Dustbrawl
Hooves skidded across the dry earth, tearing up yellowing grass and loose soil, kicking both into the air, the taste of grit left behind. Keshet teetered precariously, leather wings batting ineffectively at the air before she gave in and fell forward to brace herself against the ground.
A low growl rumbled in her throat as she bared sharp fangs.
Calanthe’s long, feathered tail swept through the prairie grass, her head lifted imperiously. The sun glinted off the plating along her back and the sharp thorns that grew down her sides.
She tipped her head just so, annoyingly calm despite the rage beating against Keshet’s ribs like a wild animal. Calanthe’s green eyes flashed, and she disappeared.
A cloud of cold air seethed through Keshet’s teeth, her bright eyes watching for the way the light bent and broke, the way the grass rustled in the wind, hoping to anticipate where Calanthe would appear.
A burst of green came from her left, and Keshet whipped her head, biting viciously down on thin air as the illusion shattered.
“I don’t even need to hit you,” Calanthe observed coolly. Keshet wheeled to follow the sound of her voice, but Calanthe remained hidden. “You’ll tire yourself out, at this rate.” There was something insufferably smug in her voice, “And it only makes you angrier, doesn’t it? Trapped in your own little head, falling for magic you should understand. A physical beating would be more tolerable, wouldn’t it?”
Keshet reared her head back. She pulled in air, feeling it freeze to the point of burning in her lungs. She leaped into the air with a heavy beat of her wings and exhaled, but the frost fell from her lips, as useless as all of her rider’s pretty words, glistening as they fell to the ground.
The most annoying part was that Calanthe was right. She was wasting too much energy, letting herself succumb to the maelstrom of emotions that roiled under her scales. Light magic was hard to see through, to pick apart, but as old as she was, she ought to have some sort of idea of how it all worked. She’d hoped that the frost would momentarily cover Calanthe’s body, wherever it was hidden, but she couldn’t even conjure that correctly, and it wheedled under her skin, as painful as it was obvious: she wasn’t good enough.
A bright ball of light flashed right in front of her eyes. Keshet roared in anger as the sunburst seared her retinas, pulse pounding through her head.
She didn’t have time to master either of her magics before the fight with Calanthe continued. She didn’t have the time to cool off, start thinking logically, or begin unweaving the illusions in front of her.
‘You don’t,’ Jack’s voice agreed from the back of her mind, and their laissez-faire attitude only serving to make her angrier. ‘So cheat.’
Keshet blinked the stars from her eyes and glanced down. The prairie was going through an extremely dry season. It took practically nothing for the dust to kick up, and even an experienced mage would have trouble perfectly predicting the swirls, eddies, and falls once it was in the air.
She closed her wings and fell towards the ground, opening them at the last second and flapping as hard as she could. A cloud of dust billowed into the air, and in a second, Keshet saw where Calanthe had hidden herself. It was subtle — she was good — but the mirroring of the air around her was just wrong enough that Keshet could crash into her, knocking the other dragon off her hooves. Keshet brought one of her own down on Calanthe, hard enough to pin her unless Calanthe really wanted to put up a fight.
It was Calanthe’s turn to bare her teeth, but if she found Keshet’s methods unacceptable, she didn’t say. Just growled, “Get off me.” And Keshet remained a moment more, poised over her, victorious, before she backed off and let Calanthe get back to her feet.
