The gnoll standing between Jack and the two girls turned at the sudden arrival of a new target, and, seeing Jack was armed, turned and snarled at him, brandishing the oversized cleaver it held in its left hand."Rose, you two okay?" Jack called out to the girls.
"We"re fine," Rose called back.
"Better now." Madeleine added dryly. Rose turned and gave her sibling a dirty look
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Before Jack could reply to the two of them, the gnoll charged at him, hurling into a flurry of blows so rapid and savage that it was all he could do to keep them from landing on him. He tried to focus to turn the tables, but he just couldn"t get his physical or mental balance long enough to shift into that frame of mind.
A particularly savage swing threatened to split him from head to toe, and he threw his axe blade up to deflect it. The cleaver"s edge impacted with the axe blade with such intensity that it threw Jack stumbling backwards it knocked away his guard, leaving him wide open for a follow-up.
Powerless to get his defenses back up in time, Jack watched with a sense of icy horror as the gnoll wound up for a killing blow. Jack closed his eyes. If this was gonna be it, he didn"t want to see it coming.
He heard the cleaver sing through the air. He heard a wet crack, and felt something heavy knock him flying sideways.
He had expected the cleaver to feel cold and hard, and the blow to cause him immense agony. But what he felt was none of those things. Was he in shock? He"d heard that when people are mortally wounded, their brain hides the suffering and makes it all go away. Was that happening to him now? Was he going to die?
He suddenly felt himself slam into the hard stone of the street, his arm and shoulder taking the brunt of the blow as the side of his head smacked one of the stones, causing his head to explode into the worst headache he could ever remember having. Not only that, but the entire left side of his body was burning hot.
Jack"s eyes jerked open. He found himself staring directly into Madeleine"s face, which sat only a few inches from his.
Reacting with a mixture of startledness and pain, he pushed the girl off of him suddenly and tried to push himself to his feet.
"Ow! Hey, what was that for?" Madeleine protested angrily, rubbing the newly developed sore spot on her rear end from its impact with the street stones.
Jack glanced in the direction the Gnoll had been only a moment before to find Rose standing over the crumpled heap of the Gnoll"s body. Jack could see even at a cursory glance that the creature"s head was definitely not designed to be sitting at the angle it was currently sitting. Rose reached down and grabbed one of the gnoll"s arms and proceeded to wipe some form of dark sticky liquid off of her shin with it.
She noticed Jack"s puzzled expression.
"Apparently managed to rupture one of the vessels in his throat when I kicked him, and he spat blood all over me," She said, dropping the gnoll"s limb unceremoniously.
"Well done providing the gap in your defense like that. It gave me the moment I needed to catch him off guard. Oh, and good job on the knockdown, Maddie. That was perfectly timed." She said, turning from Jack to Madeleine as she spoke.
"You"re welcome, by the way." Madeleine said, looking at Jack with irritation.