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Cyno snatched at her face and Lumine struck for his stomach.
She winced at the loud slap as she smacked the flat of her blade into his waist, simultaneously bringing up a wall of geo to protect herself. He grunted and scrabbled uselessly at the stone before regaining his footing from his overextension. He backstepped and she looked to the raised welt already forming at his side.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. Continue.”
He didn’t give her room to argue. He was back in her face with a flurry of slashes and another wild grab at her legs. He’d taken to trying to knock her off her feet to win, lately, and each attempt got a little closer to succeeding.
She barely deflected and backed out of his reach. He dug his claws into the sand and launched himself at her side. She forced him to the ground with a gust of anemo, quickly backstepping out of claw range before he could take a swipe at her ankles.
He snorted and hauled himself to his feet, roughly shouldering out of the wind tunnel and turning to glare at her. He hunched like a hyena. She broke eye contact for a split second to marvel at the sand stuck to his skin, the sheen of sweat in the desert sun, and then he was at her again.
This time she met his staff with her sword. She blocked a dirty strike at her thigh, then twisted out of the way of the followup swing from the opposite side. He followed through with it, taking an extra step to get at her side, but she traced him and kept him to her front.
“Very impressive,” Cyno commented. “You have quite the talent for this.”
“Oh, ya know,” Lumine replied. “It’s kinda that or die.”
He laughed once, short and genuine, and she smiled to herself. The ghost of mirth lingered on his face as he pushed off and stabbed at her midsection, making her stomach churn in ways unrelated to their fight.
She could manage the spear much easier than the claws, evident by casually deflecting his thrust to the side and sidestepping the following overhead strike. He had marginally more reach this way, but his attacks were telegraphed and couldn’t come from two directions at once.
The tip of his staff dug into the sand, then flipped it up. He’d done this before, so Lumine batted the blinding sand away with a gust of air and used the opportunity to slash at his face.
The tip of her blade sparked across the muzzle of his mask, unleashing the horrid shriek of metal on metal. Cyno winced at the sound and backed out of her reach, adjusting his helmet back to its proper place as he did. “This helmet was very expensive, you know.”
“It shows! Not a scratch on it.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he grumbled. “Now, let’s finish this. I have somewhere to be.”
He was very predictable. He followed the same sequence of attacks - a wide swing, an overhead strike, two short jabs and another swing. He varied the speed and the angle to cover any approach from the front, but it all boiled down to a simple repetition.
Which was fine, when you were as good as Cyno. It didn’t matter if your opponent knew your next move if they were powerless against it.
Unfortunately for Cyno, Lumine was not powerless.
She stepped in on the jab, past the blade of his spear, and grabbed him around the shoulders. He stiffened and tried to rip out of her grapple, but she just used his own momentum to throw him onto the ground. She followed him down, simultaneously kicking his weapon away and coming to sit across his chest.
He arched his back and tried to shove her off, but she wrapped her legs around his right arm and pinned his left with her free hand. She pressed the edge of her sword closest to the hilt against his neck, careful not to rub in a way that would cut.
He had an interesting expression as he pointlessly struggled. His mouth curled up in a grimace and he grit his teeth, hair slicked to his forehead. Sand dotted his cheeks like freckles. His eye flicked over to hers as he gave one last effort, only succeeding in rolling his helmet forward and shoving more hair into his face. She watched the fire leave his eyes as he finally went limp and sulked at her.
“You win.”
Finally. He was the one with somewhere to be, after all. Lumine grinned and removed the blade from his throat, casually tossing it over her shoulder and back to its magic sheathe, though she waited to release him.
His helmet sat askew, further covering the part of his face that she’d never seen. She chewed the inside of her lip and looked into her prisoner’s eyes.
“Can I do something a little bit creepy?”
He raised his only visible eyebrow. “...If you must?”
Before she could lose her nerve, she flipped his mask up and off his head. A mess of helmet hair greeted her, but she just brushed it out of the way and then, very delicately, pushed his sweat-slicked bangs out of his eyes.
His eyes tracked her hand and she watched a half dozen different emotions flicker across his face - confusion, anxiety, intrigue. He settled on curiosity when she withdrew her hand and looked him in both eyes for the first time.
She gave herself a good ten seconds to commit the view to memory. He was cute in a tired way, though she could never be sure if his hooded expression was from fatigue, anger or just the natural state of his face. Whatever the case, she had been sitting on top of him long enough.
She pressed off the sand to her left and stood, then extended a hand to Cyno. He accepted her help and dusted himself off.
“Did I pass your little examination?”
“Yes. You’re very beautiful.”
He paused mid-stoop to retrieve his helmet and blinked once. “Oh.” Without missing a beat, he picked up his helmet and shook the sand out. “Er… thank you. You too.”
She winced on the inside and a little bit on the outside, regretting every decision leading to this point. Who tells someone they’re beautiful after holding them at swordpoint? “Riiiight. Anyway! I’m sure you’ve got stuff to do.” She turned on her heel and started off on the path back to the forest, projecting much more dignity than she felt. “Thanks for sparring!”
“Anytime,” he said. “I’ll keep my schedule clear for this time next week.”
“You got it!”
Cyno watched her leave, her shoulders hunched in poorly-concealed embarrassment. He wished he had something more intelligent to respond with than “thanks, you too,” but her compliment caught him off guard. He could handle comments on his bladework or worth ethic with grace, but nobody ever… flirted with him.
He waited until she was fully around the bend before he finished wiping the sand from his body, gritting his teeth as he passed over the welt from earlier. He’d try to think of something funny to share next week, and maybe a compliment of his own.