He wishes for nightfall. In the dark, perhaps his limbs would quiet down; perhaps his muscles wouldn’t stand out rigid, shaking like ropes overdrawn. Caneo sucks warm air into his lungs, and spring clings wet to the darkness in his chest. His heart is a drum, a pounding alarm, its erratic beat hard against the insides of his ribs. In answer to that, he moves. His stride takes him nervously forward, light sweeping steps like a dancer’s over the ground, so far from aggressive any bystander might wonder – and what brought you again?. Perhaps he is still looking for the girl, the knight with the sun at her back – but she is not here.

        Someone else is.

        The air around the stranger reeks with that sweet, dusty smell Caneo’s mind gives to birds. Feathers like shields hang over high, golden sides, and Caneo thinks of the sun again, and feels himself withering down. The boy is a slim, narrow thing, small now in the presence of the feathered king, his silver skin fine as velvet even if the muscle underneath stands out like wire thinned from steel. He does not know the man’s name, or what brings his opponent here; he does not know if those heavy hooves will come at him in killing blows, or not. His mind spins rapidly and slowly narrows down, attention flickering across the stronger, larger body, flickering so briefly to the other stud’s face in hasty effort to read whatever may be written there – but does it matter? If they are to fight, as the others are fighting, Caneo ought not waste time looking. He mills nervously a little longer, his circling dance familiar, maybe, to anyone who has seen dogs about to fight. He is not a knight; he is not a king. Thin veils of something delicate hang over his too-sharp angles, fluttering with his movement, swaying demure in the morning light. His tail lashes once, a betrayal of the fear coiling in him like a snake, and the silver bands down its length all flash – once. Then suddenly his nervous dance is done and he moves, a quick thrust of his narrow legs fast as the glint of light off his too-short horn.

        He thrusts forward in a straight line, and suddenly his ears are back, pressed hard against the crown of his skull, dainty silver wires gleaming beneath them for the briefest moment. He leads with that dagger-horn, the cut aimed somewhere for the other stallion’s shoulder, on the left side, just before the wing. Then halfway through the leap Caneo thinks better of it, imagines flesh giving way to his assault, imagines the golden man plowing forward into him, crushing him with no effort at all. The silver boy’s front hooves slam down again and wild-eyed he cuts the motion short. His haunches tremble; muscle pulls again at bone and he swerves to the right, toward the golden man’s haunches, his head down. He tries to duck under the massive sweep of that wing, his head lowered against any possible assault, as his hind hooves come up instead. Graceless, flinging his body about like a newborn, he aims a kick for the same shoulder, cloven toes swinging fast through the air. One eye cocks back to watch, as if unable to believe the move at all, himself. Thin fabric swings unhelpfully across his vision, as if laughing at him. He cannot imagine hurting this man but he will try, all the same. No one is coming to do it for him.

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attack: 1/2
word count: 591 words
notes: Caneo is dressed as a princess. He is wearing a narrow silver circlet across his brow, fastened to his horn. A fine veil of mostly transparent white material hangs down from it and over his nose, with an opening around his eyes. A half-blanket of similar material drapes his haunches, and connects to his tail via a series of thick silver bands.
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He opened with a feint toward Kaj's left shoulder, then turned and kicked with both hind legs at the same shoulder, ducking in case Kaj lifted up his wing and tried to hit with it.

        A hit! Something cracks under the pressure, a minute surrender of the stranger’s body, and triumph thrills through the silver boy’s veins. Dumbfounded, he sails forward only on momentum, eyes like marbles slanted, glassy, toward the king. Perhaps this is not so terrible; perhaps Caneo may fight, and win, and live to tell Tandavi of his conquering a dragon even without help.

        Now hit, the dragon roars.

        Caneo’s little victory is short-lived. His moment of celebration is the mistake of a novice. Where he should have followed the first attack with a second, a third, he does nothing, and the man – the monster – rises to teach that lesson in the hardest way. The beast’s shadow crawls long and terrible over the grass, striping Caneo’s pale skin in black. It paints the morning dark before the creature falls.

        The dragon falls hard, an avalanche of golden light. No kindness lurks in the crazed eyes under the mask. Instead hooves tipped in knives rake down without mercy through the fine, unyielding meat of the boy’s haunch. Wet riverbeds open up through Caneo’s flesh; blood oozes from the thick muscle, painting livid tracks over soft hair, as gauzy streamers tear apart and flutter lifelessly. The pain is like fire, a white heat searing down through the thick muscle, and it screams from the top of his thigh to the bottom, scraping the outside of his hock with killing force. If he were wiser, he might thank whatever gods still notice him for getting through it all without shattering bones.

        He is not wise.

        A shrill cry erupts from the boy’s chest, pain mingling with indignation. Gone is triumph; gone is victory. He knows only hurt and the dragon’s weight at his back, so close to crushing him. Fear sizzles in his every nerve; his mind blanks, a single instinct screaming Run! Caneo’s body responds with the speed inherent to a creature long accustomed to danger. His muscles seize and ripple, and desperately he jolts forward, only to stagger with another cry. The pain now shooting through his left hind leg is foreign, a parasite attached to his skin, streaming down the lovely flesh in brilliant crimson streams. He catches the color in periphery: his life’s blood leaking out, hot, to slick the grass. Even as he looks, the monster continues to move: teeth clamp down like a vice on the top of the boy’s tail bone. With little more than hair to cover the vertebra, the beast’s teeth grate hard through thin skin, drawing more blood. Scraps of flesh tear away. Caneo will die. The dragon will devour him; it does so now, impatiently.

        Some fragile thing within the boy snaps; his ears slick down hard, and his mouth gapes open, young teeth pale against dark lips. Crippled, he cannot flee. He moves instead with all the wisdom, all the feral strength, of a wolf caught in a trap. The dragon’s rear end is to the left, thick muscle drawn taut under the golden flesh. Caneo surges toward it. Hard muscle under the silver skin hauls forward, dragging the injured limb along with it. Luckily, his right hind remains healthy. Caneo uses it to shove off and forward, his lean haunches trembling, and pain shoots through him with every twitch of the muscles in his other thigh. It is nothing compared to death; he snarls through it, and his head, still lowered, rises to slice at the king’s left haunch. That dagger-horn, useless in the rapier-play of other unicorns, aims to flay open the flesh between stifle and flank, and to cripple the man as Caneo is crippled. It is not a thinking move; it is a desperate, struggling attack, a wild swinging of his head. He has never used the horn this way, but something in him, some wild thing, knows what to do with the killing point. He must hope his aim is true.

        Fierce though he is in the moment, the boy remains no soldier. With the motion through, he continues forward, hoping to flee past the dragon’s hind end. He expects pursuit, but the battle of merely hauling his wounded self onward encompasses most of his failing attention. That left limb hangs uselessly, the toes pressing lightly into the grass. His tail whips back and forth in anger, and strips of torn silk flicker through the air, clinging to the blood. Head down again, the boy arches his back and kicks out. The right limb arcs blindly through the air, expressing only frustration; the left hangs as if atrophied. Whether or not he has hit flesh, Canoe hardly cares. He wants only to be away. He wants this stupid costume gone, this slick grass gone. He wants the desert back, and the moon.

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attack: 2/2
word count: 794 words
notes: Kaj's raking attack gouged furrows all the way down Caneo's thigh and scraped the outside of his hock, but didn't damage the joint. The muscle is now so painful it is mostly useless. Kaj's bite ripped off skin from the top of Caneo's tail. Caneo tried to chase Kaj's haunches and flay open some part of the skin and muscle between stifle and flank on the left side using his horn. He then tried to move forward past Kaj's rump, and kicked out blindly, his right leg swinging through the air.

        Something is strange about the golden king. The air around him sizzles – Caneo notices this through a haze of pain and bitter fear, but the phenomenon slips past his thinking mind. That first little burst of electricity, let loose before Caneo’s horn strikes flesh, is quickly forgotten in the rush and tumble of frantic escape just afterward. The silver boy staggers away with no ill effect, blood dripping from the curved point of his narrow weapon. Perhaps he ought to feel joy again, but he feels only the oppressive closeness of his enemy, the driving need to be away.

        Even his hind hoof striking wing does little to settle Caneo’s nerves. His blue eyes roll in his narrow skull, as cloven toes clutch frantically at the grass. The other man is simply too big, and too powerful, to ever be felled. If Caneo had been wiser, if he had run way rather than take part... He feels the earth rumble as the dragon-man spins, heavy hooves bearing down in hot pursuit.

        Caneo can do little to flee. He thrusts forward, his wounded hops graceless. He ought to be grateful he flees over meadow ground and not the sand of his distant home, but he feels nothing beyond the awful prickling of his nerves. His long neck turns just enough to grant a vantage of the titan bearing down on him, blood dripping down the golden haunch, fractured wing tucked close. Caneo is too green to see these little victories for what they are – new weaknesses. He sees only too little damage done, his own struggle to avoid an end poorly concluded. He squeals, a shrill noise building in his chest to match the delicate drape of his ruined costume, its ribbons fluttering sadly along his sides.

        He shudders forward just enough to avoid the ending he fears. Rather than the cascade of pain he expects, the crushing weight of the golden man smashing him to the ground, Caneo feels only the sharp pinch of teeth meeting his left flank. It is a little sharper than it should be, perhaps, as sparks leap between Kaj’s grasping mouth and Caneo’s skin, but the boy is able to rush forward just enough to deny purchase, and to deny more damage than the stinging he feels – like a little cluster of bees. He will notice it more later, perhaps, when the bruise has set in, but now his tail thrashes in acknowledgement of rage. He simply continues to move away, done with this battle, and done with the king.

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defense
word count: 425 words
notes: He took no damage from the little burst of electricity (I wasn't really sure if I ought to interpret that as an attack?). Kaj did manage to bite his flank, and the electric attack stung, and the bite caused bruising, but as Caneo was moving at the time the bite didn't really grab anything and therefore was fairly minimal.
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Realizing I misunderstood how taking damage is supposed to work when I made my second attack post >_> I hope this one is better aligned with how it should be? :\
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Anyway, this was fun Brit and I apologize if you felt rushed. I'm glad I got you as my first spar partner!