asterion*
“That’s not a strategy,” he says, but he is almost grinning even as his breath comes quick and sharp as he ducks away from the point of her spear. When he huffs a laugh at her next comment, it could just as easily be a swear.
There was only so much you could curse your god, so much you could sorrow and fear, before all that tension melted into something near to ridicule. How could they ever hope to stand against her, if she chose to smite them all? Better not to worry - to train and prepare as best you could, but to go on living too. “Yes, I’m afraid we must answer our own prayers now.” But something like worry clouds his gaze, for a moment, at the grit of her teeth and the way her ears are flat as a viper’s hood.
Asterion may not know his Champion as well as he would like, but he knows her enough by now to see something more than eagerness for a training-spar. But how can he judge? It is not peace, it is not joy, that has driven them both to this blood-salted patch of dirt.
He allows the fraction of a pause - probably a wealth of time, for such a fighter as she - before he feints left and sweeps the spear, low, in a swift arc toward her forelegs. Asterion’s grip on the shaft feels unsteady, imbalanced -
but he can’t say the feeling is anything new.
@
