Narthadis pulls back in shock. She didn’t expect this. She was now only left with her sword. She saw that she won’t achive anything but eventually get hit hard if she continued like this. She needed to go for something unorthodox: fight with exclusively finishing attacks. Powerful attacks ment for ending duels. If she could land two of them she would win this.
There are three forms of finishing attacks. The most commonly used ones ware the piercing style, focusing on delivering a powerful stab, and the slashing style, focusing on delivering a devasting cut to brake the shield and often decapitate the enemy.
She wasn’t trained beyond the basics in the slashing style, so that was out of the option. She was a master of the piercing style. She took the piercing stance, but stopped. With Souby’s incredible defense thanks to his 6 swords this wouldn’t work, she’ll never get a window to do a stab.
That left only one option, the king of finishing styles, the acrobatic style. Borrowing from both of the other styles, it is as powerful and fast as it’s hard to do. It’s based on using one’s whole body mass in a swing. This results in flashy acrobatic moves like flips, spins and more. She was in the process of learning it, but had no other options.
Gripping her sword with both arms, she charges Souby in a flowing, elegant motion, like the meandering of a river. This type of run was common to all three styles. Gripping her sword she suddenly brakes motion and jumps to the side, jumping off again from the floor in a spinning motion, her blade heading for souby’s back. The first and simplest finish in the style.
He needs to react fast. A blow like this would definitely not be stopped by the shield, neither it is avoidable. He ditches three of his swords to the ground as he turns towards Narthadis, and holds a defensive position with his feet clung to the ground, holding one of his swords with 4 arms, before he stops her strike as he is pushed back.
Then, he kicks her in the abdomen while blocking her sword, sending her far back, as he grabs back one of the swords from the ground with one of his foot, making sure not to lose visual contact on Narthadis. He takes a more offensive position now that he only has 4 swords.
She quickly regains her footing. That didn’t work, which wasn’t unexpected that would only fool the unexpired fighter. She needed to go more advanced. Was she capable of that tho?
She charges again, this time in a more aggressive patern, fueled by anger that she tried something stupid like that. She unleashes one hell of a leap together with a front flip, preparing for a great slice. The second finish, also known as the falling star.
But a ending hit was not what will happen, as she realized too late. In her anger and inexperience she ignored two things.
First is that the second finish’es effectiveness is greatly reduced the lower the hight difference between the highest point of the leap and the enemy’s hight. Without something to jump off from she won’t gain too much height. Someone more experienced in the style like the emperor or princess Esgariel could definitely pull it off, but not her.
The second thing was that Souby is 3 meters tall, meaning that she definitely wasn’t able to gain the necessary height, and she was straight in his striking range.
Souby rapidly takes advantage of his position, swings his swords over her while she is in the air, and swings them back down onto her at full force, pushing her to the floor and crushing her shield when she is between the blades and the floor. The red light comes to life together with loud beeping, as if the shield was in pain.
“My back hurts. To be fair i deserve that, that move was incredibly stupid. I didn’t take into count your height. This was quite a duel, and i have the honor of being the first edhel to fence a terrarrusian. Can you help me get up?”
“Of course, sorry about that, maybe I overextended a bit too much, I hope the back pain doesn’t last much,” he replies, lending her his hand to get back up on her feet.
"Not a issue, that move was stunning, my back will heal fast. "
Unexpectedly, a officer enters the room holding a tablet
“Admiral, news from high command!”
“Let me see… Interesting. Princess Esgariel, the acting regent of the empire, wants to in a few weeks come to Kalgyul to discuss terms of all we mentioned today: repaying damages, alliance, technological enlightenment, training of your officers in calerostan military tactics etc. And also instructs me to swear friendship and alliance to you.”
“Look, if we play with our cards just right, we can beat the SSJ once and for all.”
“We can do it without their help, we can do it with just you just fine, and what about the prime minister, huh? You’re just going to ask him to let you in with aliens beside you??”
“Who is the leader here?”
“You…”
“Great, then just trust me, the prime minister won’t be a bother.”
“You risk too much…”
“I’m not here because I follow the norm, do I?”
“Fine, but it’s on you.”
Souby turns to Narthadis again.
“We accept, but with the requirement that no armed ship enters Kalgyul’s orbit, to avoid too much of a commotion.”
“Mister Klaytry, do you really think we’d go to such lengths to establish peaceful contact, offer technological enlightenment, bring you onto this ship ony to attack you later? If so that is a foolish assumption. If we wanted to destroy your nation and kill your people you’d already be dead, the ship you’re standing on right now has the necessary weapons to anihilate the population of a whole planet in mere minutes, not to mention a fleet of your technological level. The first words i sent to you is that we are not here for war. And her royal highness the regent specifically instructed me to swear alliance to you. Braking that would break our honor, and calerost holds to nothing more than honor. The highest punishment in our justice system is being stripped of honor. I can guarantee you, with 100% certainty, we will not come seeking war.”
She then walked to where she layed down her ceremonial sword and coat and took the sword while talking to Souby:
“Reasonable demand, I’ll send it to her royal highness. Tho there will need to be a starbraker somewhere in your territory, because otherwise the journey back home would be long and dangerous.”
“Anyway, you are allowed to have a “Starbraker” in the territory, if I suppose right what you mean, just don’t take it near to the capital city, just to avoid problems from our part.”
“Understandable, I’ll try to make sure that no armed ships get in orbit of your capital.”
She stands before Souby. He was her equal so she didn’t need to kneel. With both hands she presented the sword to him
“In calerostan tradition giving someone your sword is a big deal. It means swearing a oath of friendship, a oath of alliance. So I, admiral Narthadis Ninoriel, by the instruction of the crown and in the name of the Gil-atarnië, give you my sword and swear before the gods alliance and friendship with you and your nations. May the gods bring my demise if i break this oath. Do you accept?”
He then gave one of his ceremonial, 1.8 m swords back to Narthadis, “It’s not tradition giving our swords for anything, but it seems convenient in this case.”
“Thank you. I will now escort you to the hangar as I’m being summoned back to Ilanor. It was a pleasure meeting you”
Narthadis escorted the two back to their shuttle and soon they departed, and minutes later the INS spirit of death broke into mirial space. Narthadis and Souby would probably never meet again, but the alliance they swore would last.
As agreed on a few weeks later, one after the Galactyan first contact with Kalgyul and the signing of the seacret Esgalost accord, princess Esgariel visited Kalgyul’s capital. Strangely for calerost, she came in a ship without armament, transported there by a starbraker, as per Souby’s request. She spoke with the prime minister, and they agreed to the following treaty:
TREATY OF KALGYUL
1. Calerost and Kalgyul are to form a formal military alliance, with Calerost putting Kalgyul under it's protection. Calerost shall also pay reparations for damage done during first contact and establish a permanent embassy in Kalgyul
Calerost will establish a research base around the Buostous mirial anomaly, with the goal of turning it into a full wormhole
The Bureau for the technological enlightenment of Kalgyul (BTEK) is to be created by calerost. It’s goal will be to being Kalgyul up to the same technological level as calerost, including full mirial technology, in a stable and sustainable manor.
Calerost is to station a agreed amount of ships in Kalgyul which will anwser to the Kalgyulian navy but be staffed with calerostan personel and in their own task group. Kalgyulian officers will be present on these ships to be educated on calerostan military technology and tactics.
This treaty was a total success on Calerost’s side and became the basis for calerosto-kalgyulan relations. However, as predicted by princess Esgariel, someone didn’t like this treaty, someone who would break alliances and fight former friends to try to assert it’s own control over this part of the sector: the Akropii Republic.
this marks the end of the gods among men rp, thanks for reading