Victory! But a what price?
"DORAN!"
The prince hears his grandmother's scream one moment and the next he feels a burning sensation in his stomach, as if someone had placed a piece of coal straight from the fire against his skin.
The prince lowers his eyes and sees Nysterica standing in front of him, almost hugging him, her hair tickling his nose.
"Eh?"
Doran feels the grip on his sword, still held high, loosen up and the bastard sword slips through his fingers and falls into the water with a splash.
Nysterica takes a step back and looks at him with stone cold eyes, devoid of any emotion.
Absently, Doran notes how inhuman those eyes are.
"DORAN!"
Hearing the second scream, this time from his grandfather, he feels as if a spell has been broken and the prince for the first time notices the hilt of a dagger sticking out of his stomach, just a few inches to the left from his navel.
***
Seeing Nysterica leap from the ground and launch herself towards her grandson fast as a hare The Princess of Dorne jumped up from her chair and took two steps forward before feeling her husband's hand around her wrist. Arthur pulls his wife back gently but firmly.
"You can't intervene, love." He whispers in her ear as he hugs her from behind.
Beside them the Morning Sword is held back by his own father, who grabs Trystanne's shoulder with one hand and places another on his chest preventing him from advancing.
"Is not over yet, have faith in your son." Jason Dayne tries to sound as comforting as he can but can barely hide the uncertainty in his tone.
"MOVE DORAN!" Trystanne yells as he sees Nysterica take a few steps back and draw her short sword.
***
"MOVE DORAN!"
Doran snaps out of his stupor at the sound of his father's voice and instinctively complies, the prince awkwardly leaping to the side, narrowly avoiding the blade of Nysterica.
Doran's movements are clumsy and wobbly, the prince cannot balance and falls into the water on his side. The fall sent a wave of pain through his entire body and the burning sensation spread from his stomach to his chest and slowly worked its way up to his limbs.
The prince hears hundreds of voices encouraging him to get up, but the sound is muffled and distant, as if he had cotton in his ears. Doran struggles against the heaviness of his body- it feels like the weight of each limb has increased tenfold.
He barely manages to turn around in time to see Nysterica almost on top of him, her blade raised, ready to end him.
Ironically, this position is almost a reflection of the position they were in a few minutes ago, with Nysterica lying down and him ready to kill her.
Doran sees the edge of the sword and knows that if he does nothing his life will end, and most importantly he will fail his mission.
`I swore to protect them! I can't die here!`
The prince pulls the pledges of fairness and honor aside and raises his hand, a protego on the tip of his lips.
"Protego!" He whispers with a broken voice.
Nothing happens, not an iota of light.
His magic does not respond, the prince tries to reach it but its just out of reach, the distance is negligible -he can feel it- but he cannot touch it. As in Michelangelo's painting, man can almost touch God, but no matter how much he stretches, that last centimeter is impossible to cross.
Despair and panic give way to a visceral fear, the fear of dying full of regrets shakes him to the core.
Nysterica's sword is approaching in almost slow motion from Doran's perspective, but there's nothing he can do, his magic doesn't respond and his body isn't fast enough to move out of the trajectory of the blade.
Doran moves the hand he was leaning on and feels something brush his fingers.
***
Arthur holds his breath as he watches Nysterica's sword approach his grandson's neck. He prays to all the gods, both old and new, from the Seven to the Divine Mother.
`Anyone! I beg you! Save him!`
As if some deity responded to his pleas, his grandson raises the hand in which he was leaning and by some miracle in it is the scabbard of his sword, the scabbard he threw into the sea at the beginning of the duel.
Arthur lets out a sigh of relief seeing that his grandchild wasn't cut open like a sardine.
***
Doran blocks Nysterica's sword with his scabbard.
The weight of his enemy's attack is too much for Doran's battered body and the prince feels his arms start to lose strength, the blade closer to his neck every second.
Doran refuses to give up, gritting his teeth and ignoring the pain that rolls through him like drum beats. Out of the corner of his eye, the prince notices a wave rising and sees an opportunity.
A slim chance of victory.
`I dealt with worse probabilities` Doran decides to bet against fate, all or nothing.
He starts losing the struggle and Nysterica's sword get closer and closer, just as it is about to brush his neck the prince uses all of his strength to deflect the sword to the left. Doran then kicked out with one foot at the back of the girl's knee and drove her to the ground just as the wave crashed against them. Doran takes advantage of the momentum that the wave gives him and uses the last of his strength to launch himself towards Nysterica.
The wave is bigger and stronger than the prince expected and drags them both several meters, back to the center of the arena.
***
Arthur watches in disbelief as the wave of at least two meters engulfs his grandson. The wave came out of nowhere and was strong enough to drag two teenagers nearly fifty feet in the short time a man can blink.
The bodies of the two teenagers lie in the center of the arena, where only thirty minutes ago they were both kneeling. Doran, to his immense relief, starts to move; He is lying on his side clutching his stomach with one hand and trying to get up with the other. Arthur can see the dark liquid that slides between the fingers of the hand that he has pressed against his stomach.
`Where the dagger should be,` the prince consort realizes, realization dawning in his eyes and he turns his gaze to Nysterica. She is lying on her stomach with her head turned to the side, she is not moving.
Trystanne is the first to snap out of his stupor and jump into the arena, his father and some of the judges following a few steps behind.
Trystanne approaches his son and quickly removes his shirt and places it on Doran's stomach, trying to stop the bleeding.
Jason Dayne did not follow his son, instead he walked towards Nysterica, he turned her body over with one foot; the dagger plunged into her left eye became visible to all onlookers.
"Healer! Bring a healer!" Trystanne's screams broke the silence and Maester Wulfric rushed towards both princes, a box full of potions under one arm and a bag of medical supplies slung over his right shoulder.
Doran looks at his father and grabs him with one hand, his eyes desperate to tell him something.
"Ugh...N...o...H-mn." Doran mutters something incoherent before falling unconscious, his body going limp like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
"Doran!" Trystanne is about to shake him but his good mother, who was right behind Wulfric, stops him.
"You could aggravate his wounds, let Wulfric tend to him."
The Maester reaches down and removes Trystanne's shirt to examine the wound.
"Poison!" He said shocked.
The blood that spurts from Doran's wound is black as night, and dark veins stretch out from the stab wound, like rays from a black, gloomy sun.
"Bring me that dagger!" The princess looks at her good son. "We have to find out what poison that bitch used." She grunts and orders a litter to be brought.
"We have to treat his wound here, princess. I don't think Prince Doran will make it to the hospital." Wulfric takes out some potions and begins to treat the prince's wound.
***
Trystanne ran up to Nysterica, brushed Lord Manwoody aside, and yanked the dagger out of Nysterica's eye. Without looking at the girl he runs back to his son's side.
"Wait-" Lord Dayne notices something strange and crouches down next to the corpse. "Is the skin coming off?"
He pulls his own dagger, Lord Manwoody grabs his arm and looks at him with wide eyes.
"What are you doing?"
"Confirm my suspicions." Lord Dayne purses his lips and releases Lord Manwoody's grasp.
"Martyn, let him. Something smells fishy here." Lady Wyl pushes Lord Manwoody aside and leaves Lord Dayne to do his thing.
Jason Dayne cuts the skin of Nysterica's face with the point of his dagger starting at the still bleeding wound where her eye should be and cutting down to her jaw. He reaches out with his left hand to the cut and begins to pull the skin. The skin peels like burnt skin after a day at the beach, revealing a face very different from Nysterica Yronwood under it.
"A faceless man!"
***
NOTE: The combat scene was inspired by the anime Claymore, more precisely in the Theresa VS Priscilla scene.
If you haven't seen that magnificent anime (I recommend the manga more than the anime if I'm honest) you should at least see this scene, you can find it on youtube.
In the combat, Theresa is the superior fighter, much stronger than Priscilla, but at the last moment, just when she was about to kill her, she lowered her guard for an instant. Theresa looked at the warrior lying in front of her and saw a scared and lost girl, Doran looked at Nysterica and saw the same thing. That moment cost them a lot.
As for faceless men (and women) they are more than killing machines, they are actors capable of interpreting any role to perfection. They can steal someone's identity and fool even that person's family members.
PS: Doran was trying to say "No human" refering to Nysterica, having realized something at the very last moment. Also. he is not gonna die.
PSS: Check out my new story. Is another GoT story but very different from anything I have written thus far.
The Revolution of Westeros: https://www.webnovel.com/book/the-revolution-of-westeros_25576593506569105
Also there are advanced chapter in my p@ tre on if you are interested. (Advanced chapter of Prince of Desert)
p a t r e o n. com /EdenofKovir
New Story: Isekaid in Highschool DxD with a system:
https://www.webnovel.com/book/25714170906928005 (Reincarnated with Fairy Tail System (DxD)