Mercuria calmly breathes in and out, polishing her weapon while she cultivates her inner Vim in preparation of her duel. What a situation this is. Dueling a Prince, huh? Certainly nothing she expected to be doing anytime soon, or ever, really. But the Prince, in a strange performance of apologetic martyrdom, had volunteered to take the place of the Edrilian she had challenged, Ko Adrilius. She knows from experience that royals tended to be overdramatic, but apologizing for the actions of their subordinates by offering themselves in their stead seemed a tad ridiculous to her, and off-color from the selfish stereotype of the breed she holds in her head.

Of course, this new, substituted duel wouldn’t be “to the maiming” like Mercuria had challenged Ko. That would never fly, even though “to the maiming” duels usually ended with wounds that could be quickly tended by a little Vim and a capable healer. Instead, after Prince Frank had volunteered to take Ko’s place, Christopher had immediately put forth the idea that the duel should instead utilize traditional Stave competitive dueling rules, where the first to 3 “hits” wins. Since no-one wanted to see Prince Frank get maimed and get in hot water with the throne back home, the Staves quickly backed that idea wholeheartedly. Prince Frank, for his part, made a big show of accepting the safer offer if that would assuage his host’s wounded hearts, or something. Personally, Mercuria doubts she wouldn’t want to rip that Edrilian punk’s heart from his ribs after she beat Prince Frank in this duel, but she figures it’s probably rude to refuse a duel from royalty.

First to three hits, and ideally neither fighter would do more than pierce the skin of the other. Keeping these rules in mind, Mercurial looks up from the polishing of her weapon and nods to Mason Kuridin, the elected referee of the duel. Christopher, who has been stormily brooding on the crate beside her since the duel was arranged. He seems pissed. Mercuria knows he’s pissed. Ah, whatever, he could never hold a grudge to her. Despite the tension, when she stands up to enter the ring, he claps her on the shoulder and gives her a strained smile.

“Don’t lose, but don’t beat him too badly,” he says sagely. This guy is so wise…

“Right,” Mercuria responds. She can probably afford not to hurt this royal’s feelings too badly, she judges derisively.

Mercuria trides into the ring, and her opponent does as well. Prince Frank wears an ornate, well polished set of leather armor, decorated with woven trims in the colors of his family’s heraldry - the red and white drake of House Miszer. His weapon, sheathed, appears to be a longknife or short sword. It’s surprisingly simple, for a noble, and an odd weapon choice in her eyes.

Mercuria herself wears the polished steel she wears constantly. Her own weapon, the single edged long saber with a secondary handle worked near the tip of the blade, is slung over her back in the clip style scabbard it belongs to. Her metal buckler hangs off her left forearm.

The “ring” is a circle with a diameter of 30 feet, walled off with stone and wood barriers that come to the waist of most men. In the audience she can see Christopher, the Council, Prince, Frank’s entourage, and dozens of Staves come to watch the scariest warrior in the region go toe to toe with royalty.

“Let’s have a good, clean fight. First to three hits wins, You may draw.” Kuridin says simply, and moves out of the way. Both duelists draw their weapons. When Kuridin is clear, he blows a loud, piercing whistle, declaring the beginning of the duel.

Mercuria and Frank circle each other, sizing the other up. They maintain a distance of around 10 feet between them. Mercuria’s Vim, always circulating her body’s Yield Circuits, intensifies in strength and volume at her call. She sharpens her silver Deonid eyes with this energy, and they grow sharper to an absurd degree as her inner mental processes accelerate to absorb this new influx of sensory information.

Seconds later, she smiles in mirth. Prince Frank is attempting to deceive her. While Frank in front of her circles her, matching her pace and eyeing her warily, a Prince Frank shaped distortion in the flow of light and air takes a roundabout path towards her. She wonders if Frank is taunting or underestimating her, or if he’s just totally unaware of the signature Vim abilities of the Deonid.

Every living creature on the planet possesses Vim. The two concepts are inseparable. Uncontrolled, untrained, or unguided, Vim tends to merely manifest as slightly accelerated healing, vague sixth senses, minor, inefficient, unspecific phenomenon that couldn’t be relied upon or reliably called abilities. Many wild animals, intelligent species, and races of human, though, are gifted with adaptations referred to as Natural Yield Circuits within them that allow Vim to be channelled with greater ease to achieve specified, efficient effects in accordance to the Circuit’s Signature and Motif. Deonids, for example, are gifted with extremely complex Circuits in their eyes and brain that allow them to tap into various powerful abilities when flooding the Circuits with Vim. Through discipline, training, and various rituals, Mercuria has filled the rest of her body with a deep and complex network of Acquired Yield Circuits as well, making her physically menacing and unpredictable even without tapping into the famous silver Deonid’s eyes. In any given room, she’s the most lethal inhabitant, and she knows it. Her passion for combat and bloodshed is projected out of her with such intensity that everyone else knows it too, most times.

With her eyes sharpened her thoughts accelerate as well, and she decides on her course of action within seconds of the revelation. She takes a step back, setting the ball of her foot into the ground, and bounds to the side of the ring her assailant is (poorly) concealed on. Before (secret) Prince Frank can react, she’s slipped to his left - he holds his longknife in his right - and taps his invisible flank with the edge of her blade. Her Vim returns to its normal levels, and she takes a step away. The crowd murmurs in confusion, and some Staves cup their hands and cheer.

“Nice try,” she simply says. She’s a little miffed he thought that would work. In fact… Maybe it was bait? To try to lure her into a false sense of security. Should she see him attempt it again, she’ll think more carefully next time.

He barks in laughter and reveals himself, while the other Prince Frank dissolves into flaking bits of light. “I should’ve known you’d see right through that,” he admits, as Kuridin returns to the ring and resets the fighters, declaring the contest one point in Mercuria’s favor.

Moments pass, and they begin again. Mercuria infuses her eyes and mind with Vim, sharpening both her perception and her cognition time to superhuman levels. Prince Frank seems to have abandoned subtlety this time, instead grasping his longknife in both arms and rushing forward to attack. He’s not uncoordinated, Mercuria notes. He looks calm and resolute. If she were a normal Stave, perhaps, he would be trouble. But even the best tutor royalty can buy couldn’t surpass her own talents and dedication. Christopher said not to try to humiliate the guy, but she can’t resist an opportunity like this. She’d never show off like this in a real fight, but this is just a consolation prize, anyway.

She waits until he’s a heartbeat away, bringing his knife down towards her left shoulder, before she boosts her calves with Vim and prepares to flit away. She can see the glint of triumph in his eyes.

Hah, she thinks, beginning to move. Then, without warning, her left pauldron rings out with a clang, and Frank’s blade stops in midair. Mercuria freezes, and Frank lets his blade lower, a look of satisfaction grasping his young face. As Mercuria watches, the Prince’s longknife shifts and changes, along with its scabbard. The crowd is like “!!!”. Mercuria flushes in a mix of embarrassment and anger. She feels the irrational urge to strike back, but forces it down and looks Frank in the eye.

“That was smart,” she says simply.

“Thank you. Concealing the length of a blade in illusion is a much simpler ordeal than concealing an animate human. Don’t look so sour - it’ll only work once, after all,” he says good-heartedly. Mercuria nods, narrows her eyes, and returns to her starting position.

This time, she’ll move faster than he can weave his next trick. The next round starts, and her ocular Yield Circuits are already pulsing with Vim while those in her legs vibrate with that same life energy. She bounds forwards, twisting in midair so the tip of her blade taps into Frank’s leather breastplate before he can finish his first step. Mercuria doesn’t look at him while she turns away, seeing Christopher raise his bushy eyebrows out from under his metal visor.

2-1 Mercuria. Kuridin announces that score, resets the match, and they begin again in a few more moments.

Mercuria just does the same thing again. She sets her feet and pulses forward with an explosion of dust and dirt from the ring’s natural floor. She respects her opponent enough to expect him to be prepared for the same move twice, so this time she sets her feet to the ground halfway to her opponent and jumps straight up, reaching the apex of her jump at lightning speed and molding her Vim into a collection of outward jets pointed upwards to quickly redirect her at the ground. She appears behind her opponent in a puff of dirt, and brings the blade of her saber to his ribs - to touch only air.

The illusion Frank melts away, and Mercuria immediately searches for the genuine article. To her left, Frank reforms from thin air and lunges at her with his longsword, but she steps to the side deftly. Gonna have to be quicker than that! Then another unexpected clang rings out. She looks down to her left side, where Prince Frank’s actual physical longswords’ blade is pressing against the side of her breastplate. She is very confused, and even angrier at herself for falling for another trick. So he was holding back his illusory prowess at the start? Or was she merely distracted, overconfident?

“A little misdirection does wonders, I find. I merely immediately prepared the illusion and stood totally still to the side when you turned your back, last round,” Frank explains. Mercuria curses herself silently, and faces him the whole way back to her starting position. She is NOT losing this duel. And she has an idea.

2-2, match point. The duel begins again. Mercuria pours forth her Vim. She sweeps the ground in front of her with one foot, sending a swathe of dust in a wide cone forward towards what she can only assume is a false “Prince Frank”. Her ever-watchful Deonid eyes spot the moment the dust cloud congeals or parts on the invisible body of her her enemy, and in nearly the same moment she’s surged forward to sweep him off his feet by grabbing his calf with her arm as she dips past him. The real, physical Prince Frank tumbles to the ground, and she puts her blade to his armored chest.

“Good move,” he compliments her from the ground. “I surrender.”

Mercuria nods, helps him to his feet, and Kuridin wanders into the ring for the final time to declare her the victor. She receives a polite round of applause from the gathered Council and Frank’s entourage, and an uproarious cheer from the Staves in attendance. Good way to end it, then. She makes eye contact with Ko Adrilius, the Edrilian who provoked her to this whole debacle. He raises 3 fingers on one hand, 2 on the other, and then shrugs with a smirk. No, Mercuria reckons, this duel wasn’t enough to diffuse the enmity between them. The Edrilian didn’t know when to stop looking for trouble. She clasps hands with Prince Frank in good faith, and leaves grinding her teeth. Christopher is probably going to lecture her for this whole ordeal, but before that she’s going to beat the snot out of the training golems he designed for her. To help her think.