>>5558137>2, 16, 13 for fisticuffs (you) >17 for the Novice >19, 17 for the humansThe male is quick to act, reaching for the blade upon his belt. You do not bring your own sword to bear—it would mean his end, and you mean to capture these two alive. You instead rush forward, bowling him over with your superior size and knocking him down the hill. He keeps hold of his blade despite this sudden shock, but tumbles quite a few feet before he can stop, and is visibly disoriented by the attack. It takes him a moment before he can stand steadily, and make to run…
“Jakob!”
The female’s shriek stuns the male human. He delays in his departure, remembering her despite his terror. He finds his mate in the Novice’s clutches, struggling but unable to fight her way to freedom from the much larger Serpent Priestess.
“Let her go!” he demands, foolishly.
He should be running, or drawing his bow. Instead, he charges for the two females, to liberate his Elaine. Love is a powerful force, after all.
You move to intercept his charge, but he reaches them before you do, animated by desperation. The woman’s picnic basket is crushed in the confused confrontation that results, and the Novice shrieks in pain. You roar in fury and slam your weight again in the man, this time tumbling with him as you wrench him away from your great love. You grasp his knife-arm, twisting it until it audibly pops and cracks and he wails and whimpers in surrender. The knife, red with Reptilian blood, falls from Jakob’s grasp.
“Are you—?!”
The Novice waves off your concern, grimacing in pain but still clutching the female.
“It would have been easier to kill them,” the Novice criticizes, an ‘I-told-you-so’ you cannot exactly argue with, given she is actively bleeding.
“I am fine,” she addresses your apparently-obvious concern after a moment. “It is just a flesh wound. I will weave it shut as soon as we get back. But we should hurry—this stupid scene has made much noise. We risk discovery, Dragonborn!”
You nod, and haul the man over your shoulder. He begins to struggle, and screams, but you quickly silence him with a hand over his mouth, and then with a threat:
“Ssstruggle,” you tell him in his tongue, “and I will make you watch while my female flaysss yoursss… Alive.”
That does the trick—both Jakob the Male and Elaine the Female fall into a terrified silence as you and Novice descend beneath the hills, and race your winding curse through the dark of the tunnel-complex back to your base.
