The two youths looked across the arena at each other and bowed while Rowan’s mind started going a mile a minute. His opponent was a prominent member of house Petros and he had been making moon eyes at her like she was a farmer's daughter. He really hoped he didn’t face consequences for that as the wrath of house Petros was somewhat legendary in this region.

  After he mumbled his fight acknowledgement Rowan realized that he didn’t see a spirit anywhere near the girl. That could mean that her spirit was one of the few immaterial ones he had heard about. More likely she wasn’t taking this fight seriously, which quite frankly pissed him off.

  A fact that didn’t go unnoticed by his opponent, who sent him a bright smile. “You suddenly got a dangerous look in your eye, stranger, hope you can back it up.” The smile turned sharp as a corona of light surrounded her and she was suddenly moving faster than any of his previous opponents.

  He couldn’t take the hit as he was, and he wouldn’t be able to dodge competently enough to avoid the blow. So instead he widened his stance, held up his arms to block and sent roots of qi into the ground to bind him to the earth. He didn’t have time to do it properly, but he drew on his connection to his partner to shove as much energy into the constructs as he could. All he truly knew about the coming collision was that this was gonna hurt.

  Right before she made contact a ball of pitted rock shot from the small of her back and collided into Bough, causing the turtle of earth and root to rumble out a noise of distress and pain. However Rowan didn’t have time to worry about his friend as the wrecking ball of a woman collided with his defenses.

  To his credit he didn’t move an inch, however his bones creaked and his forearms were likely to be wholly made of bruised flesh the following day. Before he could counter she shot away in a flash, a tinkle of laughter heard. What little attention he could spare he directed to his companion, who was currently crying out and being pummeled by a ball of light and stone.

  Before a thought could be formed on how to shift the fight in his favor, a blow struck his back, disrupting his concentration and making him grunt in pain. There had to be a way through this he wasn’t seeing.

  He drew strength from the earth, his roots of qi aiding the process.

  He was wood, he could bend with the blows and not break. The woman crashed into his side, still he did not move.

  He was stone, only time could erode him. She tried to sweep his legs out from under him and his stance held firm.

  Then his moment came.

  She darted over his head, for what purpose he wouldn’t know as when she passed by his arm moved as quick as he could and grabbed hold of the nearest limb of hers he could. Which happened to be the calf of her left leg. After his arm was almost wrenched from its socket due to the speeds she was moving at he used all of his strength to swing her bodily into the ground.

  He proceeded to repeat that action again and again until she stopped trying to break free from his grip.

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  Rowan looked down at his opponent to see her looking completely unharmed aside from her mussed hair and dirtied clothes.

  “Sorry stranger, it’ll take more than that to beat me. Though if you wanna spin me around a couple more times to soothe your ego I won’t mind. Was kind of fun!” She grinned up at him and gave him a wink.

  The girl was clearly insane. Or maybe he had accidentally given her some head trauma.

  He looked from his unharmed opponent to his very harmed spirit beast companion and came to a sobering realization.

  This was a battle he could not win. Not today, and maybe not ever. The difference in strength between them was too great, and even if he grew more skillful he was unsure that would be enough to make up the difference.

  Not to mention her skill set being a direct counter to his own, high speed movement combined with blunt impact resistance. It was a worse version of the fight with the boy and his flesh ooze spirit, and this time he couldn’t even get a ring out due to her being able to move mid-air.

  He could continue to struggle, with both him and his friend sustaining pointless injuries, or he could take the wiser path.

  He took a deep breath, and before his spirit was further harmed he called out as clearly as he could.

  “I forfeit.”

  Large swaths of the crowd did not take the announcement well. Whether it was because they were fans of his, disliked what they viewed as cowardice, or simply annoyed that their entertainment was cut short, all were loud in voicing their displeasure as Rowan hobbled off the stage with Bough.

  The whole time he could feel the eyes of the girl on him, and when he looked back one last time he saw the clear curiosity and confusion on her face.

  He made it back to the large beast enclosure, mainly because it was the one place he could navigate to through the maze of tunnels surrounding the arena. There was also a healer there waiting for them which was nice. They were clearly tired and overworked from the long night of fighting, but they did make sure to patch up the worst of both of their injuries, which the teen made sure to thank them for despite his despondent mood. To do otherwise would be rude after all.

  When Lucius inevitably arrived Rowan quietly requested he be left alone for a bit. Knowing how bad his friend's mood could get when he got in a funk, the slightly older boy simply told him the location of the inn he managed to grab a room in if he wanted to change the venue for his brooding. When all he got was a grunt in response Lucius shrugged and wandered off, probably not going too far away, but giving his friend the illusion of space.

  Rowan kept going over the battle, trying to find the origin of his failure. He eventually settled on the start of the fight. He had assumed that his opponent didn’t bring her spirit with her and the anger caused by that assumption made him lose the initiative.

  He should have also started closer to Bough. If his back was to the turtle-shaped spirit then it would have limited the girl's angles of attack, and he could have maybe helped his friend with that flying rock. What even was that spirit anyway? He assumed if he asked around he would be able to find out, considering how apparently well known the girl was to the crowd.

  He let out a breath. Ignoring the strength disparity between them and focusing on where he had failed tactically helped center him. There were more factors in play than pure power.

  He stiffly got up, using his friend as an anchor to help. Together they made it to the front desk and collected his winnings. Substantially less than if he had gotten to the finals, but still more than his family's farm earned in a year. He could live with that.

  As he hobbled out of the main entrance, the pale light of dawn started to color the horizon, and he noticed a figure standing there waiting for him.

  Alexandra Petros wanted to talk.

  patreon! Currently that's a bit beyond the Rowan storytime arc for those curious.