Unsurprisingly, the citizens of Terbisia had gathered around after Luxanna had told 'one' person of her test today.
"I'm guessing this is your fault." Mira said beside her, with a calm knowing confidence that had no business being on someone her age.
Luxanna looked embarrassed. "I didn't think they'd do this. Wait, how do you even know that?"
"It's in your Ki," Mira replied.
'What in the world does that even mean?' Luxanna cried internally.
From the crowd, voices were already rising in encouragement for Lux, and they hadn't even started yet.
"They look excited." Lux flinched as Asta practically materialized beside her. "This takes me back."
"I swear I didn't know they would do this," Lux said quickly. "I only told my assistant."
Asta waved her off. "Nah, it's alright. Besides, I'm the one who invited everyone." A grin spread across his face as he looked out at the gathered crowd. "What better way to introduce the Black Bulls than giving them a show?"
Luxanna looked out at the crowd. There were more of them than she had initially registered. Families pressed together along the edges of the training ground, children perched on shoulders or clinging to fence posts for a better view. She recognized faces from the ceremony yesterday. Mages she had sheltered during the worst of it. People who had spent years learning to make themselves small and invisible.
They were not small now. They were loud and bright eyed and leaning forward with the particular energy of people who had been given something to look forward to and intended to enjoy every moment of it.
Something tightened in Luxanna's chest.
"Don't let it get to your head," Emilia said from somewhere to her left, not unkindly.
"I wasn't," Luxanna said.
"You were about to." Emilia glanced at her briefly. "The crowd. It pulls at you. I can see it."
Luxanna opened her mouth to respond and then decided against it because Emilia was not entirely wrong.
Asta rolled his shoulders once and stepped forward into the open space of the training ground. The crowd noise shifted immediately, a ripple of recognition moving through it as people registered who he was. The cheering didn't die down. It changed pitch.
He turned back to face them.
"Alright," he said. "So, there's been a change of plans."
Luxanna stilled. "I beg your pardon."
"I'm not fighting any of you today." He looked between them, easy and unbothered, as though he had not just rearranged everything. "You're fighting each other."
A beat of silence.
"What," Mira said.
"Two on two." Asta pointed. "Emilia and Shyvana." His hand moved. "Lux and Mira."
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Shyvana turned her head toward Emilia slowly. Emilia did not turn toward Shyvana at all. She was looking at Asta with an expression that was composed and completely unreadable and had been arrived at slightly too quickly to be entirely natural.
"You could have mentioned this yesterday," Shyvana said.
"I could have," Asta agreed.
"But you didn't."
"No."
Shyvana held his gaze for a moment then exhaled once through her nose and said nothing further.
Mira had turned to look at Luxanna. Luxanna looked back at her. There was a brief, wordless exchange between them, the kind that didn't require Ki sense or centuries of reading people.
"Why?" Luxanna asked, turning back to Asta.
"I promised them a show. Four of you is a better show than one of me."
From the crowd, as if on cue, came a ripple of anticipatory noise. Someone had clearly heard enough to understand that something was happening, even without the details.
"Having fun are you?" Emilia said.
"Little bit," Asta admitted.
Emilia looked at him for one long measured moment. Then she looked at Shyvana.
Shyvana looked back at her.
The silence between them had a particular texture. Not hostile. Not warm. The silence of two people who had just been handed a problem they hadn't asked for and were separately calculating how to solve it.
"I won't slow you down," Emilia said finally, quiet enough that only Shyvana could hear.
Shyvana's expression didn't change. "I know," she said. Just as quietly. "You smell dangerous."
Emilia's lips curved. Just slightly.
"Are they flirting?" Asta wondered out loud. "I can't tell."
Across the training ground Mira had moved closer to Luxanna, her staff held loosely, her eyes already moving across the space between them and their opponents with that quiet attentiveness that she wore like a second skin.
"Have you ever fought in a two on two before?" she asked.
"No, but I've led teams of mages before." Luxanna said honestly.
Mira nodded slowly, still watching Emilia and Shyvana. "That's reassuring." She paused. "Emilia's going to try to separate us."
Luxanna looked at her. "How do you know that."
"Because that's what I would do." Mira glanced up at her briefly. "And she's much smarter than me."
Luxanna followed her gaze back across the ground.
Emilia had said something to Shyvana that Luxanna couldn't hear. Shyvana listened, said a few words in return, and then rolled her neck once with the casual certainty of someone who had already decided how this was going to go.
Across the training ground Asta stepped to the side, out of the space between them, and raised one hand.
The crowd fell quiet.
"Alright," he said.
His hand dropped.
---
"Why would he put you and I on the same team against Mira and Luxanna?" Shyvana asked, her eyes fixed on the other team across the training ground. "I'm a member of the Dragon Guard. I have experience in battle, and something tells me you're not far behind on that front either. So why not place us on opposite sides? Mira is a literal child and Luxanna isn't far off."
Emilia exhaled slowly. "Didn't you lose to Darryl in your first spar?"
Shyvana looked away. "That was before I learned mana reinforcement. I don't think he'd be my match in a fight anymore."
"I suppose it isn't surprising that you don't see it," Emilia said, something almost like amusement in her voice. "Asta can be quite cunning when he wants to be."
"What do you mean?" Shyvana asked.
"If we're speaking strictly in terms of magical power, both Mira and Luxanna possess far more than either of us." Emilia's gaze moved across the training ground, unhurried and precise. "In that regard they are above us. A battle of attrition favours them, not us. And don't pretend that your mana reinforcement isn't taxing on your body." She paused. "Mira is also the only one among us who has learned Ki, which makes her my worst possible opponent. She makes my illusions useless. The same may apply to Luxanna. There is a reasonable chance that her light magic pierces through illusions as well."
"So you're completely useless," Shyvana said.
Emilia gave her a sideways look. "It seems Asta wants me to grow. To push past a certain limitation."
"Sounds like him," Shyvana said. "How does that help us?"
"When I tell you to move," Emilia said, "move immediately. Don't wait to understand why. Don't look at me for confirmation." Her voice was calm and completely serious. "Just move."
Shyvana held her gaze for a moment.
She did not particularly enjoy being given instructions. That was simply a fact about herself that she had long since accepted. But she had also spent enough time around capable people to know the difference between someone giving orders because they needed to feel important and someone giving instructions because they had already thought three steps further ahead than everyone else in the room.
"Fine," she said.
Emilia nodded once. Turned back to face the other team.
Across the training ground Asta was watching them both with his arms folded and that particular expression he wore when something was unfolding exactly the way he had hoped it would and he was doing his best not to look too satisfied about it.
Shyvana narrowed her eyes at him briefly.
He had known. From the moment he announced the teams he had known precisely what this pairing would require of all of them.
Adaptation. Quite a lot to ask of a Demacian and their rigid ways.
She looked back at Emilia, who was already perfectly still, perfectly composed, her eyes fixed on Mira and Luxanna with an attention so complete it bordered on absolute.
Shyvana exhaled once.
Settled her weight.
And waited for Asta's hand to drop.
---
The moment Asta's hand dropped, Shyvana blasted forward just as Mira swung her staff forward with a short, practiced gesture.
It was only a fraction of a second, but Shyvana saw it. A single small pumpkin, fired directly at her.
At her current speed she wouldn't be able to avoid it. Something she was certain Mira had made sure of.
With a roar, Shyvana drove her fist into it, unleashing a burst of flame from her hand as she did.
The exploding pumpkin met Shyvana's flaming fist head on and the two forces smashed into one another, producing something considerably larger than either had been alone.
The explosion even took the shape of a mushroom.
When the smoke began to clear, Shyvana stood alone at the centre of a shallow crater, breathing steadily as her eyes moved across the settling dust.
Behind her, Emilia pulled herself upright from where the blast had thrown her, brushing ash from her coat with unhurried hands. "Of course," she said quietly, something close to approval in her voice. "A perfect smoke screen. Clever girl."
"They're gone," Shyvana said.
"Obviously." Emilia walked up beside her, her eyes already moving across the edges of the training ground. "It would be foolish to face you head on after all." She paused. "Can you get their scent?"
Shyvana's nostrils flared.
"Yes," she said. "Two directions."
Emilia stilled. "They split up. The moment the smoke covered them."
A brief silence.
"One went left," Shyvana said. "Toward the far wall. Another goes right, toward the crowd line. I can't tell who is who though."
Emilia turned that over for a moment. Her eyes moved across the training ground, unhurried, reading the space the way someone else might read a page.
"Mira," she said finally.
Shyvana glanced at her. "You sound certain."
"Luxanna's instinct would be to stay together. She led mages in hiding for a year, she understands the value of numbers and knows no other way." Emilia brushed the last of the ash from her sleeve. "Splitting was not her idea. It was Mira's. Add in her magic..."
"The child is directing the strategy."
"The child," Emilia said evenly, "has sparred against Asta and myself multiple times. Do not make the mistake of forgetting that."
Shyvana said nothing to that.
The crowd had gone very quiet after the explosion. Now the noise was building again, low and uncertain, people craning to see through the last of the drifting smoke, trying to understand what had just happened and what was coming next.
---
Mira heard her coming.
Not with her ears. The crowd was too loud for that, the noise of hundreds of people pressing forward to see what was happening swallowing most of the sound from the training ground itself.
She felt it in the earth beneath her feet. The pressure on her skin. The displacement of the air.
She had perhaps two seconds.
She planted her staff and vaulted sideways just as Shyvana tore through the space where she had been standing, close enough that the displaced air pulled at Mira's hair.
Shyvana skidded to a stop, turned, and looked at her.
Mira landed, steadied herself, and looked back.
For a moment neither of them moved.
Something shifted in Shyvana's expression. Not frustration exactly. The particular look of someone recalculating.
Then she came again.
Faster this time.
Mira threw a pumpkin low, aiming for her feet. Shyvana read it, left the ground entirely, cleared it without breaking stride and came down swinging.
Mira barely got her staff up in time. The impact drove her back three full steps, her boots scraping hard across the stone.
Her arms sang with the force of it.
'She's so strong.'
She threw two more pumpkins in quick succession, small ones, fast, angled to force Shyvana wide. Shyvana punched through the first and sidestepped the second without slowing, the ease of it deeply uncomfortable to witness up close.
Mira kept moving. Kept circling. Kept space between them.
She could feel Shyvana's Ki clearly. Steady and immense and completely focused, the heat of it pressing against her sense like standing near an open furnace.
It reminded her, uncomfortably, of Asta.
Not in quality obviously, but in direction.
Shyvana was not fighting to win. She was fighting to end it. Every movement aimed at closing distance and keeping it closed. Emilia had told her not to let Mira breathe and she was following that instruction with the thoroughness of someone who took instructions seriously once she had agreed to them.
Mira threw three more pumpkins and used the moment they bought her to glance across the training ground.
She snapped back to Shyvana just in time to throw herself flat as a burst of flame tore through the air above her head.
She hit the ground rolling, came up onto one knee, and drove her staff down hard.
A pumpkin that suddenly appeared beneath Shyvana's feet lurched suddenly, a rough uneven wave rolling through it, breaking her next stride.
Shyvana stumbled.
It was enough.
Mira was already moving, staff swinging wide, the large pumpkin detonating underneath Shyvana with a concussive boom that sent a shockwave rolling across the training ground.
The crowd roared.
Shyvana was launched sideways, caught herself on one hand in a brief handstand, and bounced back to her feet.
"Emilia said to be wary of you." Shyvana's hair began to shift, strands igniting slowly from the roots outward as her claws lit up with heat. "No Black Bulls member is weak. I know that now." Her eyes settled on Mira with something that was not quite a threat and not quite an invitation. "Show me your strength."
Mira exhaled slowly and smiled. "Then I won't hold back." She steadied herself on her staff. "The Captain said you were the strongest after him."
"Then prove him wrong!" Shyvana blitzed forward in a straight line. With her speed now fully unleashed, Mira was essentially a statue by comparison. Shyvana closed the distance in an instant and drove a kick forward, a fraction of her actual power behind it.
The blow never landed cleanly.
"Gah!"
Shyvana folded inward, a sudden and violent pressure driving into her stomach before her kick could connect. The air left her in a sharp burst as she was hurled backward, crashing through a tree at the edge of the training ground and hitting the ground hard.
She lay still for a moment.
Across the training ground Mira stood breathing heavily, her weight resting on her staff.
Before her, the air itself seemed to exhale as a figure shimmered gradually into view.
The Soul Reaping Gourd.
It bore a resemblance to the one that had contained Thresh, but where that one had sacrificed every other ability for the singular purpose of holding something of his power, this one carried no such limitation. It retained everything. Its full range of abilities intact.
Including invisibility.
Shyvana had launched herself in a perfectly straight line.
Directly into the Soul Reaping Gourd's fist.
Shyvana wiped the saliva from her mouth as she pushed herself upright. "Pumpkin golems." She said it less like a question and more like something clicking into place. "I understand Emilia's confidence now." Her eyes moved over the Soul Reaping Gourd, reading it the way a soldier read a battlefield. "Still, summoning something like that must have taken a great deal out of her."
Her aura answered her words. Heat poured off her in waves, building and pressing outward with such force that the trees at the edge of the training ground began to crack along their trunks, bark splitting and splintering under the pressure.
The Soul Reaping Gourd watched her.
It tilted its head slightly. Unhurried and unbothered.
'Flames won't work,' Mira thought, her grip tightening on her staff. 'Soul Reaping Gourds all carry the Heart of Fire. Fire doesn't damage them. It heals and revitalises them.'
Shyvana vanished.
She reappeared above the Gourd an instant later, drop kick already descending with the full momentum behind it. The Gourd raised one forearm and met it cleanly.
The ground beneath them shattered. Spider web fractures tore outward in every direction at once before the stone gave way entirely, collapsing inward under the force of the impact.
The shockwave hit Mira like a wall. She was thrown backward, feet leaving the ground, before vines erupted from the earth beneath her and coiled around her waist, anchoring her mid-air and lowering her back down with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with everything happening around her.
Shyvana was still in the air above the crater, staring down at the Soul Reaping Gourd with an expression Mira had not seen on her before.
Genuine shock.
'It kept up with me,' Shyvana thought, her eyes fixed on the Gourd as it straightened beneath her. 'It blocked me. With dragon force fully active.' The thought sat wrongly, refusing to settle. 'How is that possible? How is she truly that strong?'
Mira noticed the shock on Shyvana's face and allowed herself a small smirk.
'Thanks to all my spars with the Captain, I learned a few things.' Her eyes stayed on the Soul Reaping Gourd as it moved. 'My pumpkins can do practically anything a person can do. They even have their own innate magical abilities. Which means they can learn Ki. And mana reinforcement.' The smirk held. 'Those two things combined were enough to make the Captain a little serious.'
The Soul Reaping Gourd reached up, closed its hand around Shyvana's leg while she was still suspended in the air, and launched her higher with a single motion.
Then it opened its mouth.
A wide cone of fire poured out, engulfing Shyvana completely in the next instant. The blast carried her backward through the air and into the tree line, her body breaking through trunk after trunk before finally dragging a long ragged trench through the earth and coming to a stop.
A beat of silence.
Shyvana stood up from the trench. She was largely unharmed. She rolled one shoulder, brushed bark from her sleeve, and grinned.
"Fire doesn't work on me," she said. "You'll have to try considerably harder than..."
She stopped.
Blinked.
Looked up slowly at the trees surrounding her.
Six Soul Reaping Gourds looked back at her.
The reason Mira had been winded after summoning the first had nothing to do with its individual strength, nor any deficiency in her magical reserves.
It was because she had not summoned one.
She had summoned all of them at once.