[Good. He's going to take that hit and launch a rapid series of strikes on the area left undefended because of Nico's extended arm.

A core principle of mage hand-to-hand: take the blows you can and use them to leverage yourself. Chances are your retaliatory strike will be much more painful than the one you took.

He wheezes his reply to Nico (he did, after all, get hit hard in the kidney).]

I admire him, myself. I also both feel bad for him because he hasn't had the training we had, and feel good that thus far he hadn't needed to. Guess that's changing.