[@Tristwich]

[i]In combat, possibly the most vital asset is good footwork. Don't cross your legs. Keep your balance centered at all times. Keep your footing firm and level. This lesson had been beaten into Kull ever since he was old enough to swing a shortsword. It was one thing to walk or quickly stride towards an opponent, and another beast entirely to outright charge at them as Selandra intended. With Kull steadily closing in, she wanted to take him off guard with the old one-two buckle my shoe, net and trident, a combo meant to make him focus on two drastically different places at once. With her formidable size and speed, most would have been taken aback by the surprise assault and left out to dry. Kull had been calmly studying her the entire time though, ready for something like this. She didn't have much of a choice but to either go on the offensive or be backed into a wall, which would have been certain defeat.

Kull wasn't quite so agile as Selandra, nor quite so quick. He compensated for such things with a honed and intricate knowledge of combat and the reflexes of a professional boxer. He was watching her core. The core is called the core for a reason. Most bodily motion originates from the core. The way the torso squares before throwing an attack, the twist of the waist. That's how high level fighters divine where the first blow of the one-two comes from, how boxers can bob and weave through strikes that move faster than the eye can see from mere feet away. It was plenty easier to see the net and trident coming than a punch.
As Selandra rushed down Kull, he stopped short, left foot leading by a small margin a shoulder's width from his right, allowing her to bound the scant distance required to reach him.
He knew what she wanted to do if things turned sour. She planned to try and either knock him one with her free hand (assuming she had enough time to recover from the trident thrust), or lunge, roll, or otherwise seek to use her wily physique to escape to either side or perhaps crash into him. To hit him in time she'd have to awkwardly reach across her body, and even then she might not be close enough to touch him with her fingertips. At any rate, the closer she was, the worse it'd be when Kull hit her first.
There was to be no escaping the captain's sheer experience. The net swung in, the small stone or metal weights presumably adorning it smacking heartily against his left bicep and flank and draping across his fists only to slip off, but failing to cause discomfort through his bronze plate armor. The netting wouldn't have much to catch on. The bottom of the shaft of his axe was well below his waist line, and the head was too high. The practical application was null without anything to snag, and even if it could catch on something, the minute ridges of his gauntlets for example, well...[/i]

[quote=@Tristwich]
 With [color=ed1c24][b]her right hand free[/b][/color] she thrusts her trident towards Kull's left knee, the intention of crippling him in her mind.
[/quote]

[i]She had released her net to free up her hand, maybe to draw a weapon, which there was to be no time to do. Even if she had caught something, she'd no longer have a way to try and jerk him off balance or further bind him. There was no reason why he'd not have at least a few feet of leeway to move his hands regardless of whether or not the net wound up draped over them. It wasn't like the coil of a python, or a dog catcher's noose. It couldn't draw itself tight or consciously restrict him in the right places. It was a haphazard swing with haphazard results. So, Kull didn't worry about it. Just after the net hit he deftly swapped the great axe from a right handed grip to a lefty, quickly swinging it betwixt his hands like a pendulum and bringing it to bear in a New York second, left hand over right instead of right over left, axe ready to be swung from his left shoulder.

(I don't usually do this, but seeing as this is a ranked fight I wanted to make doubly sure it was clear how Kull swapped his grip. It's vital for a fight writer to be able to express virtually any action with words alone, but y'know, this medium isn't restricted purely to words. I'll always be willing to provide resources to make my emotes as understandable as possible. As can be seen, I'm a pretty lean guy and that's a ten pound sledgehammer. I can only bench about 170 and I've never trained with anything heavier than three pounds in my life, yet I can still move that fast with that much weight. Kull then, who specializes in heavy headed weapons, could very easily perform that maneuver much, much more quickly and efficiently than I ever could.)
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHhEDM2m5MQ[/youtube]

At the exact same time, immediately judging the trident's trajectory, he neatly asserted his right leg forwards to bump the thrust off kilter with his knee, utilizing masterful timing, striking the side of its head so it'd harmlessly shoot past his rear leg. He didn't think she'd be able to try and trip him with it or otherwise bring it to bear again before he ended her life. Footing was, again, the key. Selandra probably had a definite idea of when she'd thrust in cooperation to being able to lunge into an escape. You had to have your rear foot planted to bound off. By taking that sudden step forwards to deflect her trident, Kull would have prematurely closed the judged distance and likely caught her at a closer range than she'd been expecting, right as her weight probably shifted onto her lead foot after having shoved off her rear leg to power her thrust, unless she had thought a weak stab with no proper footing would cause significant enough injury to prevent the hyper aggressive manslayer from chopping her down through her attack out of spite. An unlikely error given her experience, ignoring the problems with the net. She didn't want him to touch her, she wanted to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, not trade blows and risk lifelong crippling injury and disfigurement.

There was absolutely no indication that she'd be in a position to dodge during her thrust, anyways. Eyes hardening into icy slivers, lips curling into a snarl of effort, he screwed his left heel into the ground and threw his entire upper body into a maniacal clockwise swing, intending to lash the axe over her extended left arm and into her torso with enough force to cave in her armor and split her sternum in two. If need be, he'd increase his reach by letting his left hand slide down the shaft, maybe to catch her if she were somehow able to position herself in time to try and escape. All of Kull's weight had been put into this devastating two-handed stroke, and if it hit it'd wind up killing most of her momentum and absolutely flooring her. He doubted that her speed would help her dart away quickly enough to keep her from barreling right into his counter with lethal results. Momentum could be a potent enemy. She couldn't very well block or deflect the blow with her left hand, seeing as she'd have to reach across her own body to try and awkwardly stop over seven kilos of razor sharp metal swung by a man who could bench press Sel's body weight twice over.
Even a skidding, glancing blow could take off a limb, smash bone, and tear open arteries, not that Kull's accuracy currently had any reason to suffer. Plate armor had its limits, and Kull's axe and raw strength was mean enough to break them.[/i]