Karmic Balance

"Stay still bitch!"

Jun ignored Ivar's crass language as she continued to dodge his flurry of blows, quickly giving ground as he advanced with wild swings and naked aggression.

Ivar drew his axe back and subtly wound up. Overhead blow, Jun thought, preparing to step back. Wait. The hard-won instincts from weeks of fighting those masked warriors and monsters in the Forest told her something was wrong. As Ivar brought the haft of his axe level with his shoulder, Jun saw his left arm tense a bit. Feint!

Instead of stepping back like she would have, Jun raised her shield and turned to her right, getting her shield between her body and Ivar's weapon moments before the haft of the axe slammed into it with shocking force. Jun's arm tingled and went numb as she stumbled back in the opposite direction of the blow, the axe's blunted blade narrowly missing her head in a hooked blow.

Ivar scowled at her as he advanced, transitioning into a hooking blow. Jun barely slipped away from the hook but she needed to twist her shield to slip free, leaving it out of place to intercept the next attack. The world went black for a moment as pain radiated out from her kidney from a lightning quick haft strike. Though the blow was fast and couldn't leverage all of the boy's strength, Ivar had a lot of it. Her stomach roiled with displeasure and she felt a faint burning in the back of her throat as it threatened to empty itself.

Clamping down on the pain and nausea, Jun retreated again until her back pressed against the field barrier.

"Nowhere left to run now," Ivar chuckled darkly. The boy pulled his axe back and wound up into an overhead blow as if he were an executioner about to take Jun's head.

Just what she wanted. If Jun had had to duel Ivar just a month ago, she would have lost.

To the outside observer, pitting the two against each other was hardly a fair fight. Ivar was larger than her, stronger than her, and more skilled at swinging about his weapon. He knew how to swing a two-handed axe for devastating blows that took advantage of his strength and mass, and his stats ensured that he would have the stamina to fight for hours on end, making a stamina based strategy pointless.

But she was different now. She still didn't like fighting, but she had plenty of experience. Months in the wilderness with Shiori hunting for food, fighting for survival against monsters and criminals, and martial training first under the Sergeant then against Inari's masked warriors taught her a lot. How to judge an opponent, the way bodies moved, how position determined what kind of attacks were possible. That training, combined with what she'd noticed about the boy in the brief time their teams worked together, was enough.

Ivar was a strong and talented warrior, but he was also egotistical and reckless, overconfident and quick to anger. And for some reason, Jun's mere existence seemed to get under his skin. So Jun took advantage of that, retreating and never allowing him to get a truly satisfying hit in on her, never truly fighting back. For the first time, Jun attacked.

A two-handed axe looked impressive, but it was a slow and unwieldy weapon that was poor for defending against a nimbler opponent. Worse still was a committed overhead blow that would be devastating, but only if it connected.

Jun kicked at the sand, sending a spray of it into Ivar's eyes as his arms were over his head, unable to protect them. With an enraged scream, Ivar brought his weapon down blindly and Jun jumped to the side, faking a scream of pain as she did. Ivar instinctively relaxed, taking one hand off his axe to rub at his eyes when Jun's padded short sword slammed into his wrist!

"Aargh!" Ivar roared as he jerked his hand back, abandoning his weapon. Now he retreated a few steps, giving Jun space as he hurriedly wiped the sand from his eyes. "You cheating bitch! Fighting dirty like the whore you are!" he screamed, raising his hands into an unarmed fighting stance.

In a reversal, Jun advanced while Ivar retreated. Her blows weren't anything special, clearly the attacks of a novice with a sword. In fact, her [Basic Sword] skill plateaued at Novice 14 despite Inari's training. But weapons were a great equalizer. Even the most skilled unarmed fighter could be beaten by a novice with a sword. Jun's basic thrusts and slashes had little technique behind them, but all men feared a blow to their groin as much as they feared a strike to their head, and she wasn't shy about aiming for such sensitive bits.

Something she'd picked up in this culture was that such tactics were considered dishonorable and dirty, but she didn't fight for honor or enjoyment. She fought for survival first, and in this fight, that meant doing whatever she could to render her opponent no longer a threat. Every blow Ivar backed away from put him farther and farther away from his abandoned weapon. Every blocked or deflected strike left another welt or bruise that slowed him down. The extra range afforded to her by her sword gave her plenty of time to respond to his punches and kicks. Her shield gave her a barrier that she could use to block his counter attacks and push him further back.

But it wasn't all one-sided. Ivar grabbed the top of her shield as she went to block a punch, the equipment strapped to her arm giving him leverage that he used to try and twist her arm as she flailed with her sword, her hits glancing off his arm. With true weapons, Ivar's arm would have been protected by armor so her hits would have been equally ineffective even with a sharp blade, but no armor offered perfect protection.

Jun's shoulder felt like it was about to pop out as she lifted her leg up and slammed her shin between the boy's legs. She felt as something soft compressed and deformed under the force of her kick and the pressure that threatened to twist her arm out of its socket vanished. A pained howl ripped through the air of the arena, but before Jun could pull her leg free she felt her leg get trapped in the crushing pressure of Ivar's legs.

"Got you now," Ivar snarled viciously. Now inside of her range and guard, Ivar grabbed her sword arm by the wrist and squeezed until a loud snap filled her ears and pain shot up her arm. Her sword fell from nerveless fingers.

Screaming in pain, Jun lashed out with her shield, punching the rim towards the boy's head and grazing the side. She felt something liquid and hot spurt onto her good arm moments before a ham-sized fist slammed into her cheek and nose with a crunching sound.

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The world spun and she didn't realize she was on the ground until Ivar mounted her and wrapped his hands around her throat. Everything started to go black. Weakly, Jun tapped his arm three times with her hand, the signal of surrender. The pressure on her neck only got worse. Panicking, Jun repeated the signal, but it went ignored. This wasn't a training fight any longer, he meant to kill her.

At the speed of thought Jun grabbed for her mana and started to coalesce a spell, only for the pressure around her throat to suddenly vanish. New air flooded into her lungs and she sat up, barely holding her spell from going off as the world snapped back into focus.

"Student Jun, release your mana," a voice commanded in a furious tone from above her.

Her heart racing, Jun's head snapped to the source of the angry voice, her thoughts jumbled and slow. It took her three breaths to realize it was the Sergeant, though she was looking at the Professor's back as she stood between her and something else.

"Get him to the infirmary, secure room. Now!" he roared.

Jun saw as several of the older student assistants hurried towards someone blocked by the Sergeant's body. A low hum of muttering filled the air around the arena as the Sergeant turned back around to look at her. As he moved, Jun briefly saw a bunch of students huddled around something, but her attention was seized by her Professor.

"Release. Your. Mana." The man's voice was the same rough rumbling sound, but there was a trace of some tone that didn't match.

With a start, Jun realized she still held her spell ready and pulled the mana out of the [Purging Missile] before sending it back into the flow of arcane energy circulating through her body.

"Good," the Sergeant said, signaling someone over with a hand. "Treat her and then get her to the infirmary for another check."

Jun felt a pair of hands gently touch her shoulder as warm healing magic began to sink into her, its soothing presence counteracting the adrenaline coursing through her veins. Then the second wave of pain hit, telling her the full extent of her injuries. Her right wrist was in agony, feeling like her join was fully of burning glass shards. Her nose and cheek ached and burned, while her left arm and shoulder throbbed with pain in tempo to her heartbeat. Her neck felt tight and sore, with sharp spikes of pain that crackled in her throat and lungs like she was being electrocuted.

"Can you wiggle your fingers and toes for me?" a familiar sounding girl asked. Jun did as she was asked, wiggling her toes and the fingers of her left hand, though trying to move her right only sent more pain shooting up her arm. "Good, let my magic work."

MInutes passed as the healing magic went to work. She felt the pain in her neck, shoulder, and wrist ease a bit, but that only cleared the way for the rest of her body to make their pains known. Strained muscles burned and cramped, bruises ached, and more than a few small cuts stung and bled. As her injuries slowly healed, she heard the constant hum of whispers and muttering only broken up by the occasional shout, and then eventually, silence broken only by the sound of a small few people moving around the arena.

Not long after the background noise of students' conversation vanished, her healer spoke again.

"I don't have the mana to treat this much, just stabilize you until a stronger healer can take over," the familiar sounding girl's voice said. "We'll have to get you over to the infirmary like Professor Sloan ordered."

Professor Sloan? "..." Jun tried to ask but all that came out was a rasping gasp before she started coughing uncontrollably, her throat burning as she spit a metallic tasting gob of something out of her mouth.

"Don't try to speak until you're healed!" the familiar voice chided. "Can someone help me get her up?"

"I got her," another voice said, but this one she recognized instantly. Cecilia! Jun tried to turn to her roommate, only to flinch as she tried to move her neck.

"No moving either!" the increasingly upset healer said again. "I don't know if she can walk in this condition, we'll need to carry her."

"Dawn, bring a stretcher!" Cecilia called out to someone.

A third person joined them a minute later and was revealed to be an older girl that looked to be in her early twenties wearing the same workout clothes Cecilia usually wore when she was assisting the Sergeant. She had a deep tan and dirty blonde hair tied up in a braid. "Got it. I'll grab her legs."

"Right. On the count of three," Cecilia said as Jun felt a pair of hands go under her arms. "Sorry about this Jun, it's going to hurt."

Jun saw the one called Dawn grab her around the knees and nod at someone behind her.

"One. Two. Three!"

Jun winced as she was lifted out of the sand and slid onto a piece of canvas.

"Right, Dawn and I will get Jun to the infirmary. You did a good job healing today Mara."

Mara watched with complicated feelings as Cecilia and Dawn carried Jun out of the arena. Even though Professor Sloan, or the Sergeant as the Combat Branch students called him, told her to bring her to the infirmary, she knew those two would get her there, and it wasn't like she could do anything else. A flare of pain shot through her head from the mana withdrawal headache she was nursing. She'd run herself completely dry trying to heal Jun, as any good healer should.

But there was just too much to heal and she didn't have the power or skill to treat all of those injuries, let alone make sure she caught everything. There was just too much. Ivar did a number on her. Her nose and cheek bones were shattered, her neck muscles bruised and her throat nearly crushed. Her wrist was shattered into so many shards of bone that, even if she had her ten times her full mana capacity, at best Jun might get some use out of her hand again, but would probably never be able to write. Maybe a better healer could manage it, but not her.

Minutes passed as she replayed the fight in her mind. Jun had been defensive for most of it, much like she'd been with her magic during the expedition. Always defending and running away. Jun seemed like a coward, and cowardice got people killed. But, she wasn't sure what to think now. The last fight in the Forest, Jun hadn't done much at all for most of it and just collapsed, not that it mattered that much. There were too many enemies, and a few snares and barriers wouldn't have done much to change things. Then she finally attacked, unleashing an unbelievable amount of power for a mage her same age and rank, and saved them. Saved her and her friends who'd been nothing but mean to her, spreading rumors and gossip about Jun, hoping she got kicked out of the Academy or just left and stopped wasting everyone's time.

Before collapsing covered in so many injuries it was a miracle she didn't die. This fight with Ivar had been almost the same. When he cornered her, she thought the girl was going to get beaten, and a shameful part of her looked forward to witnessing it. But instead, Jun fought. She wasn't impressively skilled or powerful, and she fought dirty, but it was so unlike the usually timid girl she was familiar with. Just like in the Forest. And just like back then, Jun nearly died and had to be carried out by others to be treated while Mara sat on the side, powerless to truly help even in her chosen role.

Mara stared at the empty arena for a few minutes longer before an idea came to her. No. She might not be a strong healer, but there was something she could do to help Jun, help the girl she'd been needlessly cruel towards, the girl who still saved her even though it risked her own life, the girl she hadn't been able to truly help. Something that, if she did it, might ease the strange feeling eating at her heart. Gathering herself up, Mara left the arena as the outline of a plan took shape in her mind.