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Yseirri M’dridi was a strict woman, to put it gently. As a pureblood oblivionite, she embodied many of the things the race was stereotypically famous for — severity, precision, arguably callous pragmatism and practicality. She cut no corners and took no shortcuts, but performed her work with rigid attention to detail and expected the same of those who worked under her. It helped add to the presentation, Ahita supposed, that she was tall and narrow — built with more muscle than would normally be expected of a mage — and seemed to hold herself perpetually at attention.

Today, she was taking him on his first ‘hunt.’

Battle technique, she insisted, was crucial for self-defense, even as a circus performer — perhaps more so — and as a feral khehora, he would grow to be powerful indeed. That ample supply of raw, untapped magic, particularly of the violent sort he harbored in his veins, would be utterly wasted — and even dangerous to those who it ought not be dangerous to — if left untrained. Ahita wanted no part in violence. He did not want to use either his teeth, talons, or magic for anything but entertaining others, warming rooms, being useful in ways that did not bring about pain and injury.

Yseirri would hear none of it. He was fed under their tents, protected as a growing hatchling by their blades and their magic as a troupe and as a family, and now that he was of age, she insisted he would hone himself to at least be capable of providing similar services. He had not been kept around, in her words to “be a lovely, shiny-scaled showpiece.” He would be Vazaera’s personal bodyguard, and on that front, he had a very long ways to go before he would be successfully defending her against anything.

So it was, on this particularly dreary late autumn day, that Ahita plodded alongside Mistress Yseirri, through the low, marshy swamplands of Soudul’s wilds. The dampness of the continent ever-weighed on him, making his magic feel stifled and heavy. The humidity worked its way under his scales and made his lungs clogged, as though he were breathing in too much water with the air — which, he supposed, was the case — but knowing didn’t make it any more pleasant. Similarly, the mud and dank grasses stuck between his talons, the air clammed up his wings, and all of it looked so dark and dismal, he thought it no wonder that most of the continent was famed for sporting grumpy and discontented citizens.

When they began seeing more luminescent plantlife, however, Ahita’s interest peaked some, his reptilian eyes widening and darting about to take in the surroundings. Bulbous and vine-like lines of mushrooms that climbed up, up, up the trunks of great swamp trees like trail markers. Weeds that grew and peeked up through the wetland with fat oval blooms that glowed vibrant, electric blue-purple in the dim light. And clusters of tiny flowers that seemed to respond to touch and activity, dim most of the time, but building into beaming glows of fluorescent color when stirred.

He opened his mouth to comment that Soudul really could be lovely, even in its danker parts, when Mistriss Yseirri cut in.

“We should be coming upon a ysali nest soon. Keep on alert.”

Ahita blinked and glanced over to her. Between his frustration with how muggy the entire situation made him feel — and how he’d likely need to intensely clean his poor scales after all this — and then his distraction with the beauty in the surrounding plant life, he’d almost forgotten that technically he was here to learn to ‘fight.’ He tried in vain to hold back a sigh, wings and snout sinking a fraction as he did as instructed and glanced about, sniffing. He paused. Actually, there was the scent of something nearby. Something other than mud and fungus and damp trees and insects.

His tail flicked, wings stretching a fraction, now visibly on alert. Yseirri was right. Though none of his immediate family within the troupe shared ysali blood, some of the performers did, seeing as they had a good portion of dovaa in their number, and he recognized that scent.

“Mistress Yseirri, they—”

Ahita froze, for that was the moment a chirruping trill sounded. Reptilian. High pitched. The creature that poked its head out from around the nearby, gnarled trunk was small and wiry, with a long neck, vine-like horns, and a coating of vibrant green scales. It could not have stood higher than to reach the knee or waist of a Magescian child at most. He felt as though he could have sat on it and been done with the ‘encounter’ if that was the point of this expedition. On spotting him, it gave another, sharper shriek, fanning its wings out, hissing and then—

It spat. Or, it must have spat. Moments after the fact, all Ahita could process was the burning, melting pain in his eyes as he staggered backwards, whining and snarling himself as he scrabbled in vain at his eyes and snout with his forepaws. Poison, poison, poison — he had to get it off and out he had to—

As the poison began sinking in and affecting him, he only passively registered the sounds of more of the venomous little beasts before, presumably, passing out, because he remembered nothing between then and when he next woke.

Pain, pain, pain.

Ahita stirred, already whining before consciousness fully set in. His face hurt. His body stung. His scales ached to move, and he felt lethargic everywhere. He smelled awful, as though some strange substance had been smeared all over his snout. Something bad had happened, he just knew it, and—

“Quit your complaining, you’re not even going to go blind for your stupidity. Lucky thing.” One of his mistrisses’ voices. Mistress Yseirri.

Mentally, Ahita winced as the details came back to him, piece by piece. He was supposed to be learning to fight, and what had he accomplished? Memory provided a vague sense of being attacked, and then — nothing. The dragons hadn’t even been that big. And that was really being too generous. They’d been tiny. Somehow, despite never having seen ysali in person before, Ahita had always assumed that they would be large, like the other clan types. Smaller, yes but not that small.

It was fairly pathetic, imagining that he’d lost to a tiny cluster of them so easily. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to call on his magic — just stood there, like a waiting statue. A target to be hit. He settled his snout low with a whining rumble. Terrible. And he felt so filthy besides. He needed a deep scrub, and—

“Come, get up. Now that you’re awake and the poison has subsided, you can try again.”

Ahita made a cracked, sharp sound in his throat. “Again—?” he sputtered. “But I just—”

“You did not think it would all be over with that quickly did you?” Mistress Yseirri huffed, shaking her head, and he heard her stand as he rubbed at his snout, fighting back a groan. “I took care of the last small batch for you, but they often live near to each other, so it will not be hard to find another group. This time, though, I expect you to attack. Understood? You are a battle-capable and fully grown beast, not a simpering noble’s pet. Follow me.”

“The poison…” Ahita blinked several times as he stood, surprised that his eyes were working just fine, as promised. It hadn’t felt like they would be fine. “What was it? How did you…”

“Mm. If you do not know, I will have Liranelle school you in more detail when we return, and Cessrik. Though it’s not incredibly powerful and is meant to temporarily distract, blind, and stun prey or attackers, if it had not been cleaned away quickly and counterbalanced with the proper salves, you would have been in far worse shape. It will benefit you to learn the most basic of these things, even as a firani…”

Ahita glanced up, interest peaked at the mention of learning something — anything — other than this. And healing for that matter. Healing was a fascinating art. Not one he could ever expect to be good at, but one he was always ever-impressed and humbled by. “I would like to—”

“Stop.” Mistress Yseirri made a quick, silencing gesture, her head turning only ever so slightly as her hollow sockets looked out over the surrounding area. When she spoke again, it was beneath her breath, hushed and guiding. “Up ahead there,” she said, stooping to a slow crouch. “Another small nest of likely three. Go in prepared this time, utilize your magic, and make the most of your element of surprise. I am here only as last-resort backup.” She notched her head towards the stated nest. “Go.”

Ahita gave a soft, whining rumble in his throat, but did as he was bid, holding himself low to the swampy terrain and trying — likely in vain — not to stand out like a single massive glimmering shape of fiery red and fuschia scales in a swamp of black and muddy purple. He gathered his magic, an antsy, itching feeling gathering in his gut as he approached, and the surrounding air temperature warmed, cresting with his building energy. Drawing a single, deep breath to focus the heat in his lungs, he bounded around the next bend and breathed, a fiery pillar that shot not only directly forward as intended, but less so in a ripple in every direction around his feet. He barely had a chance to feel abashed at the lack of control, trying to tamper down the flames, before the screeching of the disrupted ysalis cut his attention back to the primary ‘goal’ of the endeavor.

When the first came into full view, shrieking at him and arching its head back to spit, at least he was ready this time and managed to fly up, avoiding the initial acid spit. He hesitated, though, when it came to spitting more fire back. It was so small. It almost seemed wrong. Nevermind that similar compatriots of theirs had managed to take him down with verily little effort not but an hour prior, but it seemed off to fight them, let alone kill—

Vines.

Ahita blinked, so startled at first that it didn’t fully register what was gripping hold of him, but then he was being dragged down, down, into the swamp. He squawked, flailing, but in moments his wings were bound, his talons bound. Panic lurched up in place of concern and he struggled, magic flaring up and searing away his leafy prison in an engulfing bubble of flame. He breathed out, attempting to aim at another, but the swamp itself seemed to be trying to eat him. He managed, as another thicker layer of live ropes bound and dragged him ever-deeper into the muck, to see that he’d managed to turn at least one of his foes into a small, glimmering green orb.

Then, his head sank beneath swamp. His last rational thought in that moment was that this had to be among the most humiliating, most filthy ways to die that the gods could have dictated.

Whatever happened in between that moment and the one where he was being forcibly deposited above surface — mud-soaked, filthy, coughing, sputtering, and whiny, but by the gods did he feel filthy — Ahita was unclear on the details. Only that, when he did manage to push his head up enough to eye his ‘rescuer’, he winced a moment later, hiding his head from Mistress Yseirri’s unimpressed gaze.

“I can’t—I can’t,” he wheezed, spitting up more mud and shaking his head. “I’m—”

“You can, and you did…with at least one of them,” the oblivionite woman quipped, her tone still entirely too sharp for Ahita’s comfort. “You are just beginning, but I expect visible improvement before the next time we do this. Do you understand? Your magic is not all a light show. It is a weapon, and you will not waste it by leaving it perpetually dull, dusty, and unsharpened.”

“Yes, mistress…” he murmured, still trying to scrape his paws over his snout and get the seemingly endless coated smear of filth off of him. It was a vain attempt, or certainly seemed so, given that the more he scraped from one area, the more seemed to spread to another, and his paws themselves were filthy, making it difficult to ‘clean’ anything with them when everything they touched also became smeared. He forced himself up, onto all fours, staggering slightly on wobbling legs. He felt weighted by the muck on him and positively sluggish. After several failed attempts to rub himself on the grasses or a nearby tree trunk, he gave a frustrated huff of noise and stepped into an empty space before stomping and spontaneously combusting along the line of all his scales, instantly baking the muck.

That done, he cracked his wings, moving and flitting them, followed by several sharp beats of his tail. This method seemed more effective, the caked, singed mud now more like hardened clay and breaking off in brittle chunks. A few hearty scrapes against the tree trunk again and he was at least in a livable state of filthy, though he still wanted a very thorough cleaning as soon as the opportunity arose.

“So…” He ventured a hesitant glance in the direction of his companion — and now twice savior — trying not to sound too terribly hopeful and pathetic when he asked, “Does this mean we are done for now?”

Mistriss Yseirri’s snort — amused or derisive? Ahita couldn’t tell — was not particularly encouraging. So, the ‘hunt’ continued. They spent the remainder of the evening in the swamps and on into the early night. Trudging through the mud, muck, and swampland, seeking out more foes to push him against however unwillingly his body reacted to it all and her critiquing him the whole while. Pay attention. Don’t hesitate. Take openings the instant you see them. Stay alert. Never let your guard down. Keep your magic ready at all times; it is your greatest ally. Keep control of your power. Out of control, you can be as dangerous to yourself, your allies, and the surrounding environment as you are to your enemies. Learn the terrain and use it to your advantage. Stop complaining, you are not hurt — you are living, breathing, and walking: you have nothing to complain about.

However little it suited him and however much he did feel he hurt and was fully justified in at least the occasional muted complaint — because his wings were sore and stiff and his hide dirty and his snout bruised and his muscles aching and weary — he did make every effort to abide by her instructions. He wanted to please her, after all, and was well aware that despite it not being his strong point, it would help him in the future to do his best to protect his miss if the occasion ever arose where his strength not as a performer and companion but defender and guard were needed to ascertain her safety and well being. Misstress Yseirri also followed closely in his wake, and while she refused to butt in until he most definitely needed it, she did see to it that he was prevented, at least, from permanently maiming himself, receiving a deadly level of poison or being eaten by something a fifth his size. And, as the afternoon bled into evening and the evening into night, he did make gradual progress — or, so he felt he did, but the experience as a whole felt like some messy sea of humiliation, pain, poison, and horribly, horribly slow improvement, if any.

He hoped that the time between this event and the next time he was expected to do such a thing would be as extensive as possible.

Okay, two more.