Fehan lunged forward with a mischievous glint in his eyes. The spear he thrust out drew a beautiful line through the air before clashing with the head of Irsha’s Warhammer. Sparks flew and forced the War Orc to squint her eyes, while the Fomor just grinned. He leaned his body into a firm stance and twisted his wrist. The blade at the end of his spear turned and tried to snake past Irsha’s block. She imagined that metal tongue piercing through her throat and spraying a flower of blood behind her, which made her eyes open wide and her pupils contract. With a fierce yell, Irsha forced her weapon to revolve in an arc, sweeping the enemy’s spearhead down toward the earth. With that, Fehan seemed to ignore the sopping ground as he lightly stepped back, leaving a panting Irsha to slowly lift her hammer’s head out of the mud.

“Haha! Not bad, not bad! Your strength just barely passes, but I have to compliment you on those instincts. Tell me,” Fehan’s head tilted down and his jovial smile became more malicious, “did you imagine your own death just then?”

Irsha was still working to steady her breathing. Sweat was running down her neck that wasn’t a result of physical exertion. They had only shared one exchange, but she knew clearly that she was outmatched. The anger she had felt at having one of her beautiful locks severed was already completely pushed aside. She was no longer at liberty to think about things other than surviving against the enemy before her.

“Mm. Can I take your silence as a yes? Then, that’s quite the coincidence.” With hardly any warning, Fehan rushed forward. He swung his weapon like it was a sword instead of a spear, and the length of his weapon was blocked by Irsha’s. She was holding him back, but this was a bad position for a spear to be in. Even with that, Fehan used his greater strength and larger body to force Irsha to merely block that beautyless attack, the blade of his spear worryingly close to her throat.

From that position, Fehan leaned in close enough to whisper, “I also had a vision of ending your life.”

Irsha clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Fehan simply laughed and jumped back. That previous exchange had been nothing but a joke to him. More importantly, if she let him get to her any more than this, he would win the battle without even needing to fight.

Irsha gripped her weapon tightly. She was raised in a War Orc village. She had been born a War Orc. Things relating to battle were the most natural to her, and she clearly understood the importance of psychology in a fight.

But what a disgusting habit, waging a mental war against an already weaker opponent.

He had no need to weaken Irsha so she showed more openings. Just like he had told her at the start of the fight, he was enjoying dragging things out. If that was the case, she would also steady herself and do her best to stall for time.

Irsha ran through the mud and lifted her hammer up, swinging it in an attempt to dislocate Fehan’s shoulder. He simply sidestepped out of the way, calmly, like the bad footing didn’t bother him in the slightest. Irsha’s hammer dug up the mud, and the dangerous glint of metal snaked toward her abdomen. She pulled her arms closer to her body and released the strength in her legs, using the weight of her weapon to force her body down. With that, she managed to dodge the blade, but the body of the spear immediately whipped around and delivered a blunt force to her back. Irsha felt the wind leave her body, but she positioned a foot firmly in front of her and heaved her weapon out of the mud, swinging it at the enemy’s knees.

Just like after every other exchange, Fehan dodged by jumping back, which gave Irsha room to catch her breath and fix her posture. But that little bit of time was all she was given, as no more annoying lines were spouted. Fehan rushed in again, this time using a proper spear technique. He made use of the superior mobility of his weapon to draw confusing lines in the air, teasing Irsha with a flurry of small attacks. She blocked as many as she could with her Warhammer, but it was impossible for her to block all of them. Little by little, shallow cuts appeared on her face and arms. The heavy rain mixed with her blood so it ran sloppily over her tan skin.

She wanted to stall for help to come, knowing that this wasn’t an enemy she could defeat alone, but allowing small wounds like these to accumulate would spell her death. Irsha forced strength into her arms and drove the head of her Warhammer at the Fomor’s solar plexus, thinking he might at least leap away again and give her some space to breathe. However, because she forsook blocking, the metal tooth of Fehan’s spear was able to bite deeply into her right shoulder muscle. Fehan didn’t have enough time after that to dodge or block her blow completely, but he was able to step back enough that the glancing impact only dealt a negligible amount of damage. When he stepped back, his spear was removed from Irsha’s shoulder. Her left hand instinctively moved to press down on her wound and stop the bleeding, but the rosy liquid oozed out happily from between her fingers.

“Not a bad fight,” Fehan smiled. “But you look like you’ll have trouble swinging your weapon around past this. Is it about time to end it?”

Fehan leaned his body forward to dash in again, preparing his spear to slice through the thread of life that bound Irsha to this world. However, like a ripple running through space, all the heat of late summer was stripped away from the air. It was not a wind that passed overhead and vanished, nor was it a slow and steady freezing of the earth. It was an immediate and lingering cold that had abruptly taken over the area. Fehan was horrified to see that his sopping wet fur was hardening into solid ice, that his hooves had been frozen in the mud, and that this phenomenon had not extended beyond his own body.

Irsha was watching with wide eyes as the foe who had been about to kill her was turned into a living ice sculpture. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from that scene even as a hand descended onto her wounded shoulder.

“Pardon me,” a quiet voice said beside her ear. “.”

Irsha’s attention was finally stolen when a biting cold pain dug into her body. She removed her hand from her shoulder to see that the blood that had been rapidly evacuating her body was steadily icing over. She hissed at the pain but was still present enough to realize she had been saved from bleeding to death. Finally, Irsha looked down at the face of her savior, no, her reinforcement.

Fiara tilted her head in concern at Irsha’s blank stare. “Are you alright? You lost a lot of blood.”

Somehow, Irsha’s brain obtained the energy necessary to understand her situation and started turning again. “I’m a little dizzy, but I’ll be alright.” She looked at the frozen Fomor, “Is he dead?”

“Nope. I can’t kill them with just that. The heat thaws them out and then their regeneration kicks in. Now would be a good time to finish him though.”

Irsha nodded and lifted her hammer, though it made her head swim a little. With a couple of grunts, she broke both of Fehan’s knees, causing his body to topple over. Now that she could reach it properly, she brought her hammer down on his head, over and over, until she was able to break apart his skull, and splattered his brains.

Fiara smiled, “I’m going to go support Dagoran’s group. You should move to the back and get some rest. Don’t die before the chief can heal you.”

Irsha muttered absently in agreement, feeling like she was about ready to pass out. “Thanks for the help,” she managed, too tired to even feel ashamed of her lacking strength. Irsha retreated from the battlefield then, casually obliterating a few weaker Fomors on the way with her Warhammer, without even really being aware of it.

I think I’m gonna throw up, she thought vaguely, before passing out at the edge of the woods.