[center][h1][color=firebrick]Liana Vestra[/color][/h1][/center]

[color=lightgray]Mentions/Interactions: Phia [@princess], Meiyu [@Tae], Talis [@Oso][hr]

The moment Phia lunged, there was a flicker behind Liana’s eyes like a master watching a wild animal bare its fangs for the first time.

The girl was fast. Sloppy, yes, unrefined and screaming with raw instinct, but there was something undeniably alive in the way she moved. Her staff came crashing forward like the branch of a storm-tossed tree, unpredictable and deeply personal. What Liana hadn't expected in all of that erratic movement was the level of skill underneath...and when Phia's staff caught the side of Liana’s head just enough to pull her slightly off her centerline, she couldn't help but smirk.

Not enough to wound. But enough to impress.

[color=firebrick]“Oh,”[/color] Liana murmured, barely above the hiss of their motion, [color=firebrick]“seems you fight as well as you bleed, little bitch.”[/color]

She parried the next blow with a sharp tilt of her forearm, bracing one dagger against the length of her own wrist as it met the staff mid-swing. The resulting crack of impact rang through the tiled chamber like a note struck too hard on a piano, and it reverberated through both Liana and Phia’s bones painfully. The force of it sent her sliding half a step to the side, heels dragging briefly across the tile as Phia bore down on her with more attacks in mind.

Then came the second danger.

The illusions arrived like smoke trails twisting out of the corners of her vision. Half-formed silhouettes, mimicries of Phia’s fury, began closing from multiple directions, and for just the smallest fragment of a heartbeat, Liana hesitated as she was taken by surprise. She moved to strike one of the attackers, just to have her blade move through it as though it were a ghost. Then came analysis, recognition, and then…she adjusted.

[color=firebrick][i]Shadows. Projection. Clever.[/i][/color]

Unfortunately for her, that was just enough of an error to give the caster her chance to strike. 

Meiyu’s blade was already in motion by the time Liana turned. She caught it in her periphery, just a glint of steel at first, but there was a whisper of something slick on its edge that gave it away. Not just sharp as a razor’s edge, but poisoned as well.

Meiyu closed the distance like a dancer, her strike coming in an arc aimed precisely where Phia’s chaos had just created an opening.

Liana had to admit, It was…well-timed. Too well-timed.

The dagger sliced across the outer edge of Liana’s ribs, drawing a thin but precise line of blood that bloomed dark against the black of her tunic. She hissed...not in pain, but in disappointment. The moment was not a loss, but there was an adjustment.

Her counter was nearly imperceptible.

One of her daggers vanished from her hand in a cloud of black smoke as if it had simply grown bored of being held. Her now free palm snapped forward, fingers curling, and in the same motion she turned her body into Meiyu’s space, close enough to smell the the venom on her blade. Her free hand caught the wrist that had struck her and twisted, just slightly, just enough to send a message through the nerves.


And with that, she pushed hard enough to send Meiyu back into the blur of illusions she had conjured, causing her own magic to flicker as movement and reflection collapsed into one another.

The move gave her a window of opportunity to turn her focus back to Phia.

She twisted low beneath another wild swing, letting her body pivot with a grace that seemed impossible in such close quarters, then surged upward in a clean vertical arc, one obsidian dagger reversing in her grip as she brought the hilt toward Phia’s injured arm with brutal intent. It was not meant to slice. It was meant to punish. To shatter the rhythm.

If it landed, it would hit like a flash of lightning at the nerve center.

She followed it with a high kick toward Phia’s midsection, a movement both graceful and cruel, meant to drive her back and break her stance without delivering a killing blow. Liana’s every motion was precise, every breath measured, every strike meant to teach.

They were both more dangerous than she had first assumed, and so now she moved as if they deserved better.

Her next dagger danced between her fingers before snapping forward in a spinning arc, aimed toward the ceiling...no target, no kill. But as it struck the vent above, the light fixture shattered, casting the room into a flickering, strobe-lit chaos of broken arcane illumination and shadow-play, where perception was now a lie and motion became harder to track.[/color]

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/TuDL8uY.png[/img][/center]