If three decades of armed combat had taught Teric anything about the battlefield, it was that victory was never assured. It was the nature of a battle to be unpredictable. With the right amount of luck, any green novice might land a killing blow to a legend. With enough misfortune, even a hero might accidentally draw the ire of someone the fate's favored more. Mistimed spells and stray projectiles were commonplace, and the wounds they inflicted could lay low even the most powerful warriors...
Boil away the legend and the mystique surrounding him, and Teric Reginald Barton was nothing more than an old man with a sword; a man just as mortal as the rest.
Both of his arms hurt. The wound in his leg, a remnant from an earlier fight, ached. His lungs burned inside his chest as powerful limbs constricted over his throat, choking the life from him. As darkness closed in around the edges of Teric's vision, the veteran tried to piece together where exactly he'd gone wrong. Unfortunately for him, and for any other warrior really, it was hard to isolate just one act in an activity as ferocious and fast as armed combat that - if done differently - might have made for a completely different outcome. He tried to think about Sei, and about the camouflaged snake wrapped around his arm and neck like a boa, but as the blood to his brain trickled to a stop, Teric found it impossible to think about anything.
Simple fact of it was, sometimes it just wasn't your day...
The veteran didn't even feel the tremendous impact that tore him bodily from the grasp of his mystery foe. If asked, all Teric might have recollected to anyone was the image of a hairy grey limb sweeping down on him like a scythe. Dimly, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, something might have registered the fact that his arm was broken, and that the paw compressed his chest so greatly that the ribs all down one side of his body snapped like toothpicks. If he'd been aware enough to realize what was going on, the veteran might have been grateful for the mythril chain weave that kept the dangerous claws from his flesh even as his bones shattered. Thanks to his chameleon friend's powerful choke, however, there was little left of the Grandmaster's consciousness to worry about such things.
The deadly arc of the creature's swinging arms flung Teric like a child's plaything - the mercenary's body twisting awkwardly as he bounced once off the squishy ground and then slid unceremoniously to a halt several meters away. There was muck and debris packed into his nostrils and mouth, but Teric didn't move to get up and clear away the mess. He just lay there, one eye open, as the patter of the rain drowned out the dull roar of the crowd.
It was romantic to believe that, as he lay there dying, Teric enjoyed some sort of epiphany - some manner of enlightenment that would forever change the course of his life after the Cell. They always claimed that life flashed before your eyes in these final moments, and that this rare instance of reflection allowed a man to truly measure the weight of his deeds. What they always seemed to neglect, however, was that a battered fighter had no more ability to reflect on the actions of his life than a prize-fighter does after being knocked out in the second round.
There was no epiphany for Teric. In fact, there was no thought whatsoever running through the old man's mind as the warm embrace of death slowly crowded in around him.