"Shit!" Gregor cursed as he barely managed to stop his fall by placing his left hand in front of him at the last second. Even in this position, the Mountain did not lose his sword and swung it at the cursed Dornishman, but he missed as Oberyn jumped back with an easy grace.
The Mountain tried to get back up on his feet again and again, but his knee was seriously hurt this time, and just shook helplessly, refusing to follow his orders. It seems that all those previous hits that he had taken before were finally taking their toll on him.
"Ugh!" The Mountain grunted as he swung his sword wildly, hoping to catch the bastard on one of his errant attacks, but he knew it was fruitless, as he couldn't even touch him at his full strength, let alone now from his awkward half-kneeling position.
'Finally,' Oberyn was breathing just a little heavily at the moment, but other than that, he was feeling completely composed, his eyes were fully alert, and he forced himself not to become complacent just because his enemy was kneeling, as he knew that this was the most crucial moment.
He slowly but surely began to close the distance with the beast, while continuing to focus his assault on Mountain's other knee and his hand holding the sword, wanting to completely deprive him of his mobility.
It took him some effort, but eventually the Mountain's hand faltered as the sword was bashed out of his shaky hands, and he was finally made to fully kneel with both his hands and knees flat on the ground.
Oberyn finally allowed himself to feel a hint of relief, as he had finally managed to accomplish what he had set out to, and brought this beast in human clothing, this scrouge on the face of Westeros, down on his knees.
"W-Wait! Don't kill me!!" Mountain's voice quivered as he begged using words that the man had never imagined he would ever use in his life, "I-It was not my fault, what happened!" he growled, looking up with a desperate look on his face, "I was ordered! I was just doing my job! Your sister Elia—"
"Keep her name out of YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!!" Oberyn roared as he lunged and brought his spear down on the monster's head, but Mountain moved as if he had been waiting for that as he abruptly dodged at the last moment and pounced at Oberyn with the sword that he had reacquired sneakily.
"ARGH!!"
The Mountain had used all of his remaining strength and wits, but sadly, Oberyn was no rookie and easily evaded the desperate man's desperate attack.
He was going to make no stupid mistake at this final moment, no matter how full of rage he was at the moment, and no matter how much his blood boiled to make this monster pay immediately for daring to utter his sister's name.
But unfortunately for him, while he did not make the blunder at this crucial moment, someone else did...
...
"FUCK!" Nymeria screamed in despair as she looked at the spear enlarging in her eyes, feeling completely helpless to stop it, 'Am I going to die?'
A few seconds earlier, the girl had been feeling on top of the world; she had been making easy work of her two opponents, completely overpowering them to the point that they had to take turns to keep her occupied.
And as the fight went on, and they began to accumulate injuries, and as they saw their friends die one by one, their determination to fight back got weaker, and they began to look for ways to get away, and this only made the battle easier for her.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, Nymeria captured the perfect opportunity using a feint, and made one of them extend a little too much and be unable to counter her for a moment, leaving his comrade all alone.
And the girl seized that moment perfectly, and immediately began to ruthlessly plummel the other man, and with him being so weakened due to the poison, it only took Nymeria three swift strikes of her spear before his sword was blasted out of his hand, and her spear impaled through his venomous eyes.
"Ha!" Nymeria smirked as she mercilessly yanked her spear out of the dying man and turned around, wanting to deal with the first guy and then go help her father with the Mountain.
But at that exact moment, when she was feeling the most assured, and her guard was at its lowest— Someone struck! Someone who had been waiting for that moment! Someone whom she and everyone else had already considered done for...
...
There aren't many things in this world that Amory Lorch could proudly say that he was good at.
He was not a very good fighter; he could not ride in a tourney to save his life, he couldn't do Archery, he was not very strong, his stamina was shit, and he was, safe to say, gifted with the ugliest of mugs the gods had ever given a human.
But if there was one thing—one skill that he could be proud of, something he had always worked hard to improve, then it would be his ability to kill with a knife.
He could still vaguely remember that day when he was just a young guard working at Lannisport and saw an unruly sellsword somehow take down a fully armoured knight using just a small dagger.
He, of course, got taken down by the other guards soon enough, but still, that sight had impressed the young Lorch so much that he decided then and there that he wanted to be able to do that too.
And to his surprise, he found that it was something he was actually good at. For once in his life, he could learn a skill by just putting a small amount of effort into it.
So the man put even more effort into it, hoping that one day, the skill would become useful and save his life in a tough spot.
But who would have known that he would be taken out in this battle, that would probably be the last one of his life, before he could even show off that he was not a completely useless person?
Then, as he was trying to helplessly crawl away from the fight, hoping to somehow disappear before the enemies noticed him missing, he came across the miserable man who had been killed immediately with a knife to his neck.
And at that moment, feeling the profound feeling of exhaustion as the poison slowly sapped the remaining strength in his body, Lorch finally gave up, realising that trying to run was just a delusion... that this would probably be the place where he would die.
So knowing that there was no hope for him to survive, his mind firmed up, and he decided that his final act would be retribution against these bastards.
He grabbed the knife out of the dead man, slowly crawled to a rock, sat up against it and then began to look around with his blurry eyes to find his target.
Noticing that both the girl with shield and the cowardly archer were too far away for him to reach, and that the Dornish prince will be taken care of by the Mountain sooner or later, he decided to set his eyes on the girl with the spear, but he found her to be too vigilant, and knowing that with his current strength, it would be useless unless it was a sneak attack, he decided to wait.
So he waited... and waited...
And sure enough, his patience eventually paid off as he finally chanced upon the perfect opportunity, and then, without hesitating for a single moment, he hurled the knife in his hand with all his remaining strength straight at the Dornish girl's face while, 'Die you bitch!!'
'Pity, I won't get to play with her,' Lorch thought in disappointment as the last of his strength left him and his body tumbled to the ground, unable to see the result of his attack, as his consciousness began to slowly leave him, 'And damn, she was so pretty too,'
...
'Shit!' Nymeria only noticed the sneak attack when it was less than three inches from her face, but the girl had always been very nimble, and had the reflexes of a cat so even in this dangerous situation, she managed to turn her head at the very last moment, and instead of knife taking her eye, it left just a nick on her cheek.
But unfortunately, this manoeuvre left her completely unbalanced, and her other opponent, who was already half dead, happened to be in the exact position to take advantage of her vulnerability, and even in his current useless state, the man did not miss the chance that god had presented him with.
"ARGH!" The man roared with a deranged look on his face as he stabbed his sword at the girl's chest with all his might.
Her spear was too far away, her body had just dodged a deadly attack, so at that moment, Nymeria was completely out of options and could only watch helplessly as death approached her.
"NYMERIA! NO!" Sarella, who had just taken care of her opponent and was catching her breath for a few seconds, happened to catch sight of that moment and screamed heartbreakingly at the sight of her sister's certain demise.
But while everyone else was powerless to intervene, there was someone who was not...
His arrow arrived at the perfect moment and slammed into the neck of the attacker, depriving his attack of its strength, as he helplessly stumbled drunkenly to the ground while holding his neck with a stupefied expression on his face.
'Phew! Just in the nick of time,' Jon breathed in relief as he slightly lowered his bow.
Ever since he had mistakenly raised that bloody death flag a few minutes ago, Jon had been waiting for something exactly like this to happen.
He had been patient, and he had been vigilant, constantly scanning the other battles every few seconds while dealing with his own enemies.
So it had not been particularly hard for him to capture that dangerous moment when Nymeria was in danger, and fortunately enough, he already had an arrow nocked in his bow about to take the life of his last enemy, so with just a simple change in the angle, he managed to rescue the girl and avert the inevitable death flag.
'Take that! You fucking omnipotent—'
But before the emotion of joy could even settle in Jon's brain, a second disaster struck... a disaster that he was not fast enough to avert.
...
Hearing his daughter's tragic scream had shaken Oberyn to his very core, and like any normal father, his reaction was also immediate and reflexive as his head snapped towards her with an alarmed look on his face.
Thankfully, though, before panic could fully set in, he saw her being saved by Jon's arrow, making his tensed nerves relax, but then, in the very moment, all his hair stood up as he realised what he had done, 'Oh, shit!'
A second...
Just a single second...
That was the amount of time that Oberyn had been distracted because of his daughters, but that was exactly the lapse that Mountain had been waiting all this time for...
"DIE!!!" The Mountain screamed in an enraged voice as he swung his sword with all the strength that he could muster in his kneeling position.
Even at this deadly moment, Oberyn displayed his top-notch reflexes and somehow managed to raise his spear to block at the very last moment.
But this hasty block may as well not have been there, as even in this weakened form, the sheer force of the Mountain's strike bent the shaft of Oberyn's spear, and smashed into his chest and sent him rolling away until he slammed into a rock and came to an abrupt, painful halt.
"UGH!" Oberyn coughed and wheezed, feeling as if his chest had been crushed; even regular breathing had become hard for him at the moment.
But knowing how dangerous the moment was, the Dornishman tried to push through the pain, and hurt, and even though he couldn't even open his eyes fully without getting disoriented, he tried to push himself to stand up as his hand automatically searched for his spear, but halfway through, his body jerked and he stumbled back into the ground, his mind slipping in and out of consiousness, 'Damn it! Get up!'
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Jon cursed with a panicked expression on his face, as the battle that had been going so well for them suddenly turned so deadly, 'How the hell did it come to this?!'
///