The girl was tired. Not quite so tired as she had been during her spar with Abraham, but very nearly. Was it the sand and the red waters which were sapping her strength? Or simply the weight of constant inaccuracy and defeat? Rarely if ever did Isopia rely on her heritage and lineage or use it as a crutch, but dammit, she was someone (even if she hated to admit it). She was a damned demi-god, and if she couldn't even landed a damned attacked well then --

-- the muscles in her neck tightened as her forward momentum slowed slightly. The resistance was relatively minor, and she could actually feel the exact second where her horn left Kaj's flesh, if only because it moved more freely. Then there was the blood. It dripped down her muzzle, staining the white hairs of her deathly-marking, and bolstering her confidence in a way too dark and macabre for her mind to even reconcile.

Had she ever felt blood  like this before? Had it ever touched her, in a way so directly related to her actions and intentions?

Not that she likely would have had the battle-forged anticipation to have avoided Kaj's attack, but that her mind was already distracted by the crimson liquid slowly drying on her muzzle, made his kick all the more inevitable. Isopia felt a dull thud against the broad (and underdeveloped) muscles of her chest. It womped through her body in a way that she couldn't quite articulate, other than to pin her ears and grit her teeth to stifle the cry of pain her body wanted to emit. The pain felt resounding, albeit muted. As if the weariness that permeated through her body, also plagued Kaj's. Though perhaps that was just the rationality of her mind trying to understand how battles worked. In reality, there should be no good reason for the weariness she felt to be similarly felt by Kaj. He was in better physical shape than she - even though he was far older - and was a veteran. Whatever physical dominance she might have had, along with her (literally) god-given gifts, seemed to have been cleanly swept aside by his know-how.

And yet his kick had been soft somehow. Her chest was bruised, yes. Pain throbbed and warbled through the muscles with each step she took, and yet she had known him to do better than this.

Her golden gaze, unmarred by Kaj's crusted blood staining her face, watched as he began to pivot. Thinking herself quite cunning, Isopia threw her body weight to the left and commanded her long limbs to dance nimbly to the side - elegantly crossing one over the other. Although Iso was typically not one for showmanship or dallying in that which was aesthetically pleasing simply because it was so, that it helped her narrowly avoiding his bite was all the justification she needed for her showy display. As his teeth snapped shut on the air, somewhere to her right, Isopia's front legs rose off of the ground, aiming for Kaj's right shoulder or wing joint, meaning to shove him backwards with her considerable bulk. But given that Isopia hadn't really done much shoving in her life (intentional physical contact was not her forte - in more ways that her missed attacks would suggest), it was more of a flumph and a flail at Kaj, than a well-guided and intentional shove.

Lathered in sweat and with laboured breaths, Isopia pulled her folded forelegs against her body, as her trembling hind-legs retreated a step or two to let her body return to the ground.

"Is that it?" She voiced between mouthfuls of air. By her count, she had attempted three attacks. The un-articulated rules of battle that she had surmised so far indicated that regardless of efficacy or accuracy of attacks, you only got three of them. She hadn't however, been counting Kaj's, and her body was a muffled whine of pain, such that it no longer remembered individual injuries, but hummed with an organic and all encompassing ouch.

So was that it?

Her body braced for a final impact as her chest swung around to try and mirror Kaj's movements, so that if there was to be a final attack from her leader, at least she would see it coming.