Shalmaneser entered the gates of Hydlaa with the enki woman close at his side. After they passed through the gates together, the woman’s eyes widened as she took in the city for the first time in years.
“Does it look very familiar to you?” Shal asked.
“Yes… yes, I know this place! But much has changed.”
They walked along the stone path until the statue of Talad came into view. Shalmaneser told her to seek the Vespers near the temple if she needed further help. She thanked him for all he had done for her, and they parted ways in the crowd.
“Cheater.”
The stranger’s voice emanated from behind Shal’s back. He turned.
“Honourless cheater.”
The speaker was another female enki, but younger, and clad entirely in fresh leather armour from head to toe. He didn’t recognize her face, but something in her tone was eerily familiar. He recognized an insignia woven into her breast covering: Dwarvesbane.
“I know your guild mate Drahlian, fenki, but I’m afraid I do not know your name nor the source of your displeasure.”
“I am Quitaa, and you are a cheater. Drahlian has told me about you… that you use potions in combat! You fight without honour!”
Shalmaneser was taken aback by Quitaa’s unprovoked rudeness, but he then remembered a time when he protected a party of dwarves from Drahlian. He used light green potions to avoid having to kill the dwarf-hater, and Drahlian never forgave him for it. He glared at Quitaa. "I will do whatever is necessary to protect my friends. Such battles are about survival."
Stone faced, Quitaa ignored him and turned her head towards the large crowd that occupied the plaza. “I don’t think that Shalmaneser would win a single fight without potions!”
Though her tone was so strikingly familiar, Shal took even more notice of being spoken of in the third person. She was not talking to him, no - she was talking to the crowd. Her taunts were for their ears as much as they were for Shalmaneser’s. He heard a snicker. This was a trick. This was a trap, and Quitaa’s clasp on the hilt of her dagger was tight.
“Quitaa, it is? Hiding behind false names and false accusations... you talk with the tongue of a coward. But did I hear you right? You wish to duel as a test of honour?”
“Sure.”
“By the fountain then? Someone is likely to be hurt if we stay in this crowded place.”
The two walked separately down the stone steps to the floor of the plaza and stopped near the feet of Talad’s likeness. Shalmaneser stared up at the crystal staff held by the stone giant. Even though his faith lay with Laanx, he was still able to appreciate the symbol for what it represented to so many: Faith, strength, forgiveness, and honour. Remembering where he was and why he was there, his attention returned to his physical reality. The Dwarvesbane enki that had showed him such a wicked tongue had moved and was now standing far from him near the other side of the plaza. His senses went into overdrive; he noticed the smell of food and ale in the air from a nearby tournament, there was the clanging of Harnquist as he tended his craft and the bellow of his furnace, and there was the scent of musk and incense from Laanx’s temple and her worshippers. And he saw his enemy, her mouth moving as she looked back at him from afar, and there was a burning pain in his shoulder. He was hit by an arrow.
Shalmaneser ran at his enemy full force as he realized that his time was running out. It seemed that arrow after arrow came at him. The short dash was a lifetime as different parts of his body exploded with fiery pain from Quitaa’s magic.
The two met. Mid-spell, Quitaa dashed at Shalmaneser even as he ran towards her. The two sliced air with their blades and moved past one another. On the verge of collapse from the toll of the arrows, Shal looked at his blades. One was bloodied. ‘Yes!’ he thought to himself. ‘At least that trickster will not get away without some pain to remember me by!’ He was pulled back into the moment as yet another arrow struck him, this one near his temple. Looking up through the haze of his injuries, he saw Quitaa’s figure even as she spoke yet another incantation through a twisted smile. Shal saw blackness, there was a warm trickle down his back, and his face rested on the stone floor of the plaza.
As Quitaa walked up to him, Shal’s thoughts were simple and fading. ‘Mongrel cheater… to use magic… in such a duel?’
“You know,” Quitaa said as she loomed over Shalmaneser’s dieing body, “You should spend the time to learn some magic.” She snickered. “Should you find a way to make my energy arrow more powerful, I would be glad to hear it.”
As Quitaa's figure faded to black, Shalmaneser waited to awake in the death realm. Even though he was killed, he felt at peace with what had happened. It was a duel to test honour, after all.
