It was hard to say right away what effect Janius' advice had on Julan, since he went off on his own to return to his friends right away, but it was only a few hours later that Julan's rite was set to begin, so their games could not have lasted too long. Kaleeth had stayed with her father most of the morning, so they headed out to the center of the village together. The terrain was not perfectly even, nor clear grass or mud, but the area near the base of the Hist tree was the most open in the village, at least on one side. 

In general, village life would go on as normal during a rite, except for those particularly close to the participants. However, according to Zharanthixil, Julan's rite had attracted a bit more attention than usual. There was more of a crowd gathering, especially among the hunters and apprentices. Fortunately, Julan did not know that the attention was unusual, else he may have been even more nervous. 

Kaleeth, her father, and Janius had found a comfortable place to sit underneath the Hist tree, on one of the floor mats from Zharan's hut. Kaleeth was finally feeling comfortable enough to leave her weapons behind and get out of the chitin armor she had been wearing for most of the past few weeks, and was instead just wearing a simple loincloth like many of the other villagers. At the very least, she [i]looked[/i] like she fit in. 

It was hard to say that Julan was not nervous, but he was not letting it show [i]too[/i] much. After spending ten minutes talking to the Master-Hunter, Julan finally pulled himself away for long enough to approach his parents. "I, um, guess we'll be starting soon. I was just wanting to ask, father, can I...use your sword? I just have this knife. They offered to give me a spear, but I don't think I would really be as good with that. I have been trained with it, but only really in formations and stuff. You're the one that has been teaching me with a sword." 

[hr]

Ahnasha and Rhazii had sparred many times before, all throughout his training, in and out of their beast forms. They had done everything ranging from light sparring with practice weapons, to rather heavy brawls. It would be easy to say that they should understand each other's styles, and that was partially true, but Rhazii would quickly discover that there was still much for him to learn. Ahnasha had always fought better than Rhazii, but she had also held herself back, simply allowing herself to be better and better the more skilled Rhazii became. Rhazii's training required him to fight against more skilled opponents, but Ahnasha had to fight close enough for their bouts to still be instructive. Now, however, there were no limits, other than the lethality of Ahnasha's attacks. She reacted as quickly as she could, left no openings in her defense, and used tactics that Rhazii simply did not have the experience to respond to. For Rhazii, it was his first true glimpse into why the clans held the Champion's pack in such high regard. 

Rhazii's quick strikes looked slow in comparison to what Ahnasha could accomplish. It was not only her physical training, but the degree of control she had over her beast spirit in order to use her wolf form more directly, with fewer mental barriers. She could not control herself as perfectly as Meesei with her Ring, but she was as close as she could be without magic assistance. She dodged Rhazii's swipes, feinted attack after attack to keep Rhazii on edge, perhaps even wondering if she even intended to attack at all. Then, she timed a short flurry of attacks in step with Rhazii's limp, jabbing the claws on her thumbs into him three separate times. Two were minor flesh wounds on his bicep, but the other struck the inside of his elbow directly. She sacrificed allowing Rhazii to scrape his claws across her shoulder, but Ahnasha's precision attacks were calculated and effective. He had caused her some bleeding, but she was compromising his ability to move at all, limb after limb. In her mind, if his restless beast spirit would not lose the will to fight, then she would remove its ability to fight.