Free Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) by Marc Secchia

downward, trying to stifle Zuziana’s counterattack. But the crafty girl punched her right in the eye.
    They fell apart, groaning.
    Aranya was the first to clamber to her feet. She wiped her eye. There was blood trickling from a cut. She blinked to clear her vision. She smelled smoke in her nostrils. There was so much anger in her, so much hurt and pain at having been exiled, that she was finding it almost impossible not to pour it out on her tormentor. But she knew somehow that that decision, once made, would change everything. She had to choose a better way.
    Instead, lifting her staff, she chose to channel her anger into the wood. With that as a focus, she would not be tempted to kill the girl.
    Maybe.
    “ Yeeeeaaah! ” screamed Aranya.
    The strength of her assault staggered Zuziana. Aranya tried to overpower her, to beat the staff out of her hands, to break the resistance of her arms with an overwhelming attack. Her breath hissed through her teeth like a hungry fire licking around dry wood. In quick succession she scored hits on her opponent’s elbow and right thigh, followed by a skull-rattling connection with the back of her head. Zip retreated, showing real concern for the first time. But she did not give up. Suddenly she rolled in underneath Aranya’s defence and tangled with her legs. Aranya howled as Zip bit her calf muscle.
    “You wretch!”
    She kicked Zip away. Aranya channelled her utmost fury into the ironwood grasped in her hands. Her staff whistled down, smoking through the air. It cracked Zuziana’s staff in twain.
    Both girls stared. Ironwood, broken? Impossible .
    With an animalistic growl, Aranya sprang atop of her opponent. Using her superior weight and strength, she forced her staff down across Zuziana’s throat. The girl writhed and fought like a crazed rajal, but Aranya ignored the blows to her face and chest. This was for her humiliation. This was for Immadia . This was for her dead mother.
    Pinned to the sand by her neck, by the wild strength coursing through her opponent, Zuziana began to choke.
    “Give up? Give up?”
    “Never.”
    “Ladies!”
    Hands, rough hands, reached in and tore them apart. Three warriors wrenched Aranya off Zuziana; another two prevented the smaller girl, who was frothing and bleeding at the mouth, from throwing herself at Aranya again. Panting, bloodied and hurting, they faced each other.
    Aranya shook off the warriors’ hands. The lamps were ablaze, so much so that several had cracked with the additional heat, but as her fury cooled, so did the l ighting until Nelthion, Zuziana and all the warriors glanced about them in puzzlement. She said nothing. The thought of revealing her powers snuffed out her heatedness; it scared the living pith out of her.
    “Ladies. Taking a little morning exercise?” Nelthion’s tone was scathing. “Duels are expressly forbidden in my Tower. Don’t want daddies descending on this place in full battle array demanding to know what happened to their precious little Princesses.”
    Aranya uncurled her fingers from the ironwood staff. The wood was charred where she had gripped it. Charred!
    “Now, my men will escort you back to your rooms. You two will patch each other up. You will report to my office in one hour, together, where I will assign your punishment. Don’t ever let me see stupidity of this magnitude again.”
    A warrior scooped up the two halves of Zuziana’s staff and handed them to her. “How do you break ironwood, lady?”
    “Ask the monster from Immadia,” sulked Zip.
    Nelthion bellowed, “Enough!”
    * * * *
    Zip had a broken forefinger and a swollen, split lip. She had two lumps on her forehead that made her look surprised–or like she was growing horns–and a magnificent purpling bruise across her neck. Aranya sported a black eye that by evening had swelled completely shut, despite the generous application of cool cloths. She had a generous collection of bruises in a range of colours similar to her hair.