“Every action has consequences. This is something too many youngsters often fail to get in their heads, at least until some consequence they couldn’t handle loom over them.” - Tomislav Kroyche, retired mercenary.

Adrian de Kars was livid from the insult of having his helmet’s visor struck aside like so much trash.

Well, somewhat worried as well, as the bastard peasant wench of a mercenary was stronger and faster than he expected, but mostly livid at the utter lack of decorum and respect shown by his opponent. It was against regulations to aim for the opponent’s visor in an honor duel, everybody worth a gold knows that for a fact!

“Honorless cur! Wench! How dare you ignore the rules that regulate duels between your betters!” cursed Adrian in his native tongue. To his frustration and dismay, all the reaction he saw from his opponent was how she tilted her beastial head to the side and raised an eyebrow questioningly. Of course the low-born mercenary doesn’t even understand him!

With a guttural scream of anger from deep down his throat Adrian stepped forward and swung his greatsword once more. The sword was a precious masterpiece, gifted to him by his uncle just before he left for Caroma to study. It had never failed him in the duels he fought against other young noble students while studying strategy and tactics in Caroma

So it greatly annoyed him to see the mercenary wench so lightly evade his blow, even daring to smirk at him while she did that!

He expertly halted the momentum of the blade and redirected it into a hewing downward cut with the false edge, a move done by a clever twist of his arms, only to miss his target once more by the barest margins, with the smirk remaining on his foe’s features. He tried to wipe out that smirk by thrusting his blade towards her face, but his opponent easily bent her neck to the side and narrowly avoided the blow as well, all without breaking a sweat.

Adrian was in the midst of retracting his blade for another series of strikes when he noticed a dark blur coming towards him from the side. For a brief moment he was glad that he no longer had the visor, as he might have otherwise missed it. He quickly tilted his blade into a guard position, primed to intercept the incoming blow from his opponent’s odd weapons.

He had not expected the blow to simply smash through his guard, as it was heavier and more powerful than he had expected. At least his attempt to block it had slightly deflected the blow from where it was aimed towards his shoulder, however, and it landed against the side of his chestplate, which was easily the thickest piece of armor he wore.

The impact that he felt even through the armor nearly drove the breath out from his lungs and shocked him. As a result, he failed to notice the second blow, aimed towards his waist, until it already slammed home with even more power behind it. Despite the skirt-like metal structure that covered his waist, the blow was one that caused him pain.

Even as he stumbled back, he noticed that there was a sizable dent on the metal plate that covered his waist on the right side, and that walking back caused a piercing pain from his hip, one that almost caused him to stumble. Somehow the mercenary wench had struck hard enough to injure him through his armor, which was something that should not be happening!

The suit of armor he wore used to belong to his father, after it had been resized to better fit him at his father’s request. It had been made by some of the best blacksmiths of the Barony, and was a subject of envy to many of his peers back in Caroma. How could a mercenary’s weapon manage to damage it to such an extent!?

His questions and frustrations were destined to go unanswered, however, as when he tried to deflect another blow from his opponent’s long maces, bad luck struck as the blow landed directly on a section of the sword’s blade that was already damaged from a previous hit. The metal of his greatsword failed under the stresses imparted upon it and shattered, leaving him with only the lower half of the blade.

Not that he ever had any chance to use what was left of his weapon, as the vicious blow continued on its path and accurately struck his left elbow. The blow easily crumpled the thinner armor that covered his elbow, the force of which was plenty to crush the flesh and pulverize the bone it protected. A scream of pain and outrage left Adrian’s mouth, but before it could go for long, a second blow landed against his waist.

The blow was aimed precisely where the armor was already bent and damaged, and the metal gave way underneath the force of the second strike, resulting in a sudden numbness in Adrian’s right leg and waist area, as he found himself suddenly toppling over to that side. He only managed to halt his fall by stabbing the remnant of his blade into the ground below.

And he only realized just how open that left him a moment later, far too late for him to do anything else.

Vaguely, Adrian heard his father’s angry yell from behind him, before another vicious blow struck his face, right at the area his visor was supposed to cover. Oddly enough, he felt no pain from the blow, not even as his vision distorted and then turned into darkness, nor as the voices around him suddenly seemed to come from much further away.

The last thought in the mind of Adrian de Kars before everything disappeared into the darkness – having one’s face and brain demolished by a blow from a metal truncheon was not a survivable injury after all – was a mixture of disbelief that he had lost, hatred towards his opponent, and in a small corner of his mind, some anger towards his uncle, who had started the trouble that had led to all this in the first place.