She saw his counter-attack rising up to meet her jaw as she lunged for him. Even if she had wanted to try and evade, she was already committed to the charge. Her forward motion would have made a sudden change in stance difficult and unlikely to succeed. All she could do was try to brace for it and power through.<br/><br/>That didn't make an uppercut to the jaw<i>hurt </i>any less, of course.<br/><br/>She felt her hand make contact with his shoulder, but the flames dancing about her fingers were suddenly snuffed out as his fist made contact as well. The dull sound of the strike was accentuated by the distinct<i>click</i>of her lower teeth rapidly meeting her uppers, her head snapped upwards by the force of the blow. She managed to avoid biting her tongue this time around, but that did little to lessen the impact of his punch. Stars danced behind her eyes, his knuckles once again catching the soft skin where jaw met jugular. The blow left her stunned, but at the same time, it didn't stop her own hit from landing--for what little good that ultimately did. Most ordinary men would have been laid out on the ground from a direct knee to the bollocks. Rysalt, evidently, was not most ordinary men.<br/><br/>Had her vision not been blurred, she might have seen the pain briefly twisting his face, but that was all the satisfaction she would have gotten. She wavered on her feet in the heartbeat of time between the completion of his punch and his next move, but forced her rattled brain to stay awake and shook her horned head in an effort to dispel the buzzing fog clouding it. Aryel collected herself just in time to see him leaping forward again, bringing up his knee for another strike, which she desperately attempted to block with forearms held over her gut. It did little to lessen the blow, but though she was knocked backwards, teetering alarmingly on her feet, she stubbornly held her ground until he finally brought them both down.<br/><br/>Their intertwined forms hit the ground with a fleshy thud, punctuated by a few dislodged cobalt feathers wafting through the air in their wake. Were it not for the context surrounding them, the position might have almost been intimate. What little wind she had managed to regain was almost knocked out as she fell hard on her back with him lying atop her, but she was nothing if not tenacious. Her legs were pinned, rendering a retaliatory knee to his gut difficult, so she instead went with a simpler plan--she reached up for his throat with both hands and tried to choke the life out of him. Heat bloomed against her palms once more, but while it would be painful if her grip made contact, it was no longer enough to seriously burn. Her head was swimming from the repeated punches, making it difficult to focus on anything beyond her immediate physical actions, and despite her rage, her grip on her magic was fading.