>>6207332[Not so! Nermal did okay, kek.]
>>6207307Your approach unfortunately does more harm than good, initially at least. Zith-Zi, whose face is twisted in exertion as she fends off multiple foes, relaxes ever-so-slightly when she sees your approach… Which is when one Unseelie adoptee takes advantage of this barely-perceptible drop in her guard to score a slash across the exposed part of her chest and throat.
<span class="mu-r">“MotherFUCKER!”</span>
<span class="mu-b">ZZ: 22/30 HP</span>
It’s thankfully shallow enough to allow her to exclaim in such a way rather than, for instance, making wet choking noises. It also gives your fury a specific focal point, and with a scream straight from Hell’s own heart, you and Nermal throw yourselves bodily upon the offending foundling. Your haphazard stabbing—more like someone madly digging than proper spearfighting if you’re being honest—fails to do much more than distract, but the distracting it DOES provide is enough for Nermal to chomp down and end the attacker.
“Good girl! Uh, boy! Newt! Thing?”
<span class="mu-i">croak</span>
You and ZZ spare each other only a quick look, communicating all you need to, before you move back-to-back, with Nermal circling around your feet. The grouping-up gives pause to the mutants’ attempts to maim, which gives you the briefest of windows to see what else is going on around you.
You witness Sternstone and Copperbelt crowded in until they bump, back to back, and each of them catches a blow; the boss-dwarf’s is glancing, absorbed in part by his armour, but it is one of the vine-wreathed ‘elites’ who reaches out with a long arm to score Steiner’s shoulder and open up a font of (admittedly delicious-looking) blood.
<span class="mu-b">Steiner Sternstone’s HP: 9/15
Iorund Copperbelt’s HP: 11/20</span>
You really have to hand it to him, though: if ever there was clearcut evidence for the inherent fighting spirit of the dwarven race, it was watching the pudgy pencil-pusher wing his pickaxe to ribcage-caving effect against the twisted terror that did the damage, and then hurl the pickaxe with such force as to split the skull of another, before storming up to reclaim it.
“Baldy oughtta give ‘imself a raise,” you hear Zith-Zi mutter, evidently sharing your admiration.
<span class="mu-b">Copperbelt crits AGAIN, kills two more foundlings.</span>
Whatever joy you take from witnessing such visceral violence in your favour is diluted by the dire sound of your boytoy’s voice raised in a pained cry. You turn to where you left Martyn, and see him beings et up by two Unseelie of the smaller sort, who have slashed open gouges where his armour is lighter, upon the legs. With disturbingly childlike giggles, the begin trying to tear him down. He stabs at them, but they skitter on their weird little nubbin-legs, between swinging the sword there appended.
<span class="mu-b">Martyn Meadowgrass: 7/20 HP</span>
