Mercuria stares at Prince Frank with her face blank. He meets her eyes unwaveringly, the fear and meekness he displayed confronting Ko Adrilius nowhere to be seen. He seriously thinks dueling him is worth postponing killing the Edrilian, she realizes. Come to think of it, that whole outburst might have been planned between them. He wants this. A feral smile splits her face, but she still glances to Christopher for confirmation. The older Stave gives her a nod that tells her to go for it, he tentatively agrees this was their intention to begin with, and not to kill him. She almost laughs. Of course she wouldn’t kill him! Definitely not interested in killing Prince Frank.

Even with this distraction, she’d ideally save her next kill for the Edrilian who so blatantly antagonized her where he knew she’d be caught between her obligations towards her Deonid kin and her Stave allies.

“I suppose knocking you around for a bit could tide me over until I get to euthanize your dog. You really want to duel me? We won’t go to the death, of course, but how about to the maiming? We have great healers here.”

“Ahhh… Well I did tell you I was here for glory and death,” says Prince Frank, smiling with too little teeth.

As expected, Christopher takes that moment to interject before Prince Frank can speak the exact words ‘to the maiming, then’.

“Let’s pace ourselves, here. Classical rules are fine - first to three good hits. Frank gets to atone for his servant’s behavior, and Mercuria doesn’t become an enemy of the crown,” the Warden declares.

“By your judgment, sir Warden,” says Prince Frank, nodding.

“Works for me. Do you need any time to prepare, your Highness?” Mercuria asks. She thinks she does a pretty good job concealing how pleased she is with this whole situation.

“A few minutes,” he admits. Mercuria bows and turns to leave, exchanging a meaningful glance with Christopher as she goes. “When you’re ready, you can have Elric teleport you to the arena floor.”

Christopher is staying behind to keep an eye on their guests, in case they think they can start something with Mercuria gone. He commends her on her maneuver back there - floating the possibility of a duel to the maiming so he could assert his authority by quashing it was wise. He also impresses the need for patience and decorum, and that he will assist her in retaliating against Ko Adrilius when it is apt.

Mercuria takes the steps three at a time as she ascends towards the arena floor. After months of boredom and sullen apathy, suddenly her life is full of color and excitement again. She’s in a great mood! She gets to duel a Prince of Reillynd, there’ll be an Expedition soon where there will surely be enemies to kill, and she’ll get to split an Edrilian’s reinforced skull open in the foreseeable future. Things are looking up.

She idly wonders why Prince Frank and Ko Adrilius went about initiating a duel with her in such a roundabout way, if that was indeed part of their plan the whole time. She would have agreed if either of them had asked outright the moment they arrived. Maybe Prince Frank is looking to boast at having dueled a Deonid, and they think the Edrilian’s provocations will distract her?

She ponders this as she arrives at the arena floor minutes after her departure. There is a score of Staves already here, sparring each other, running drills, or challenging various Vimitech golems that serve as more monstrous training partners. As she enters, some of them stop what they’re doing and salute, drawing the attention of the others. She isn’t often here, as she has her own exercise chambers, and her appearance is instantly a subject of gossip amongst the formerly training Staves.

She brushes past them as she enters the dueling space and heads towards the end opposite the entrance to lean with her back to the wall. None dare approach her, given her reputation, but she sees some of them jog away to the stairs or use communicators to signal their friends that something interesting is going to go down on the training floor.

Maybe Prince Frank and Ko Adrilius have the same impression of her that these rank-and-file Staves do - an impression shared by many amongst the Depleted Lands Staves.

Mercuria is a frothing beast, a monstrous presence kept in check only by Christopher’s stern machinations. Mercuria is a berserk murderer who respects nothing but strength, and lives only to prove her own against anyone comparable, be they ally or victim. Mercuria is a demon given human form, and she’ll take your soul with her Deonid Eyes if you stare too long!

Staves begin to filter onto the training floor from the stairwell. On either side of the arena’s ceremonial dueling space, there are ascending rows of seats protected by stone rails that Mercuria knows will project a Vimitech field from crystal bulbs when the fight begins.

Mercuria appreciates the reputation she has, and she knows Christopher benefits by being seen as capable of controlling such a monstrous personality. Everything they say is true - she is a frothing beast, a monstrous presence, and a demon given human form - at least figuratively. Yet as every new Stave who files onto the benches noticeably tries to stay as far away from her as possible while still being able to see, she can’t help but feel that her reputation and her true self, once so congruent, have drifted apart.

The Mercuria that respects nothing but strength and seeks only to rip those she considers strong apart with her jagged blade and the Mercuria that constrains the bloodlust she feels around an Edrilian agitator to better serve her commanding officer’s power game are two different identities.

When she first began working with Christopher, she was a menace. She was impulsive, temperamental, and evil, earning every iota of the reputation she has now with blood and flame.

She understands the necessity of their deployment to the Depleted Lands on a rational level. The attention her and Christopher’s exploits on their rise to power had drawn would throttle them if they continued to slug it out in the thick of things, so Christopher accepted a “promotion” to serve as Warden of the Staves of Man in the Depleted Lands, to allow things to smooth over.

As dreadful as it’s been, it was the correct play. She resents it, she complains about it, but she does not rage against it, nor reject it, or burn everything down to escape it.

Just what kind of domesticated animal has she allowed herself to become? These are years off of her life - has she forgotten that she’ll die one day? Will she allow herself to become meeker and meeker, slower and fatter, until one day she needs to fight with the totality of her self, and cannot? An existential unease settles over her mind, lingering for long moments.

She spots motion at the arena floor’s teleportation chamber door, and snaps her attention to it. Prince Frank files out ahead of his posse and Christopher’s officers, and Mercuria meets Ko Adrilius’ glowing white eyes. He smirks, and Mercuria realizes just how impactful his few short sentences have been in throwing her off her game.

Motherfucker, what have you put in my head?

Mercuria’s rage makes itself known, so strong it is as if it never left. It bubbles beneath her skin, trying to escape. She’s tempted to let it, but the duel is yet to begin.

Neither the monster nor the soldier have a need for self-reflection. Do away with it, she commands herself, and it is done. Her attention is directed entirely towards winning the duel.

Prince Frank steps onto the field of play. He still wears the same elegant noble’s dress he arrived in, colorful and unobstructive, but now it is crisscrossed with belts and latches to hold the scabbards of over a dozen blades of various sorts. He has daggers in scabbards on his upper arms, a bandolier of small triangular knives strapped to his chest, and three swords of different make on each of his hips. He still wears no armor, not even padding under his clothes, so Mercuria figures she’ll have to pull her punches to avoid maiming or killing him. Which she still doesn’t want to do!

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Prince Frank’s blue Mizser eyes meet her Deonid reds, and he gives her an easy smile. If he's confident because he thinks she'll still be off-balance by Ko's provocations, he's in for a big surprise. Mercuria hopes that he's confident because he's actually strong, instead. The Deonid didn't become subservient to the Reillyndian crown because the royals were unimpressive, after all. The Prince tosses his head, shaking some stray hairs that have escaped his small ponytail out of his field of vision, and paces back and forth a few steps.

Mercuria is ready for battle, as she always is. She wears a dutifully maintained suit of polished steel plate, but forgoes wearing a helmet - given her abilities, any obstruction to her perception isn't worth the amount of physical protection that a helmet might offer. She detaches her back from the wall and takes a step forwards.

Christopher and Elric Watanabe are the only non-combatants to yet linger on the field of play. Christopher stands stoically beside his Liaison as the dutiful salesman announces the terms of the duel to the combatants and audience.

"Prince Frank Mizser, 14th in line to the Reillyndian throne and an honored guest of the Depleted Lands Staves, has agreed to duel Mercuria III Deonid, First Assistant, to compensate for offenses rendered by his servant. The duel will be in the classical form, with the first fighter to achieve three clean hits being declared the victor. Begin with weapons sheathed in a state of spiritual neutrality. The duelists will reset after each clean hit. Punches should be pulled when necessary. Maiming and killing, while acknowledged as a theoretical possibility, are to be avoided at all costs. Warden Christopher Nakeem, the swordsman Lethrin II Pereman, and I, Elric Watanabe the Liaison, will serve as judges and referees. Is that understood?"

Frank and Mercuria both signal their assent. Elric and Christopher hustle off the field of play and take their positions behind the stone barrier, which flares to life with a pane of crackling energy stretching to the ceiling from its crystal bulbs. Elric raises his right arm.

"Duelists ready?"

Elric waits a moment, giving one last chance for objection.

When no objection comes, Prince Frank swings his arm back down to his side. "GO!"

Mercuria disrupts her spiritual neutrality - a state where one's Vim isn't being manipulated to do anything in particular - the moment Elric's words leave his mouth. Her Vim snaps to attention like a trained dog, going exactly where she wants it to go in fractions of a moment. Her life force is at her whim, bolstering her whole body's strength, speed, and durability - but a significant portion of her energy is directed to flow through her scarlet Deonid eyes.

Mercuria's sight deepens, sharpens, and intensifies. Her perception of time slows to a crawl and continues to tick slower still as her eye's Innate Yield Circuits greedily absorb more and more spiritual energy.

Prince Frank is moving, drawing a rapier from his right hip with his left hand. Mercuria notes the speed with which he moves - as she continues to amplify her eye's Vim supply, it appears ever more glacial.

Far too slow. Vim pools in the Yield Circuits that course up and down her legs and torso, and she takes a step back before bounding forward with superhuman speed and intensity. Her saber, a misshapen hunk of steel with jagged saw teeth on its straight edge, blurs from its scabbard into her hands as she clears half of the distance between them before her foot touches the ground a second time. Prince Frank's weapon is ready in a defensive stance, poised to intercept her on her current trajectory, so she takes several smaller steps at lightning speed instead, closing the distance.

Mercuria spins her saber in her hand so that the snaggletooth end will face Frank's rapier first. Her gait is loping and uncanny, like a raptor trying to sprint with the body of a woman, but with her empowered body it works efficiently just fine and serves to make her a more monstrous and less human opponent.When one learns to fight outside of the Staves, they're usually training to fight other humanoids, and she commonly emulates animals and monsters to better throw these sort of opponents off. She is within half a thought of him, and her sawtooth implement is swinging upwards towards his thrusting rapier.

The weapons make contact at each blade's midpoint with a clang, and then a moment of metallic scraping. Frank's rapier is caught in her blade's teeth, and as she continues to twist her arm upwards, he loses his grip as it is wrenched away from him and spirals away.

The Prince has his off-hand on the hilt of a knife from his bandolier, but Mercuria is already deep in his personal space, bringing a gauntleted fist upwards towards the Prince's royal chin. At the last moment she pulls away, mastering her bloodlust, and deigns to palm his face with her open hand instead.

Frank stumbles back - unhurt thanks to her restraint, but clearly the loser in that exchange. One of the judges rings a bell, and Mercuria arrests her momentum, returning to her state of spiritual neutrality. Not only is it necessary for the rules of the duel, it also conserves her Vim and willpower.

"Point, Mercuria!" announces Elric Watanabe, his voice carrying clearly across the arena. "One to zero, in favor of Mercuria!"

Mercuria turns and walks back to her starting position as Prince Frank retrieves his rapier.

"Aw, it's bent. This was an heirloom, you know," he says, but Mercuria is pretty sure he's not actually mad. He seems pretty detached from material possession for a royal carrying dozens of weapons.

She flaps her hand dismissively. "We can fix it for you," she says. "I'm not obligated to hold myself back from wrecking your toys."

"You aren't. That was pretty impressive."

"Says you. I'll accept your praise when you show me you have strength of your own."

"Very well..."

Elric signals that the next round will soon begin as both fighters have resumed their ready stances. "Duelists ready?"

"GO!"

Mercuria leaps into action as quickly as she did before, intent on repeating the same humiliating maneuver unless Prince Frank shows some backbone. Vim rages through her body, empowering Yield Circuits of all sorts, transforming her from merely superbly athletic to blatantly superhuman at the speed of thought.

Again she lopes towards Frank at unnerving speed, fast enough that she might have trouble controlling herself if she weren't so well versed in perception amplification. Prince Frank has drawn a broadsword, and Mercuria cackles to herself. That's his adaptation? Wielding a weapon too thick for her to grasp and disarm with her own so easily?

She could do it anyway, leveraging her apparently flatly superior (sad!) strength and Vim to shear his weapon in half or knock it out of his hands, but she decides to work around it as a sort of challenge to herself.

Frank is strafing to the side this time, trying to get at her flanks as she flies past, or force her to slow down, or something. She arrives at the edge of his weapon's reach and continues hurtling forwards under her own momentum, a deliberate bait.

Frank probably imagines he has to catch her at a moment like this, where she's going too fast to change her trajectory and dodge. She almost rolls her eyes when she sees him attempting to do just that, but he isn't deserving of that level of inattention, yet.

Frank twists into a sweeping horizontal slice with his broadsword, one foot pushing off of the ground while the other remains planted as a pivot. Acceptably executed, but mundane. Mercuria snarls in disdain.

You can use Vimitech, you can use Vim, do anything! Be exhilarating!

Mercuria plants an outstretched foot in the sandy arena floor, her leg hardened by Vim to become a stopping point for her whole body. Vim strengthens her torso and neck from the jarring impact as her boot's toe digs into the arena, plowing a trail. She leans backwards on that one leg, becoming parallel with the ground, under Frank's attack, stretching towards him even as momentum carries her past him. Twisting her jagged saber so that she only smacks him with the flat of the blade, her riposte is a distended, uncanny, impossible thing.

Her weapon passes through Prince Frank's leg as if it weren't there. Startled, momentarily worried she has somehow de-limbed him despite her restraint, her momentum is spent and her boot twists in the sandy earth, spinning her onto the arena floor in a heap.

The tip of a broadsword taps her steel cuirass from out of view. She looks up to see Prince Frank, smiling and intact. At his side stands a doppelganger, an identical man with a hazy stump where his right thigh ends.

"Point, Frank!" announces Elric Watanabe. "One to one, tied!"

Mercuria understands now - Prince Frank is an illusionist. He is not merely capable of using Vim and Vimitech, he is a prodigy on the level of Christopher - though likely with a different specialty.

Mercuria's body remembers to get to its feet as her mind is full of buzzing emotions. She feels shame at being so cocky and predictable, for not recognizing the illusion the moment she cut its leg and felt no resistance, anger at dropping a point to someone she doesn't - or didn't, until 5 seconds ago - respect, and finally, thankfully, that feeling she has lacked for so long - one of risk, of danger, of intrigue.

"Okay, that was very impressive. This duel is officially interesting enough for me to forgive you for your Edrilian's barbs. Why didn't you lead with that?"

“Truthfully, I needed to burn the first round to see you in action. I need to know how you like to fight, how you like to move, and how you watch the world around you. If you hadn’t blitzed me like that, I would’ve eventually become more proactive, but I didn’t want to waste Vim on a simulacrum that wouldn’t accomplish anything but revealing my ability. You only get to reveal you’re an illusionist once, after all…”

“Oh. Well, do you still think you have a shot now that I know?”

“I sincerely believe that I have an honest chance to win this duel.”

Mercuria studies the Prince’s face, even more suspicious of him now that she knows he could be magically concealing his true visage - she thinks Christopher would have noticed that, but a person’s Vimic techniques often say a lot about them even when they aren’t in use - and decides that he is earnest. Good.

“You’re in luck. If you hadn’t proven to be interesting, I was going to make Christopher let me bite your head off.”

“Hah!”

The duelists resume their positions. Two points in either direction will win it, and for the first time since she was exiled to the Depleted Lands, Mercuria feels the thrum of excitement.