30 — Fight!

Lily took her stand and slowly started to surround this creature, moving in a clockwise position, he followed her trail... It wasn't like the way it was the last time that she had fought with someone in an open field or in a ring, she painfully remembered how it had gone. She won of course but she didn't know then that she would be fighting a soon to be traitor.
She looked at this creature, her head filled with all manners of conclusion as of where did he emerge from. He had the palest skin she had ever seen, skin so pale, it would make her skin crawl. He had the sharpest jawline she had ever seen, an inverted dimple on the chin and tiny ones on his cheeks that seemed to showcase themselves every time he frowned and sucked his cheeks as he was doing right now.
"Who are you!" She shouted at him with her kaayan accent thick on her tongue. He looked at her with the eyes that she had only seen in dead fishes, his was worse and yet there was something so fierce it made her almost want to put down her staff and run in the other direction but she was a commander! And commanders defend and to do that she must fight!
No response from this strange creature, she stopped her clockwise rotation and inched closer to him, letting her legs spread wide open... Incase he charged, she could move back and avoid his hit. She inches closer and he inched back. She wasn't liking this.
"I repeat, who are you and what are you doing prowling majestically on our lands?" The man kept on looking at her and that infuriated her, she didn't understand if her English was wrong or if he was a fool.
There was only one way to find out.
****
He was mesmerized, it was not everyday you saw someone wearing a mask and yet still look so beautiful with it. He wasn't sure exactly why he took this stance or why he kept looking at her, she was beautiful and somehow she managed to Trump every girl he had ever seen plus the mask. He wished he could at least see her face... She asked a question but he was too tongue tied to answer and then something unexpected happened.
****
Lily charged at the stranger,holding her staff perpendicularly to her body, she had calculated his distance and how she was going to throw him off his feet. She lunged at him and he moved out of the way, it stunned her. Her eyes widened and she gasped for breath, she couldn't believe that he would just step out of the way. It was like he didn't want to fight but somehow found himself in this situation. She felt insulted by it.
"You are here on my lands! You will fight for your passage and if you don't fight, I will kill you" that got Nicholas to laugh. He laughed so hard, it brought a form of colour to his cheeks. Gosh, she was cheesy. How old was she? She didn't look much, maybe a little younger or the same age with Laura. He shook the thought off his head. What was he doing comparing gentle Laura and this wild but beautiful girl?
"You can't possibly mean that?" He smirked at her, this was a new challenge. A new thing for him to be challenged by this... This child. He smiled and decreased his eye width to make him look as though he squinted but in actuality, he was merely sizing her up. It would take only a swipe from his sword that he hadn't even drawn yet and he could give her a clean slice. She was pretty but he was not going to accord disrespect.
"You must fight! Fight for your worth or I kill you!" She still shouted, he may be handsome but she was not going to let him think that just because she was petite because his little truck with the eyes, she knew what was up and it infuriated her that he would think that because he was bigger, she should cower and that she had no power whatsoever but she had defeated much more bigger creatures than this one. He was a child in terms of combat where she held her title. If anybody should be afraid of been against her, it should be him!
"How many combats have you had? I can see beyond your fake bravado that you only duel with your father. You're a Papa's boy, you have no experience and you have no manners, I will correct that which your father declined to teach you, come!" She signalled with her hands that he should come, she squared her feet and squatted on her knees, widening her stance to give her more coverage, she set her hands on his centre of gravity and smirked 'how poorly he stands, he only copies my stance but he doesn't have the mantra'
****
'A Papa's boy! A Papa's boy! Inexperienced! What!' he was furious now, she thought she had the sharpest tongue and the meanest stance but he had a knife and she had a staff, a pretty full staff and he had a knife in his hands and a sword on his belt and yet, the one with the sharo weapons gets called a child and a mannerless one at that. The one with the big sharp weapons is the one who was told by some petite girl from the caves that he needs to be taught a lesson. He had trained all his life for a battle and this... This child had called him inexperienced and had threatened his life! Maybe it was time to show her that these sharp and pointy things that he carried were not for child's play. Maybe he should play.
Maybe he should fight!
He charged at her, seeing red and like a bull seeing a red cloth, he charged at her with fury that his ego was just ripped from his chest and while he was alive and well, he wasn't going to stand for this utter nonsense and disrespect. He was going to fight!
****
Lily watched the man approach with quite a remarkable speed and she held her staff tightly, knowing fully well that he was going to slash with a sword but was well prepared for it. What fazed her was that the man was both approaching her with a knife in his right hand and a now drawn sword in his left hand and he was looking like he could use both instruments quite well. Lily at this point didn't know what to do.
Due to fast reflexes and lots of training, Lily swerved back and barely missed the knife point which was aimed at her throat. With her downward momentum, she swung her staff and caught the man by his legs, sending him sprawling while she did a back flip quickly to land on her feet.
The man wasn't done though. In a flash, he was on his feet but he didn't charge, he stood his ground and sized her up again. She was small but quick on her feet, swifter than the wind and that little stunt she had pulled there had not even drawn a breath from her. She appeared to be perfectly normal and if Nicolas wasn't a vampire, he would've been dealing with a broken neck and probably a shifted spine. Don't get him wrong, it still hurt.
They were both circling each other once again and Nicolas observed that she was gliding with some sort of grace, she had lightness of feet and a calculative eye, Nicolas would give her that.
"Afraid, stranger?" She mocked, circling him and giving him a calculative look through the holes of her mask. For the hundredth time, Nicolas wished she wasn't so beautiful.
"You wish," he snapped, already tired of her caging. For gods sake, he had a sword and a knife and this girl had just a staff but somehow, she'd sent him sprawling to the ground. It was shameful buy Nicolas wasn't going to dwell on that.
With her stance set in defensive mode, she lunged at him again, swinging her staff in the air as she got closer to him. He slashed with his sword as she got closer and his sword met her staff. Pressing her, he increased his swipes and she was parring his every move. Making a thrust that he knew would distract her long enough because it was a very complicated move that ended with him putting her in what he called a sword lock, he took a brief moment to savour her obvious struggle because she was not used to this technique.
He whipped out another knife and seeing the glint of a blade, Lily somehow manoeuvred her way out and tried to swipe at his head again. He blocked it and slashed with his knife, catching her in the thigh. The cut seemed to have little effect on her except the twitch of her lips but other than that, she gave no cry.
Was this girl even a human? He was not sure.
Angrily, he gave another thrust and with a calculated move, she applied enough force to send his sword skittering. With shock, he stared at the sword for half a second but it was all the time she needed to shoot her feet out and caught him on the jaw. Sliding on the ground, she applied force to his leg, sending him in the air and before he'd even landed, his knife which had somehow left his hand was now pressed to his neck.
This girl, who ever she was, she was good and he would give her credit. Thank the gods his father had not witnessed him being beat up by a girl. He would rang, call him weak and stupid, call him a coward who'd let a woman beat him up like a little boy.
"I could very well slit your throat right now, stranger, but I won't." She said, her face inches from his as she stared at him like he was some disease but at the same time, a prize.
"Why won't you?" Nicolas was struggling under her hold. She brought her staff down on his leg with an agility he hadn't seen before and he cried out briefly. The staff had caught him on the knee and gods did it hurt like a bitch.
"You're going to be my captive," she said and Nicolas managed to blink in confusion through his haze of pain. This couldn't be happening. He was a prince and no one had ever taken him captive. He couldn't even imagine how it would seem. How was a kayaan prison cell like? Was it filled with rats, mouldy with mosses and filled with the smell of rotten, decayed and rotten flesh?
Internally, he panicked. He'd come here, no explanation to anyone, his tracks were well covered. No one would ever find him here because the vampires and the kayaans were on mutual terms so they would not be considered an enemy or a captor of their prince. This was bad.
Unconsciously, he thought about Laura. He hadn't given her anything but a note and he'd said he'd come back in three days. With the way this girl had said it, it didn't seem that she would release him in three days time, pat his back and call it a good fight. Nope, she was going to parade him like a prize.
As she drew to her full height, which wasn't much, she took him by the scruff of his neck with remarkable strength, and drew him to his knees.
"Close your eyes," she commanded. Nicolas could've rolled his eyes.
"You're not the boss of me," he spat at her and she shrugged.
" Not my problem," she mumbled and before he realized what was happening, she brought her staff down on his head. Hard. The last thing he saw was her hovering over him and then, it all went black.