CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
What followed was a sword exchange that created a distinct sound in the stone chamber. It's not the dramatic clash of heavy weapons, but the rapid, precise impact of blades meeting at controlled points.
Each contact was brief and purposeful, with both fighters reading the other's weight distribution and footwork in real time, adjusting their next moves before the current ones concluded. Virella held a reach advantage over Iris, using it to maintain the engagement at the outer edge of Iris's comfort zone.
Additionally, Virella's off-hand casting demanded Iris's ongoing attention, splitting her defensive awareness across two threat registers simultaneously.
Iris did this by constantly moving, never giving a static target for the off-hand to aim at, and by positioning herself using features of the chamber's walls and floor as reference points to force Virella to turn, which threw the off-hand's casting angle off every time.
