"Who are you?! What were you doing in the Northern Overseer!?" The Sentinel - as Adam called the mounted warrioress - stopped some distance away from the torch-man. Already feeling the heat. "Extinguish your flames and surrender, then I will start to think about sparing your, or your friend's lives, only then!" She demanded.
"I shall not leave my comrades at your grace! No noble warrior would leave the lives of their friends at the hands of an enemy!" The noble knight, shrouded in flames, shouted with all his might at the woman sitting high on her horse - clearly without understanding of the noble knights' code of conduct.
"I will repeat only once! Who are you and what did you do in the Northern Overseer!!?" The Sentinel raised her polearm high toward the clouds, bathed in the sunlight, in a threatening act.
"Don't try to scare me, thug! I have seen plenty like you - all the talk about mercy, but when the time arrives, your blade soaks with blood...." Stellmo reached into the flame around his body and pulled out his blade. A short, double-edged sword, already coated in his aura - sharpening it and lighting it aflame. "Conversation will lead to nothing - run away to your quiet lair, or die. Decide." Words spoken, Stellmo waited for the woman's answer. Ready to clash.
Sentinel remained silent for a while, staring at her opponent as if wondering why, why can't he comply?
Nevertheless, she didn't have a whole day.
"I hope you said your goodbyes, stranger." She announced.
And charged.
Her weapon - a long halberd with a slim side blade and a similar poking spearhead - flung to her right side, in readiness to attack as soon as the horse reached the flaming warrior.
Hooves slammed the ground, and the mount sped through the surroundings along with his rider. The horrifying speed at which they moved stunned most of the onlookers, some of them had seen people travel as fast, and in Fenfallal's case could also move as such, or even faster - but even then, seeing another one was still unexpected.
The Sentinel seemed to be well versed in the art of mounted combat, but whether her experience on a horse was bigger than Stellmo's on the ground, was yet to be seen.
As the horse neared, the flaming warrior finally moved. Stellmo dashed to the side, his right and the Sentinel's left - getting out of her attack range, as she hadn't had enough space to turn her mount in time, and passed the man with her polearm on the opposite side of her horse.
"Come on! You can do better!" Stellmo did his best to provoke his opponent.
"Shut up, scum!" Sentinel roared, outraged that such a simple manoeuvre managed to outwit her - even if it was done by a master, who by no means was slow on his feet.
The horse turned around rapidly, and at the same time, the woman on top of it started to give off a green hue - she covered herself in aura, wind aura to be precise.
Along with her, her weapon also changed. But instead of a lonely hue, the air around the polearm also started to twist and turn - changing into a miniature whirlwind coating the whole armament.
Once again, the horse rushed towards the warrior, this time slightly askew and slower. Sentinel was ready to strike at both sides either way, grasping her weapon with both arms low on the right side, yet ready to change it.
This time, Stellmo hadn't run away from the fight - if he wanted to finish it in a somewhat timely manner, he had to get rid of the horse.
Waiting for the sentinel to arrive before him, the warrior took a stable stance and prepared his sword for a low, slashing strike, while having his kite shield just below his eyes.
The horse neared, and seeing that her target intended to block her strike, Sentinel decided to go for it and raised her polearm behind her - in preparation for a low strike with incredible power.
SWOOSH
Covered in a whirlwind, Sentinel's polearm swiped through the air at incredible speed towards Stellmo's shield.
CLANK
Just before the metal clashed, a small explosion shook the flaming warrior.
While his knees bent, his torso leaned towards the horse - which was previously too far to reach with only a shortsword.
As Stellmo's weapon neared the stallion's thigh, his shield bucked and twisted, positioning itself at an angle towards the incoming polearm.
The axe blade of a halberd-like weapon struck the shield and rebounded away, delivering only a portion of the power imbued in it.
Regardless of the angle, Sentinel's whirlwind struck the shield, twisting it mightly. Stellmo's grip weakened, and the shield got snatched by the raging wind.
As the triangular piece of metal flung through the air, a horrifying neigh escaped the horse's snout.
Blood splurted from an open wound, right at the centre of the stallion's thigh, and landed on Stellmo, before being incinerated in flames covering the warrior from head to toe.
In accompaniment of bloodcurdling sounds, the woman's horse rapidly deaccelerated, stumbling and hitting the ground - and flinging his rider into the air.
"AAAH!" Sentinel screamed in horror as she flew through the air, more in anger and fear for her beloved mount, than the surprise of being suddenly airborne.
She spun around in the air, landing a few metres from the shield her opponent lost.
"You fucker, how dare you touch my horse!" In anger, Sentinel swung her polearm at the lonely, unenhanced shield, and shattered it with one strike. While destroying his trusty protection, she stared into the flaming warrior's eyes.
Stellmo, on the other hand, stood some distance away, shooking his left hand to get rid of the stinging sensation from a massive force ramming itself into it.
"Spitefull, are you." He stopped moving for a moment. "Step back and flee, and maybe I will let your horse keep his life - disregarding the disrespect you have caused me before my companions." While speaking, Stellmo stared at his shattered shield, whose shards scattered around where it fell after leaving his hand - and consequently losing the protection of his aura.
Sentinel's face reddened in anger, her hands tightened around her weapon before she released a fierce wave of air around herself, striking her halberd on the ground.
"You dare threaten me with my mounts life?! Who are you, scum?" Her hair flung around her head as she shouted, obviously enraged.
"Once again, that information is useless to you - thug. Decide." Stellmo stood his ground, his head had already recovered from the shock and was gripping his shortsword along with the other one.
"Decide?!" She seemed to laugh. "There is nothing to decide, your fate is already sealed." Sentinel declared ominously, still smiling - but only with her mouth.
Having said her due, she raised her arms, both clamping on the polearm's shaft and swung her weapon mightily.
As the blade swished through the air, the air aura erupted outwards, like an extension of the shaft - creating a whirlwind-like blade, that travelled towards Stellmo at incredible speed.
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He, slightly surprised by the attack's speed, tried to step to the side, yet hadn't managed to dodge the whirlwind slash.
Stellmo's shortsword was between him and the danger, bracing for impact, but defending using a sword left much to desire and most of the raging wind passed by the blade's defences.
"Argh!" Stellmo let out a shriek as he crashed a few metres from when he got hit - but picked himself up immediately, with a sword over his head, already bracing for another strike. But this time, he planned to push it to the side.
Just as the flaming warrior expected, Sentinel was already next to him, her polearm high in the sky - and falling.
To survive the ordeal, Stellmo let out an explosion from his mouth - propelling himself further back - and loosened his wrists, letting the halberd move the sword and slide on its blade, while the hilt remained in place. Relatively in place, the weapon along with its owner tumbled back, away from the enemy.
Polearm's blade struck the ground next to where its target curled a few moments ago and sunk deep beneath the surface.
Using the moment in which Sentinel pulled her weapon from the earth's embrace, Stellmo rose to his feet and dashed with his sword raised high - and scorching with flames.
SWOOSH
Sentinel barely escaped the shortsword's strike, but dodging the after wave of fire, which clashed forward in a similar fashion to her previous medium-range attack, didn't go that well.
"Tsss.." The woman hissed in pain, but apart from that and an obvious grimace, nothing revealed that a fiery wave washed over her body - its heat and force lessened by an enchanted armour and Setninel's aura armaments, yet still fiery enough to leave light burns all over the master's body.
Tired of talking, the horseless rider jumped towards her opponent, striking with both hands in a backhanded fashion - cleanly from a position in which she held her weapon in front of herself to defend against a sword, in case she didn't manage to dodge it in time.
Stellmo easily reacted and parried the strike - meeting it in the middle with his own, overhead slash.
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While the warriors shouted at each other, Adam, along with the rest of the group observed them from the hill - partially enjoying the show, and partially playing scared.
At first, Adam was quite scared about the outcome, but after looking around, he discovered that none of his companions were truly scared - though they seemed to want to appear as such. But let's be honest, none of them were capable of a good deception, and Adam could easily recognise that it wasn't their true face.
But considering that the Sentinel, as he named the warriors who went after Stellmo, was focused on battling said man, and probably hadn't spared much of her attention towards the supposedly defenceless friends' of the fiery master, she would have meagre chances of discovering their deception.
Seeing Fenfallal as calm as always, Adam hadn't worried much about the fight that was about to unfold before him, on a major road that was weirdly quiet and empty - as if it had anticipated events that were about to happen.
However, the beginner magician's heart rate rapidly accelerated when the clash started. No amount of assurance could completely eliminate a rush of adrenaline in a fifteen-year-old watching people brawl it out, even if his birthday was rapidly approaching.
In the first clash, the fiery warrior gained some respect and admiration from his young magical friend - only to lose all of it after he sacrificed his shield to take the horse out of the battle.
Neither of these things was liked by Adam, who thought that losing a shield was a grave mistake, one a warrior should never commit. As for horse-cutting, though brutal, it could be summed up to Adam's curiosity about anti-rider warfare - and while getting rid of the horse was a viable solution, probably the best one, it was something even the young mage could think of, and as such, didn't teach him anything.
The next course of action though, immediately got rid of any regret about the duel, as Adam simply forgot about his previous disappointments.
The whirlwind slash unleashed by the Sentinel was something amazing and gave Adam much inspiration and motivation to pressure Algier into teaching him more about wind magic - which would further delay Adam's reach into nature magic, but that's just life, sacrifices must be made.
As the fiery warrior and the Sentinel clashed again, resulting in the man's retreating further back, Adam was left agape at the ingenuity of his companion, who managed to turn the seemingly fully offensive aspect into an ingenious dodge.
When Stellmo counterattacked, Fenfallal turned towards his left, eying the brown-haired youth that stood beside him.
"You are probably curious why we have such trust in Stellmo, right?" He waited until the young mage nodded his head in confirmation. "It's because while I am the leader, we aren't really sure who would win - we both command two aspects related to our elements and haven't fought in quite some time..." The golden warrior, who at the moment hid his beautiful weapons behind his back, quieted for some time.
While the older warrior was silent, the fight sped up, as the burned Sentinel and a burning man clashed each second.
Stellmo mostly dodged, running away from the powerful blows of a polearm and the whirlwind that followed, sometimes parrying it with his won attack - if given a chance to prepare something capable of shortening the gap between the amount of force a halberd and shortsword were capable of unleashing.
Sometimes, he missed and staggered, or didn't manage to dodge in time - those moments were followed by a powerful blow delivered by the Sentinel, each throwing him metres away. Yet he remained relatively unharmed, his powerful aura barrier and few enchantments on his armour didn't let the halberd's blade near his skin - though the force still remained.
Sentinel, on the other hand, hadn't had a good time. Her barrier provided some resistance, and blocked most of Stellmo's force - as such she too, hadn't felt her opponent's blade. But while it proved excellent against physical attacks, it lacked in case of nullifying the fire that followed the dreadful blade.
Fiery warrior, Stellmo, who was covered in bruises, continued to clash with Sentinel, burned in many places, when Fenfallal finally decided to finish whatever he was talking about.
"As for her, she seems to control only one aspect, though, to be honest, it is a good one... I can't figure out why is she here, far from the battlefront." The golden-eyed man said quietly.
"So, Stellmo has heat and explosion, while she handles something akin to a tornado?" Adam asked for confirmation, as quietly as his older companion did.
"Probably... Refrain from ever talking about our aspects outside of our group, even after we return to Derdania - it's disadvantageous for the people in question." Warned Fenfallal, still quietly. He seemed more serious than before but didn't raise his voice or anything else.
Adam nodded at him, affirming that he would follow the Royal Swordmaster's advice, before turning his eyes again towards the fight happening at the road a few dozen metres from their hill.
Down there, the sound of clashing iron became rarer and rarer, as the warriors exchanged powerful, yet demanding attacks without rest. Both of them were worn and torn, their armours bent, cloth cut and tattered - but there was a difference between the flaming warrior and polearm-wielding Sentinel, one's light dimmed while the other shined in as much brilliance as before.
From afar, it was clear that Stellmo was winning the battle of attrition. Adam speculated his energy reserves may be bigger due to two aspects under his control, the second possibility was he was better at managing efficiency and reserving his aura., but which of them was real wasn't important, the important was that eventually, he would fell the Sentinel.
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Another strike landed perfectly in the middle of the long shaft, raising a fiery cloud and small amounts of smoke around the two fighters - a woman, covering behind her weapon and curing on the ground in defence, whirlwind dancing around her. And a man, surrounded by flames, and wielding an equally scorching shortsword - pushing with his weapon on the woman from above.
"Die! Scroundel!" Stellmo shouted at the woman from behind his blade, his face distorted by rage and dissatisfaction.
"No! You die! Nameless scum!" The Sentinel replied with an insult of her own. Her face was burned in multiple places, her hair was in a mess, in places town out, and sometimes replaced by ter scars, as for the eyes - they were fearstruck, yet unyielding. She knew that she would lose, but she hadn't lost hope.
In a desperate attempt to get away from the source of hellish heat, Sentile released the whirlwind covering her, in a burst powerful enough to push her opponent away.
When Stellmo flew away, pushed by the gust of wind, Sentinel pulled herself up, and after launching another wave of whirlwind vaguely in the direction of a walking fire, she dashed towards her horse who after receiving the wound stumbled out of the fight's way.
"CURSE YOU; STRANGER!" She roared, standing beside her mount, with her halberd-like weapon raised high in the air - at the tip, massive amounts of aura gathered, leaving her body and the reso of the shaft naked.
WHOOSH
Stellmo was standing between the Sentinel and his companions who his on the top of a hill when a powerful wave of wind blocked his sight of the master rho chased after him from the Northern Overseer.
In an attempt to clear his sight, and get rid of the wind that would pick him up and throw him high to the sky in a moment, Stellmo performed an upward cut, raising flames in a column before himself.
Fiery flames, whose tips reached above the quickly approaching wind wall, split the Sentinel's attack in half, protecting their master and those who covered far behind it.
When the wind passed, and the flames subsided, Stellmo could finally see beyond them and notice his opponent - Sentinel in armourd darkened from fire - riding her horse into the distance. Hurriedly, yet not as fast as before.
In the path they tread, blood marked the ground, telling of their defeat against an unknown enemy.
The enemy, who stopped roleplaying as a torch, fell to the ground in exhaustion and sighed in relief.
'It's the last time I agree to cover the back...' The warrior lamented in his head.