Domhnall and Iridiel
For a moment, Domhnall continued to gaze into the nearby shrubbery, Jaelnec and the rest of their little "camp" left behind his back for the time being. As Iridiel appeared to be pulling out her crossbows (and seemed to be quite capable of standing on her own in spite of her recent fall), he, too, reached for the only weapon he actually had on his person there and then - the same knife he had been using for making ammunition for his crossbow when the others first arrived.
Now, he suddenly regretted not picking up his crossbow, overly precautious as it might have seemed to the newcomers. (Would they really have blamed him, though? They were just three people, one of whom exhausted and another hurt and asleep, whereas the newcomers were mounted warrior-looking fellows accompanied by a massive predatory beast.) And, for the matter, that his spear was a ways off. All in all, he felt woefully unprepared.
For the lack of any other options, he gripped the handle of the knife in his right and moved his weapon-hand back, took half a step forward, held his left arm and hand out in front of himself, and waited. Should he be lucky, he might even get to gut whatever it was before it succeeds in tearing his uncovered protecting arm off... (Though, one could suppose, getting one's throat torn out would be even worse than getting one's arm torn off, so risking an arm was the
reasonable thing to do, as far as survival was concerned. Not that it was a particularly consoling thought...) Behind him, the older black-eyes commented something about it being "something new".
He thought there was a momentary rustle in the shrubbery, and on the next moment, several things happened at once. Something - nay, some
one, it,
she, was a human in tatters or something very close to it - burst forth from the shrubbery with a bone-piercing ethereal shriek and made a beeline for them - him and Iridiel specifically. The peculiar aura Iridiel had pointed out mere moments ago intensified, revealing this person as the source of it. It was ... distracting, made trying to determine the proper course of action a notch more difficult.
At the same time, Iridiel prepared to shoot the blatantly hostile newcomer, whereas Jaelnec had drawn his sword and rushed past both of them, preparing to parry the the frenzied stranger of a woman, and someone else screamed behind him. It was not
exactly fear ... it was frustration, anger, the sound of someone being terminally
fed up with something, well and truly. And then ...
"STOP!" It was not an order. It was a
compulsion. It worked as a reflex not unlike that which makes one close one's eyes upon seeing something fly at one's face, or draw back one's hand with a flinch when contacting glowing-hot metal. It felt similar to the older black-eyes' speech earlier, somehow, yet it was actually Rodorian, not
all the languages.
He complied - something which, in this rare instance,
was actually easier done than said, since he was still and in waiting already.
Beside him, Iridiel was likewise frozen in place, seemingly having been a blink of an eye from firing two bolts into the savage woman's body, her expression one of shock. The first thing out of her mouth as she began to recover was a salvo of swears in her native language...
Behind him, the white-eyed woman hissed that she would kill - her? - with a mere word, should she as much as breathe funny. He was in full mind to believe her.
Etakar
The noble beast had raised his head and honed his gaze on the commotion following the healer's fall from her perch, contemplating whether or not it was a situation that warranted his involvement. There was little investment or familiarity between him and the two not-humans, but the female of them had still mended the worst of the damage done to his limb; he owed her that much.
In the end, he decided the situation was best left to the humanoids to sort out, and was about to go back to idling when an oddity caught his attention. It was not truly a sound or sight, it was a faint ubiquitous sensation. A feeling. An uncanny, explanationless one. It smelled like magic.
Etakar
hated magic. ...Well, perhaps not healing magic, provided the individual did nothing else funny. All other magic, however, meant trouble.
With a sigh, he pressed his right hand to the ground and got up, muscles which had spent too long compensating for the lack of a fourth usable limb complaining in turn. He did not get far before a humanoid burst from the shrubbery, emitting a - frankly - quite inhuman screech, and being responded in kind by Thaler.
For a long moment, he pondered whether or not to demonstrate the fact that if he wanted, he could be louder than either of them, but ultimately decided contributing to the altercation was beneath him. The confrontation between the woman newcomer and Jaelnec, however, was of concern.
He would move closer, and keep an eye on it.
Aemoten
The creature had him pinned down; its tiny, vicious, venom-green eyes stared him right in the face, its many rows of needle-sharp teeth gnashing together mere two inches from his nose. The demon - if that was what it was - shrieked at his face, an inhuman, bloodcurdling screech; pain flowed into his head like molten lead. It had horns not unlike a deer's, and its eyes lit up like the Illusionist's once long ago.
This one here, it was a savage, though. It lacked the refinement and cunning of the sadistic psychopath of a mind-manipulator. It threw everything at him, raw physical and mental power - it was insane. Filled with sheer, unadulterated madness, its only intent was to rip and tear, to destroy and consume. It felt no fear. It cared not for pain. It was determined to break him; he saw it in its eyes. It laughed at him, a sinister, yet oddly childlike mocking giggle.
And he was losing. Its clawed appendages were digging into his exposed flesh, and even when he had grabbed it by its neck and was keeping its jaws at a distance thusly, bloodloss or being tired out would soon make his arm yield... The pain in his head
exploded, not unlike one might imagine an axe to the head might feel like, and he was abruptly torn from his nightmare and thrown back into the waking world.
The first things he felt were confusion at the evident lack of an evil glowing gaze and many rows of teeth about to tear into his face, and then the ungodly ire of of an infinitely exhausted man prematurely roused from much-needed sleep, combined with the cold sweat and trembling left over from pain-induced shock. He was pallid, breathing too fast and his pulse thudding in his ears.
It took uncharacteristically long for his mind to catch up on his surroundings, for him to realize that a duller version of his dream-headache persisted even now, for him to properly comprehend that whatever period of time he had slumbered, the world had gone to all hell once more, and the situation was far from fine.
At the very least, though he was far from rested or recovered, he personally - objectively speaking - felt a little bit better. His soul protested being brought back so soon, invoking irritation and impatience in his mind, and he still felt the familiar scraping pain in his chest and faint taste of blood in his mouth, but at the very least his soul was no longer trying to actively make his body implode to compensate for being stretched too thin. It had recovered at least some of its usual reserve of magical energy. And though still sluggish, he was more alert now, more coherent.
With some effort, he got up to a sitting position, leaning onto a single shaking hand, and tried to assess the situation, eyes moving from Thaler to their two new acquaintances to Jaelnec confronting ... a human woman?
Noctis
wintersoldier
Izurich
sandstorm
Alfhedil