Sen knew they had made progress against the enemy. She had been there herself to see more than just a few of them crash to the blood-soaked soil, their thundering collapses lost amidst the sea of combat, but from her current vantage point it still seemed like square one out here. Bulging muscles and crude scimitars still aimed for her, the fury in the corresponding double-set eyes as unwavering as it had been from the moment her boots hit the ground. She saw a man fall to his knees not far from her position, body contorted in pain as his massive assailant prepared to deliver a final blow.<br/><br/>She pulled the thin longblade into both hands and tightened her grip, making a run for the soft axillary region of the Tutar’s exposed side. The plan didn’t exactly radiate finesse, but it had worked before… sort of.<br/><br/>Somewhere between confidence that she would make contact and too much momentum to stop even if she wasn’t going to make contact, the youngest Brigham saw the hind pair of burning eyes lock onto her own. Panic flooded her gut and self-preservation instinct tried to force a tactical change, even as her body realized it had no idea how to do that at this point in a charge. A hand that could easily crush her skull caught the blade as easily as a child would catch a lobbed stick, thick fingers wrapping with pointed, bloodthirsty slowness and tightening. As the metal snapped and crumbled like shards of glass in the Tutar’s fist, Sen could only blink at the shattered weapon still clutched desperately in her own grip. The creature reared back, re-preparing to demolish his victims and clearly planning to use no more than his highly-effective hands. Time slowed again (more than before? or had it sped again since then? she wasn't sure) and her legs seemed frozen as she stood in front of the kneeling swordsman. In a cruel twist, her brain allowed her to suddenly remember a pocket of training that explained exactly what she had done wrong just now.<br/><br/>Her mismatched eyes squeezed shut, phantom blots of color still dancing across her black view.<br/><br/>“Alle-oop!”<br/><br/>Her feet lifted from the ground and her equilibrium shifted dramatically, prompting her to arms to latch onto the nearest solid thing and eyes to fly open. Sen’s fingers dug into a soft fabric, pulling it toward her easily. One strong arm was wrapped firmly around her upper back, the other curled around the back of her knees, and though the woman (she was pretty sure of the female nature, given the details felt in such close proximity) was currently in the middle of a leap so high she was very nearly in flight, rarely had the raw warrior ever felt more secure so close to another person. The brightly blue hue of the woman’s aura glowed even more than before, increasing her semblance to a comet even at this distance; she could see the outline of a head with shaggy hair, but the details were hidden by the brightness of the halo. “How did you last this long, little lamb?” The tone was relaxed, and Sen could hear the smirk.<br/><br/>“Huh?” Considerably less confident-sounding, the woman landed from her unrealistic leap and released the blonde fighter in the same movement; at that instant, the whirling strips of silk that made up the unnatural tornado disappeared, only to reappear as a blinding light show. Sen knew there were more of them now, the painful brilliance of them buffeting her from a few angles, but more than that she couldn’t discern. The faded bands of wind had magnified in their intensity as well as quantity, and from the center of the swirling licks of brilliant lavender spouted a cumulous cloud of the palest blue. It was lighter than any white the woman had ever seen, but still unmistakably a sky, almost cobalt tone. No flame had ever burned this bright; the clouds, tornados, even the aura of the strange smirking woman stung Sen’s eyes, but she couldn’t close them. What was<span style="font-style: italic">happening</span>? Was this from the gods, or some Tutari trick? If the remaining mortal soldiers were blinded, they would be struck down as easily as a herd of sheep. Shielding her vision no longer helped, and both lids squeezed shut, one arm laying tightly over them as she stumbled backward.<br/><br/>“By the Dice, what did you<span style="font-style: italic">do</span>to her, Laiya?”<br/><br/>“Other than save her from becoming pulp? Nothing.”<br/><br/>A male voice had joined that of the cocky dark-haired woman, and though Sen still protected her over-sensitive retinas she knew this to be a momentary respite from the press of the enemy attacks; no heavy footfalls, no throaty roars or metallic clinks were within at least five yards. The man’s voice came again, sounding closer as he approached, though she could hear no step whatsoever. “‘Nothing’ my arse. I feel our Lady’s influence just the same as you.” His tone changed when he drew close enough to touch with an outstretched arm, from a mockingly fond lilt to something softer, huskier. “Let’s see then, high-roller.”<br/><br/>A strong hand gripped her wrist and pulled, gently but insistently, and Sen let her arm come away from her face. Immediately she was assailed by light through her lids, most of it a confusing shade of brightly dark navy blue. “Can’t say I know<span style="font-style: italic">why</span>it’s a problem, exactly,” he started, low voice echoing with curious amusement, “but there’s only one real difference, isn’t there?” Despite everything, Sen felt just a bit bashful as the man tied something around her head. It held fast at a diagonal, covering her recently-healed eye; immediately, the light that burned through her receptors lessened to a gentle presence. “Try that out. Come on, open up.”<br/><br/>“Hurry up, snake eyes. Might be hard to keep up if you’re busy mooning.”<br/><br/>Sen opened her eyes quickly, her first sight being the man’s face; even hooded as he was, she could make out a strong chin, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. It made for a decidedly dark, smouldering sort of attractiveness, something only accentuated by the black of his thick hair and deep cobalt of his eyes. He flashed a bright white grin, maintaining eye contact with the storkish woman even as he answered his fellow, “Who's mooning?” He winked, then seemingly from out of nowhere drew a small short bow and promptly fired three arrows in one shot over Sen’s shoulder, his forearm a hair’s breath away from touching her nape.<br/><br/>She spun, just in time to see three creatures fall; two of them had a single arrow buried in their left eye sockets, and the third had a projectile spearing through its mouth and out the back of its skull… Sen wasn’t sure how that worked, considering the beast appeared to be at a complete right angle to the other two. Before confusion could melt away into the remembrance that logic no longer applied to this battle, the glowing woman called Laiya spoke again. “Only three, Luke? Waste of energy,” she scoffed, flipping her hood back up and leaping back toward the heat of the fighting. The blonde mortal noticed that the battlefield seemed considerably different than before; there were no sheets of floating film, no swirling tendrils of silken wind. The only thing to suggest the power of the gods (beyond the logic-defying combat) were faint glows around the comet-people, and even they were dimmed.<br/><br/>“I’ll show you a waste. Come then, high-roller. I’d hate to see you run through after I tore a perfectly nice cloak for you.” Sen’s confusion deepened as the dark-haired man winked, then turned around. “I think all the horses are spoken for, but I’m faster anyway.”<br/><br/>She remained still, facing the spot between the strange, aura-cloaked man’s shoulder blades.<span style="color: #80BFBF">“… What?”</span><br/><br/>“Okay, now you really<span style="font-style: italic">are</span>wasting time.” He shifted backward before the last word, pushing his back into her torso and yanking her knees around his waist before she had even registered he was moving. Instinctively, Sen gripped with her legs as her feet left solid ground, arms flinging around his neck as he shot forward like one of the arrows he had fired only seconds ago.<br/><br/>“Welcome back, idiot,” came the shout, less than a minute after Sen regained a sense of awareness and almost a minute after the two of them re-entered the thick of the fighting. The man shifted and blue-coated throwing knives appeared in his right hand, flying past his fingertips so fast that Sen wasn’t sure she had actually seen them at all. She had no time to see if they had found their marks, but something told her they most certainly had. The shouter made an appearance, leaping like an unnatural gazelle alongside her cloaked counterpart. “I don’t know how to tell you this but,” she paused, spinning rapidly in mid-air and spearing no less than three Tutar through their necks before falling back into stride, “you seem to have a stowaway on board.”<br/><br/>“Funny, I was about to say the same to you,” this time he paused, using the top of an enemy’s head to push off his next leap and just happening to break its neck as he did so, “but then I saw you had merely gained some weight. Perhaps you need to train a bit harder, Liza.”<br/><br/>Sen heard the grin, but forgot it as her eyes lit on a particularly massive Tutar. Three of her Sisters surrounded it (inasmuch as three people could), blades and one spear drawn and ready but trying to draw the beast into attacking before they made a move. The creature had several arrows lodged in its chest, a small blade protruding from its side, and a much larger sword sticking out at an almost perpendicular angle from its clavicle; it fought with a particularly savage, unthinking aggression, desperation evident in its every move. Even from here, Sen could see that the three woman wouldn’t be enough. One arm came loose from the man’s shoulders and she pointed firmly toward the fiasco,<span style="color: #80BFBF">“That way!”</span><br/><br/>“Hm?” Luke turned his head where she had indicated, then changed direction with his next leap. A spear, carved in Ravine-fashion and speeding from seemingly out of nowhere, came flying toward the duo- Sen shoved her ride’s shoulders forward and leaned her own body back, neatly avoiding the wicked point of the projectile. It would have been a fairly impressive event, except that she was now falling backwards from an awkward height into a pit of bladed monsters.<br/><br/>Just before her head dipped below the level of her hips, a thin, fast shoulder jutted into her stomach, knocking the wind from her even as it saved her from being impaled on a pair of waiting tusks. The corresponding arm wrapped around the back of her thighs, but she only jerked her head toward the huge Tutar and Lindenian women.<span style="color: #80BFBF">“Over there!”</span>she shouted again, stubborn resolve flooding her voice and half-gaze. The hood of the figure’s cloak rubbed against Sen’s side as she turned to face the indicated direction. “Aye, I see them,” she said, her voice huskier and very nearly deeper than even Luke’s, though distinctly female. For a brief second, Sen wondered how many hooded, midnight-blue aura’d people there could possibly be.<br/><br/>“Stay loose, soldier.” Without another word, she disconnected herself from the mortal, simply dropping from underneath her even as Sen remained propelled forward by the momentum. She knew that she should have panicked, that everything should have been moving too fast for her to function, but even as she rushed toward the desperate Tutar she felt the slowness. It wasn’t that the enemy wasn’t moving as quickly or that she had gained sudden speed in her skills; she was literally moving through the air at a manageable speed. Or, rather, her mind moved faster than the physical situation. It was surreal, but there was still little time to waste dwelling on it.<br/><br/>Her hands reached for the hilt of the uppermost blade, the one lodged in the chest. Even as her fingers wrapped around the well-worn sword, she saw no less than seven small, silvery-blue knives rush into the creature and penetrate deeply, not ending their journey until the force of her own trajectory had pulled the vast majority of the sword from the flesh. The combination of the long blade ripping out and at an angle, as well as the volley of precise, enhanced luck-knives had its desired effect; the desperate ferocity of the Tutar was cut short has its head was shorn almost completely from its shoulders. Only a few strips of flesh still connected it, and the larger sword hadn’t come completely free of the fresh corpse, but it collapsed to the ground with a small quake, the half-braided Sister coming to a halt in a pile of legs not far from the carnage.<br/><br/>It took longer than usual to disperse with her vertigo from the tumbling stop, and even when it did, she scarcely believed it to be gone. She must be looking at the world upside down, or backwards, because from her current vantage it looked as though the horde had turned tail into a full retreat. For a few seconds, Sen didn’t even try to untangle her limbs. Through the haze of hail and ice spears, stamping and galloping hooves, battle cries, horns, roars of savagery that echoed from Ravine and Allied forces alike, she felt as though she could see every single enemy that disengaged. Every single Tutari back that was exposed to the arrows and piercing shards as they fled, every single weapon that was hastily dropped in an effort to escape.<br/><br/>When she did stand, it was slow. Bruised, battered, exhausted and in a rather… different condition than she had started, Sen forced herself to collect, to focus. It was difficult; right now, all she really wanted to do was cry with relief.