Round two began from where round one had ended with both of them reading each other like a book meant to be studied by the opposition.
The Stormhorn had learned something from the first exchange. That much was clear in the way it held itself differently now. The roll it used against Damien had worked.
It had stripped his palm entry before it reached anything meaningful and had used its own mass as the counter rather than meeting Damien's technique with a technique of its own. The Stormhorn had found something that worked and the intelligence behind those ancient eyes of it showed that it was incorporating it.
Damien had learned something too.
The horn discharge, the active counter-pressure against his entry, and the roll. Three pieces of information about how the Stormhorn fought, each one different from what the demon captains had presented, each one requiring a different solution than what had worked before.
This time, Damien was the first one to move.
