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Stinging pain. Sudden darkness. Nathaniel hadn't caught the slip of the hand, he was too focused on the sword arm of Julian. Now, he was without sight as he roared in pain. He drowned out his own hearing, leaving him surprised by the sudden strike to the shin. It didn't feel like the swing of a training sword. Nathaniel's mind poured through the various books and manuals he had read, but he couldn't understand what had just happened. Did this charlatan use magic? Nathaniel heard no incantation.

In the briefest moment before he was knocked off his feet, Nathaniel's lips and tongue had tasted some of the coarse… dirt? Sand? It made little difference. He had been tricked, just as the others. This Julian had employed yet another underhanded deception against him. This realization was met with a strong push in the chest, and his right foot had been knocked out of position just enough to fail to catch his weight. Nathaniel slammed onto his back, and the grip on his sword loosened. In a moment of panic, Nathaniel tried to lift his weapon up to swing blindly. He didn't even have the chance to do that much, as Julian had the leverage to swing down on his sword hand over and over. Nathaniel fought with his aching muscles to hold on, but he could only do so much against this disorienting onslaught. His grip weakened further still, and the sword was knocked from his grip. A shrill whistle could be heard piercing the air.

The match was over.

Nathaniel lost.

The teen removed his gloves, wiping and rubbing his eyes furiously while lying on the ground. The pain was extraordinary, and tears streamed down his cheeks involuntarily. A life of training, studying, preparing… all taken away in an instant. After clearing most of the sand from his eyes, enough to actually be able to look towards the box with the four knight Commanders, the face familiar to him was gone. The man he had known as a child had stepped away.

After everything, Nathaniel wasn't good enough.

He let his hand slam back into the ground for a moment, his eyes closed to help keep the involuntary tears at bay. He felt sick to his stomach, a mix of pure sorrow and anger mixing with anxiety in his gut. He had staked his life on this path, and had little else to go home to. He wasn’t meant to be a noble, or an aristocrat. He cared little for politics or parties. Yet here, and now, the only life he had ever dreamed of, had been swiftly snatched from his grasp by a conniving thug of a baker’s boy. Nathaniel’s pain latched onto a solitary name as he laid in his own defeat.

Julian Baker was the source of his dishonor. If he got the chance, he would unmask that rat for all to see what he had seen: not a future knight, but a charlatan with a pocket full of dirty tricks.