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Geren reared back as his opponent's claws raked his face. They kept at each other, clawing, kicking, lunging, wresting. Both of them were bleeding freely, and the female had landed another blow on Geren's haunch, making him limp, though the worst blow by far had been on Geren's wing. Geren was putting more ferocity into his attacks, trying to bring the fight to an end before Alambil and the others would think they had to intervene. He was subconciously ignoring the fact that this was the worst position in a fight he had been in in a long time.

The dragon with her rider and the other sphinxs could see them clearly now, and that Geren was was losing ground. Then Sorcha saw the female duck under Geren's defence, clawing a deep gouge in the tendon of Geren's leg. She also landed another blow to his chest. She felt that she had missed his heart and lungs, but the blow was still very deep and causing him to lose a lot of blood.
Sorcha, living with the sphinxs who were Ally's guardians as long as she had, was very familiar with the sphinx way of fighting one on one. Others did not intervene, to the point it was considered dishonorable to the aided party. But Geren's life was at stake , and when the lives of her friends were at stake, she really didn't give a damn.
Not just breathing fire, she concealed a huge ball of fire around her and launched it at the two sphinxs, as she was still out of regular firebreathing range.
"Sorcha, NO!" cried Ally, but it was too late, it was already streaming towards them. The ball hit them dead on.
Because of the Lifebond that had been fused between all of them, they were immune to each others offensive magic. Hence Sorcha's fireball would leave Geren completely unharmed (and it was also why Alambil hadn't been reduced to cinders since she was riding on Sorcha's back) while doing heavy damage to his opponents.
Except... she couldn't believe it. Aside from an irritated glancein their direction nothing had happened to Geren's enemy. Then her wings and hair flared up with anger.
Oh, GREAT... figures she a Fire Elemental...
The flames soon died down, as sphinx's tended not to use magic when fighting duels...
<Sorcha, that isn't helping our relationship!>
<WHAT RELATIONSHIP??!! YOU"RE TRYING TO KILL EACH OTHER!!!>
Then the fatal moment occured. Before Geren could reply he was not trying to kill her (though apparently the same couldn't be said about her for him) his hind paw caught on a tree branch, causing him to stumble. Before her could react to defend himself, Morgule lunged at him, her jaws stretching wide and reaching around his neck. She was going to rip his throat out...

The party in the air watched it all happen. Too late they realized what was happening, while they were almost on top of the feuding sphinxs, they were still too far away to intervene. Except for one...
Alambil did two things at once, without even thinking, reached inside of her to where she could feel Geren, connected to her. She sent a surge of power through that connection, causing a protective sheild around Geren. By itself it would not have saved him, the other sphinx's teeth being too close to avoid contact. But the other thing she did in that moment was to trigger a blast of energy right between their chest, exploding between the two of them. The blast in part bounced off the sheild that had started to form around Geren, redirecting itself and adding force to the blast that hit the female sphinx in the chest, hurdling her away from Geren. Even then he barely lived: her teeth scrapped the front of his throat as they closed before the blast threw her into a huge boulder nearby, knocking her unconcious.

Alambil half lept, half fell off of Sorcha in her desperation to get to Geren She prayed that she hadn't been to late...
The blast, though not as strong as the one that had hit the stranger, had still thrown him a little ways. His eyes were glazed and he shuddered as he breathed, his wounds causing him to loose far too much blood.
Alambil put her hands on either side of Geren's head and began to call up the healing magic inside of her....she felt it flow through her and into him as she fought to save his life.
Finally, she didn't know how much later, she pulled out of her concentration. He would live. He would even be able to heal back to normal eventually; he still looked like he was close to death's door, but he would heal, though it would take him a while.
She looked back over her shoulder to see the concerned faces of Oniba, Xiao, and Hakhar, who seemed to have arrived with the elvish healers. They had arranged a sphinx-sized strecher, held up by magic, and were waiting for her to finish, to see if her would live.
She looked over where the other sphinx had fallen. Sorcha was sitting there, clutching the unconcious sphinx in her claws. Alambil saw a very rare look of utter loathing in Sorcha's face. Her claws wer trembling: Alambil realized it was taking all of her self-control to keep from ripping the sphinx apart.
"Has someone ordered the troops to start moving out?' she asked quietly.
Oniba nodded "yes. They're on their way up the valley now."
One of the elven healers came up to her and kneeled beside her.
"My Lady, Sir Geren cannot continue with us. He can recover, but he needs far more rest than he can ever possibly get while traveling, especially at our pace..."
Alambil nodded her head. "I know." She closed her eyes. This was one of the things she hated most about being royalty. She knew she couldn't stay behind, no matter how much she wanted to. Geren had to be teleported to a grounded location where he could focus on recovering. But she had to continue to lead the troops. She could not stay with her friend.
She also knew this would be a terrible blow to his pride. He had not only lost what should have been a fairly simple formality, but had to be left behind, and leaving the person he had sworn to protect with his life unprotected (or at least that's how he would think of it).
She looked over at Sorcha, then over at Oniba. <Will one of you go with him?>
Oniba volunteered, though Ally knew she was just as reluctant to leave as Geren himself would be. <I'll try to keep him unconcious for a while.... >
Alambil silently agreed. The longer he was out, the less bad Geren would feel: more like there really wasn't anything he could be doing on the front. If he was awake that would be all he could think about.
The elven healers opened a gate back to one of the Havens: one of the larger ones a human would have been a bit small in. People tended to recover better when they were in their natural size, and some of the faery Havens were only designed for people under a foot tall. All of her guardians could change sizes, but again he would heal better at his normal size.
"And what about her?" said a still-scowling Sorcha as she held up the limp form.
"We will take her into custody" said a couple of the Haven guards as they came through the gate opening that seemed to have come out of nowhere.
Nodding, Alambil watched as the strange sphinx was moved through, then Geren. After goodbyes, Oniba acompanied him.
Due to the urgings of the other Generals, she moved on ahead with Xiao, Sorcha, and Hakhar to catch up with the front lines that had already passed them. As she swung up onto her horse and rode foreward, Alambil didn't notice that the centaur who had started the whole thing also beign moved through the gate to recover from his own injuries.