The feast had reached that comfortable, unhurried depth that only fae celebrations ever truly achieved — the kind where time stopped being a useful concept, where conversations drifted and merged and split, laughter filled the place as people ate drank and enjoyed themselves.
Thalien had eaten more than he intended to. The food was extraordinary, nothing like anything ever served to him, and his mom made him some pretty wierd food, roasted mushrooms glazed with something that tasted like honey and pine resin, bread that had been baked inside a living flower, small silver fish served whole and cold that somehow dissolved on the tongue like snow. He'd stopped questioning what he was eating after the third dish and simply surrendered to it.
Lunassa, now significantly less nervous than her introduction suggested she was capable of being, had planted herself across the table from him and was currently delivering a breathless and only partially coherent explanation of why the blue-eyed bear he'd seen in the grove was, in her words, "actually very polite once you get to know him."
"He just looks scary," she insisted, gesturing with a piece of bread. "His name is Orim. He's been living near the eastern cluster of oaks for like forty years. He just doesn't like strangers walking through his mushroom circles. That's completely reasonable."
"I didn't walk through any mushroom circles."
"You might have. There are a lot of them and they're not all visible."
"That's a design flaw."
Lunassa pointed the bread at him. "That's a feature. If you can't see them, you weren't meant to be there."
"How does that even make any sense"
"Its simple if the mushrooms are invisible then you aren't meant to go through them, whats so complicated?"
"Huhhh... Alright whatever you say"
There was something deeply easy about talking to her — she had none of the social calculation that characterized nearly every conversation he'd had with people his age in noble circles. She said things because she thought them, reacted to things because she felt them, and moved on without filing anything away for later use. It was, he realized, somewhat disarming.
Seraphyne was seated beside Elder Zera at the head of the table, speaking quietly, and had been for some time. Thalien had noticed it — the way Zera would say something and Seraphyne would nod slowly, and occasionally glance toward Thalien and Lunassa with an expression that was almost evaluative.
He didn't have to wait long to find out what.
"Thalien."
He looked up. Seraphyne was watching him from down the table with calm, fond eyes.
"How are you feeling?"
"Well," he said honestly. "Better than I expected, actually."
"Good." She set her cup down lightly. "Zera has been telling me about Lunassa's progress. Apparently she's been advancing very quickly." A small pause. "I've also been telling him about yours."
Lunassa's ears — slightly pointed, he'd noticed, like all the fae — perked up.
Zera folded his hands on the table, and the slight formality of the gesture pulled the nearby conversations quiet in a way that was subtle but total.
"It is rare," Zera said, with measured warmth "to have two young druids of such different traditions in the same place. Particularly two who are, by all accounts, exceptionally gifted within those traditions."
Thalien felt the shape of where this was going before Zera finished the sentence.
"It would be a waste," Zera continued, the smallest smile crossing his face, "not to let them learn from each other. Don't you think?"
Seraphyne looked at Thalien. Not asking permission — she never really did — but offering him the chance to want it himself, which was her particular version of kindness.
He looked at Lunassa.
She was already looking at him. Her pink eyes were bright, and she was doing a very poor job of suppressing a smile.
"Huhhh..." Thalien faked a sigh, though he was also smiling.
⦾⦾⦾⦾⦾⦾⦾⦾
They cleared a space near the shore, where the tree line pulled back and left a wide circle of soft grass that met the sand. The moonlight here was full and unfiltered, bright enough to cast shadows, and the sea beyond was perfectly still, reflecting the sky like a second version of it.
The other fae gathered at the edges without being told to. They perched on branches and hovered in small clusters and sat in the grass, the whole village tilting toward the clearing with the quiet ease of an audience that had been waiting for a show without knowing it.
Zera and Seraphyne stood to one side, not quite together, close enough to intervene.
Thalien and Lunassa stood across from each other in the centre of the clearing, perhaps fifteen feet apart.
She had shed her shoes at some point, which she did constantly–he suspected it was because she was more used to flying over walking, and shoes were umcomfortable for her. Her wings were open, not beating, just resting wide like a reflex — the way his hands sometimes shifted toward a stance when he was about to fight without him consciously choosing it.
He studied her.
She's a flier. That was the first and most important thing. Her natural axis was vertical as much as horizontal, which meant that his instinct to read an opponent in terms of left-right footwork was going to be largely useless.
She could break the geometry of a conventional engagement entirely just by going up.
Her magic is fae-native. He had no real frame of reference for what that meant in practice. Plants, probably — the fae were deep-root practitioners, attuned to living things in a way that was older and more intuitive than structured druidic training. But fae magic was also notoriously fluid, difficult to anticipate, full of tricks that didn't follow the same internal logic as the spells he'd learned. He couldn't predict her arsenal, at all.
She's excited. Not nervous — excited. Which meant she was either overconfident, or she had very good reasons not to be nervous.
He decided to assume the latter.
Lunassa tilted her head at him.
"You're doing the reading thing," she said.
"What reading thing?"
"The thing where you look at someone like they're a puzzle." She smiled. "Lady Seraphyne does it too. You have the same eyes when you're thinking."
He blinked. Then filed that away.
"Ready?" called Zera.
"Yes," they said, simultaneously
Then Zera said, simply: "Begin."
Lunassa moved first.
Not aggressively — she rose, wings snapping open and carrying her up in a single smooth motion that was so fast and so graceful it barely registered as motion at all. She was simply suddenly higher than him, the moonlight catching the gradient of her wings, and from that new angle she extended one hand toward the grass.
The ground responded immediately. Vines erupted from the earth and shot toward Thalien in three directions at once, and they moved with a speed and organic precision.
He gracefully avoided the first two, and in a fast and fluid manner casted natural blast making the third explode, he then sprinted towards her, and used a little bit of elemental power to launch a strong gust of wind, not powerfull enough to hurt her but to destablize her flight.
She tumbled sideways in the air, using this opportunity thalien casted three powerfull natural blasts towards her.
She immedietly rebalanced herself, effortlessly weaving through all three of them, and then — and this was the moment he realized she was genuinely dangerous — she laughed, and the laughter, it was delight, she was enjoying being pushed, and she immediately used the momentum of the correction to spin into a dive.
She stopped a few feet off the ground, thalien tried to attack, but she immedietly started spinning around incredibely fast, spreading a cascade of luminescent seeds, that impeded his vision, and as they settled on the ground they immedietly sprouted, thick-stalked plants with wide flat leaves that curled upward and outward at an alarming rate, reshaping the terrain of the clearing in seconds, creating a maze of high growth that broke his sightlines and gave her cover.
'She reshaped the battleground' he thought
As he was taking in the changes dozens of vines shot at him from the wall-like plants, and those vines kept manuvering towards him no matter how much he dodged, and suddenly just like that he found himself trapped in a maze dancing around vines shooting from the walls.
'She really is something'
Thalien continued in a cycle of dodging, and casting nature blasts at the vines that wont give him a room to breathe, he tried to think his way out of it, trying to predict the vines and where they will come from, to figure out a chance where he could try and sense where luna is, and when he thought it was the time he casted the spell, though he couldn't find her, he could sense the fey, zera, seraphyne, but not her
'She must be using a concealment spe—"ughh"
Just then he was stabbed by a vine, but it didn't just hurt, it burned, like he was poisoned.
"AAAAAHHH"
Another vine, this time a much bigger gash, and a much larger dose of the poison.
Thalien managed to find his rythem dancing around the vines, but he couldn't keep going like this, he had to find a way, he had to think his way out of this, he had to-
Thalien tried to get more comfortable, to, instead of thinking about every step, get more natural with the rythem and let his instincts do its thing, while he focuses on the sensory spell.
Still not managing to find her he decided to look down.
one of the properties of a grove is that its constantly in a very efficient process of recycling natural energy, powerfull natural treasures release alot of natural energy into the grove, that the vast root network uses to feed other natural treasures, that then release more potent natural energy, and the cycle continues.
so the roots under the grove adapt and move, and lean towards any place where there is a cluster of natural energy, of course the owner of the grove could command the roots to do anything, but that is their natural process.
The first thing thalien noticed was the cluster of roots around zera and seraphyne, because of the natural energy that gathers around them, but then he noticed the roots leaning towards a certain someone concentrating alot of energy to keep her spell afloat.
He immedietly shot a barrage of blasts towards that direction with an amazing firerate, natural blasts, that like gernades, exploded each shaking the ground and scattering a bunch of charred plants.
The vines stopped and thalien could hear a scream, he looked and saw lunassa flying out of the smoke, clearly burnt.
He turned into a vampiric leopard a black leopard with red spots–that countrary to their name, are not undead, but natural beasts that use their fangs to suck blood, and have their prey die of blood loss–and immedietly sprinted and then lunged at her, biting her ankles as hard as he could, and taking her down with him.
After which he proceeds to suck as much blood, and take as many bites as he can, sometimes taking chunks at a time, she tried to crawl away, but he would bite her by the anckle and pull her back, she tried to stab him with her vines but it wouldn't make him stop, she tried restraining him but he would use his flexible feline body to get out of it, until she finally managed to surround him with enough vines that he couldn't get out off, she then proceeds to surround him with hundreds of vines, in what was essentialy a cacoon.
Inside, thalien was suffocating, spikes coming out of the vines were injecting him with massive amounts of poison, his veins were burning with immence pain, yet he managed to use the fire element to burn the vines around him, and then claw and bite his way out.
Standing infront of lunassa, thalien shifted back to human, the two of them barely standing infront of each other, panting, with burnes, stabs, bites, poison, blood loss, both of them were at their limits.
Thalien looked above to see the fae watching them from the air, with their wings, and whatever spell seraphyne was using, flying above the maze.
'It doesn't seem like either of them is going to interfere and end this'
Through the corner of his eyes thalien managed to spot a cloud of poison flying towards him, he barely avoids one just so another could hit him like a gust of wind, he holds his breath, but the fumes get absorbed through his skin, and through his eyes.
Suddenly his vision becomes so blurred he can barely see anything, and his entire body becomes so numb he can barely feel anything, for 10 whole seconds he remains like this until he wakes up to realise that he is hanging from a plant covering him with some sort of mucus that is hardning around him, he tried to loosen it with the fire element, freeze and break it with ice, but nothing worked.
The mucus had reached his neck, before he managed to transform back to the vampiric leopard and claw his way out.
"HEY, that's fighting dirty"
"I AM A FAE"
Lunassa said as if it was an excuse.
"And also, YOU FUCKING MAULED LIKE A DOG WITH RABIES"
Now 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 was an excuse.
The fighting would continue on for about 3 more minutes, before both of them collapse to the ground, barely conscious, and covered in blood.
The fae cheered for the end of the show and finaly zera, and seraphyne descend to them.
"I think that was a draw, don't you lady seraphyne"
"I think so too" seraphyne said as she flicked her fingers and immedietly healed them both.
"Though i have to say that was more violent than I imagined"
"HE MAULED ME"
"SHE POISONED ME FIRST AND IT WAS FUCKING PAINFU—ahem, ahem... I mean i apologise"
"Phaahaha... Its fine, we were always going to heal you anyways, I think its a good thing you went all out"
"I agree, now, its time to go home thalien"
"You are going back?"
"Yes, but don't worry we will be visiting much more often due to thalien's training"
"I think I speak on behaf of all the villiage when I say we look forward to having you and young master here again, tonight was a wonderfull night"
While serafyne was saying goodbye to the fae.
"Sigh...𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑢𝑛"
Lunassa seamingly forgeting about everything she was just yelling about, went back to her chearfull high pitched voice.
"...It was" thalien couldn't help but smile
"OH OH, we should exchange spells–I should take you on a tour of the island–we shoul—
"Maybe tomorrow lunassa"
"You should call me luna, I'll call you thal"
"...yeah, thats a good start, wanna exchange numbers"
"We don't have phones here"
"Really, how do you pass the tim–you are a fae what am i asking"
"Hahah..though dad told me I could get a phone once I get to the academy"
"You are going to the academy too!"
" 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝐼 𝑎𝑚, 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑖𝑓 𝑖 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛'𝑡 𝑖𝑡"
"Yes, yes it would"
Lunna got kinda surprised "you should joke more, but thank you"
"Lets go thalien" seraphyne put her arms around him and initiated the teleportation circle.
"Bye thal"