“Again.” Caitlyn spits, joints cracking audible as she hurls herself back up into stance, knuckles curling, eyes flaring.

Ever since Ambessa and that flaming Enforcer of hers had wormed their way into Cait’s head (and bed), the young head of house Kiramman has been a veritable tempest of hate. You’ve always admired Caitlyn’s drive, but it is always personal; and her causes are less noble than they might’ve been, in her wide-eyed naïveté.

Her eyes are like slits, now.

“What are you waiting for?” The silken lilt of her voice, both born and bred—has scraped into a terse hoarseness, lips split with red. Her fingers twitch, tensing in their tightened fists, limbs coiled tight. A blade forged too-brittle, at its snapping point.

She pants, tangled ponytail almost out of its hinges, neck pulsing.

“I said, again.”

There is no point to another round. The bandages around Caitlyn’s palms have bled through, torn loose through the hours upon hours of sparring. Her jaw will purple, tomorrow. Yet, her grasp on her staff, still hastens.

Caitlyn has honed her melee skills plenty. She looks seconds away from collapsing from exhaustion; if not for the pure vindication pumping her alive. (Besides, Caitlyn has always been an overachiever—even when she was only an Enforcer, speak what you want of the Kiramman name; you were there, for all the sweat-sodden uniforms and gritted teeth it had taken Caitlyn to prove herself. Or even before; in which nights spent dragging the scion off from drooling into the papers on her desk.)

Caitlyn has always been an overachiever—if that is even possible for someone of her already, steep position. Overexertion is more familiar to her, than rest.

This bloodlust, though. It is sickeningly new.

Perhaps, you pummelling her is a form of self-punishment. There is no world in which this ends in good. Besides, it would be a shame to mishandle that pretty face—or even worse—knock the last, lingering remnants of sense out of her head.