Chapter 12

While Kora felt relieved to have finally cleared the air with Tan, and they spent the few hours in the field together talking amiably in a friendly way. A way which clearly showed that her gambit of giving up her official pursuit had worked. He wasn’t being sarcastic or subtly insulting her anymore, but rather giving her genuine tips on the task that was before them and casually discussing the weather.

It was like someone had flipped a switch in Tan’s brain, Kora reflected, and now he saw her in an entirely different light. A part of her tried to figure out how to use that to her advantage, but she quickly crushed it. She would not be marrying Tan, regardless of what her family wanted. He didn’t want that, and she had come to learn that neither did she. She was grateful for his blunt rejection of her awkward attempts at getting closer to him now that she’d come to that second conclusion.

If they could be friends instead of potential spouses, then she saw no reason not to be.

However, as they got closer to finishing their chores and the tournament approached, she began growing nervous once more. “Tan, I’ve never fought before,” she admitted to him.

“You haven’t?”

“Well, I’ve sparred with a few masters, but they were so cautious not to hurt me that it doesn’t really count. I don’t think that you and the others are going to put forth the same effort,” she explained.

“Yeah we’re not. Getting hurt is part of fighting. My parents will make certain that nobody is really hurt. Dad will intervene if he sees anyone using a technique that’s actually dangerous, and Mom will heal us up afterwards if we need it. But the entire point of this is to learn to defend ourselves, and if we have to defend ourselves for real our opponents will be trying to kill us. For real. So even with Mom and Dad making sure we’re safe, it’s better that we act like we’re fighting for real as well,” Tan informed her.

“So you’re saying not to hold back?” she asked.

“If you hold back, then Safron will kick your butt and wouldn’t that be embarrassing?” Tan teased.

“Wait, Safron is going to fight?”

“Yeah. We actually will be holding back against her though. She’s still in the first stage of the initiate’s realm, so we’ll be using no more power than that. And none of us are really going to beat up my little sister, we’re mostly just going to let her swing at us and use her magic until she tires out. But it will be good for her. If you hurt her then I’ll hurt you, you can bet on that though.”

Kora frowned, thinking about fighting a child. But then she steeled her conviction and nodded. “Okay. I won’t hold back. Except against Safron, of course.”

“If she beats you I’m going to tease you so much,” Tan promised.

Once everyone had finished their chores, they went into their rooms to change into their tournament clothes. For the boys, that was a pair of shorts that were enchanted against the elements. They would fight shirtless and barefoot. The girls wore the same pants and a sort of sports bra that protected their modesty without getting in the way. Kora was slightly embarrassed to be showing so much skin, but she knew that it wasn’t improper and nobody seemed to be giving her a second glance, so she put it out of her mind.

They drew lots, and Tren wrote down the battle order on a sheet of paper for them to follow. Surprisingly, the first battle was big brother against little sister, with Safron fighting Tan. Kora watched with some amusement as the little girl psyched herself up by yelling childish insults at her big brother and promising to get even with him for tickling her the other day.

As soon as Tren rang the bell for the fight to start, the little girl waved her hands and conjured a fireball. Which Tan promptly extinguished with his own magic. Safron’s eyes went wide. She tried again to the same result. And a third time, before screaming and frustration and running at her big brother with her fists.

The match was over in minutes, ending with tickle torture until Safron surrendered. She went off in a corner to pout about the unfairness of it all while the next combatants faced off.

It was another match of brother versus sister, with Ko fighting against Won. The twins faced off against each other, their faces inscrutable, and when the bell rang, Won charged. He pulled back his fist, his entire body wreathed in an armor of flames, and attempted to punch his sister right in the face. His sister caught his fist, unafraid of being burnt as she conjured her own element, bringing forth water from the humidity in the air.

She doused his armor with a spray of water, leaving him wet and just himself again. Undeterred by his technique being disabled, Won continued to press the attack, moving with preternatural speed and precision as he launched attack after attack at his sister.

Ko met the attacks that she chose to meet and avoided the ones that she chose to avoid. It took Kora some time to realize, but it was in fact the sister who was more in control of the battle. Won was hot headed and seemed to have the advantage, but only because he was so adamantly on the offensive. Ko, on the other hand, was allowing the boy to burn himself out.

Then abruptly she kicked her brother in the balls and pinned him to the ground, and that was the end of the fight as she held a fist to his face after pinning him on his back. The entire fight lasted five minutes, but just watching it had left Kora breathless.

She swallowed. So that was a fight between cultivators, she thought.

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She was up next, with a fight against Pao, the Earth cultivator who was only a stage behind her in cultivation. That should give her an advantage, she thought, but he also had more experience, having fought in this sort of tournament for years. As she squared up against him, taking the stance that her combat tutors had shown her, she met his eyes and was surprised to find that the amiable friendliness was gone, replaced with a cold look.

The bell rang, and Pao simply stood there, his arms raised in a defensive stance. Kora waited for him to move, ready to block his path with a conjured flame. Only he was waiting for her to make the first move as well. And he was more patient than she was.

With a scream of frustration, she conjured a fireball and sent it flying at him. He didn’t even dodge, just raced an elbow to meet it. She didn’t even scorch the hair on his arms, she noticed. She screamed again and began launching her attacks at him one after the other, attempting to burn him to a crisp only for him to simply stand there and endure.

“Is that it?” he asked. “Safron’s flame is hotter than this.”

She blushed and redoubled her efforts, while he simply stepped forward into the onslaught. She backed up as he approached, until with a sudden lurch he dashed forward and she felt a pain in her gut as he punched her in the stomach, driving the wind from her lungs. She collapsed to the ground and he stood over her, foot on her back, pinning her to the earth.

“Do you surrender?” he asked.

“Yes,” she admitted.

The pressure on her back vanished, and he walked over to the sidelines while the others waited for Kora to get out of the way for the next match.

That could have gone better, she reflected to herself. She got up and out of the way, going off the side to lick her wounds, although they were mostly to her pride, as she watched Won face off against Safron next.

Safron tried to imitate Won’s embodiment of flames armor technique, only to scream when her hair caught fire and run around until her mother put it out. The fight was over without actually coming to blows as the little girl cried in her mothers arms about her ruined hair, and the decision was made that she would sit out the rest of the matches due to her ‘injury.’

Next in the lineup was Tan versus Ko. The two stood facing each other in the field where the fights were taking place, each with a wry grin on their face while they waited for the bell. When it rang, Tan vanished and appeared behind Ko, who spun and met the roundhouse kick with her forearm.

A followup punch and a kick from Tan were blocked, and Ko retaliated with a punch aimed at her opponent’s solar plexus only to connect with air as Tan abruptly retreated, moving so fast that Kora was having trouble keeping up with the boy.

She swallowed, watching as Tan dashed in and darted back from different angles. Ko met each blow and tried to take control over the flow of the battle, only for Tan to change the tempo every time she seemed to have it under control.

While Ko had been in firm control over her previous battle, it was clear that this time she was struggling to keep up with Tan. He was relentless, and although he didn’t land a finishing blow, one in ten of his attacks got through her guard and the damage began to accumulate on the water cultivator.

And this was just in the opening moment of the fight.

Abruptly the wind in the fallow field changed, with dust kicked up and spiraling around the combatants. Realizing that Tan was bringing his magic to bear, Ko tried to conjure up some water, only for him to spray it back in her face with a sudden gust of wind. That caught her off guard, and he ended the fight with a series of six blows to her stomach, chest, and face.

She collapsed to the ground and held up a hand to show that she’d had enough.

Tan froze the moment he saw her surrender. Grinning, he helped her stand up and patted her on the back.

“Good job, you were keeping up with me really well,” he said.

“Thanks. It wasn’t easy, but I’m getting better at following you when you move that fast,” she said.

“Yeah you are,” he agreed. The separated, and Tan returned to the center of the field for the next fight.

“Isn’t it unfair that Tan is fighting multiple fights in a row?” she asked Lady Wensho.

“It’s not fair to the other children that Tan is as much as five stages ahead of them in cultivation, why should we give him time to recover between the fights? This is supposed to be challenging, that’s the point,” she explained.

“As the children are now, Tan will always win in a sprint. We’re training him to fight in a marathon,” Lord Shen explained to her.

She frowned, but watched as the next fight took place.

Once more, Tan was a blur of motion. He landed more blows against Pao than he did against Ko, but they seemed to be even less effective. Ko had grunted when she took his punches, kicks, knee-strikes and elbows. Pao met them stoically, sometimes taking a blow that he could have blocked to show his lack of concern for his friend’s strength.

It was the longest fight so far, lasting for ten minutes of Tan furiously attacking the older boy and Pao stoically enduring. When Pao’s endurance gave out, it happened all at once, with the teenager falling to one knee and holding up a hand to tap out of the fight. Once more Tan displayed his sportsmanship by helping his friend to his feet and off the field.

“You lasted longer than before,” Tan complimented.

“It’s not your punches that hurt,” Pao said, “It’s the Qi that goes with them. I can’t block that, and it accumulates. If it wasn’t for that I swear I’d be able to wear you out.”

“Keep dreaming,” Tan laughed, and he moved back to take on Won.

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