“Just because you’re dressed to the gills with the best armor money can buy doesn’t mean you should charge the enemy like an idiot. That road leads to naught but an early grave.” - Hassan Ibn Namsul, instructor for the Chosen Guards of the Hassid Caliphate, circa 402 VA.

Once the signal for the duel to start was given, Erycea nimbly leapt up to her feet from her seated position. Even clad in armor, she felt light, her movements unhindered. Of course, a lot of that was thanks to how Grandpa Hogarth had personally made her brigandine to make sure that it suited her exact needs, rather than leaving part of the process to his assistants.

Where full plate armor like what her opponent wore was expensive stuff, something that would have taken weeks of a skilled smith’s time to make, brigandines like what she wore were basically considered the poor man’s alternative to it. It was far easier to have the smith’s assistants and apprentices to churn out dozens of small plates of metal than it was for a skilled smith to craft a part of a custom-fitted platemail after all.

What most people with such armor don’t have compared to her was a master blacksmith with centuries of experience who specialized in brigandines, however. The brigandines worn by the members of the Free Lances were all put together under Hogarth’s directions, at the very least, and like better armor, were custom-fitted to their wearer’s needs.

Erycea’s own set was more flexible than what most would have expected out of the typically rigid armor, and looked a bit thicker as well. Her grandfather had made it with extra layers of cloth padding on both the inside and outside, not only for comfort but also to increase the armor’s effectiveness against most attacks. The result was armor that was comfortable to wear and retained some flexibility without sacrificing protection.

If it was a tad heavier than what most wore, Erycea wasn’t troubled by it, since her therian heritage made her stronger than humans and her body could easily handle the extra load.

In contrast to her light steps, her opponent took firm, steady steps towards her. She knew that plate armor like what he wore wouldn’t have limited the man’s mobility by that much, but it was still a noticeable weight, and most people experienced with fighting while wearing armor would usually take it slow when they could afford to in order to save their stamina.

That was a good thing. At least the spoiled noble brat had some experience behind him. The fight would have felt too much like bullying an incompetent toddler otherwise for Erycea. Instead of coming towards the young armor-clad noble, Erycea made a provocative gesture, essentially inviting him to come get her, if he could.

She had not expected it to work, but it turned out that the noble fell for her provocation and stepped towards her with wider steps, his greatsword swinging towards her in a wide arc that gave little thought to defense. Clearly someone used to relying on their armor to keep them safe then. It was a notion Erycea would disabuse soon enough, but for the time being, she took a step back and easily avoided the swing instead.

To his credit, the young noble managed to not only halt the momentum of his swing, he even redirected a good bit of it into a reverse swing from the other direction. This time, however, Erycea was not playing to his time, and the metal truncheon in her right hand lashed out to meet the greatsword before it could fully build up its momentum for a proper strike.

The impact was marked by a cacophonous noise of metal striking against metal, and although Erycea swung her weapon one-handed, she actually pushed the greatsword away with her blow. A sizable chip was visible on the greatsword’s blade, near its tip, right where Erycea’s truncheon had made contact with it and blew it away.

Before her opponent could react, Erycea struck with her other truncheon, her strike aimed directly at the head. Her opponent managed to react in time to take a step back and avoid taking the blow full-on to the side of his head, as instead the truncheon’s uppermost segment only managed to strike the conical protruding part of the man’s visor.

That blow was still strong enough to not only bend the steel plate of the helmet, but since the helmet was secured against the gorget of the chestplate below it, also to rip the visor off as a whole. One of the hinges that connected the visor to the helmet broke as the blow bent the metal aside, leaving the ruined wreckage of what used to be the helmet’s visor hanging from the left side of the noble’s helmet, held in place only by the other hinge.

Taken by surprise, the young noble stepped back a few more steps, as he took a distance from Erycea and nervously touched the wreckage of his visor with one gauntleted hand, his other hand still holding his greatsword and pointing it towards her. She allowed him to do so, seeing no urgency in the fight. Her opponent was used to fighting in armor, but was unused to fighting someone who knew what to do in order to deal with said armor.

It was a fatal bit of arrogance on his part to assume that just because he had the best sort of armor that money could buy and had never been bested in duels under a controlled, safe environment then he would also be able to triumph in real fights. A typical case of spoiled youths raised in a glasshouse where everyone praised them for their “genius” who would only learn later on that the world was rarely as nice as they expected it to be, to their detriment.

Erycea planned to be that detriment for this one noble youth in particular, and she had no plans to let her opponent live and learn from the experience.