Sea Lion Shores Por you, for you

Athan could sense the opening of his body too late, ignoring it in favor of attacking once more, aiming at the opening he saw on his target. He acted mostly on instinct rather than honed martial techniques — a feeling rather than tactic. He had been trained briefly as a child, but those few lessons flew out of favor in the face of reality. He wanted to overwhelm, ignoring the attacks lobbed at him in favor of exhausting his sparring partner — he was a persistence hunter if anything; waiting, waiting for his prey to exhaust themselves before he went in for the kill. It had helped him in the past; there was no reason why he could apply this to fighting.

And she was truly a partner now, an equal. He could sense that she was at the very least knowledgeable in battle tactics, based on her graceful, almost beautiful dodging — more knowledgeable than he, if anything. Though that was not saying much. But how could you continue dodging multiple, back-to-back attacks? He bore the nip on his shoulder, focused entirely on launching another attack at the junction between her shoulder and neck. A few scars would mean nothing in the face of victory, he told himself.