Vesryn was getting better at weathering the storm on his own, but Khari was also hitting harder than ever.
She'd improved markedly since he first fought against her in Haven, and it was safe to say that here, in Rilien's tower in Skyhold, without Saraya's help, he was not fighting nearly as well. The purpose of the session was largely for his benefit, as he doubted Khari gained much of anything from landing hit after hit on him other than a decent workout. And with Romulus still gone on the Riptide to parts in Rivain and back, the little bear had more time to spend training with Vesryn instead, which he tried his best to see as a gift in disguise.
"Not getting tired, are you?" he asked once they had a moment to breathe, rolling his shoulders to loosen them up. The question was quite rhetorical; he knew full well that Khari could do this all day, especially with Stel nearby to tag one of them out occasionally and take her own turns. With Cyrus gone as well, the three of them had been putting in far more dedicated practice, and Vesryn liked to think it was paying dividends for all of them. They couldn't know when the next time would be that their skill would be needed.
Vesryn stood his ground for her next attack, deflecting several swift and heavy slashes aside. He'd been working especially hard on not absorbing the full force of her swings with his guard, instead precisely redirecting them aside, forcing her to expend more energy than him and giving him a better chance of finding windows to counterattack. He'd found a few earlier, but none this time. Khari was getting less reckless with her offense all the time, and made fewer mistakes than before, especially against him. They'd practiced enough to know each other's tendencies.
The engagement ended with Khari stepping around Vesryn when he whiffed on an attempted counter, her own blade whacking across his upper back with a loud clang of metal. He pitched forward and nearly fell, instead merely stumbling a few steps with a grimace. Expelling a few breaths, he removed his helmet as he turned. "Well played." His eyes found Stel at the side of the practice ring. "Think you could tire her out a bit more for me? I might have a chance then."
"I'm not convinced tiring her out is really possible, but I'll do my best to contribute." Stel offered them both a smile, uncrossing her arms and letting them drop. There was something to be gained from watching each other spar as well, something she tended to take as much advantage of as she could. "Let's switch things around a bit, Khari. Small arms?" She crossed to one of the many racks of practice weapons, picking out a pair of daggers and tossing one to the elf. They were made of metal, but the edges blunted so they wouldn't cut each other to ribbons. That didn't stop them from smarting a great deal if they connected, though.
They did this quite often—changing the parameters of their fights, so as to prepare themselves for as many different kinds of situation as possible. It had done a great deal to show them that they all had valuable things to teach and learn. Khari was easily the most relentless of them, but the advantage was Estella's on the days they chose not to use armor. None of them was entirely outclassed by anyone else unless Rilien elected to demonstrate something, which he occasionally did, all the more to their collective benefit. Or, of course, unless Khari decided she wanted to spar Saraya on some particular occasion.
Khari caught the dagger easily, stabbing her practice claymore into the sand outside the ring and leaving it there. She peeled down her dark hood, lifting her open-faced helm off as well, though the metal mask over the lower half her face remained intact. It was on balance much wiser to have as much peripheral vision as possible when fighting Stel—she was extremely mobile in the ring and had caught Khari by surprise more than once, particularly on the occasions when she added her mark's powers into the mix.
White teeth flashed in the mask's gaps. “Watch out, Stel. I've been practicing with these, you know. Knifed my share of Venatori at Halamshiral in my fancy dress and all." She moved through a sequence of motions which was by now long-familiar, testing herself for any damage she'd failed to notice before. She'd taught them how to do the same; apparently it was a standard chevalier practice, in case adrenaline dulled the pain of an injury so much that it went beneath notice. Probably more a risk for someone who fought like she did than anyone else.
"Then you'll have to show me what you've learned," Stel quipped back, and they both dropped into their ready stances. As she often did, Stel attacked first, darting forward quickly and going directly for the sliver of skin between Khari's gorget and the underside of her chin.
Her aim was accurate, but Khari stepped aside at the last moment to divert it before Stel could adjust, half-turning so she was at ninety degrees and aiming for Stel's less-armored side. She hit only air—Stel rolled away and back to her feet swiftly, lunging again to make up the distance while Khari was pulling her strike back.
That was the rhythm of things for several minutes. They moved as lightly and quickly as their feet and reaction times would allow, aiming for weak spots when they could and suitably-distracting ones when they could not. Actual hits were few and far between; Khari sustained the majority of those, when her armor meant she could afford them. Occasionally, their weapons met with a clang—Khari was considerably stronger than Stel, but Stel was the more precise of the two. Her deflections were likewise exact, and so she didn't require strength she did not have, and the match continued quite evenly for some time.
Both of them had come a long way—all four of them had, in point of fact, and it showed. Stel feinted, half-lunging before she pulled up and switched her knife from one hand to the other to come in from the other side. Khari was fooled almost for a moment too long, but managed to get her gauntlet in the way for a block. The knife hit with a scrape before Stel withdrew it and jumped back to reset the distance. They were both understandably wary of closing to range on the other's terms, and the ebb and flow of their motion was nearly constant as they ventured forward and withdrew again.
But over time it became clear that Stel was the superior combatant in this style: Khari was clearly not all that accustomed to the short, light blade in her hands, and at times seemed almost to forget she was wielding it instead of a much longer one. One such mistake eventually cost her the match, a faltering in her guard allowing Stel to step in close and catch her arm, lifting it up over her head and resting the blunt tip of her tagger at her friend's unprotected armpit.
Khari conceded with a breathy laugh. “I know there's a big artery there, but death by armpit-stabbing would just be an embarrassing way to go, right?"
Stel grinned back at her, eyes narrowing with the force of her smile. "I'll be sure to aim for somewhere more dignified next time." Releasing Khari's arm, she stepped back. "What do you think, Ves? Want to go another round with the Red Bear of Skyhold?"
"I do love getting mauled," he said, shrugging and hefting up his shield and a blunted spear. "Perhaps this will give you a bit more trouble, though." He didn't usually prefer the shield and spear combination for single combat, but against Khari he'd rarely used it at all. Perhaps he'd be able to catch her off guard once or twice. He enjoyed watching her and Stel fight, and enjoyed a little more watching Stel win, but beating Khari himself would probably outdo both.
Khari considered the arrangement for a moment, tucking the knife into her belt and hefting her sword from the sand to lay across her shoulders. Her helmet went back on her head, too. This was, after all, an entirely different kind of fighting than the kind she'd just been doing. She tilted her head at him, then, a familiar glint in her light green eyes. “Saraya hasn't had a go at me in a while. Does she fancy helping you beat the tar out of me again? I could go for it."
Khari was right; it wasn't every day she asked for this. Probably because the fights between her and Vesryn-with-Saraya always tended to be a little more intense than the ones without. Each side feeling they had a little bit of something to prove, perhaps. For Khari, that she was actually improving and coming closer to being on Saraya's level. And for Saraya, almost the opposite, that Khari's chevalier training wasn't nearly enough to best her. Vesryn didn't think Saraya would be okay with losing to anyone, let alone Khari.
But, today Vesryn was willing to have another go at it. It had been a long session of practice already, and he honestly hadn't been looking forward to another round of being pounded on by Khari's relentlessness. "Sounds like a wonderful way to end an afternoon." He slid his tallhelm down into place, leveling his spear at her and showing her the face of his shield. "Your move."
Khari didn't immediately take it, at least not in the usual way. she knew by this point that she had to be at her best if she was to last more than a few minutes, which was something she could at least reliably do now. Partly because she'd gotten smarter about fighting at least as much as she'd gotten physically stronger or faster. She started to circle; Vesryn turned to keep the shield between them.
When she darted in, they hadn't even finished a quarter-turn. His thrust was turned aside by a deft parry, but she wasn't quick enough to hit a second time before he'd checked her with the shield. The hit was hard enough that she went to the ground, rolling out of it before the blunt polearm could find her and attacking again.
She was, as ever, utterly relentless, but his blocks needed no fine-tuning now, and he was able to turn each blow aside with the minimum effort necessary to deflect her. That was quite a bit more than it had been, but still not enough to wear him down quickly. Her own defenses had improved, but she continued to mostly rely on dodging, turning what would have been devastating center-mass hits with a sharper spear into less major injuries: there he clipped her hip, there skimmed over the side of her ribcage instead of finding the thinner chainmail protecting her near the waist.
The shield seemed to give her more trouble than the spear; it wasn't much smaller than she was, in all honesty, so perhaps that was understandable. She was slowly starting to get the hang of working around it as much as possible, though; her footwork resembled Stel's a great deal more than it had once done. Light, but solid. Her sorties against him resulted in losing her footing only about half of the time, and she was always quick to find it again. The fact that she took "injuries" despite her mobility was something she just seemed to accept as part of the course of the fight—as long as they were light enough, there was no reason to declare the match over.
She turned another stab, spinning out of the way of the shield, but her attempt to hit him in the side was interrupted by the low sweep of the spear; she was forced to jump back to avoid it. A gap appeared in her guard on the left side, but she ducked his thrust and lunged when he went for it. A deception, then. Khari tsked when he shifted, the blow she'd meant to deal him turned aside by his shield with the change, and sprinted out of range when her miss left her open for real.
"You'll bleed to death before you get a hit in at this rate," Vesryn said, though the tone of the taunt didn't have nearly the bite it once carried, back in Haven. The flow of the fight was easy enough to see. If they both attempted to wear the other down Vesryn would win, as he'd already landed a number of light hits on her, and even small victories on her part wouldn't help her catch up now. Her weapon wasn't built for it, either. She would hope for the heavy blow, no doubt, trying to break down the door of the tower and end the siege quickly before her "wounds" could catch up with her.
Which, for Khari, would take a very long time, but then, Saraya had no issue with a prolonged combat.
It certainly didn't seem to provoke her the way it once had, either. Khari laughed, a little breathlessly from exertion, and shook her head, subtly enough that she didn't have to take her eyes off him to do it. “I'm not patient enough to bleed to death."
They reengaged, Vesryn feinting a spear thrust and then taking an aggressive step forward, aiming for a shield bash to plant her flat on her back when she dodged. The plan worked as Saraya expected; Khari dodged left, the spear thrust didn't follow through, and she should've absorbed the hit of the shield fully. Only she didn't. Somehow it didn't make it there in time, and suddenly Khari was on his left side, heavy blade rushing diagonally down at him.
He rotated quickly, getting the shield up just in time for her blade to clang loudly against it, a full impact that was distinctly different from the usual glancing scrapes and turned aside blows. It was enough to knock Vesryn back a step, and it almost felt as if the air itself changed in the room. An ooh escaped Vesryn, not entirely devoid of uncertainty. He was actually a bit confused as to what had happened. Either he was slower than he and Saraya thought, or Khari had suddenly gotten much faster than he remembered.
Vesryn didn't recall anything colliding with his head, but suddenly he felt more unstable than before. Not enough to let it show, with Saraya's help, but for a moment there was the oddest sensation in his extremities like his hands and feet didn't quite belong to him. Wouldn't fully obey him. By the uncertainty he felt in his motions, they weren't quite obeying Saraya either.
He frowned, but Khari had clearly sensed blood in the water, encouraged by getting very close to the decisive hit she needed. She charged back in, batting aside a thrust that was more defensive than anything in nature. Her next swing was aimed high, head level, probably intending to force Vesryn's shield off the ground somewhat, giving her an opening to then go low for a trip. Only the shield remained firmly rooted in place, and actually sunk lower, the bottom rim of it touching the sand just before the blow arrived.
Vesryn's weight started to tip forward against his will just as Khari's blade collided with his helmet. His vision was violently twisted to the side, all his senses overpowered by an earsplitting ring of metal on metal, before everything went black.
He knew not how much time passed, but when his senses started to return, he was immediately met with a powerful throb in his head, one that he couldn't immediately identify. Surely the collision it had just suffered with Khari's blade had something to do with it. He groaned, the sound muted in his ears, but steadily it gained clarity, and he could discern that Stel was speaking to him. He could barely see her, though she was no more than a foot from him.
He felt the sensation of her fingers on the sides of his face; clearly she'd removed his helm at some point. There was a fuzzy, bluish-purple light at the periphery of his vision—her magic. He didn't feel anything, though, that would correspond to any spell. Gradually, her words became slightly clearer. He caught his name a few times, the tone of it clearly worried, but devoid of any panic or hysteria.
He blinked at her rapidly, trying to force himself to see her more clearly. It helped a little. He was having trouble parsing through what he was feeling, besides the physical pain. His body felt like his own again, but he felt a foreign sinking feeling from Saraya. A troubled, disturbed realization that had yet to really sink in for Vesryn. He reached up to grab Stel's hand with his own, and smiled. "Hello, you. I'm, uh... alright? I think?" He really didn't know, to be honest, but instinctively he knew that not being okay was against his nature. He tried to push himself up, but even the first foot of lifting his head off the ground came with wooziness, and it definitely showed on his face.
A bit of relief flickered across her face, probably at the fact that he was at least speaking clearly, but when he tried to move, she shifted her free hand to his shoulder and shook her head slightly. "Forgive me if I feel the need for a second opinion," she said quietly. "I sent Khari for Harellan and Astraia. I wasn't sure if the problem was something physical, or..." her mouth turned down, etching a frown into her visage. "I think you're okay where Khari hit you, mostly, but, well. Can't hurt to be sure."
It didn't take more than a few minutes for all of them to arrive; they'd clearly been sprinting. Khari stood back several feet, letting the mages get a little closer with as little crowding as possible. Harellan looked immediately to Stel. "Diagnostics?"
She looked uncertain. "I'm not really sure. Something doesn't seem quite right, but I can't tell if that's just where he was hit, or..." Stel cut herself off, a hint of frustration pinching her face about the eyes. Her grip on Vesryn's hand tightened enough for him to feel the difference.
The elven man hummed thoughtfully, kneeling next to her at Vesryn's side. He passed a hand several inches over his forehead, then back again, his palm and fingers green in the same way Stel's were violet. He frowned slightly, a small line appearing between his brows. "How does the connection feel, Vesryn?"
"It's... fine now," he said, a little uncomfortable with the rapidly increasing number of people kneeling next to him. Astraia quickly took up a spot by his head on the other side from Stel and Harellan, discarding her staff and lighting a spell in her hand before her knees even hit the sand. Vesryn was halfway to waving her off before he decided that it was quite futile. "It was during the fight, it just... I felt sluggish, like falling asleep quite suddenly, like my hands and legs just wouldn't respond. I couldn't balance."
"Gods, this bruise..." Astraia said breathlessly. He could see sweat forming on her brow, which was creased with worry. "You're lucky your skull is still in one piece. Thank your helmet, I guess." She looked up suddenly, at Khari, unable to hide the bit of anger that broke through in her expression. "Were you trying to kill him or something? What happened?"
“What?" Khari looked genuinely surprised for a moment—the absence of her mask made it easy to tell—but it was swiftly chased away by obvious guilt. “No, of course not. I was—sparring him. With Saraya. I never expected the hit to land, and he went out of it at the wrong moment. I couldn't pull the blow by the time I realized." Her grimace deepened; she met his eyes then. “I'm sorry, Ves. I didn't mean to... to do that." She gestured vaguely to the side of her own head.
"I know." He grabbed Astraia's hand, and she looked back down at him. "Relax, Skygirl. It wasn't her fault. She had every reason not to hold anything back. I was kicking her ass up until that point." Despite his best efforts, he was starting to feel a little frustrated. Astraia acting like he could've died. Estella worried and sending Khari rushing for help from Harellan, who immediately began inquiring after Saraya.
Even if all of them were absolutely right.
"Forgive my glibness," he said to all four of them, "someone has to make up for all the negativity swirling around in my head right now." Saraya was clearly convinced that this was the worst of signs, the last thing she wanted to happen to them. Vesryn couldn't argue with that, and the implications were frightening to say the least. What if it happened again, in a battle where his opponent wouldn't go running for aid after downing him? What if it happened when he was needed to protect someone he cared about? He shook the thoughts from his head, but the cobwebs remained. He was resolved to ignore them. "Help me up? Or are we just going to lie here in the sand a while longer?"
Stel cleared her throat. "Best not, or none of us will stop finding it for weeks." It was hardly her most shining attempt at humor, but she managed a small smile and stood, using their already-linked hands to help leverage him up as well. Once he was standing, she hugged him, and not particularly gingerly, either. "I'm sorry I made a fuss," she said, barely audible. "I'm glad you're okay." She wasn't nearly naïve enough not to have grasped the same implications as everyone else, so it was fair to suppose she meant okay right now.
Had she not hugged him, he might've fallen over again, as his balance at the moment was atrocious. He had no idea what to attribute that to, however, since it was likely that he was more than a little concussed, helmet or no. "It's alright," he said. "You know I'd make a fuss for you, too." Once he finally felt he wasn't in danger of falling over anymore, he slowly released Stel from his grasp, looking uncertainly at Harellan. "I'll, uh... let you know when the headache fades?"
If the headache faded. That remained to be seen.
She'd improved markedly since he first fought against her in Haven, and it was safe to say that here, in Rilien's tower in Skyhold, without Saraya's help, he was not fighting nearly as well. The purpose of the session was largely for his benefit, as he doubted Khari gained much of anything from landing hit after hit on him other than a decent workout. And with Romulus still gone on the Riptide to parts in Rivain and back, the little bear had more time to spend training with Vesryn instead, which he tried his best to see as a gift in disguise.
"Not getting tired, are you?" he asked once they had a moment to breathe, rolling his shoulders to loosen them up. The question was quite rhetorical; he knew full well that Khari could do this all day, especially with Stel nearby to tag one of them out occasionally and take her own turns. With Cyrus gone as well, the three of them had been putting in far more dedicated practice, and Vesryn liked to think it was paying dividends for all of them. They couldn't know when the next time would be that their skill would be needed.
Vesryn stood his ground for her next attack, deflecting several swift and heavy slashes aside. He'd been working especially hard on not absorbing the full force of her swings with his guard, instead precisely redirecting them aside, forcing her to expend more energy than him and giving him a better chance of finding windows to counterattack. He'd found a few earlier, but none this time. Khari was getting less reckless with her offense all the time, and made fewer mistakes than before, especially against him. They'd practiced enough to know each other's tendencies.
The engagement ended with Khari stepping around Vesryn when he whiffed on an attempted counter, her own blade whacking across his upper back with a loud clang of metal. He pitched forward and nearly fell, instead merely stumbling a few steps with a grimace. Expelling a few breaths, he removed his helmet as he turned. "Well played." His eyes found Stel at the side of the practice ring. "Think you could tire her out a bit more for me? I might have a chance then."
"I'm not convinced tiring her out is really possible, but I'll do my best to contribute." Stel offered them both a smile, uncrossing her arms and letting them drop. There was something to be gained from watching each other spar as well, something she tended to take as much advantage of as she could. "Let's switch things around a bit, Khari. Small arms?" She crossed to one of the many racks of practice weapons, picking out a pair of daggers and tossing one to the elf. They were made of metal, but the edges blunted so they wouldn't cut each other to ribbons. That didn't stop them from smarting a great deal if they connected, though.
They did this quite often—changing the parameters of their fights, so as to prepare themselves for as many different kinds of situation as possible. It had done a great deal to show them that they all had valuable things to teach and learn. Khari was easily the most relentless of them, but the advantage was Estella's on the days they chose not to use armor. None of them was entirely outclassed by anyone else unless Rilien elected to demonstrate something, which he occasionally did, all the more to their collective benefit. Or, of course, unless Khari decided she wanted to spar Saraya on some particular occasion.
Khari caught the dagger easily, stabbing her practice claymore into the sand outside the ring and leaving it there. She peeled down her dark hood, lifting her open-faced helm off as well, though the metal mask over the lower half her face remained intact. It was on balance much wiser to have as much peripheral vision as possible when fighting Stel—she was extremely mobile in the ring and had caught Khari by surprise more than once, particularly on the occasions when she added her mark's powers into the mix.
White teeth flashed in the mask's gaps. “Watch out, Stel. I've been practicing with these, you know. Knifed my share of Venatori at Halamshiral in my fancy dress and all." She moved through a sequence of motions which was by now long-familiar, testing herself for any damage she'd failed to notice before. She'd taught them how to do the same; apparently it was a standard chevalier practice, in case adrenaline dulled the pain of an injury so much that it went beneath notice. Probably more a risk for someone who fought like she did than anyone else.
"Then you'll have to show me what you've learned," Stel quipped back, and they both dropped into their ready stances. As she often did, Stel attacked first, darting forward quickly and going directly for the sliver of skin between Khari's gorget and the underside of her chin.
Her aim was accurate, but Khari stepped aside at the last moment to divert it before Stel could adjust, half-turning so she was at ninety degrees and aiming for Stel's less-armored side. She hit only air—Stel rolled away and back to her feet swiftly, lunging again to make up the distance while Khari was pulling her strike back.
That was the rhythm of things for several minutes. They moved as lightly and quickly as their feet and reaction times would allow, aiming for weak spots when they could and suitably-distracting ones when they could not. Actual hits were few and far between; Khari sustained the majority of those, when her armor meant she could afford them. Occasionally, their weapons met with a clang—Khari was considerably stronger than Stel, but Stel was the more precise of the two. Her deflections were likewise exact, and so she didn't require strength she did not have, and the match continued quite evenly for some time.
Both of them had come a long way—all four of them had, in point of fact, and it showed. Stel feinted, half-lunging before she pulled up and switched her knife from one hand to the other to come in from the other side. Khari was fooled almost for a moment too long, but managed to get her gauntlet in the way for a block. The knife hit with a scrape before Stel withdrew it and jumped back to reset the distance. They were both understandably wary of closing to range on the other's terms, and the ebb and flow of their motion was nearly constant as they ventured forward and withdrew again.
But over time it became clear that Stel was the superior combatant in this style: Khari was clearly not all that accustomed to the short, light blade in her hands, and at times seemed almost to forget she was wielding it instead of a much longer one. One such mistake eventually cost her the match, a faltering in her guard allowing Stel to step in close and catch her arm, lifting it up over her head and resting the blunt tip of her tagger at her friend's unprotected armpit.
Khari conceded with a breathy laugh. “I know there's a big artery there, but death by armpit-stabbing would just be an embarrassing way to go, right?"
Stel grinned back at her, eyes narrowing with the force of her smile. "I'll be sure to aim for somewhere more dignified next time." Releasing Khari's arm, she stepped back. "What do you think, Ves? Want to go another round with the Red Bear of Skyhold?"
"I do love getting mauled," he said, shrugging and hefting up his shield and a blunted spear. "Perhaps this will give you a bit more trouble, though." He didn't usually prefer the shield and spear combination for single combat, but against Khari he'd rarely used it at all. Perhaps he'd be able to catch her off guard once or twice. He enjoyed watching her and Stel fight, and enjoyed a little more watching Stel win, but beating Khari himself would probably outdo both.
Khari considered the arrangement for a moment, tucking the knife into her belt and hefting her sword from the sand to lay across her shoulders. Her helmet went back on her head, too. This was, after all, an entirely different kind of fighting than the kind she'd just been doing. She tilted her head at him, then, a familiar glint in her light green eyes. “Saraya hasn't had a go at me in a while. Does she fancy helping you beat the tar out of me again? I could go for it."
Khari was right; it wasn't every day she asked for this. Probably because the fights between her and Vesryn-with-Saraya always tended to be a little more intense than the ones without. Each side feeling they had a little bit of something to prove, perhaps. For Khari, that she was actually improving and coming closer to being on Saraya's level. And for Saraya, almost the opposite, that Khari's chevalier training wasn't nearly enough to best her. Vesryn didn't think Saraya would be okay with losing to anyone, let alone Khari.
But, today Vesryn was willing to have another go at it. It had been a long session of practice already, and he honestly hadn't been looking forward to another round of being pounded on by Khari's relentlessness. "Sounds like a wonderful way to end an afternoon." He slid his tallhelm down into place, leveling his spear at her and showing her the face of his shield. "Your move."
Khari didn't immediately take it, at least not in the usual way. she knew by this point that she had to be at her best if she was to last more than a few minutes, which was something she could at least reliably do now. Partly because she'd gotten smarter about fighting at least as much as she'd gotten physically stronger or faster. She started to circle; Vesryn turned to keep the shield between them.
When she darted in, they hadn't even finished a quarter-turn. His thrust was turned aside by a deft parry, but she wasn't quick enough to hit a second time before he'd checked her with the shield. The hit was hard enough that she went to the ground, rolling out of it before the blunt polearm could find her and attacking again.
She was, as ever, utterly relentless, but his blocks needed no fine-tuning now, and he was able to turn each blow aside with the minimum effort necessary to deflect her. That was quite a bit more than it had been, but still not enough to wear him down quickly. Her own defenses had improved, but she continued to mostly rely on dodging, turning what would have been devastating center-mass hits with a sharper spear into less major injuries: there he clipped her hip, there skimmed over the side of her ribcage instead of finding the thinner chainmail protecting her near the waist.
The shield seemed to give her more trouble than the spear; it wasn't much smaller than she was, in all honesty, so perhaps that was understandable. She was slowly starting to get the hang of working around it as much as possible, though; her footwork resembled Stel's a great deal more than it had once done. Light, but solid. Her sorties against him resulted in losing her footing only about half of the time, and she was always quick to find it again. The fact that she took "injuries" despite her mobility was something she just seemed to accept as part of the course of the fight—as long as they were light enough, there was no reason to declare the match over.
She turned another stab, spinning out of the way of the shield, but her attempt to hit him in the side was interrupted by the low sweep of the spear; she was forced to jump back to avoid it. A gap appeared in her guard on the left side, but she ducked his thrust and lunged when he went for it. A deception, then. Khari tsked when he shifted, the blow she'd meant to deal him turned aside by his shield with the change, and sprinted out of range when her miss left her open for real.
"You'll bleed to death before you get a hit in at this rate," Vesryn said, though the tone of the taunt didn't have nearly the bite it once carried, back in Haven. The flow of the fight was easy enough to see. If they both attempted to wear the other down Vesryn would win, as he'd already landed a number of light hits on her, and even small victories on her part wouldn't help her catch up now. Her weapon wasn't built for it, either. She would hope for the heavy blow, no doubt, trying to break down the door of the tower and end the siege quickly before her "wounds" could catch up with her.
Which, for Khari, would take a very long time, but then, Saraya had no issue with a prolonged combat.
It certainly didn't seem to provoke her the way it once had, either. Khari laughed, a little breathlessly from exertion, and shook her head, subtly enough that she didn't have to take her eyes off him to do it. “I'm not patient enough to bleed to death."
They reengaged, Vesryn feinting a spear thrust and then taking an aggressive step forward, aiming for a shield bash to plant her flat on her back when she dodged. The plan worked as Saraya expected; Khari dodged left, the spear thrust didn't follow through, and she should've absorbed the hit of the shield fully. Only she didn't. Somehow it didn't make it there in time, and suddenly Khari was on his left side, heavy blade rushing diagonally down at him.
He rotated quickly, getting the shield up just in time for her blade to clang loudly against it, a full impact that was distinctly different from the usual glancing scrapes and turned aside blows. It was enough to knock Vesryn back a step, and it almost felt as if the air itself changed in the room. An ooh escaped Vesryn, not entirely devoid of uncertainty. He was actually a bit confused as to what had happened. Either he was slower than he and Saraya thought, or Khari had suddenly gotten much faster than he remembered.
Vesryn didn't recall anything colliding with his head, but suddenly he felt more unstable than before. Not enough to let it show, with Saraya's help, but for a moment there was the oddest sensation in his extremities like his hands and feet didn't quite belong to him. Wouldn't fully obey him. By the uncertainty he felt in his motions, they weren't quite obeying Saraya either.
He frowned, but Khari had clearly sensed blood in the water, encouraged by getting very close to the decisive hit she needed. She charged back in, batting aside a thrust that was more defensive than anything in nature. Her next swing was aimed high, head level, probably intending to force Vesryn's shield off the ground somewhat, giving her an opening to then go low for a trip. Only the shield remained firmly rooted in place, and actually sunk lower, the bottom rim of it touching the sand just before the blow arrived.
Vesryn's weight started to tip forward against his will just as Khari's blade collided with his helmet. His vision was violently twisted to the side, all his senses overpowered by an earsplitting ring of metal on metal, before everything went black.
He knew not how much time passed, but when his senses started to return, he was immediately met with a powerful throb in his head, one that he couldn't immediately identify. Surely the collision it had just suffered with Khari's blade had something to do with it. He groaned, the sound muted in his ears, but steadily it gained clarity, and he could discern that Stel was speaking to him. He could barely see her, though she was no more than a foot from him.
He felt the sensation of her fingers on the sides of his face; clearly she'd removed his helm at some point. There was a fuzzy, bluish-purple light at the periphery of his vision—her magic. He didn't feel anything, though, that would correspond to any spell. Gradually, her words became slightly clearer. He caught his name a few times, the tone of it clearly worried, but devoid of any panic or hysteria.
He blinked at her rapidly, trying to force himself to see her more clearly. It helped a little. He was having trouble parsing through what he was feeling, besides the physical pain. His body felt like his own again, but he felt a foreign sinking feeling from Saraya. A troubled, disturbed realization that had yet to really sink in for Vesryn. He reached up to grab Stel's hand with his own, and smiled. "Hello, you. I'm, uh... alright? I think?" He really didn't know, to be honest, but instinctively he knew that not being okay was against his nature. He tried to push himself up, but even the first foot of lifting his head off the ground came with wooziness, and it definitely showed on his face.
A bit of relief flickered across her face, probably at the fact that he was at least speaking clearly, but when he tried to move, she shifted her free hand to his shoulder and shook her head slightly. "Forgive me if I feel the need for a second opinion," she said quietly. "I sent Khari for Harellan and Astraia. I wasn't sure if the problem was something physical, or..." her mouth turned down, etching a frown into her visage. "I think you're okay where Khari hit you, mostly, but, well. Can't hurt to be sure."
It didn't take more than a few minutes for all of them to arrive; they'd clearly been sprinting. Khari stood back several feet, letting the mages get a little closer with as little crowding as possible. Harellan looked immediately to Stel. "Diagnostics?"
She looked uncertain. "I'm not really sure. Something doesn't seem quite right, but I can't tell if that's just where he was hit, or..." Stel cut herself off, a hint of frustration pinching her face about the eyes. Her grip on Vesryn's hand tightened enough for him to feel the difference.
The elven man hummed thoughtfully, kneeling next to her at Vesryn's side. He passed a hand several inches over his forehead, then back again, his palm and fingers green in the same way Stel's were violet. He frowned slightly, a small line appearing between his brows. "How does the connection feel, Vesryn?"
"It's... fine now," he said, a little uncomfortable with the rapidly increasing number of people kneeling next to him. Astraia quickly took up a spot by his head on the other side from Stel and Harellan, discarding her staff and lighting a spell in her hand before her knees even hit the sand. Vesryn was halfway to waving her off before he decided that it was quite futile. "It was during the fight, it just... I felt sluggish, like falling asleep quite suddenly, like my hands and legs just wouldn't respond. I couldn't balance."
"Gods, this bruise..." Astraia said breathlessly. He could see sweat forming on her brow, which was creased with worry. "You're lucky your skull is still in one piece. Thank your helmet, I guess." She looked up suddenly, at Khari, unable to hide the bit of anger that broke through in her expression. "Were you trying to kill him or something? What happened?"
“What?" Khari looked genuinely surprised for a moment—the absence of her mask made it easy to tell—but it was swiftly chased away by obvious guilt. “No, of course not. I was—sparring him. With Saraya. I never expected the hit to land, and he went out of it at the wrong moment. I couldn't pull the blow by the time I realized." Her grimace deepened; she met his eyes then. “I'm sorry, Ves. I didn't mean to... to do that." She gestured vaguely to the side of her own head.
"I know." He grabbed Astraia's hand, and she looked back down at him. "Relax, Skygirl. It wasn't her fault. She had every reason not to hold anything back. I was kicking her ass up until that point." Despite his best efforts, he was starting to feel a little frustrated. Astraia acting like he could've died. Estella worried and sending Khari rushing for help from Harellan, who immediately began inquiring after Saraya.
Even if all of them were absolutely right.
"Forgive my glibness," he said to all four of them, "someone has to make up for all the negativity swirling around in my head right now." Saraya was clearly convinced that this was the worst of signs, the last thing she wanted to happen to them. Vesryn couldn't argue with that, and the implications were frightening to say the least. What if it happened again, in a battle where his opponent wouldn't go running for aid after downing him? What if it happened when he was needed to protect someone he cared about? He shook the thoughts from his head, but the cobwebs remained. He was resolved to ignore them. "Help me up? Or are we just going to lie here in the sand a while longer?"
Stel cleared her throat. "Best not, or none of us will stop finding it for weeks." It was hardly her most shining attempt at humor, but she managed a small smile and stood, using their already-linked hands to help leverage him up as well. Once he was standing, she hugged him, and not particularly gingerly, either. "I'm sorry I made a fuss," she said, barely audible. "I'm glad you're okay." She wasn't nearly naïve enough not to have grasped the same implications as everyone else, so it was fair to suppose she meant okay right now.
Had she not hugged him, he might've fallen over again, as his balance at the moment was atrocious. He had no idea what to attribute that to, however, since it was likely that he was more than a little concussed, helmet or no. "It's alright," he said. "You know I'd make a fuss for you, too." Once he finally felt he wasn't in danger of falling over anymore, he slowly released Stel from his grasp, looking uncertainly at Harellan. "I'll, uh... let you know when the headache fades?"
If the headache faded. That remained to be seen.