say, take that measure and beat him around the pointy ears with it!”

Ash held up her hands. “Sparkles, you’re babbling again.”

Chuckle. “I am, aren’t I?”

“But, by the sap of my ancestors, girlfriend, you babble a great deal of sense, so don’t you ever stop. Alright. When I come back over here, you are getting a massive, resounding, totally smug, ‘I told you so.’ Understood?”

“Understood …”

“Back off, Sparkles. This is about to get ugly.”

Phew. Wish as she might for some of Ash’s spirit, all she had was the sparkles, and Allory could only look on as the Princess of Ahm-Shira stalked out toward the Dark Elf and struck a dramatic martial pose.

He glowered at her. “What now?”

“You see this spot?” she pointed to her cheek. “That’s where I will kiss you.”

“Kiss? You wouldn’t dare!”

“Scared?”

He clenched his fists. “You are not worthy to question my honour.”

Bluster or truth? Allory shivered. If ever her sparkles had the oddest shiver going on, it was now …

“Are you, an Elven warrior who hides beneath his helm and has not so much as offered the courtesy of his name, worthy to cross blades with me?”

Swallowing his indignation so hard that his throat clicked audibly, the Ahlumviar prowled over just as stiffly and snatched his sword from her grasp. He glared down at her from his great height, a titan taking the measure of a girl more than a head shorter; one who yet exhibited the gumption to oppose him. Blood trickled from her split lip. Ashueli did not appear to notice.

At length, he made his nod resemble a mountain threatening an avalanche. “Since you dare to resume this contest, girl, let’s duel.”

His tone branded her a fool – honourable, but a fool.