(2025-09-21) Taking the Test: The Rumpus

Details

Author:	Luridel
Summary:	Written for the prompt 'Taking the Test'. A moment from 'Fighting the Bigger Fish'. Estel sees a challenge and decides that she can't just pass - she needs to win. Shadow is a tool. ~580 words.
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

Arc: Season 17: From the Mists

Chain: Prompt Responses

[ During this... ]

"You have studied the art of one-on-one combat…or occasionally five-on-one," Instructor Myang tells them. "Now we will test you in the art of one-on-many. Let us say… fifty." She smiles sweetly.

One person versus fifty people. Based on pure math alone, that sounds insane. None of them actually need to defeat all fifty - this is a test of survival. Two minutes inside the ring is enough to pass. They call it the Rumpus.

They make their way down the hill into the Ring of Inner Focus. The stones are spotted with wet patches from the rain that has passed.

Gwen survives. Azizia survives. Both of them knock out their fair share of trainees.

It's not enough for Estel to survive. She's the team's healer. She needs to be better than that. There's no Ben or Dane with their shields to stand in the way of trouble. It was enough, earlier, to play fair, to use the stances they taught her and follow their rules. But she doesn't have to do that now. She has permission.

"In a true fight, you will apply all you have learned to achieve victory," Master Stone Fist explains. "In a test of your readiness, it should be no different."

Estel finds her center. She goes cold.

Shadow comes to her like a gathering storm, like a slow-creeping certainty, like the stillness of night. The mantle of power settles over her body. She can feel it in the gaps between her fingers; she can feel it in her teeth. Her heartbeat slows. The veil tightens. Shadow is formless. The world has dimmed. Estel can be of the dark, when she chooses to be.

The students begin to rush her.

They don't all come at once. A group of five comes first, and Estel tethers a hook of shadow in the mind of the liveliest one, pulsing waves of searing pain and fatigue out to the others. You must be so tired. Lie down. She calls a Shield of Light around herself with barely a thought.

Waves of trainees. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. They all get close to her before the Shadow overwhelms them. The fallen form a barricade against the ones who come next.

I am the hand that balances the scales. I am the light in the darkness; I am the shadow in the light. All that shit Sister Eridan used to say.

Twenty-five. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty.

Estel isn't counting seconds, she's counting bodies.

They're alive. She hasn't killed any of her fellow students. Some of them have passed out. Many sprawl on top of each other, groaning as Shadow reverberates in the air around them.

Forty-five. Fifty.

Estel has no idea whether or not her two minutes have run out, only that no one around her is standing. She looks up at Instructor Myang, who is standing up on the hill behind a fence, and sees a memory in her place. Sister Eridan, cloaked in shadow, meets Estel's eyes and smirks. Another blink, and she is looking up at her pandaren instructor signalling the end of the Rumpus.

Fine, then. It's done. Estel casts off her Shadowform exactly like she might shrug off a coat and reaches instead for the Light. It warms her fingertips as she casts it out around her in a wash of healing for the trainees.

Blah blah blah, hand that balances the scales, all that shit. Warmth floods back into her. She returns to her team.