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>0 Damage Sustained
>Combat Concludes! Ever Vigilant now includes an immunity to being disarmed in the first round.
>Sir Emile Andrei will recover from ‘Battered’ status shortly.
Your opponent, Hassan Ibn Arif, is a nomad. To find themselves against heavier armoured opponents is nothing new to these hardy southern folk. You have found yourself disarmed before, but you’ve typically always had at least your dirk as a back up, and the lack of reach open to you to stave off of your attacker is new territory. The man’s initial first dash was a feint, and you find yourself shocked by how quick he can move. You misread his sidestep and turn too slowly, holding off the knife but in doing so allowing him to position his leg behind yours. With the barest application of force at the wrong angle you find yourself stumbling, and then falling.
<span class="mu-i">thoom thoom</span>
Your ears ring with the distinct rattle and clang of your armour even as your body feels the harsh impact of the sandy ground. You at least have the presence of mind to catch the downward stab, managing at the last moment to turn a ‘lethal’ blow into a ‘harmless’ slash across your gorget. The supervising Marshall watches on silently, not satisfied that your attacker has in fact struck a killing blow. The melee continues, but it was nearly over in those first few seconds already.
Your nomad opponent has the advantage, leaning over you in an attempt to force the wooden knife through your braced arms and into an opening in your armour. He is lithe and quick, acclimatised to the heat of the day and coarsened from untold hardships of a life spent eking a living out in the barbarous southern sands. But you are stronger than him, and the difference begins to tell even from your semi-prone position.
<span class="mu-i">thoom thoom</span>
Slowly, but surely, your scrabble secures a grip on your opponent’s wrist and begins to inch it back from the gap beneath the chin of your helm. Straining and grunting against one another in a desperate wrangle, the nomad warrior shifts his weight to press in for the kill while you strain with every fibre to stave him off. You are evenly matched and, judging from the calls of encouragement or derision from the growing audience of Dragon Guard bystanders, it is anyone’s guess whether the wooden dagger will find your throat or if you will overcome the nomad’s manoeuvre through sheer force and pin him in turn.
<span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-r">“Ata!”</span></span> The Marshall, not Durand but from one of the Nomad Talons, finally calls a halt to the spar.
<span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-s">thoom thoom</span></span>
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