Afres's blade had grown a few cracks after just minutes in a fight against Katherine. He had pulled out all his best spells, but it looked like non of them affected his opponent. After all, she was faster, stronger and even a better spell caster than he was or could ever be. It was a fight of a sheep against a wolf—that's if the wolf looked like a suicidal maniac in a dress.
Her swordsmanship surpassed his on each level and at this point, he only believed that she was just letting him live for fun.
He couldn't take this anymore. He had exhausted his magical energy and the small fraction he still had was to keep his body protected from the more lethal spells she had installed for later. Using that fraction would mean losing his defense against magical attacks. And if the spell fails then she would kill him in just a flick of her finger and so he was saving this for last.
