MidReal Story
The One-Armed Duel: A Tale of Honor
Scenario: I’m a one armed swordsman
Create my version of this story
Jian Li
one armed swordsman, friends with Mei and rivals with Shen, athletic build with a missing arm, determined and skilled
Mei Lin
skilled healer and friend to Jian, admires Jian's resilience, petite with gentle features, compassionate and wise
Shen Wei
ambitious warrior and rival to Jian, respects Jian's skill, tall with a stern face, competitive and strategic
I’m a one armed swordsman.
I lost my arm in a duel with Shen Wei, but I still beat him.
He was the one who ran away.
I was the one who had to live with the shame of losing my arm.
I was the one who had to learn how to fight all over again.
I was the one who had to prove that I was still a warrior, even if I only had one arm.
It took me years to get back on my feet, but I did it.
I learned how to fight with my left hand and became even better than I was before.
Shen Wei never came back to challenge me again, but I knew he was out there somewhere, waiting for his chance to take me down once and for all.
He would never be satisfied until he proved that he was stronger than me.
But I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I would keep training and fighting until the day I died, and then maybe he would finally leave me alone.
Night had fallen and the moon was high in the sky when Shen Wei finally showed up.
I was expecting him.
I had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and now that it was here, I was eager to see if he had improved at all in the years since we had last fought.
It didn’t take long to find out.
We faced each other on the dueling grounds, swords in hand as we prepared to do battle.
Shen Wei was still as tall and imposing as ever, with his stern face and his broad shoulders.
I stood across from him, my athletic build showing off the years of training that had gone into making me the best swordsman I could be.
A hush fell over the crowd as they waited for us to begin, and then, with a cry of rage, Shen Wei came charging at me with his sword raised high over his head.
I had been prepared for him to attack, and I managed to dodge out of the way just in time.
He stumbled forward a few steps before he managed to regain his balance, then he turned around to face me, a look of contempt on his face.
“You can do better than that,” he said with a sneer.
“I expected more from you.”
Shen Wei charged at me again, but this time I didn’t try to dodge out of the way.
Instead I held my ground and met his sword head-on, pushing back with all my might.
We stood like that for a long moment, each of us trying to push the other back, until finally I feigned to the right, then slashed at him from the left.
He wasn’t expecting that, and he had to scramble to get out of the way before my blade could connect.
He regained his footing easily and turned around to face me once again, but this time he was frowning slightly, as if he couldn’t understand how I had managed to outmaneuver him so easily.
“You’re not as good as you think you are,” I said with a smirk, “but it’s okay.
I’ll teach you how to be better.”
Shen Wei growled something under his breath, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sound of my own heartbeat.
Without another word he ran at me again, and this time I knew that he wasn’t going to hold anything back.
I braced myself for the impact and met him head-on once again, our swords clashing together in a deafening cacophony of steel against steel.
It was clear that he was trying to overpower me with brute strength alone, but I knew that I was faster than him, and that with a little bit of luck I would be able to outmaneuver him once again.
And then luck was on my side when I decided to lower my defenses just enough for Shen Wei to see an opening that he couldn’t resist taking.
With one clean movement, I slashed my blade upward and deep into Shen Wei’s neck as he charged at me, and he staggered backward, one hand pressed against the wound as he stared at me with wide eyes and dropped his sword, which clattered to the ground at his feet.
I held my own sword steady and waited for him to topple over, but he didn’t.
He just stood there, his blood pouring out of his body like water from a broken pipe, his eyes wide and unseeing as he stared at me, his lips moving soundlessly as he tried to say something that would never come out of his mouth, and then, after what felt like an eternity, Shen Wei finally fell, his body hitting the ground with a sickening thud as his severed head rolled away from his body and came to rest at my feet.
And just like that, the duel was over, and I had won.
The crowd that had been watching us was silent for a long moment, and then suddenly they burst into raucous applause as they cheered for me and congratulated me on my victory.
I could hear them calling my name over and over again, but it didn’t matter to me anymore.
All that mattered was that Shen Wei was dead, and that he would never bother me or anyone else ever again.
But that wasn’t true at all.
As I stared down at Shen Wei’s lifeless form and tried not to think about how he had once been one of my greatest rivals, the pain from my severed arm seared through me and threatened to overwhelm me completely.
I could still hear Shen Wei’s voice echoing in my ears: “You’re not as good as you think you are,” he had said, “but it’s okay.
I’ll teach you how to be better.”
He had always been so arrogant, so sure of himself and his abilities, and now it was up to me to make sure that he would never be able to hurt anyone ever again.
But even if it meant killing him, it would never be enough to satisfy my thirst for revenge.
The truth was that I had always wanted to defeat him in battle, but not like this.
Not while he was already down on his knees begging for mercy just before I killed him.
Shen Wei had been a worthy adversary and a friend, and although I had lost my arm in the duel that had come between us, I had won another one in the process.
Another one that would never allow me to forget what I had done to him, no matter how hard I tried.
But even so, I knew that I couldn’t show any weakness or pain, not while there were so many people watching me.
Or rather, not while there were so many people watching me, along with a small crowd of beasts with red eyes and sharp fangs.
They had been watching me fight Shen Wei from the shadows, and now they were standing in the open and staring at me with expressions of shock and horror on their faces.
They were silent for a long moment before finally turning away from me and slinking back into the darkness once again.
They had seen too much and would tell too many people about what I had done.
But it didn’t matter to me anymore.
It had been a gory sight to see my old friend’s body lying on the ground like that after I had cut off his head to end our battle once and for all.
The duel itself had been fierce and brutal, and even though I had made up my mind to become a one-armed swordsman before it had even started, I still wasn’t sure if it had been worth giving up my arm like that just to win against him.
But at the same time, there was no way that I would have been able to beat him without doing it.
Shen Wei was just too strong and too skilled of a warrior to have let me live if I hadn’t done something to change things up on the battlefield like that.
And so in the end, I had decided to take my chances with my final move and try to get the upper hand by using my new swordsmanship to my advantage.
It had been worth it in the end, because it was either kill or be killed on the battlefield anyway.
But at the same time, it was still hard to believe that he was gone now.
After all, Shen Wei had always been such an ambitious warrior and so full of himself and his abilities.
It seemed like he was always looking for new ways to gain power and control over the people around him, and now he would never be able to do anything like that ever again.
Instead, he would be remembered as just another one of the countless souls who had lost their lives on the battlefield while fighting for what they believed in, and there was nothing that could ever change that at all.
But none of that mattered to me as much as the pain from my arm did when it suddenly flared up again and made me want to scream from how badly it hurt all over again.
It felt like all of the blood in my body was rushing out of me and leaving me behind with nothing but an empty shell of what I once was, and there was nothing that I could have done to stop that from happening either, not even if I wanted to.
But even so, I still refused to let myself think about how much pain I was in or how much damage my body had taken from our duel or how much blood I had already lost in the process.
Instead, all I could do was try and stay focused on what needed to be done next, which was getting back home before someone saw me in this state and tried to kill me while I was still weak from battle.
And with the help of my loyal mount, who followed after me as best as he could while keeping his distance from everyone else who was still standing around watching us, I finally made it back to our village without any further incident or injury, even though all I wanted to do at the time was lay down and die from how tired I felt all over again.
But even so, there were still some things left for me to do before I would be allowed to rest for good, and one of those things was trying to explain what had happened to Mei Lin when she saw me walking through the front door with only one arm attached to my body.
