By the time he helped her from the water, they were both laughing and carrying on as if they'd known each other all their lives.
There were a couple of frictions, however. The main one was Dar. Because he was Arkisian, Allia took an immediate dislike to him, and Dar was instantly afraid of her. That was a wise thing, Tarrin guessed, and from then on the young man avoided Tarrin like the plague any time he was with Allia. Tarrin didn't ignore Dar, he just divided his time between his two friends so that he could spend time with both without leaving out the other.
The next day, Tarrin and Allia walked out onto the training grounds wearing their practice clothing. For Tarrin, it was his old leathers. For Allia, it was the same sand-colored baggy clothes which she had worn the day before. She'd worn Novice clothes that morning, and looked distinctly uncomfortable in them. She was wearing the trousers rather than a dress, and when he asked her why, she laughed in his face. "Selani do not wear such ridiculous things," she told him. "It would tangle my legs when I fight."
After a quick consultation with each other over the rules of the sparring match, they faced off to quite a crowd of Knights and apprentices looking on. They had never seen a Selani face off against an Ungaardt before. The rules they'd chosen were what Allia called "child's rules". Tarrin didn't want to hurt her, since he was so much stronger than she was, so he'd insisted.
What he didn't gamble on was that he had to hit her in order to hurt her. She was wildly, impossibly fast. He'd never seen anyone who could move with the blinding speed with which she evaded his attacks. Tarrin himself was fast, inhumanly fast because of his Were-cat nature, but she was even faster than him. Tarrin was quickly put on the defensive, using every block and evade tactic he knew to keep her blurring hands and feet away from his sensitive parts. The unfamiliarity of his own body worked against him, as he struggled to work the forms that he knew around his new body, but facing an opponent like her was no time to experiment, so he simply tried as best he could to defend himself against her using what he knew and his natural speed and agility. They helped, but her own speed and agility neutralized that advantage, and his promise to pull punches eliminated his strength advantage. With no advantages over her, he was facing someone more adept in her style of fighting than he was in his, and the pummelling he endured proved it. But, after a while, he had to concede that he had never been as good as she was, even when he was human. Allia could give his mother a good fight. He would have paid money to see them face off against one another.
After about an hour of getting beaten like a dog, Tarrin started to come to understand her moves, and started anticipating her attacks. She used set, specific forms, and once he identified them, he could predict which move she would flow into next. It still didn't help much, for her speed allowed her to change moves in mid-attack. She beat him almost at will, punching and kicking him almost anywhere she pleased for that first hour, until he managed to mount enough of a defense that her attacks could no longer find him. That look of light amusement dissolved into a set look of concentration as she had to start working to get past his defenses. She could still do it, but it wasn't nearly as easy as it had been before.
Tarrin came to understand why the Selani were so deadly at that point. Had this been a real fight, and had he not been a Were-cat, she probably would have killed him by now.
"Enough of this play," she said. "Now we spar for real."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean that we do not pull punches," she said.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said.
"You will not, trust me," she said with a challenging smile.
"Alright, they're your bones," he shrugged.
One hit was all it took. Tarrin knew that. He had not used his full strength in their earlier spars. He blocked a side kick with a forearm with enough power to knock her off balance, and then he put a foot right in her belly. He did not pull the punch. Allia folded around his foot and was knocked backwards a few spans, then she sat down heavily on the ground, wheezing and gasping for breath with both hands to her belly. Tarrin knelt by her and put a gentle hand to her belly. He didn't feel anything wrong there; he'd just knocked the wind out of her.
"Goddess!" she said in a choked, breathless voice. "What did you hit me with?"
"My foot," he said calmly. "I'm alot stronger than I look, Allia. I tried to warn you."
"So you did," she wheezed. "I will listen to you next time."
Two instructors and a Sorceress came over. "Are you alright?" one of them asked.
"I will be in a moment," she said in a breathless voice. "You pack quite a punch, friend Tarrin."
"Maybe too much of one," the instructor said. "It will be very hard to train you when you have such a strength advantage."
"I can be careful," Tarrin said.
"It isn't the same," the man said. "You have to learn by doing, and doing your best. If you pull punches in training, you'll not learn as well as you could."
"I think that the Tower has something that could even things," the Sorceress said. "I'll make a few inquiries. I believe that we have a magical object that will augment the user's strength. Would that make it right to train him?"
"Would that give the wearer the same resilience as Tarrin?" the instructor asked. "Great strength does more than let you hit hard. It also gives you the ability to absorb blows. It has to be the same."
"I had never considered that," Allia confessed, speaking in a more normal voice. "We are a strong people, but we teach that speed can overwhelm power. Speed is more important than power."
"I've always believed that you need a balance of the two," the man told her. "Speed alone and power alone aren't enough. You need both. You'll find that most of the toughest men are also among the strongest. You can use that power to defend as easily as to attack."
"That's what the Ways teach," Tarrin told him, helping Allia to her feet. She put a hand delicately to her belly, but said nothing. The Sorceress stepped forward and put her own hand on Allia's stomach. The Selani looked about ready to kill the woman, but said nothing. "You've got a very nasty bruise forming here, and that blow injured the muscles in your abdomen. You're going to be very tender unless you let me heal this," she said.
"Then do so," Allia said in a calm voice, a voice that Tarrin could tell was tightly controlled. The Sorceress put her hand under Allia's baggy shirt, and Tarrin felt that sensation of drawing in again. Allia sucked in her breath at the icy touch of Sorcerer's Healing.
After that, Tarrin looked up. "It's getting late, and this is a good place to stop."
"Yes," she said. "I learned much today. I became overconfident, and I paid the price," she told him, putting her hand on her stomach. "I underestimated you. Tomorrow I will not do so again."
Tarrin winced. She'd beaten him almost at will all day. He'd gotten in that one shot because she didn't know the nature of her opponent. He had no doubt that she wouldn't approach him the same way again.
"But I am impressed. Your Ungaardt Ways are effective, but I can tell that you feel uncomfortable with them."