It ends pretty much immediately.

You find yourself unsurprised when the Paladin charges you instead of answering- but you are pleasantly surprised when the icon you'd come to associate with 'Players' in a 'Party' disappears from his stat bar. The fact that he stumbles and has to dismiss a popup, no doubt informing him that his ranger companion had enough of his nonsense and decided to leave the party is icing on the cake, as it lets you pelt him with a Venom Bolt while he's distracted. A cheap shot, perhaps, but in a real fight not a story-book one he obviously thought he was in, anything and everything went.

"Dishonorable scum!" He snarls. "I shall see you punished for that! And you!" He turns to Lyrissa. "How could you- ACK!" Your Chill Ray cuts him off, and honestly, you're somewhat glad he thinks this is a storybook battle. It gives your spells time to charge. And you're not about to give up any advantage you can get. Heroes tend to be stronger individually then non-bosses, and, well... you were a caster. Fair fights were something you'd loose, and you wanted to stay alive.

He seems to figure out that you'll cheerfully take advantage of any talking he does, as he charges back in instead of trying to say anything. You sweep his feet out from under him with your staff, sending him slamming into the dirt and taking the opportunity to back off and start charging a second ray. The longer you let the poisoned status work, the better a chance of survival you'll have.

Thankfully, fights at levels below twenty or so tend to be short affairs- No one involved really has enough tricks to make them drag out. Later on, they could end up lasting for quite a while, with multiple revives and returns from near ****, but now? Even an advantage as meager as getting the first two blows in can be decisive.

You barely get your second ray off, and then he's upon you. He's not technically skilled, not at all. He's just swinging as hard as he can. Either that or he's not using it. As it is, you can just barely deflect or counter most of his blows. Unfortunately, 'most of' is not 'enough' let alone 'all'. You're loosing. Far, far slower then he'd like, and not as slowly as you'd like. Finally, you're **** to block instead of redirect, and that's the end of it.

Dazed and bloody, you collapse on the ground, as the Ser Jhondoe The Brave winds up for the killing blow. You tried, you reassure yourself. You did your best. That has to count for something... And then the paladin stiffens, and topples over onto his side, dropping his blade and thankfully missing you with it. Huh. You guess your Venom Dart lasted longer then expected.

****. Bleeding out 1:00

The standard alert flickers above him, and you pull yourself somewhat shakily to your feet. Lyrissa sighs. "For a moment there I thought you were going to kill each other. I'm glad you didn't die, at least."

You wheeze a laugh and lean on your staff. "I'll admit I thought I was merely going to go down fighting. Normally this is the point where I'd hit him with Life Leech to recover somewhat, but... I'm not sure what the appropriate etiquette is here."

"Oh go ahead and heal." She waves off. "He'll respawn. He'll not be happy about it, but he'll respawn."

You nod, and channel the spell. The alert flickers from '****' to 'respawning' as you regain perhaps a quarter of the HP you lost. Of course, the interesting bit is the loot. There, at the top of the list... a Claim Crystal. Well then. That saves you the effort of hunting one down in the tower, you suppose.