Devaguea let the tribe 'try' to hide the event from him, and the next day sought them out to suggest changes. They could have their fight, but once they got them down to the final eight for each position, or sixteen for the two positions of lancer and another sixteen for the two positions of archers, he would chose from the remaining mares. It wasn't JUST to get the most powerful centaurs, but he did need to encourage the ones that didn't make the cut to train. After all, they might be competing in six years again.<br/><br/>So after three days of rough and tumble combat, and another day talking with the thirty two mares to get to the end of the combat, he made his choices. Some of his choices were... surprising, considering his known personal preferences in 'companions.' One of the archers was a normal centaur mare, but the second choice was a slip of a pony-taur, a runt compared to the other mares. She was the youngest in the group by only a year, but everything else about her was smaller by nearly half to the other centaurs. She made up for that with her crossbow and the fact that she had hit the dead center of every target every time, using only a small touch of natural magic. The other outlier was the first lancer, a mammoth of a woman who stood almost equal to Devaguea's height and looked like she juggled large boulders in her free time. That she was also the only one to not immediately try and get him to mount her had been a point in her favor, and knew that Sak'bas would find her pleasant company.<br/><br/>The next month, he was heading north to with Camilla and Anke to meet with the Swordlords, as they were starting to get loud about him needing to do more to help them. While he could just keep meeting with intermediaries, he wanted to meet with whoever was in charge of the Swordlords, because last time he had met with them, he had met several people, but none had claimed to be in charge. He was also a bit miffed about them making noise about them paying him, when his charter explicitly said he was empowered by the Surtovans, which meant THEY should have repaid the Swordlords, but the money had already been sent back through Anke.