Snippet #2746304

The melee was starting to wind down, but that didn’t really mean too much for Miralda. After all, she was still in the fight, and a dagger is not a weapon one uses for a fight like this. While there were only four fighters left outside of herself, they were all the best (or at least the luckiest) the arena had to offer.

She herself was certainly lucky that three of them were embroiled in their own fight on one half of the arena, while she only had to deal with one opponent. Unfortunately, she was facing the massive man from her penultimate bought from yesterday, this time effectively armed with a toothpick. The man nodded to her and called out, “Shall this be to first blood then, little lady?” While she scowled at the appellation, she nodded herself in agreement, saluted with her dagger, then charged.

Her opponent quickly cut off her route with a swing of his axe, which made her scramble backward to not get hit. She feinted a move in momentarily then moved to go in from an angle, but the axe-wielder didn’t bite on her fake and she was again forced back after a close shave. With her small weapon, she couldn’t hope to block, and even trying to deflect a blow wouldn’t work well without either a metal shield or a much larger blade. To get in to attack, she would have to get creative.

Her opponent didn’t give her much time to think however. The second she stopped trying to move in, he started moving towards her with little movements of his axe that he could easily turn into fill swings. As she backpedaled, she spotted a longsword to her back and left. As she was forced back, she changed her direction slightly so that she would end up right over it in a few more backsteps. The instant she was driven back far enough the sword was halfway between herself and her opponent, she struck.
The dagger came out of her hand spinning, on a collision course with the behemoth of the man across from her. He brought the flat of his axe head around to block the improvised projectile, but Miralda was already off, running straight at him while she bent to collect the longsword mid-stride. The axeman wasn’t distracted for long, however, as a slash came out targeting her mid-section. Using her momentum, she went all the way down to slide on her back under the strike. It was close; so close, in fact, she could feel hair being clipped from her bangs. Still, she got under it successfully, and spun quickly to nick the leg of her target before she lost momentum a few feet past. While her backside was rather soar now (she would make sure she was wearing at least some kind of armor there before she attempted that stunt again), she rose to her feet feeling triumphant. She had won!
Her adversary shouldered his axe, shaking his head amusement as he walked toward her, and chuckled, “Well, I see that you have quite the create mind there, little one. It was a good bout once again, and I would love to do this once again. First, however…” Suddenly his axe was no longer on his shoulder, and she dropped to the ground to avoid the blow. However, the blow didn’t come, at least not at her.

“It would appear that someone here meant to finish you while we talked.” She turned to see a man shouted in pain and clutch at his now missing hand. On the ground was a sword, along with the hand that still held it. She let out a breath in relief, both for the attack that she had though was at her and for the one that she had never seen coming. Although, now that she listened, the sounds of combat were gone. The large man laid down his weapon and held his hands up in the surrender gesture. After a moment of pause, the announcer went, “A-a-a-ASTOUNDING! The new-comer Miralda has won the melee within the VERY week she qualified! Everyone, give her a round of applause!”

The crowd erupted into loud cheers (and jeers) as Miralda shakily got back to her feet. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, all she wanted to do was go back to the inn and sleep. Still, she trudged up to the arena managers who had come down on the field to accept her prize, a not-so-insignificant amount of coin and some good chainmail. The chainmail was too large for her (they had probably expected male with a much larger fame than she had), but she figured she could give it to one of her companions when she saw them again.

After what felt like an eternity of being paraded about in the arena, she made her way back to the inn and collapsed onto the bed face-first without changing into anything more comfortable or even washing the dust and blood off herself. She would take care of that soon, she just wanted to take a little break…