Chapter: 595 – Her Expertise

Tala and Eskau Meallain had both somewhat purposely overextended in their first exchange, each seemingly leaning on the ignorance and lack of familiarity the other had with their current capabilities and style.

While Tala, in theory, had fought against Eskau Meallain hundreds of times while the elf woman was fully solidified in her style and capacities, when the two had sparred in the House of Blood, Eskau Meallain had explicitly not used her concept and more esoteric fighting style at that time.

It had made perfect sense, given the purpose of those clashes. The point of that training had been to build up Tala’s instincts and help her rely on them more and more. So using magics that specifically made those instincts wrong, and punished her for trusting them, would have been rather counter productive.

That method had also left Eskau Meallain in a position where she—in theory—could beat Tala in a fight with relative ease, given her own building familiarity with Tala’s capabilities and tendencies, gained through those sparring sessions.

That would have been true ten years earlier, but Tala had changed a lot since she’d left the arcane cities.

Tala had gone into this fight, knowing that she didn’t have the elf-woman’s measure, knowing that she was essentially fighting an unknown enemy, even if one weakened below her usual advancement.

Eskau Meallain had seemingly suspected the same, but Tala had proved that the elf had underestimated the disparity that time had brought about, the growth that Tala had gone through in the last decade.

The first exchange had proven that, and only the fact that this was ostensibly a ‘friendly’ spar had allowed Eskau Meallain to recover.

It was now time for the second round.

This time, Eskau Meallain started the engagement. She flowed sideways, not bodily closing on Tala even while her weapon licked out, a finger-thin spear tapering to a vicious point as it covered the distance between them, with speed brought about both by the white steels alteration and Eskau Meallain’s own strength.

Tala countered with a thin sword, close to Flow’s length, but not quite the same profile, as she had filled in the blade this time.

Her deflections rolled along with her body, seeming to meet each incoming spear-thrust and guide it to the side with quiet gentleness. There was hardly any sound of metal on metal, so light was each redirecting contact.

The result was an odd dissonance.

From the outside, it almost looked like Tala and Eskau Meallain were engaged in some form of choreographed two-person martial form.

Only those with long familiarity with combat could see that Eskau Meallain’s strikes were each aimed with ‘lethal’ intent, and only Tala’s actions kept them from landing home.

Had the spearhaft been wooden, Tala could have cut it to ribbons, or shaved off bits of it with each deflection, but the nature of the white steel in both their weapons made that incredibly difficult.

If Tala moved to a harsher style, hacking more than gliding, she could have begun to do damage to Eskau Meallain’s weapon, but that damage would have been trivial to fix, and that style of combat was easier to predict and counter.

The elf changed weapons as she varied the range of their engagement, moving backward and using a whip for curling, harder to predict strikes, then surging inward, shortening her weapon down to a short-spear, then a longsword, then even shorter as she drew near.

Tala only rarely altered her own weapon, purposely staying on the defensive, but as she did that, she kept the initiative in the fight.

In a mundane sense, it shouldn’t have been possible. After all, the one attacking chose when the clashes happened, and that, by the very nature of it, set the tempo.

But at the speed of their clashes, with multiple attacks coming in per second, Tala was able to alter exactly when she blocked or how she moved, forcing, in turn, an alteration in the cadence of Eskau Meallain’s attacks.

It was true that the older woman could pull her strikes early in order to maintain control over the rhythm of the clash, but that would weaken her position even further, allowing Tala to practically rule the battle.

If you control how your opponent attacks, you have already won.

Eskau Meallain’s relatively stoic face slowly blossomed into a smile.

She is probably assuming that I believe her magic only works defensively. So, my staying on the defensive is a tactic to avoid that.

-That’s quite the assumption on your part, Tala. Be careful.-

I’ll be as smart as I can. I can’t take care in such a clash.

-Fine, fine. Be smart in your clashes.-

I’ll try.

In truth, Eskau Meallain had refrained from using her concept through this early part of the second round, but Tala wasn’t deceived. The elf was testing her, slowly building up a picture of Tala’s current abilities—at least when downgraded to this level of power.

That was one flaw in this test, however. Where Tala was physically downgraded to be on an equal footing, advancement wise, with Eskau Meallain, her mind was not so impaired. It really couldn’t be.

Therefore, Tala simply wasn’t acting on instinct. To her perception, both herself and her opponent were moving in slow motion.

Because of that, when Eskau Meallain’s concept came into play with a truly beautiful, light touch, Tala’s effectiveness didn’t change.

Oh, she certainly felt like her block would fail, and she needed to alter the path of her sword. Even at these speeds, if she hadn’t known what Eskau Meallain’s concept was, she’d have fallen for the tactic, trusting her instincts over what she could perceive.

But she did know, and so even the feather-light, truly masterful working failed to affect her.

Fighting at my own level of advancement, this tactic wouldn’t work. We’d be following instinct and this would end us.

-Oh, yeah, it definitely would.-

Work on a counter?

-I am trying…-

Tala also realized that at her full power, the elf was a step beyond her, making this fight a foregone conclusion in the elder woman’s favor, had they each been fighting at their best.

-Well, assuming you restricted yourself to a sparring sword and martial and perceptual magics.-

Yeah, that’s fair. My armor would mitigate a lot of her advantage, but her armor is far from useless if she had that.

-Yeah, and Flow would render her armor back to mostly useless.-

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True enough.

The incredibly more experienced Eskau was only thrown for a moment by Tala’s seeming resistance to her concept. Her strategy up to that point seemed to have been to slowly increase the pressure on her one-time-pupil to feel out and learn Tala’s capability, while lulling her younger opponent into a false sense of safety, only to seize upon that and land a decisive blow.

That had failed, and as such the elf was done testing.

She came in like an avalanche, her weapon’s form fracturing into one with multiple blades.

Any blade that Tala blocked moved backward, away from the block, as if hinged, while the others continued forward, seeking flesh and forcing Tala to dodge, where before she’d been able to more or less counter any incoming attack.

The white steel responded to Eskau Meallain practically as flexibly as an independent body, allowing the blades and points to thrust and swing in ways utterly independent of how the elf moved.

Most of those attacks lacked much power, given they were generated simply by the flexing and shifting of the material, but Tala had no doubt that if she let even one through, Eskau Meallain would be able to alter her movements to bring true power behind that portion of her strike.

In those almost frantic moments, Tala finally saw the true potential and power of Eskau Meallain’s abilities, as well as how much the woman had truly been limited by the finite quantity of the white steel.

Protian weapons, by their very nature, could change in mass and volume within set ranges, allowing for far greater flexibility and far more attack vectors than she could currently manage with the material she’d been allowed for this clash.

Even so, the fact that Eskau Meallain could shift the perception of where she was, and how, exactly, she was moving, meant that from Tala’s perspective—even as sluggish as the battle was when compared to her mental capacities—truly any one of the barbs or blades could be a full powered attack.