Snippet #1374862

Jasper noted the Darkspawn with a cold knot in the pit of his stomach. He'd already taken one out, on their way towards the cave entrance. He doubted very much that any of the people therein had seen him do it, but he hardly cared about that. Rather, he'd followed the lot of them (disorganized as they were in terms of unit cohesion) to the site of another, far more dangerous, skirmish.

There was a slight tremor in the pirate's limbs as he surveyed the field of battle, but it was far from one of fear. Rather, it would be better to say that the tremulousness was nothing more or less than a feeling of anticipation sweet enough to addict far more iron-willed men than he, and it was a sensation he actively sought. Here at last was something to rid him of the cloud of apathy that ever hung over his soul. Was it dangerous to treat such a thing as though it were not in fact a matter of lives at stake? Certainly. But Jasper knew well exactly how risky it was, and that was the very reason he embraced it.

He'd been told frequently that he had a death wish. His response was always the same: Is it truly a wish to die if I'm always alive at the end? A small smirk twisted the pirate's mouth, and he drew the curved blades from his back noiselessly, approaching the first of his victims while still under the cover of stealth. A swift stab to the back blew his cover, but he hardly minded. Dark blood gushed from the Genlock spellcaster's wounds, but the rogue twisted out of its path, already smoothly slicing into another before the creature realized it was dead. This one was struck in the side with his larger weapon, but the wound was not as clean, nor as complete, and its resulting cry alerted the nearby Darkspawn to his presence.

Thankfully, most of them were presently occupied. He was a bit disappointed to discover that in all honesty, Darkspawn did die about as easily as anything else, but then he supposed that upped the chances of his surviving this stupid risk of his, which he could not interpret to be fully negative. A large Darkspawn (was it Hurlock? He was pretty sure it those ones were Hurlocks) armed with a two-handed axe came charging at him, raising the double-edged weapon to swing crudely at the black-clad man with one uncovered eye. Had anyone been observing the scene, they would have seen it roll skyward. Apparently, the rumor about the intelligence of these things was correct: they fought with less guile than most of the privateers he'd encountered, which was really saying something.

Stepping to the side, he avoided the downward arc of the axe, watching almost disinterestedly as it bit into the ground. Rather than give the Hurlock the opportunity to recover it and take his head off, Jasper struck viper-quick at the exposed (though still armored) back. He found a joint between the metal plates and slipped his shorter blade in, removing it in just enough time to dodge a swing from the much more lightly-armed creature who'd tried to sneak up on him. Unfortunately, his avoidance was incomplete, and he earned a rather nasty gash to his forearm for his trouble.

Hissing through his teeth, Jasper parried the next blow and closed the distance between himself and his opponent, engaging in a rather lovely set of formulations for combat pragmatists, colloquially described as dirty fighting. He preferred to think of it as practicality.

He freed his blades from the resulting corpse in enough time to notice that there was a rather large monster standing over a fallen mage, apparently about to strike. Well now, can't have people dying now, can we? Certainly not when they might be tomorrow's amusing diversion. Right then. He did not generally carry a bow, so his ranged options were limited, which meant his best course of action was to distract the thing long enough to get there.

"Oi, ugly!" he called to the creature, watching with satisfaction as its grotesque head swiveled towards him. Time to move. "Yikes. Now yours is a face only a mother could love..." Did Darkspawn have mothers? He might have read a reference to such a thing, but he really didn't want to think about it. Some things were simply too disgusting to be contemplated, and that was most certainly one of them.

Long, hasty strides had him close enough to engage before the thing could lose interest and turn back to its prey-of-the-moment, and the next minutes would be spent in a flurry of ducks, dodges, parries, and similar acrobatics as the pirate tried to find away through the Darkspawn's defenses.