Katy was glad to have Azura back, but she would kind of missed watching him rush between classes like the rest of them. Of course that wasn’t the only thing that bothered her. He was different, and she could accept that, but it was odd, she had known Azura since they were kids… well younger kids than they were now, and while he had matured she had never really felt like he had changed. She didn’t really know how to handle it now that he had. It wasn’t even in big ways, it was in little things that she noticed the most change. He was calmer now, it wasn’t just a facade like before, and perhaps paradoxically his anger had lessened, but his aggression had increased.
It scared her. He fought harder than before, and it wasn’t just because he was stronger, but she didn’t realize how much he was holding back before, she didn’t even think he realized. He had always tried so hard not to hurt anyone, that he’d end up fighting way less efficiently. Sure he was using his full strength and speed, but even still he was holding back. That had stopped, and while it was funny watching Lily get her ass handed to her at first, the more she thought about the fight the more concerned she became. They all sparred with each other fairly regularly, but no one had expected that fight to be as lopsided as it was. Especially since even now Roran and Lily were inarguably their most powerful members, at least in terms of destructive force.
“Copper for your thoughts.” She turned to find the object of said thoughts smiling at her. She raised an eyebrow at him. Among his changes that were perhaps less concerning were his new openness, and the fact he was using his observational skills for personal interaction and not just to figure out what people are hiding.
She turned back to look out at the town from the little balcony she was leaning on. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just a little concerned. You really put Lily through the ringer earlier, I mean I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually cut anybody with that blade of yours before, or at least not anyone who didn’t deserve to be pierced through the chest instead of getting a cut on their arm.” Cynthia was there, so it’s not like the wounds weren’t taken care of, but still Azura hadn’t hesitated with his sword strikes like he normally did.
“Yeah, I noticed that too. I guess I just realized I was only hurting you guys.” She glanced at him in surprise and waited for him to continue. “Real opponents aren’t going to hold back for fear of cutting you, all I was doing was instilling you with bad habits, and lowering the value of your training. I’ll bet you anything Lily learned a lot more from this fight than any of the ones we’ve had before. Next time she won’t be pulling any punches either, and that’s how it should be. No, that’s how it needs to be.”
She pondered his words. It made sense. It was a little cynical, and a little out of character for him, or well, at least it used to be, but it made sense. Perhaps that was part of the reason she never bested him, she had always thought deep down that even if she lost he wouldn’t hurt her, there was no real motivation to win, aside from Azura being a bit smug, but that was par for the course. “Well, care to test that theory then?” She had only ever beaten Azura in a spar once, and he had been given a fairly huge handicap, on top of that the gap between them had only widened, but if he was right, and this would help her get stronger then she’d gladly bleed for that.
***
Cynthia felt a little glad for Azura’s increased aggression, and in turn felt guilty for being glad. His new philosophy meant she got a lot more practice with her healing magic as his opponents tended to come out with more cuts and bruises than unblemished skin. They had actually gone out of their way to get Cynthia since they were going to spar, which none of them had really had to do before. She of course informed everyone else, because all of them would no doubt like to watch the fight. Especially since Katy was the most aggravating one to fight since she was the least up front combatant. Well not counting herself of course.
There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Azura would win, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t learn anything from this fight. Katy had become a real menace while Azura was gone. Among the first years there was pretty much a unanimous decision that Katy was the most annoying to fight, even though there were several other students much stronger than her. “You better not take it easy on me, I haven’t been slacking either you know.” Katy taunted Azura smugly.
Azura chuckled. “I do know. I may not have been here, but I still pretty much was. Besides, it would kind of defeat the whole purpose if I started holding back now.” She chuckled silently. It was going to be an interesting fight for sure, especially since both of their fighting styles relied on being the one to set the pace of the fight, Katy was better at keeping that momentum, but was also less able to handle it when she lost control of the flow. So it was set to be an interesting match.
“I told the others to come watch, hope that’s ok.” She knew they wouldn’t mind, but Azura had practically forced them all to subscribe to the better safe than sorry line of thought.
“Of course, why wouldn’t I want a live audience to see me get my butt kicked.” Katy joked. She said that, but her tensed body made it obvious she had no intention of letting Azura beat her so easily. Katy was fairly confident, and honestly her friend had every right to be. Of the party Katy’s powers were the hardest for Azura to directly counter, so their fights usually ended up just being a melee scramble in between traps and illusions that they set for each other.
“At least Lily won’t have any room to laugh.” In contrast to Katy, Azura was perfectly calm. He wasn’t tense, or concerned in the slightest. It was different from before, Azura used to be like that when he was looking down on his opponent, but now it was different, it was like he was sure enough of himself, that the results wouldn’t matter. She supposed he was more comfortable in his skin now. Ironic given he didn’t technically have skin anymore. Being a magic being and all that.
“Keep laughing, I’m not going to make it easy for you.” Katy was glaring at him now, but she could tell there was no real heat behind it. The 2 of them were as in sync as ever.
“Wait for me!” She smiled as she heard Roran’s shout. She turned to see the rest of their group running to catch up. She held in a smile at Lily’s grumpy expression, despite having all her surface cuts and bruises healed it was obvious the bruise to her ego would stick around for a bit longer. “Oh this is so exciting! Maybe now we’ll finally get to see Katy fight instead of just a ball of darkness.
“You mean aside from the time you just exploded the whole ball sending me flying?” Katy glared at Roran who laughed sheepishly. Katy had beaten Roran in that spar, but it hadn’t felt like it, she was the only one to sustain any injuries, he just ran out of magic first and surrendered.
“I really thought that would win me the fight to be honest. Your enhancement magic is very well honed.” Katy grumbled her thanks reluctantly. She had to hold in a giggle. Katy had been pissed about that fight for weeks.
“Honestly it normally would have, but Katy has this thing where she can fuel herself on pure spite.” Katy glared at Azura who only laughed harder. She quickly joined him along with the others. As much as it was a joke, it was kind of true. Katy definitely fought harder when she was embarrassed than she did otherwise.
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“Well then I’ll be unbeatable in this fight, I have plenty of spite to go around.” She really enjoyed it when her friends bantered. She could just relax, and listen to them playfully fight each other. It was an experience she was fairly unused to. People were always quiet around her when she was little. Everyone was too focused on their mental shields to talk to each other let alone her.
Well it also helped that if she felt like chiming in none of them would reject her. “I don’t know, Katy had a lot of spite, but Azura has that thing where he cheats.” No one stopped laughing even as Azura grabbed his chest in mock offense
“How dare you imply I’d ever stoop so low as to cheat. I will have you know that I have never done anything that was against the rules.” She rolled her eyes. It was technically true, but only in the sense that he found loopholes or technicalities so whenever someone called him out on it he had an air tight defense.
“What about that time, you had a copy out in the city to get whatever answers you needed for a test and then had it dispelled.” Was that how he always got perfect scores?! That was so unfair, she had been working so hard to try and match his grades, but he was just cheating the whole time?!
“For one that’s not against the rules, and for 2 I did that one time for a test on agriculture. I hardly think anyone is going to care if my grade on how farming works was higher than it technically should be.” Oh, yeah that was true, she honestly barely even remembered that test. Why was it even mandatory? To this day none of them knew.
“It wasn’t against the rules as worded, but it was definitely against the spirit of the rules, and if the test was so insignificant why even bother cheating?” Because he was Azura and would rather die than get anything resembling a bad grade probably. She hadn’t realized how studious Azura was, until she saw him try to fit the same workload in with only 2 of him.
“Because anything less would be a disgrace too… huh look at that, I guess speeches really do have an effect if you hear them enough.” Katy winced, and looked oddly guilty. She tilted her head in confusion. She had a guess about the nature of his comment, more because Azura refused to talk about the subject than because she knew anything about it.
“Sorry, I didn’t really think before I spoke.” She looked at Katy in mild surprise. Her friend didn’t apologize often, and she’d be lying if she said that didn’t make her more curious.
“Can we get that out in the air yet? You kind of hinted at your tragic backstory way back when, but maybe you’ll finally elaborate on all that.” Lily brought voice to the group's curiosity even if it was a lot less considerate than she would have liked.
“Oh yeah, I forgot I hadn’t told you all.” They all rapidly turned to him in shock as he shrugged. “Sure I’ll tell you after the spar if you want.” Even Katy’s jaw dropped as they all stopped walking except for Azura who continued on perfectly relaxed. He turned back with a smirk. “Why the surprise? The last time anyone asked me about it was during that group mission, if any of you had asked after the trials were over I might have told you.” He turned back. “Or maybe not, we’ll never know now.” He had agreed to it? Just like that? He really had changed.
Luna was the first to recover and began walking faster to catch up with Azura which kicked the rest of them into gear. “You mean it? You’ll tell us?” Luna seemed hopeful, but also a little worried that he was just kidding. She kind of understood. She had never really felt like he trusted them. He’d hang out with them and help them, but he never trusted them with the full story even as they all shared theirs.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you. Can’t promise you’ll like what you hear though. Quite the opposite even. Even Katy probably only knows around half of it if that, and for good reason too.” He shrugged again. “But I owe it to you guys to let you decide for yourselves. At least now if you call me a monster you’ll be right on all counts.” He smiled sadly at them, she couldn’t say she had ever seen him with an expression like that before.
***
Katy was nervous. She stood across from Azura in one of the bigger training rooms, and he still didn’t look tense in the slightest. It was so different from how he normally was that she found herself even tenser than usual. Still she had been planning for this very match for a while, and she thought she had a pretty good strategy. Making it pitch black wouldn’t work against him, and would be a huge waste of mana, but she had made a point of training up on her smaller illusions to make them indistinguishable from the real thing, and she had a plan to use that to its full effect.
“You ready to go, or you still coming up with a plan?” It annoyed her how calm he was, no calm wasn’t the right word, he was ready to fight, that much she could tell, but he was so relaxed. It was like he had absolutely no doubts, and that was just as unlike him as his sudden willingness to tell them things.
“I’m just imagining how satisfying it's going to be to beat that smug grin off of you.” She took a deep breath to calm herself. If she got knocked off balance before the fight even started she’d get massacred.
“If you say so. Roran, care to be judge?” Roran nodded and got in between them. Funny enough the strategy she had come up with to at least give Azura a run for his money wasn’t even her idea. When they had played cyvran, Cynthia had got them all in on it, and Lily had ended up being the winner., but it showed her one of Azura’s 2 weaknesses that she could think of, and the only one she was able to exploit.
“Begin!” Roran shouted before immediately jumping as far back as he could to no one's surprise Katy made the first move dashing at Azura full speed. Or at least that’s what she made everyone else see, as she slunk around the side as close as she could get while still stopping his senses from picking her up. Azura unleashed a wave of ice at her illusionary double, and didn’t seem surprised when it went right through.
“Wow, you really haven’t been slacking have you?” She didn’t make the mistake of answering back, she had learned that lesson plenty of times already. Even if she could make her voice come from somewhere else, that still told him at least one place she wasn’t, and if she put it all over then it was a waste of mana. “Your invisibility spell has really improved, there’s not even any shadows in here to help disguise you either.
Azura dodged to the side as another illusionary copy dove from above, And pulled his shield up to block a strike from another illusion that lunged at him from the side only for it to go through him, she dashed at him along with 2 other illusions, and Azura created 2 copies to stand back to back with all 3 attacks were blocked, but the one she had actually attacked used slightly more force than Azura usually would to knock her off guard, too bad for him that’s what she wanted. She used the force to go back further than the illusion made it look like she did, and his counter hit nothing but air.
The copy she had engaged with grunted as she once more retreated out of sensory range. “Throwing knives liaise with some kind of sleeping potion huh? Not bad, but useless on me now.” The copy took the small knife out of his leg without batting an eye, and a magic circle appeared which he put the dagger through. When his hand came out of whatever space the circle led to, the knife was gone.
She needed to keep up the pressure. The only way she won, was if she overwhelmed him, and she didn’t have the speed or power to do it with brute force, and his copies made it hard to do with pure numbers even if her illusions could deal any real damage, so she’d have to do it with tricks and catching him off guard. Like with sleeping potion that had some other stuff mixed in.
The copy’s leg exploded from where the knife had cut him, flinging the other 2 away from the force of it, and making that copy scream as it slid into the gore from its own leg. He was made of magic now right? That meant no permanent injuries, and no reason for her to fight nonlethally. She dashed at the original, this was going to be her best shot to end the fight, she had caught him off guard, and then had knocked him off balance, she wasn’t going to get a better shot than this. If she could just reach him before he was able to recover then she won. She could do this!