As Jack fell into melee with the nearest gnoll fighter, time itself seemed to slow slightly as the creature swung its axe. He gently stepped to the side of the strike as the axe swam slowly through the air, positioning his body to the gnoll"s unprotected side. Seeing a gap in the creature"s armor beneath its arm, he twisted and snapped his blade upwards in a spray of red. The creature tottered and stumbled, looking confused at the spurting stump where its arm had been, before falling face first into the gra.s.s with a gurgle and a whimper.The gnoll next to the slain one was already mid-strike when he brought his blade back in front of him to parry. The creature"s hooked sword clashed against Harrowbloom"s edge, driving relentlessly toward"s Jack"s head. Taking advantage of the creature"s forward momentum, Jack instinctively angled Harrowbloom"s blade down slightly as he side-stepped, letting the creature"s weapon glide down and off its length. With a snap of his wrist, Jack whipped his weapon around and through the unbalanced gnoll"s neck. With a fountain of blood and an unsettling sucking sound, the creature and its newly-severed head slumped into the dirt.
Jack turned his attention to the rest of his team to see them all engrossed in their own battles. One gnoll near Rose"s feet pulled itself slowly away, leaving a smeared stain of gore across the ground from entrails dragging out of his split stomach. The second held her hard-pressed, dual-wielding a pair of long knives and attacking in tight arcs. Several small nicks on her arms emitted small trickles of blood that threw droplets through the air with every parry she made.
Seeing this, he strode forward, curling his tongue in his mouth and whistling loudly in the creature"s direction. The noise caught the gnoll"s attention for the briefest of moments, providing Rose the moment she needed to get past the creature"s guard and carve her blade halfway through its torso. The creature wailed and burbled horribly as Rose planted her foot in the creature"s chest, kicking it backwards off her weapon. Then, almost non-chalantly, she walked over and buried the blade into the crawling gnoll"s back. Once it had stopped moving, she wiped her blade on the back of the creature"s head and walked over to join him.
Even her movements seemed to be slower somehow. The overall effect he experienced as was if either time was a little bit slower, or he was a little bit faster. It wasn"t dramatic, but it did very much give him the impression of everything around him moving through water rather than air. It must be the effect of Harrowbloom"s magic. It was somehow even better than he had imagined it would be.
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"Thanks for the help," she said, sidling up beside him.
"Don"t mention it." He said.
He turned his attention to the rest of their group. Rezza lifted one of her attackers up, its face palmed in her hand as it struggled to get away, before unceremoniously using her free fist to smash its skull in a way that reminded Jack very much of a sledgehammer hitting a watermelon. While she did this, Jemeni added two more dogmen to his tally, his tiny arms reloading and rearming his crossbow so quickly that Jack could barely follow his movements.
As he looked around, however, he realized that the brothers weren"t with the rest of them. He scanned the battlefield around him, only to see one of them some distance behind the rest of their group, slumping to the ground as a gnoll pulled its spear out of his body. Not far from him lay the bodies of the other two. Somehow, several of the gnoll flankers had managed to get behind them and catch the mages out while the rest of them fought.
He cursed under his breath and sped towards them, cleaving the gnoll with the spear clean in half with a powerful swing of his blade. With a few more well-timed cuts, the three others that were with him joined him, and Jack rushed to the nearest brother. Finding no pulse, he checked the second, to the same result. Cursing again, he ran to the one he saw run through, and found him still breathing, but barely. Blood bubbled out between his lips and onto his chalk-white face with each breath, and when Jack leaned down over him, the boy stared at him in open-mouthed terror.
"You"ll be fine. I"ve got you." Jack said, holding the boy"s arm with one hand as he reached into his belt pouch with the other and pulled out one of his healing potions. He pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth, before pouring the contents into the young man"s mouth. Within moments, the color began to return to his face. Jack inspected the boy"s wound. The opening itself was closed, if barely, but he couldn"t know if all of the internal damage had been mended as well. The boy could still probably die if he wasn"t treated in a more thorough fashion, but for now, at least, he was stable.
Jack looked the boy in the eyes.
"Stay here. Act dead. Once the fighting is over, we will come back for you. If you get up, there is a good chance you won"t leave this field alive. Do you understand?" He asked.
The boy nodded in mute fright, and Jack nodded.
"Good. I will be back soon." He said, before standing and returning to the fray.