It actually kind of amazed Rhode, in that moment, to consider just how badly he was getting his ass handed to him. Iron clashed and his sword flung off course. The Viper Knight moved in ways that defied his instincts, by means that beggared his preconceptions: she fought in a way that could only be possible with levels.
Lady Ser Hakkat-Yune ducked low, her torso forward and flat and almost parallel to the ground; with her knees splayed out and bent so low It hurt to look at. Her main-hand sword lashed out like a scorpion – well, more like a snake, but if one were to start describing her like then it would never come to an end, now would it?
Rhode had to stumble backwards just to keep his shins. His arm and sword went wide, and his big, clumsy feet were kicking up dust and tripping over his own divots. Yune lunged to the side, darting horizontally into the plodding homunculus’ blind spot. Snicker-snak, she threatened his leg again with her sword. But as he leaned back off balance to protect it, she reached out casually and cut his forearm shallowly with her knife.
“Ah, what the heck!” Rhode trumpeted.
He swung his leg back the other way for a kick, and the knight vaulted backwards in an improbable somersault. Her armor jingled musically, and she readjusted her belt with a dismissive sneer. Rhode stared at her for a moment, and then shut his mouth. She closed again behind the point of her steels, and he was too slow. Maybe he could have had an easier time of it if she would just come at him in straight lines. But she was everywhere at once, dismantling him from every angle and constantly in motion.
It was obnoxious, it was embarrassing, it was painful, and –
It was exhilarating.
After so much life spent resigned to its end, even if not meeting it, or maybe just the grueling struggle to clutch just a little more time…
How could Rhode have forgotten the joy of flesh? His bones jolted with impact against dirt. His tendons coiled against the forces which his muscles strained to produce. His skin slicked with sweat and the cold, damp of the chamber. His blood thundered within his chest.
Well, perhaps it wasn’t blood anymore. Dark, reddish purple ichor leaked from the cuts that Yune was giving him. It was amazing, almost surgical, how she could mark him that way. Nothing was more than skin-deep so far, even if it bled terribly. Rhode wasn’t even angry though. [Vigorous ichor] pumped through his arteries and set him afire from the inside. He reveled in the feeling of new strength. He was drunk with the illusion of being whole again.
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His hand grew steadier as his eyes followed his opponent around the room. His sword swooped lower, curving, and more strategically, as the most basic of fighting instincts were starting to settle in.
But frustratingly, every improvement Rhode seemed to be making was matched in kind by the lady of House Jern. She tracked the reach of his arm with better intuition than he knew his own limits, she understood the placement of his feet so well that she could strike at the exact instance most likely to stagger him.
The half-elfin prodigy, Hakkat-Yune. The banner-sworn, Sergeant at arms, and second-finest sword in the whole of Baron Rugelgridt’s army. Seventeenth overall, some would say, in her mastery of the blade in the whole of Sacred.
She was toying with Rhode, he knew that. He knew it. But she was also teaching him.
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Perhaps one might overlook Rhode’s initial surprise to have met the lady in Cellar Vault B, ready for him that night as she was. Perhaps one might infer that it was insight, or divinations of magic which made it possible for the dark conspiracy below Four Rings to predict his every move. But sometimes the answer to life’s mysteries is much simpler than we expect, and the real magic is just a matter of what we allow ourselves to reveal or withhold from each other.
Lady Eintirp-Wan of House Jern huffed as she waddled at top speed. Her uniform was kind of heavy, with all of its cool belts, and its decorative chain mail. It wouldn’t protect against anything dangerous, really, but the boss-man was insistent that she needed to get used to the weight now. She hadn’t done up her hair again, since it was technically past her bedtime, so it poofed up frazzled. Jern family hair was infamously unruly, which was probably why Eintirp’s older cousin straightened and dyed hers.
The young page’s face was puffy and red, she had been running so hard. One of the quartermaster’s assistants was walking towards her in the long hall, buried in a report on monthly liquor rations, and oblivious to the girl’s mad dash.
“Gods!” The man cried as he crashed into a stacked pile of crates.
“Sorry!” Eintirp wailed, but she did not slow down.
Around the corner, there was a simple, unadorned wooden door, just the same as most of the others in the underground. But the page slide to a halt, tottered at an angle, and then flung the door open inwards without warning or ceremony.
Junior Scholar Rikva was off shift, but she shot up in an instant. Her eyes were bloodshot from playing Imps and Burglars with the Hornupant acolytes and off-duty Guards. Her mouth slurred as she tried to shake clear of cheap thkurr, and she slapped at her table for a light-crystal, or even a knife (just in case).
“Whuh?” She said as her eyes locked onto the little goblin in her doorway.
Her vision focused more clearly, and then Lady Einterp-Wan, lesser cousin of Hakkar-Yune, assistant page to Thousand-Cut Brand himself, and happiest little gob who’d ever landed a summer job, ever –
Pumped both of her fists in the air and squealed at the top of her lungs. “FIIIIIIIIGHT!”
And how could anyone possibly say no to that?