“Even if many consider it mock battles, the fighting between the teams in the arena retained its dangers. Fatalities happen from time to time, though of late they have successfully reduced its occurrence by quite a lot, with the last death happening four years ago. The penalties associated with them helped too, I’d say.

But heavy injuries like broken bones and the likes were pretty much the norm, and also the main reason why only established outfits and nations joined the league so far. The expenses of retaining a good healer for such prolonged periods of time would probably be beyond the budget of smaller outfits.” - Irisviel Edelstein, Captain of the Free Lances Mercenary Company, circa 681 FP.

“It’s a direct clash! The Lances had opted for a quick and brutal opening strike as their flanks occupied the Cuirassiers flank, and they had broken through the middle!” the announcer said excitedly, his excitement aped by the wild audience. “Oh! Felgor Demarches is down! The Lances strike team just struck him down as they passed! Will the Cuirassiers be able to recover from this setback!?”

From her seat at Orloff’s box, Cal thought the announcer’s hypothetical question as an unlikely one to happen. Unless an army had a really strong reaction force to plug said breaches, they often led to the battle’s end quite rapidly, due to the broken formation.

The battle itself devolved into a more chaotic mess, which the Lances seemed to favor over near formations. Their strike team of six managed to close the distance to the dwarven halberdiers with only a broken breastplate and helmet - on different members - as the price. Meanwhile, Cal noticed how the shieldbearers kept pushing the dwarven shieldsmen further away towards the flanks, and left the ongoing melee alone.

As they utilized their superior physiques, the shieldbearers from the lances hit their dwarven counterpart hard, and kept them on the backfoot. One lucky swing from the elephant-therian caught the side of a dwarf’s shield at an unfortunate angle, and the force of the blow wrenched and dislocated the dwarf’s arm. Both therian shieldbearers immediately focused down that dwarf, and took him down in short order, even as the dwarf’s on retaliatory final blow cracked one of their breastplates.

Said breastplate crumbled while they took care of the other dwarven shieldsman, and the two large therians found themselves face to face with three dwarven light infantry - two of which were down to one armor each - which was all that was left after their skirmishers and harassers “sacrificed” themselves to buy time for the others.

On the opposite side, a similar scene replayed itself, but the therian shieldbearers were down to an armor piece each there. The dwarves were no better off though, as only two of them were left in the game. The skirmishers from the Lances had exacted their toll in blood to great success there.

Both sides clashed almost at once. The dwarves tried to go around the shieldbearers to come to the aid of the halberdiers, who were being overwhelmed by the strike team of the Free Lances, while the shieldbearers stood in their way and prevented them from doing that.

Clad in lighter armor, the light infantry dwarves were notably more nimble and agile than the shieldbearers, and tried all sorts of tricks as they capitalized on that advantage to feint and break their way through. One of them even sacrificed themselves to take out the shieldbearer down to his helmet, as his own was crushed in turn.

In a two on one fight, the remaining two dwarves used their superior experience to deal with the remaining elephant therian shieldbearer. The young therian fought back, his wild instincts paired with muscle memory from years of military training, but in the end, his lack of experience proved to be his downfall.

He still managed to take one of the dwarves down with him, and shatter the helmet of the last one, but the dwarf was still “alive” by the rules as his breastplate was intact, if cracked. Said dwarf ran as fast as he could to where the Halberdiers were only to find a sight of despair awaiting him.

All the dwarven halberdiers were down for the count. Three of the Lances still stood, even if all three were down to one armor, and another was fast approaching - a shieldbearer from the other flank who had just finished his battle there - while the poor dwarf was left on his own.

One on four was terrible odds to say the least, yet the dwarf gave his best regardless. For a brief, shining moment, he gave a breathtaking performance that kindled hope in the hearts of those that supported the Cuirassiers, as he managed to somehow take out two of the four mercenaries he faced with his axe.

Yet that hope was shattered along with his breastplate when one of the remaining two Lances - a girl Cal thought might be an Elf-Orc mix like her half-brother - caught his axe with one of her own, and deftly struck hard against his open chest.

The dwarf slumped down to his knees in utter dismay, all too aware that this loss might well have cost them the year’s championship. The remaining two members from the Free Lances team raised their arms and yelled in triumph instead, a yell that was echoed and amplified by the now standing audience.

That very same audience were partly embroiled in a massive brawl, as emotions ran high and supporters of the Cuirassiers took their frustrations out on supporters of the Free Lances who happened to sit near them. Naturally, those supporters had not taken it quietly either, and struck back just as hard, with the brawl now involving hundreds, if not thousands of people all at once.

“Is that… normal?” Cal couldn’t help but to ask when she saw the growing brawl.

“The youngsters are very passionate about their entertainment!” replied Orloff with a loud guffaw. From his nonchalant manner, Cal thought that this situation was likely nothing too serious then. “Just leave them be. Most of us consider this part of the show by now! It always happens after a close fight!”