The boy moved first.
He came at her low and fast, dropping into a sprinter's launch, and as he closed the distance the magic symbol on his chest flared and the cold gathered around his lead fist — a sheath of frost, jagged and white, crackling the air with it.
{{Warrior Art: Lance of Ice}}
He fired off the ground like a loosed bolt, the iced fist aimed straight for Ebony's center mass, fast enough that a sane person would have dodged.
Ebony did not dodge.
She took it. The frozen fist drove into her sternum and the impact folded her around it, blood spraying from her mouth — and through the blood, through the shock of cold biting into her chest, she was smiling. That cynical, furious smile that had no warmth in it at all.
"(There you are.)"
Her hand clamped down on his extended arm before he could pull back.
