As my eyes opened, the first thing I noticed was that I was on the floor.
The second thing was how my entire body hated me for the actions that led to it.
The pain wasn't in one place either. No, because that would've been too convenient. The pain was everywhere. I could feel the throbbing as my shoulders ached. My ribs felt like someone had kicked them repeatedly until they eventually got bored. My arms were tingling with that awful aftershock you get when you cast too much too quickly and your own Aether core decides to protest as a complaint.
And annoyingly, the sparring ring was still kept intact.
Dust floated around in lazy spirals through the air, while catching the pale hall light. The brief section of floor around us had been torn apart in ugly divots where Ilya's last spell— or, whatever it was-had pressed into it, though even that damage was slowly starting to get repaired.
'So... that just happened.'
A few feet away, I saw Ilya, who was also flat on her back with one arm placed over her forehead, breathing hard enough that her chest was rising and falling visibly.
For once, she didn't look chirpy.
She looked wrecked. Physically.
'Good, if I'm struggling out here, then you also better be.' I snickered to myself.
For a while, neither of us said anything.
Then Ilya turned her head slightly toward me, still panting, and grinned, as usual.
"Damn, Ryn," she said. "You're really strong!"
I let out a breath that could have been a laugh if my lungs weren't practically deflated from exhaustion.
"I could say the same thing to you."
"No, seriously!" she exclaimed, while smiling through the exhaustion. "That last spell of yours was nasty."
"So was your giant purple hand-thing."
"Magenta."
"What?"
"It was magenta," she corrected.
I slowly turned my head and stared at her in sarcastic disgust.
"That's what you're focusing on??"
"Of course! Accuracy matters.
"Yeah. I'll make sure to remember that the next time someone tries to kill me with an oversized colourful hand."
Ilya laughed, then immediately groaned and clutched at her side.
"Ugh, it hurts to laugh."
"Good."
"Hey, Ryn, that's mean."
"Ha?? You tried to flatten me into the floor a few minutes ago."
"That was then, when we sparred. This is now."
"Ok. So, this is me being 'mean' NOW."
Before she could respond, footsteps approached from the edge of the sparring ring.
Randel and Junio came over first, with Randel looking worried and Junio looking exactly as composed as he had before the spar began, which is now starting to make me deeply annoyed.
Randel crouched slightly between us, eyes flicking from Ilya to me.
"Are you guys both okay?"
I lifted one hand weakly.
"I am alive. Unfortunately."
Ilya copied the gesture from her side of the floor.
"Also alive. But in much pain."
Randel looked at the cracked floor, then back at us, then let out a breath that sounded somewhere between relief and disbelief.
"Still, I have to say, I'm surprised it ended in a draw."
That sentence hit me in a very specific place.
Not my pride.
Worse.
My competitiveness.
I turned my head toward him slowly.
'A draw, huh?'
That word felt infuriating.
It wasn't because I almost lost. Weirdly, that fact didn't really bother me as much as it probably should have. I mean, Ilya is strong, annoyingly strong, but the fact that I could've been smashed into the ground by that Palm of Serenity thing. That was what bothered me.
No.
If I'm being honest.
What bothered me was that I didn't win.
It wasn't the pain.
It wasn't the humiliation of nearly being squished by a purple— magenta.
It was the absence of victory.
'A draw... ugh.'
The very thought of the word made me want to stand up and demand that Ilya go again. In fact, I would've except, my legs were currently making a convincing counterargument.
Ilya noticed my disgruntled expression and burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha— ow, ow— okay, bad idea to laugh when your entire side is screaming in pain." She said while rolling onto her side slightly, still smiling. "You really hate it, don't you?"
"Hate what?"
"Oh, come on! It's obvious just looking at you! You hate the fact that you didn't win."
"I don't hate it."
"You don't hate it?? You look like Randel just insulted your entire family!"
"He did."
"I did not." Randel cut in, blinking in disbelief.
"You said draw."
"... How is the word 'draw' an insult??"
"It is in spirit."
Junio looked down at me with that calm expression of his. "I think that explains a lot about you."
I glared at him from the floor.
He didn't look remotely threatened.
Ilya pushed herself up onto her elbows and shook her head.
"Nah," she said, looking at Randel. "If we're being serious, then I lost."
That made me pause.
Randel frowned. "You lost?"
"Yeah." She nodded toward me. "I didn't have much Aether left, and strategy-wise, I was all tapped out. That last Palm of Serenity was my big finishing move. If he survived it or managed to dodge without taking damage, then I had nothing else to follow him up with."
I opened my mouth, but she continued before I could interrupt.
"And even just by looking at him, I can tell Ryn still had a lot to give in the fight."
I sat up hastily and immediately regretted it.
My ribs groaned.
Loudly.
"Well," I said, trying to maintain dignity while wincing, "I wouldn't say I had loads."
Ilya raised a brow.
I lifted a hand.
"But I definitely could've continued. Maybe. Probably."
"You were on the floor."
"So were you."
"... Touche"
I pointed at her.
"Although I do want to say, for the record, I was genuinely a split second away from being demolished by whatever that purple hand thing was."
"Magenta," she said again.
"You see those stone fangs in the debris right there? I'm going to throw one of them at you."
"You're too tired."
"Don't tempt me."
Junio's eyes moved to Ilya, and for the first time since I'd met him, there was a slightly more focused interest in his expression.
"Yeah," he said, voice still calm. "What even was that, Ilya?"
The question shifted the mood slightly.
Not negatively.
Just differently.
Randel looked curious, too.
Ilya sat up properly, crossing her legs in the middle of the ruined training ring. She looked thoughtful for a second.
Then two.
Then five.
Her face was scrunched up in a type of focus I hadn't seen from her till now, like she was trying to solve a puzzle written by someone who hated her personally.
Randel exhaled, cutting through the brief moment of silence.
"It's okay, Ilya," he said, laughing softly. "You don't have to tell us."
"No, no!" she said quickly, waving both hands. "Honestly, it's fine. I was going to tell you guys anyway."
"Are you sure?" Randel asked sternly.
"Yeah."
She took in a quick breath, and the brightness in her expression settled into something more grounded.
"What I used is something called Majin Fist."
The name sounded interesting now that the chaos had stopped.
In the middle of a fight, "Majin Fist: First Form" sounded like the kind of thing you only had enough time to either panic about or block badly, at least in my experience.
But here... sitting in the training hall with dust on our clothes and cracked stone beneath us, it sounded old.
And important.
And honestly, a little dangerous.
Ilya looked between us.
"It's an old combat technique," she explained. "Instead of manifesting Aether through an affinity, the user releases Aether directly from the core and shapes it through the body as a form of attack or defence."
I frowned.
"So, it's not an affinity?"
"No." She shook her head. "It isn't like Terra or Ignis or Ventus or anything like that. It's pure Aether released from a person's own core."
I stared at her.
Randel stared too.
Even he looked properly amazed.
"Pure Aether?" I repeated.
"Yeah."
"So that giant palm thing was just… raw Aether from your core? Something that powerful?"
"Yep! Just good old raw core power shaped through form, stance, and inherited technique," Ilya said, raising a finger like she was trying to sound academic and only somewhat succeeding. "Trust me, the form matters. The body matters, and obviously, the core matters. If you mess up its structure, you won't just fail the technique; you'll end up hurting yourself. Or worse."
'What the hell could be worse?'
"Death." She said, as if she could read my mind and answered in response.
My arms were still buzzing from the collision. I looked at the cracked floor.
"Why the hell have I never heard of anything like this?"
Randel nodded slowly. "Same. I've heard of pure Aether theory, but not… that."
Junio, however, didn't look surprised.
Not really.
He looked interested.
Calmly interested.
Too calm.
I noticed before I decided whether I wanted to notice.
"You knew something about this, Junio?" I asked him.
Junio glanced at me.
"I knew that pure Aether techniques existed," he said. "In theory. Some close combat families— martial families, some texts called them- were said to have used them. I also heard of old battlefield traditions, certain monastic lineages. But I've never seen what Ilya used before."
His eyes returned to Ilya.
"It was certainly fascinating to see."
The way he said it should've been harmless.
Maybe it was harmless.
But there was something about the way he said the word in his mouth that made me think of a knife being placed gently on a table.
'Fascinating.'
Not cool.
Not impressive.
Just fascinating.
The situation didn't seem to warrant suspicion, so I decided to let the comment go.
Mainly because I didn't have proof of anything, and partly because I wasn't convinced I wasn't losing my mind after attending the Academy for so many weeks.
Hopefully I'm not.
Ilya, completely unaware of the mental gymnastics that were going on inside my head, continued brightly.