[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/FH03WJT.png[/img]
[h3]Tohsaka Manor, Premises Outskirts[/h3]
[@Breo][/center]
Sigurd's reaction had been commendable, but merely that. In the end, the two combatants were both certainly in the upper echelon among what it meant to be "at the level of a Servant", the power of their bodies could easily be called first rate. In that regard, then, the battle would be determined by their respective skill, by chance, and by their other abilities and equipments. 

What had happened here was one such example. For after all, Gavel's strike was one made towards the left from his perspective. Sigurd using Gram as a hold in order to pull himself to the right, leaving the range of Gavel's swing, was a commendable thought. However, it had a core tactical misstep. 

While Sigurd was out of Gavel's arms' reach, he was still in the [i]direction[/i] of the swing.

Gavel knew little to nothing about the nature of Heroic Spirits or the Holy Grail System. Command Seals, Noble Phantasms, such terminology was meaningless to him. As such, perhaps even he underestimated just how unthinkable his next action was to a Heroic Spirit. When he saw Sigurd begin to vault himself over to avoid the strike, the Rider kicking out as he did so, the Burial Agent did not attempt to shift his movements in an attempt to strike out at Sigurd's legs. 

No, in the first place, something like that was likely impossible. While a Servant could do seemingly impossible things, changing the angle of their body after they had launched, for instance, that was only from the perspective of mere men. In a battle between Servants, fought in short distances that these monsters could cross in fractions of fractions of seconds, that sort of change in momentum could simply not occur. Rather, he merely ducked his head in to minimize whatever glancing blow a kick from someone moving in the opposite direction could give, readied himself...

-And released. 

The Fourth Holy Scripture left his hands near the end point of its swing. While Sigurd's kick did hit its mark, the fact that he had done so in the beginning was his undoing. The strike met Gavel's head, but given that Sigurd was pulling himself in the opposite direction as the kick, the damage it dealt was a far cry to what it could have been were it an all-out strike. Nonetheless, he landed his blow. 

As mentioned, in such short distances as this, in a battle between Servants, the ability to do the impossible is cancelled out. Just as Anthony who had committed himself to a swing could not react in time to entirely avoid Sigurd's blow, even with his slightly superior speed to the Servant, nor could the Servant who had committed himself to his movement cancel it so quickly, let alone dig his blade out of the ground and use it to shift his momentum before the hammer moving faster than sound would travel a mere few inches to hit its mark. 

His enemy had at least been slightly damaged, but nonetheless, Radah found its mark, the hammer striking against Sigurd as its user shifted back, admittedly a touch dazed from the blow to his head. Sigurd, by contrast, should have been better for wear coming out of the exchange. While blocking the force of an "A rank" blow with his Prana Defense had been costly, the blow had not caused damage, and what was more, he still had his grip on his weapon, unlike the enemy. 

However, what should happen is not always what does happen. 

At the moment of contact with Radah, Sigurd felt it. Like an oppressive weight bearing down on him, despite the damage of the hammer being blocked through Sigurd's magical energy, that did nothing for its concept. Just as a Magus Killer's bullet applies its effect whether it strikes one's magecraft or oneself, the effect of Radah found itself exhibited even through that defense. If the shield had been something other than Sigurd's own magical energy then perhaps there would have been a chance, but such conjecture was for naught. 

Weakness. An overbearing weakness weighed down upon Sigurd from the moment that hammer of the Lord struck him. He was still a being of a Servant's level, there was at least that solace, but that impossible weighed seemed to push down on him from all sides, bringing down his capabilities immensely. His strength, his speed, the very amount of magical energy he could store, all of these plummeted down into the bare minimum of what a Servant could possess. 

Was this the nature of Radah? No, something like that was hardly surprising; the mystery and power of Gram was well above that of Sigurd's own Saint Graph, so a result like that after seeing what had happened to his weapon was only natural, but still...

[color=ed1c24]"Feel that, Rider? That's the gap between you and God."[/color]

His opponent stood opposite him, some distance now between the two, his hammer clattering onto the ground and his head reeling slightly from the previous impact, but even then, he could hardly be called the loser of this exchange.