Candlelight danced along her fingertips for only the brief second it took to reaffirm her plan, licking with controlled flame the stainless steel of her armament. The rules were that you couldn't use your own magic to climb. It never said anything about someone else's. She'd let her arms slowly fall and the pan with them, nudging it into the dirt without letting anything dirty inside; she would trace it over the snow, bending her head to cast her eyes down. She'd watch a little bug, climbing over a sproutling from the base of a cliff, and the effort it extolled in fighting back against the passing breeze ... and the wind picked up, pushing its flailing shape off until she lost it in the snowdrift. She stopped moving. She held her breath.
"Hey there, little lady." She jumped and whipped in mid-air at the words of the goons who had come out of the nearby woodwork, having noticed the thinning populace and the lack of familiar faces in the passing moments. The moon hit her with its gaze and she sparkled in her flip, a khopesh drawn in each hand and angled to bear down on the closest of the men as they rallied in the face of her instant aggression. She said nothing, and she entered the fray steel glinting.
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