It took me a moment to recover fully from getting flipped, which gave enough time for my guards to join us, though they stood by the others and conversed quietly among themselves, keeping their eyes on us all the while. Twisted was giggling to himself like crazy though, probably from seeing me get flipped in an instant. Might explain why it took them a moment to get here; had to calm down from his laughing fit.
I turn my attention back to my sister with a raised eyebrow. “So why are you here at the dueling circle anyways?”
“I was told it was a safe place to try this eye out; Princess Luna said you tested yours out here.” she explains.
I keep my eyebrow raised. “Well, if that’s what you wanna do. Speaking of which, does it still hurt?”
“A little… but nowhere near as much as it did before. Just… uneasy about it now.” she answers.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and let it out. “Well, better to get it over with than to let it sit and fester.” with that, I walk out of the circle and back in, activating it and enclosing the dome around us once more. She’s a little startled by it, probably didn’t notice it the first time when she slammed me since it happened so fast.
She stares at the dome around us in wonder, and I decide to explain it to her. “Two people have to be in the circle for it to turn on; Though, they can configure the number of combatants with magic. We can’t see or hear outside of the dome, so as to minimize distraction, but they can see and hear in.”
She looks back at me. “So how do we get out then?”
“When one person lands what would be a killing blow. Or at least one that would take your opponent out of the fight. The dome itself uses magic, and is really good about catching you; I’ve never seen anyone die in one of these things.” I answer.
She raises an eyebrow. “Well that's comforting.” she says sarcastically.
“Well to be fair, you had a knife to my throat a few minutes ago.” I say with a shrug. “Thanks for almost killing me by the way.” I saw with a bit of sarcasm of my own. “What’s up with that?”
She winces in regret a bit, and rubs her arm. “I dunno, nerves? You startled me, and I’m pretty jumpy about that sorta stuff. Plus, back home people didn’t exactly have the best intentions. You know how it is.”
I pause at the mention of home, but shake it off, not wanting to remind her of it so as to not upset her further. “Not exactly, but I’ll take your word for it. Anyways, you said you wanted to try out your eye?” she nods. “Well, a good first step would be to actually open it. Just a thought.”
She gives me an annoyed look, and rolls her one open eye. “Never would have thought of that one.”
I just snort in amusement and motion for her to go on.
After a moment she takes a deep breath and lets it out, slowly opening her right eye. The first thing I notice about it is how similar it looks to mine. Like mine, it’s also got a symbol for a pupil, which seems to be the same as mine but upside down. The other thing to note, is in contrast to my blues, hers is black and what I’d hesitantly call purple; maybe fuchsia?
She holds her eye open for a moment before shutting it again, wincing and rubbing at it a bit.
“Well? Did you feel anything? See anything?” I ask curiously.
She nods, and opens her eyes again, this time seeming to take a bit more effort to do so. She blinks back tears and looks around a bit. “I… don’t know how to describe it. I feel… like a bottle of soda that’s been shaken up. Bubbling up, but nowhere for it to go.”
I raise an eyebrow and rub my chin. “That's… a creative way to describe it.”
“Is that how it’s supposed to feel?” she asks, a hint of worry creeping into her voice.
I shrug. “I dunno, your eye is different from mine. But I doubt it’s not working as intended. Mine feels more like a trigger than what you described.”
She looks around at the world around her with cautious curiosity. “As for what I see… it’s like… a bunch of colors. Wisps of colors floating around. It's oddly beautiful…” she says as she continues to look around. She then turns to me. “It’s just everywhere.”
“Alright, so you see colors… dunno what that could be. As for the other part, feeling like a soda bottle… maybe you need to use the eye to relieve that?”
“Well I would if I knew how. How’d you figure yours out?” she asks.
“Mostly trial by fire over the course of a couple hundred years… part of it at least. Other things like teleporting I figured out while fighting here in the circle.”
She winces a bit at the first part, but then rolls her shoulders a bit. “Alright, let’s fight then.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Scuse me?”
“What, afraid to get your ass whooped by a girl?” she asks tauntingly before chuckling to herself. “Again?”
I roll my eyes at her poor attempt to provoke me, but put my backpack down off to the side, and crack my neck. “You sure you wanna go through with this?” I ask while my eye lights up.
She flinches at the sight, but nods resolutely. No sooner than that do I let loose a blast from my eye towards her. A small one of course, I’m not trying to actually hurt her.
A couple things happened. One, my blast makes contact, but not with her. Instead, a relatively see-through purple aura with a somewhat intricate design on it is surrounding her, which seems to have absorbed the blast entirely without a scratch. And two, she flinched back from the unexpected noise of the blast.
After a moment, the aura fades and she stares at me, before scowling at me. “I was expecting a fist fight!”
I grin sheepishly, and raise my hands defensively. “Hey now, you never specified. Besides, that blast probably equated to the strength of forceful shove.” This time, I’m the one rubbing my arm. “I’m not exactly good at those. Wouldn’t be able to give you enough challenge to trigger your eye. Not without a few potions, and I don’t plan on using those every time I need to fight.”
Her scowl lightens up a bit, and she giggles. “So you admit a girl can whoop your ass.”
“Without my eye, anyone could probably do so. But my eye is a part of me. It’s not a crutch or a cheat to use it, it’s part of my life. And your eye is a part of your life now too, so don’t be afraid to use it.” I admit.
She smiles a bit. “Yeah, well you can’t rely on it one hundred percent of the time. We’ll work on getting you into shape later.” I raise an eyebrow at that. “For now though…” she looks around with her eye again, this time not seeming to actually be looking at anything, but more thinking.
“I felt something when that shield came up… if I can… nooo…. That ain’t it.” she says trying a bunch of different facial expressions, levels of eye opening, and even tried doing something with her hands before she sighs explosively in frustration.
“These eyes... It’s like if you were to grow a pair of wings; you wouldn’t know what muscle group to flex to use them. You gotta feel it to know it.” she thinks over my words, before a look of understanding dawns on her face.
“How about we try it again; this time, you know a little of what to expect, and you know the feeling. Try mentally grabbing onto it when it triggers itself, and get familiar with it.” I say, and she nods.
After a moment, I blast her again, this time a little more forcefully, knowing that her eye is at least defensive in nature. Like before, the aura manifests itself, and again, not a scratch on it. This time however, her eye is actually glowing and the aura is staying. After a moment, the aura starts flexing out; shakily at first, before slowly steadying out, albeit still a bit shaky. It takes the form of a dome around her, and she looks around at it silently. It then converges back onto her, forming an outer shell-like formation around her entire body before fading away entirely.
She looks back at me and smiles, running at me and jumping at me in a hug. “I did it!”