By The Stream

Azalea was prepared this time, or at least they felt they were. They let Remi's surface feelings flood their mind as they stood guard, awaiting Remi's approach. They felt her focus, and it gave them focus. They felt her predatory drive, and it sharpened their own. They felt her frustration, and it made them grin. If their opponent was frustrated, they were doing something right.

And then came Remi's charge. Azalea knew exactly how to respond. This time, instead of a tactical retreat or a long-range bombardment, they simply took a single step forward, and put all their might into a forward thrust to meet their bull-rushing opponent head on, relying on the sheer reach of a thrust attack to hit before Remi's could land, and hoping that'd be enough.

Azalea let out a guttural cry as they made their attack that was equal parts for extra forcefulness and due to pain at using the bruised muscles in their side.

Azalea abandonded the sword rather than pry it out of Remi's arm. They let it go with both hands as they were pushed away, not resisting but letting their body travel with the force and managing to maintain balance just barely.

Azalea quickly flicked both wrists forward and clenched her hands into fists. This motion caused snow to rapidly liquefy under Remi's feet and rush up her ankles, refreezing to attempt to lock her to the ground. Azalea then pulled just enough water from the air to make another compressed water-bomb, and began compressing it, never taking her eyes of Remi all the while.

Azalea watched Remi beginning to dig, and decided to alter their strategy. Remembering the nearby stream, she glanced in its direction. Alas, that was too far away to move without getting much closer, and that'd take too long.

Instead, Azalea let the bomb they were forming decompress back to its normal size, and then threw it up in the air. They gathered all the snow around them that they could manage, turned it to vapor, and sent it rushing up several meters above them as well, where it all combined and began to form unnatural storm clouds. In the space of about thirty seconds, Azalea had sent most of the snow in their immediate battlefield into the air, leaving a bare field of moist earth under the shadow of a massive cloud.

And then it began to rain. Or at least, it rained directly above where Azalea was standing. Everywhere else, it hailed. Except the hail was jagged and pointy, like a million tiny, icy daggers falling from the sky and coating the battlefield. Azalea stood with her eyes closes and both hands outward. It took a great deal of focus to keep this much water doing this many things as once. With luck, this would all have happened faster than Remi could dig sufficiently far down or at enough of an angle to avoid the hail. Time would tell if luck had been on Azalea's side or not.

Azalea was completely focused on maintaining control over the hailstorm now pelting the battlefield, and was entirely helpless to stop their assailant as she burst from the very earth which now gave way beneath Azalea's feet.

"Ah! ...the fuck!?"

Azalea's body was tossed like a ragdoll as the hail stopped, and the clouds above began to disperse slowly as the water composing them suddenly decided to obey the laws of physics again. Azalea's ass slammed into the ground with a painful thud.

Tiredness and disorientation poured off of Remi with increasing intensity. The borrowed feelings festered in Azalea's mind and threatened to overwhelm her. If there was any hope of victory, she was going to have to put all she had left in a single attack and hope it found purchase before she collapsed.

Azalea shakily righted herself and drew from the moisture in the earth and the air, flinging their right arm outward as a large ice spike formed immediately to their right, rooted in the ground and pointed right at Remi.

Azalea stopped the spike from growing as soon as the tip was just under an inch from Remi's neck. She slumped into the spike a little, using it as a support, panting heavily and staring right at her opponent.

Azalea grinned, still panting.

"That's probably wise at this point."'

Azalea got up, shaking a bit, using the ice spike as support while they stood with the use of just their right arm.

Azalea then used her right arm to grab and lift her left, still entirely made of stone.

"I uh, do hope this is reversible?"

Her grin turned mildly playful at this question. Meanwhile, Rose deftly dropped from her perch in the tree.

"That was awesome you two!" Rose beamed, walking over to the pair and helping to support Azalea, who just kind of slumped gratefully into her sister's arms. "You're probably too tired out from that match right now, but we have to spar sometime too, would seem you're quite the wily opponent."