"Patience," Claudia said. "One must save wrath for when an appropriate transgression is committed, else one becomes a slave to its usefulness."
"S-sorry," Amelia stammered. "I d-didn’t… I mean, I didn’t realize… I thought…"
No doubt it didn’t help her confidence that Verdant was looking at her with such a stony expression. He was more offended on Oliver’s behalf than Oliver himself was. "Retainer of Lady Blackthorn, you would be wise to walk more carefully. My Lord does not need to tolerate such acts."
"I understand… I’m sorry," Amelia said again, bowing twice hurriedly in quick succession, Pauline joining her.
"Enough. Your Lady is battling. As long as you refrain from such acts in future, I will not hold the axe over your head for it," Oliver said.
Blackthorn was still in the midst of combat. Now that she’d recovered her rapier, one would think that her chances had gone up, and they certainly should have, but Oliver had yet to see her manage to make a counterattack yet. The deep snow hindered her normally slick movements ever so slightly, which certainly wasn’t helping matters.
She was forced instead to continually dodge over and over again what the Hobgoblin was sending her way, a fact that was making the monster increasingly angry, and making its attacks increasingly erratic. One particularly wild swing slammed through the snow, sending up a cloud of it towards the girl, obscuring her vision, and hiding the next attack that came her way.
That was the first blow that almost caught her. The club just edged down the left side of her body, just barely making contact, before it slammed back down into the snow. That slight amount of contact was enough to send her gasping. It was a strike that Oliver thought might very well have ended the contest altogether. Once more, he prepared to step in.
But though she stumbled, Blackthorn didn’t fall entirely. She took the blow, and created more distance, her eyes narrowing as she grit her teeth.
"Now there’s a woman," Ingolsol cackled, seeing the look. It was a look of the utmost intensity. It shattered the image that many had of Lasha Blackthorn as a quiet and fragile flower. This was a fierce woman, and even more beautiful for it.
She had grit, none could take that away from her, but she’d had few opportunities to showcase that fact. She showed it now, how badly she wanted to achieve that goal of hers, and how much she was willing to fight for it.
She only gave the Hobgoblin as much ground as she needed to in order to recover, and then she was straight back on the front foot with renewed intensity, seeking something out this time, attempting to land that fatal counterattack.
The smallest specks of golden light began to flow around her, as they had with Kaya before her. Unlike with Kaya, the lights weren’t nearly as bright. They were just the slightest suggestions of potential, vague little ideas that Lasha tried to grasp for.
She found one of them, a tiny spark, and pulled it closer towards her heart, trying to create something with it. The Hobgoblin swung. It was too wide a strike, even wider than the last, but with how long its club was, it was the sort of horizontal strike that could hardly be avoided.
Ordinarily, Lasha would have dodged it by stepping back, as she’d practised all that time with the goblins. But here, she made a gamble, and instead ducked in under it. The spark of golden light made something out of her. It gave her the single step of time that she needed to land an attack of her own.
The club was thoroughly out of the way, there was nought the Hobgoblin could do to defend itself. Lasha took advantage of that fact, and she lunged at it with as much power as the snow would allow her to wield, thrusting her rapier in towards its heart.
"Shallow," Oliver murmured, seeing the strike go in. The thick hide of the Hobgoblin blunted her strikes, just as it had blunted Oliver’s strikes, all that time ago when he’d struggled against the creature. The point had been aligned towards the heart, but it was stopped long before it reached it.
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And now the Hobgoblin revealed what made it so dangerous. It had dropped its club, and was throwing a fist straight towards Lasha’s unprotected side.
Now she was the one that had been caught flatfooted. The advantage in momentum she’d had was gone. She’d put it all on the line in order to deal the final blow, anticipating that it would kill the creature. Now that her attack had failed, she was left weak.
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"A good effort," Oliver said, as he arrived, cutting the Hobgoblin’s arm from its shoulder before it could make contact, before twisting and beheading it in the next step. "But it seems that still, you’re lacking power."
Lasha only just remembered to breathe. The fist had been within half a second of shattering her face. The weight of that moment weighed on her, and now that she was relieved of it, she collapsed to her knees, and gasped for breath.
"Damn it…" she cursed, in a very unladylike manner. "It’s the same problem – I’m still lacking strength, just like my father and my brothers said. It’s the very reason they keep women off the battlefield."
"When you break through to the Second Boundary, that strength will come," Oliver said.
"You speak of Boundaries, Ser Patrick, but I have a hard time understanding it… No one else talks of it but you. I know you say it’s taboo, but if so, why tell me?" Lasha said.
"Do I seem like a man that’s done a great job of following all the rules?" Oliver said lazily. "But you are right, I suppose. It’s redundant for me to tell you of the Second Boundary, for it doesn’t solve your current problem. I merely suggest that you do not be fooled – there are many ways to address that lack of strength, than praying for physicality. Your counters, for instance.
If you’d had the Hobgoblin run straight onto your blade, how would the battle have gone differently?"