Snippet #1549757

She was swift enough becoming a liability, and that fact stung Talae's pride probably worse than breathing stabbed at her broken ribcage. Even with the extra speed granted by her much-lighter weapons, she was still moving forward only by sheer force of will, all pretense to her usual fleetfooted grace having disappeared some time ago. Some part of her wondered if this was as far as she went, but the rest of her rebelled at the notion. Even if it were true, she wasn't going to resign herself to it just yet. There was far too much still to be done for that; dragons to see slain and cold, a sister who still needed much guidance.

None of that was to say anything of her own life of course. She rarely wasted time thinking about that, and she wasn't planning on starting now. She simply was, and had never really thought it less than enough. Well, excepting this instance perhaps. It occurred to her vaguely that she must be losing some serious blood to even be thinking any of this. Where the hell had her discipline, gone, anyway? And just what the hell was happening to Kisikoni?

Wait, what? Talae shook herself with enough force to cause her head to swim, but sure enough, when her eyes cleared, she was still confused. Where a few moments before her partner had stood (and she was really going to have to talk to him about learning to save his own ass, which he could have done thrice over by now if he hadn't slowed himself down to stick close), there was now something entirely different. She was at a loss for how exactly to describe the... entity, but her mind was still working well enough to connect it to the earlier instance, and so she knew it was him. Well, sort of. She'd never seen the like, and frankly, if she wasn't so exhausted, she might have been afraid, but fear had dulled long before clarity, and she was presently at a loss for both.

Well, whatever he was doing, it was working, and she decided it couldn't hurt... her. The undead, he was most definitely hurting. How convenient. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak, Talae took the opportunity to fumble around with the flasks on her belt until she found the one that was not poisonous, acidic, or an antidote. Downing it in one go, she grimaced as the cobwebs disappeared from between her ears and she could make a little more sense of her surroundings.

If anything, it made the pain a little worse, but the trade-off was that she could actually feel her limbs again. She skirted around the edges of the large mess her partner was making of the field in his current shape, picking undead off here and there until at last the numbers seemed to start thinning. A sonorous command reached her via the armor, and she lowered her weapons as the last of the undead were scooped away.

"Kisikoni? You can, er... change back now. It's over." A good thing, too, if the tremulousness in her legs was anything to go by. Damn. She needed a healer, and now, but she'd wait until she was sure he was fine too. Whether or not what had just happened had any side effects was a bit beyond her knowledge, but it seemed like it might. The bigger questions, she laid aside for later.

---

Alistair was frustratingly unable to land a single hit on his opponent, but then frankly the same could be said about the Silenced, thought the amount of near-misses would have been unnerving were he any less stoic at the moment. As it turned out, it was only the small minutiae of flight, something that a ground-bound being would obviously not understand as well as he did, which saved him. He was graced with enough age and experience to understand his own mechanics very well, indeed, and it was that which saved his life.

Of course, such things hardly applied when one was unable to predict the opponent's movement, and so Alistair was also cautious, and able to predict with some accuracy when bursts of speed or teleportation spells would be applied. He'd even baited for them a few times, to decent result. He had not, however, seen the last one coming, and was thus extremely glad when Sid intervened. "Impeccable timing as ever, Captain," he called, a nod to the previous battle as well as this one. Really, by this point, he might as well make a habit of it; it seemed that the others tended to leave her to her own devices, perhaps assuming that she could deal with it. While he did not doubt that in most instances this was true, even the most experienced soldier could benefit from some eagle-eyed assistance.

She looked weary, and it was an expression matched in all those he could see. Probably on his own face as well, now that he thought of it. he took down one last soldier and slung his spear over his back, only too happy to obey the command to cease aggression. Reporting to Sid was an easy matter, as they were presently within five feet of each other, and so Alistair stood serenely and waited for the others to assemble. "Are you injured, Captain?" She did not seem so, but it was the courteous thing to ask, and he had found that those in command were often the last to allow their wounds to be tended to. Something that was not wrong, and in some sense admirable, but also a bit worrisome.