She recognized the bold mare from the meeting just the other day. It brought a wild grin to her lips. A fight was excitement enough, but one of her ranks doing their job, well that was utterly thrilling! "What's your name warrior?" Ampere asked as she continued to move around the arena. The sand kicked up easily around her hooves, the top layer encouraged to such loose freedom beneath the blazing season of their lord.

Maybe Ampere wasn't good with names, but she was pretty decent at recognizing character. Nephele had the guts to stake a claim in her role, attempting to fulfill her duty and bring honor to the title she bore when others were content to dawdle around with an empty title. Takes more than guts though, Ampere thought as her eyes traced the taller mare and her noticeably battle-ready form. Battle ready, but Ampere wasn't so sure about tested or worn. She certainly had an age to her that all the younger soldiers couldn't boast, but age hardly meant a damn if there was no experience to go hand in hand with it.

Well she said she wanted this, and she seemed built for it - all that was left was to test it.

A smirk slipped into place on Ampere's lips. There was little more that brought her to life than the competition of her own strength against another's. For all the words that whipped around her, all the moments she spent watching the sea and the sand in eternal war, all the ethics she struggled to obtain among this selfish world - it was this that kept her grounded. This was something tangible she could take in her teeth and bite on, channeling all her rage, all her weakness, all her inabilities into something she could physically master (or at least be mastered by). 

Looking anything but, Ampere was the sanest when she fought.

Seconds passed, woven into a moment that fell into place on the timeline of their lives. Ampere breathed out as her hooves sunk into sand, skin taut as it pulled over her warmed and readied muscles. Her head inclined just the slightest bit as she looked closer at Nephele, and then she turned.

It had not been more than a couple minutes since Nephele entered, a couple seconds since Ampere spoke, that she was now turning and charging towards the dark mare. She purposefully waited until her warm-up circle set the rising sun at her back, and then she made her move, ideally forcing Nephele to look into the blinding face of their Sun if she also wished to watch for Ampere's tactic. That's all it was though, tactic.

The blue mare raced towards, then past Nephele, daring to breeze close by the mares body like a taunt. Hit me if you can, because Ampere was fast, and she knew it. Her running wasn't just for show though, it granted her the momentum and speed she needed to get airborne, leaping up and off the metal tines of the arena's borders as she went to give her extra lift. Her wings snapped out from her sides as she threw herself into the air, as always relying on the strong grip of the wind to catch her and hold her up, but it had never failed her yet.

Tilting her tail feathers as Ampere banked left to circle back around, she peered out at Nephele, grin still firmly in place. Opting to forgo her typical tactics of knife throwing and lightning lashing, Ampere decided to really make this test personal, combating flesh against flesh only. She needed the practice too - if her fights with the gods had taught her anything it was that one could not always rely on what the dieties had granted you, sometimes all you had was your mortality - sometimes that was enough. 

(Mostly it wasn't...)

Diving down Ampere aimed to harry Nephele by swooping in just above her head, hooves dropped down to lazily drag across the mare's skull if she wasn't smart enough to move it out of the way. Her wings pumped afterwards, her momentum cut down by the attack and her strength required to keep her aloft instead. Still, she laughed, because this was love.

---

A: 1/3
D: 0/1
W: 715/800

We can do vanilla :) no companions or magic! Also sorry for my delay D: life at me up but I should get better now <3 I'll starting the teaching next post since there's not much to say about openings as they don't count for judging ;)