“I-I beg your pardon?” Elder Martin looked on, shocked at Ester.
“I’ll do it. You said you wanted at least platinum, correct? Surely I will suffice.”
The stunned noble could barely stammer out any kind of protest. He likely had any number of platinum ranked members to beat Tahir into the ground, but none of them would hold a candle to Ester, and he didn’t have a good reason to refute her.
Fenian let out a sigh. “Fine, that shall do nicely. This is also a rather great opportunity.” He looked out toward the crowd at large. “To my six gold sponsorship recipients, you might be wondering why there is a mix of gold and mithral ranked Redclouds here. The reason is that I planned to have a mithral pick two of you to form a small team and mentorship for better organization. I’ll leave it up to the mithral ranks themselves to decide who they want to pick, and I suppose for young Tahir, you can use this as a chance to show your skills to your prospective mentor. Come along, let's move to the training fiends and get this over with.”
During what he considered to be the most awkward shuffle out to the fields, Tahir took a moment to look closely at the other people in the crowd as they moved around the edges of the field. Among the other gold ranks, he noted two other men. One of them has fair skin, and sandy blond hair that fell around his shoulders in waves. He seemed to keep his eyes half-lidded, and looked hard to read, casually observing everything around him. Tahir thought he could see two daggers sheathed on either side of his belt. The other man was an Iskarai - though hard to tell at first glance. He had dark brown skin, and two small horns that just barely peeked out of a short and messy afro. More prominently were his bulging muscles threatening to tear through his casual clothes. Against all odds, he held onto a mage’s staff.
For the women, the two he could see were one with black hair and eyes, also wearing a black dress and boots. Around her neck was an amulet that depicted the moon and the night sky, a Noxulla devotee maybe? Near her was a beastfolk - one of the few Tahir had ever seen around Balrech. She had fair skin, and long ears that dropped down, covered in the same white fur that he could see in patches all over her body. Her hair was a similar color, and her eyes were the most striking things about her. Yellow, long, and horizontal. She wore a wool top that showed her midriff and pants of a similar material, and appeared to be unarmed.
The last of the gold ranked sponsor recipients looked androgynous. They leaned slightly closer to feminine, but Tahir didn’t assume. They wore light armor mostly covered by a hooded coat, and Tahir could see that they carried both a wand and longsword.
For the Mithril members in this group, he spotted an Osni man and woman - with the same warm brown skin tone that Tahir and Theo shared. The man had short black hair, and dressed in gray clothes with a hooded jacket. Tahir thought he spied a wand holstered on his belt, but couldn’t tell from the distance. The woman had long pink hair, and wore a long black cloak with a white shirt and black pants underneath. The last man had tan but fairly lighter skin in comparison. He had dark brown hair in a long ponytail, and wore a set of clothes with long flowing sleeves.
As for Ester, once they reached their destination she stood across the training field from Tahir. He wondered about the uneven ratio of gold ranks to mithral ranks, but decided to hold off on asking. Fenian stood off to the side along with Elder’s Carlsen and Martin, and looked between Ester and Tahir with a mildly concerned expression. “Are you sure you’d like to go through with this, young Tahir? Ester will be using a real weapon on the assumption that your aura shield can hold, but if the discrepancy between you two is too great…”
“I’ll be fine.” Tahir replied, and drew his sword. Normally, the aura shield of the average gold rank wouldn’t hold a candle to anyone who got to mithral rank. Either aura or magic, against an advanced spell or a sufficiently aura-empowered attack their shield would shatter like glass. Tahir would never normally plan to take a hit dead on, but he had a feeling he could take one from Ester if he planned correctly. “Before we get started, since the issue here is whether or not I can fight without getting possessed - I made a contract with a new spirit just last week, should I use them since the bond’s fresh?”
Fenian and Carlsen looked to Martin, who scoffed. “Very well, child. It will not matter in the slightest, but do try not to get possessed.”
Tahir nodded with a smile, then looked back to Ester. “One moment.” Calling upon the magic, he brought forth his spirits. He settled on the earth spirit for tier zero, and at the same time called upon his bond to give physical form to the spirit he connected with after they got back from the ruin. Before the crowd’s eyes, a white serpent with feathered wings materialized in front of Tahir. It wasn’t very large, a little longer than four feet, but it floated in the air around Tahir, without even needing to beat its wings.
“A celestial spirit?” Ester asked, so quiet that Tahir almost missed it. A small number of them appeared when he did his second ritual in the leyline crossing. He wagered that they found themselves attracted to him due his blessing from Odium. Maybe they found his call worth paying attention to if the gods themselves acknowledged him.
The serpent hovering around Tahir drew whispers from the crowd. As if to silence them, elder Martin coughed loudly and looked between Tahir and Ester. “Yes, yes, very impressive. Though that type of spirit certainly won’t help you here. Are we ready to begin, master Fenian?”
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“Quite.” Fenian still looked toward the serpent. Tahir couldn’t tell, since he wasn’t looking at him straight on, but he thought he detected shock on the elf’s face before he fixed it. “If you are ready, on the wave of my hand shall this trial begin. We shall be testing Tahir’s aptitude and his ability to remain unpossessed by his bound spirits under pressure. Are you ready to begin?” He raised his hand after the two of them nodded, Tahir holding his sword out in front of him and Ester getting into a stance, preparing to lunge with her glaive. “Very well…begin.”
Tahir couldn’t help but think back to the first time he fought Ester, about a year ago at this point. Without any experience, it felt like she moved faster than his eyes could see, and knocked him out without any resistance. This time, he could clearly see her aura enhanced lunge, crossing the 20 feet between them in the space of a second and bringing her glaive around to swing. He stood ready and, once he found the path of the glaive, put all of his aura into blocking it with his own sword. A shower of sparks rang out as the blades collided, and Tahir found himself sliding back half a dozen feet from the impact. But he held on, stopping Ester’s blow, to the surprise of everyone surrounding the field.
Even Ester held off on continuing her assault immediately, opting to take a step back instead. “You’re heavier than you should be. Is that the spirit’s magic?”
“I’m just full of surprises.” Tahir said with a shaky grin. He felt the weight increase from the earth spirit after he received Odium’s blessing. He couldn’t tell if the spirit itself became stronger, or maybe his own ability to utilize it, but he felt like he could apply - or in this case receive some serious force compared to before. “Don’t worry about me, I haven’t given up yet.” Tahir stayed in his stance. After a moment, Ester gave him a small smile before she continued her assault.
As confidently as he presented himself, blocking that strike took nearly half of his aura on its own. He only wanted to fully block that first one to make a point. That he could stand against even mithral rank using their aura. He wanted to prove beyond all doubts, and while he could have probably left it at that, he wanted to see where he stood for himself against Ester - knowing full well that he’d lose at the end of it.
He couldn’t speak to the White Serpent in the same way that he could to the Traveler - it seems they didn’t share a language, but they could communicate intentions. Tahir sent the intent for the serpent to not attack Ester, so it flew overhead and observed the battle, occasionally using its own magic to help Tahir. He felt himself suffused with the serpent’s divine magic, manifesting as a soft glow over his entire body. A shield that layered on top of Tahir’s aura shield, and made it notably more difficult for Ester to connect with her glaive. At least at first.
Noting the shield, Ester began to channel her own divine magic into her weapon, causing the blade of the glaive to glow white. It carved through the weaker force of the tier one spirit easily, but said shield made dealing with the empowered weapon much easier for Tahir. As easy as fighting a mithral ranked Redcloud could, at least. Tahir stayed on the defensive, opting for mostly attempts at counter attacks. Ester hit hard and fast, far too fast for Tahir to even consider pulling out his staff to cast, and the better range from her glaive made it hard for him to actually reach her for an attempt to counter.
Divine magic, separate from the arcane or natural, is generally bestowed upon mortals from gods themselves, or powerful celestial beings. It existed as a separate energy source from mana and aura. To Tahir, it seemed like it bypassed the issue he ran into this way, so one could fully devote their time to training their aura, and upon further contributions to their deity’s cause, the power of their divine magic would increase as well. If she had a high proficiency in both, Tahir could easily see how she got to Mithral rank.
Once he got a moment to think, he sent a different intent to the White Serpent flying above, and rather than continuing to refresh the shield as Ester tore through it, at Tahir’s instruction it changed tactics. In the middle of Ester’s assault, she had to jump back to avoid a bolt of divine energy that the serpent fired at her. The action gave a moment of reprieve, and even allowed Tahir to cast a spell. Channeling his mana, he conjured four bolts of fire at once before shooting them off at his opponent. An intermediate spell that all but drained him of mana to cast.
Ester dodged two, deflected one, and the last one hit, but simply flared harmlessly against her divine and aura shields. After he cast the spell, Tahir rushed forward to start his own barrage of strikes. Most of which she deflected with her glaive, and even the ones that he slipped past her defense bounced off her own robust shields.
She moved to defend against him while dodging additional divine bolts from the Winged Serpent, and altogether it gave the impression that he was actually driving Ester back. Still, anyone worth their salt could tell it would be a losing battle. Tahir breathed heavily from weathering the storm that was Ester’s assault earlier in the fight, while Ester herself hadn’t shown any indication of tiredness. Try as he might, if she really wanted to, she could outlast him with aura.
While she continued to block his strikes, she suddenly pushed back against one of his blows, causing him to stumble and jump back to avoid her followup swing. “That’s enough, I think.” She said simply. Tahir looked on, confused for a couple of seconds, before quickly sending the intent to the serpent to stop shooting at her with its divine bolts. “You’ve already made your point. I don’t see a need to drag it out any longer.” With a smile, she glanced down at her glaive in her hands. “You surprised me very much with that first strike, though. I’ll remember your determined look.”
With that, she started walking off. Out of the field and back toward the Redclouds’ building. Tahir let the weariness from the fight catch up to him all at once, dropping down to his knees and relying on stabbing his sword into the ground to keep himself upright. Fenian called out to her before she could get too far away. “Splendid as always, Miss Ester. If you could, might I get your official verdict on young Tahir?”
She stopped, and glanced back toward the elf. “For the moment, he is Gold. Nothing more, but nothing less either.”