>>5517271>15The Drow’s blade strikes the rotten corpse-creature before it can teleport away. It was mid-leap—you suspect mid-warp—but it now tumbles and falls.
“Yes!” the Duelists enthuses, praising her hands above her head and jumping with excitement.
You divert your eyes from the (ahem) EFFECT that this jumping produces, and instead hurl your own dagger to finish the blasted thing off—the Duelist’s dagger struck its side, but you now impale the yowler’s head.
“My god appreciates a display of skill,” you say with no small smugness, “but victory is not secure until the kill is actually MADE.”
“Whatever,” The Duelist scoffs, refusing to have her good mood spoiled. “You made that shot BECAUSE I made mine, Dragon.”
You shrug. She isn’t WRONG.
“Help me collect some pelts,” you command her—and the others.
They move to assist. You lament that you can bring back no intact heads to display as trophies, but pelts should be enough to raise morale among your harried henchmen. They will HAVE to do, since any head thus harvested is, evidently, at risk of escaping…
Though, as you collect your shoggoth-dagger, you find THAT beast’s head is at least in pretty good shape, despite being clearly, truly dead. An excellent find!
“Not a bad shot,” the Duelist notes admiringly.
“A bow would have been easier,” you note.
Azonia gestures to her overlarge mammary glands—even bound up as they must be for combat, they would clearly impede her drawing of an elven longbow.
“Maybe for SOME,” she says.
Your <appetite> waxes… And, as unpleasant memories rise to meet it, wanes again. The Mother of Dragons’ sadistic laughter echoes in your mind, and your loins and soul alike feel a pang of remembered, ecstatic agony.
“Ah,” you simply say, and turn your head until the discomfort passes.
You return to your forces, heart and aura still alight with triumph in spit of your troublesome trauma. The Pit-Guard and his Apprentice both proudly display the harvested hides of the fallen felines.
“The feral yowlers are returned to Death’s embrace!” you declare.
In return, you receive a unanimous cheer—even from the slaves, who evidently find their condition infinitely more tolerable now that they are at least not being terrorized and slain. Their joy is short-lived, though, for the kobolds return to their task of mastering these mammals, and they in turn return to their labour.
