The guards surrounding the Duke did not hesitate, and though Lucien sprang forward in an attempt to get to Prosper in time, he had no such luck. A swordpoint found the manās chest, emerging out his back in a good foot and a half of red-coated steel, glimmering dully from the illumination of the moon overhead. The guard withdrew the sword, and the nobleman fell to the snow, the same red soaking into what had once been pristine white.
The Qunari woman, Lucien noted, was not killed, though he could tell from this closer distance that she appeared to have been chained, what might have been a knife discarded several feet to the side of her. He supposed that made senseāif this was really some kind of information exchange, Marcus would not want to kill the person with the information. The Magister himself appeared largely disinterested in Prosperās demise, and as soon as it was done, he spoke again. āNothing personal. Loose ends and all that.ā With a wave of his hand, the dozen or so guards that had been surrounding Prosper turned to face the oncoming party. One of those dealing with the Qunari woman dealt a heavy blow to the back of her head, and once she collapsed, those dozen started forward as well.
But perhaps the part of this situation that made it almost implausibly dangerous was that the wyvern also turned its attention towards them, its mouth opening and tongue lolling out, teeth dripping yellow-green poison to the ground, where it ate through the snow like corrosive acid. Though its first steps towards the group were slow, like a stalking cat, when it got within a hundred feet of them, it charged, forcing everyone to scatter or else still be standing in its path when it reached them.
Amalia rolled to her feet considerably to the left of the creature, eyes darting around the field for the one threat that was not obviously accounted for yet. When she found him, it was to note that he was already looking at her, as though waiting for her attention. Undoubtedly aware that he now had it, he raised a hand in a beckoning gesture, as if to bid her forward, then turned and sprinted into the woods.
āMarcus,ā she hissed. He wasnāt doing this again. He wasnāt going to escape the consequences of his deeds, again. He would not live to torment her again. This was going to end. It had to end, or she would always fear its return. Glancing once back at the others, she hesitated.
But then she bolted after the Magister.
Sophia chose not to dive but instead to step out of the way of the wyvern, as it snapped its jaws away from her, at another target. Staying within striking range, she managed to land a decent cut down its side as it passed, opening a bloody line that the beast seemed hardly to notice. This one was far more impressive than the one they'd hunted and killed earlier, and it appeared to have been tamed. She was almost curious how such a thing could be done.
Her curiosity was wiped out, however, when the beast's tail followed behind it, and swept out to the side, catching Sophia in the side either by chance or by design. It hardly mattered, as the effect was the same: she was thrown from her feet to land face first in the snow a few feet away, dazed and disoriented.
The target the wyvern had initially gone for happened to be Ithilian, who needed to dive out of the way entirely to avoid having his entire upper body clamped down on by a set of jaws. After the first attack it switched targets, allowing the elf some room to breathe, which was when he saw Amalia moving at full speed in pursuit of Marcus. There was really no question in his mind what he would be doing; he'd come here for Amalia, after all. His sight was still poor, and his breathing was agitated now that action had begun, but he would not let her run off on her own now. Pushing back to his feet, Ithilian took off after her.
One of Rilienās remaining lyrium explosives cracked on the wyvernās hide, near the base of its neck, and he knew he had successfully drawn its attention when it swung towards him. The guards were not to be counted out, either, however, as many as they were, and he wasnāt able to follow up with anything more than that before he was ducking out of the way of a longsword, bending backwards and drawing his knives on the way back up, trying to keep his feet as light as possible over the snow so as to avoid sinking into it. With two of their number off into the woods after Marcus, the rest of them were going to have a difficult time not getting killed by some combination of wyvern and man, but if they could recover their organization and figure out how to deal with the situation most effectively, they might yet succeed.
"Aurora. Help me keep it distracted.ā The two of them had range compared to Lucien and Sophia, so if they could keep the wyvern busy for long enough, then the other two could cut down the guards, hopefully quickly enough to make sure neither he nor the mage died.
"One moment," Aurora said, concentrating on a weaving a spell in between her hands. She had dodged the Wyvern as well by going away from it, and once she found her feet again, she set to casting the spell. Once she'd dipped into the fade, she threw her hand up into the air above, a dull blue orb shooting upward into the sky. Moments later a clap of thunder followed closely after, a bolt of lightning striking a guard, and forcing to him to his knees in response.. They were severely outnumbered, but a lightning storm would help even the odds.
Visibly breathing heavier at the effort, Aurora's eyes fell onto the wyvern and she nodded, "Right." Stepping forward, her arm whipped from below and she threw an underhanded stonefist at the creature. It struck its hide with a certain amount of force, but it just seemed to brush it off. Instead, it began to step toward them. Tilting her head toward Rilien, she asked, "Split up?" as she backed away, clearly not waiting for his answer.
The tempest spell did indeed help thin the ranks of soldiers, who had been rather tightly clustered into their two groups as they advanced on the four remaining opponents. It would seem they had been warned against being too reckless with these particular foes, regardless of the comparative numbers. A good half-dozen guards dropped as a result of direct hits by the lightning, but the others continued to advance forward.
Lucien, who had seen Sophia fall a few seconds prior, was making his way in her direction, believing that when it came to dealing with their human antagonists, sticking together was better than splitting up. But the first few got to him before he could quite make it to her position, separated from their peers by superior swiftness on foot or at least lightness over the snow. He was honestly glad theyād come in staggered like that, else even he might have felt the pressure of having to deal with too many at once.
As it was, he cleaved the first one at the helm with Everburn, a few would-be slashes from the others glancing off his armor. One came too close, and he drove an elbow into the manās temple, sending him to the ground. That left one more, who brought up her shield to block the feint that would never actually connect, but found herself unable to parry the bodycheck that followed, and expired when the sword punctured her chain sheathed, however temporarily, in her belly.
The others made an attempt to sweep around and encircle Lucien, but one was not aware enough to notice Sophia back on her feet, the daze mostly worn off, at least enough to put a deep slash into the back of his leg, and then stab directly down where his chestplate ended at the neck. Her sword came free glistening red, and she let him fall, taking the last few steps to Lucien.
"At your back!" she called, turning to face the foe once she came within a few feet of Lucien. They were outnumbered, certainly, but the guards seemed to have at least some understanding of who they were fighting, and proceeded cautiously. As long as they held their ground, at least they couldn't be flanked.
Three came forward on her side, the most that could reasonably attack her at once, and Sophia held her position, refusing to advance forward and open up space behind her for them to attack either Lucien or herself from the back. The battleaxe armed man in the middle of the three stepped forward first, swinging his weapon down, forcing Sophia to sidestep right. The enemy on that side lunged with her blade, which Sophia parried, reaching to grab her by the mail coif she wore, and forcefully hurling her, sending her stumbling over into the axe-wielder. The two tangled together, preventing the third from getting around to strike. Sophia struck down hard, cutting deep enough into the back of the woman's neck to kill, quickly withdrawing the blade only to plunge it into the throat of the tied up axeman.
Rilien recognized the wisdom in Auroraās suggestion. It would make the most sense of they could juggle the wyvernās attention, but it would be a dangerous gambit to focus it on one of them for any length of time, so they would have to be precise about it.
As it happened, the wyvern went after him first, and so Rilien backed up as quickly as he could, trying to draw it towards a cluster of trees, where it would have to lose most of its speed, unable to run in a straight line. If he was lucky, it might even his one by accident, but he didnāt count on that. He was still a good twenty yards from the thicket when Leopold charged, and Rilien was forced to turn his back and run as fast over the snow as he could, kicking up ice crystals as he passed.
The wyvernās jaws snapped together no more than a foot from his left arm, and he could smell the stench of its hot breath. Droplets of poison splashed onto his sleeve, one hitting his cheek with a burning sensation. Rilien clamped his jaws shut, wiping off the spot with his other sleeve, promptly cutting both off at the elbows as he ran, the wyvernās progress behind him inhibited by the trees, but not for longāthe thicket was hardly large. Now would be an excellent time for Aurora to get its attention.
It was no sooner than a moment afterwards that a fireball splashed against Leopold's hide, charring it black and melting the snow around it. Waiting only long enough to ensure that she got its attention, Aurora was off toward the thicket. She ran in a serpentine pattern, but that only stalled the wyvern for moment, choosing to move straight ahead instead of trying to follow. As it turned out, the creature was smarter than she gave it credit for, and soon abandoned the plan, instead opting for a mad dash to the trees.
She could feel it hot on her heels, so she threw a cone of cold behind her without looking, hoping the spray of ice would at least buy her a few moments more to reach the trees. It did the job, tiny icicles jabbing at its face, but it was still only by a hairsbreadth that Aurora reached the thicket, at which point she broke off hard. Or rather, she attempted to, as she slipped on a patch of icy snow, causing her feet to kick out below her. With the creature already on her, Aurora scrambled as fast as she could with her hands and feet, kicking out a stonefist to slow Leopold down enough so that she could climb a nearby tree.
Venom stained the bark just below Aurora, proving herself quick enough to scale the tree, but now the wyvern had her cornered. "Uh, Rilien?" She called, backing her way further up the tree as the wyvern followed.
Lucien could feel Sophia in nearly constant motion behind him, but with both of them paying conscious attention to it, they managed to avoid putting too much space between their backs and giving those that surrounded them an opening. From the corner of his eye, he could see the wyvern charging Rilien, but this, like everything but the guards in front of him, he could do little about at present. Keeping his left foot planted, he lunged with his right, the abruptness of the motion catching the man to his left unprepared, and with a rasp, Everburn slid between the plates over his chest and those protecting his lower torso. Lucienās extension enabled one of the others to get a good hit in on his bicep with a hand-axe, right around his more vulnerable elbow joint, but he shook it off, withdrawing his sword from the other man in one smooth motion and slicing it upwards at an angle, taking the second manās head off entirely. Two more stepped in around the bodies of their fallen comrades, one of them wielding a large hammer, which was obviously a serious threat even to his armor.
Fortunately, such a large weapon was slow to move, and when the hammer was swung for his chest, Lucien managed to catch it near the head with the flat of his blade, and drew the wielder of it towards him with a mighty heave, which he met in the opposite direction with a gauntlet-encased fist to the nose. That was sufficient to make him drop the hammer, and the rest was simple. The two next to him fell in succession as well.
Sophia had a small pile of bodies in front of her, though the fight naturally shifted, as both sides looked for better ground to stand on. She actually used the obstruction to her advantage, using her blade's longer reach to bring down a foe who couldn't strike back with a shorter sword. She was thankful that the others were keeping the wyvern busy; they likely wouldn't have seen a charge from it coming, or they would've been unable to react in time. Fighting over twenty enemies at once was challenging enough.
Once with a shield and mace managed to slip through while she struck left, getting close on her right side and leading with the shield, ramming into her trying to keep close. It was a better strategy than the rest had come up with, her sword becoming unwieldy in such close proximity, but she was still able to plant her foot, rotate such that the mace deflected off her shoulder guard, and bodily throw the man back. He stumbled and fell, giving her a moment to thrust her sword down and end him.
Their bloody work continued until all of the enemies were either dead or incapacitated, by which point Sophia's arms were growing tired, her breathing strained. But the wyvern still hounded after their allies, and she took off in its direction. "Come on," she urged, though she knew the encouragement was wholly unnecessary.
Rilien, now freed of anything that could have poisoned him even incidentally, was able to circle around behind the wyvern, his sling loosely in one hand and the remaining lyrium projectilesājust twoāin the other. He loaded both into the sling at once, knowing that he was going to have to give it a very good reason to leave Aurora alone, now that it had her up a tree. The sound of the sling cutting through the air was a soft whistle, the same sound the glass spheres made as they headed directly for the side of Leopoldās head. One was a little high, and shattered instead against a different tree, leaving a massive scorch mark in the trunk, but the second did precisely what it was intended to do: it hit the wyvern just above its eye, the resulting impact blinding it on that side of its face.
With a ground-shaking snarl, Leopold propelled himself off the tree and in the direction the hit had come from, but rather than trying to peel away in a straight line, Rilien moved with his blind spot, ducking a random swipe of his massive talons, though not completely. One caught him on his upper arm, slicing raggedly into his left bicep, parting the flesh and muscle there like it was paper. Fortunately, the Tranquil managed to pull himself away from the hit, rolling in the snow and staggering back to his feet, a red smear staining the ground in his wake. There was no mistaking itāthe wyvern could smell him now.
Aurora had to hold tight to the tree when Leopold launched himself off of it, causing the tree to violently shutter and shake with his departure. Still, she didn't descend and follow the creature, not when she had a vantage point in the tree. No, instead she wedged herself in forking branches and gripped one for stability. She watched as the wyvern clawed into Rilien, though fortunately not fatally.
However, if the creature continued to be allowed free reign of the field then it was only a matter of time before someone sustained more serious wounds. Dipping into the fade, Aurora summoned a spell in her hand and cast it as the creature as it lunged at Rilien. It had the appearance of a stonefist, but instead of striking the head or back, struck its back legs. Instead of an impact like and ordinary stonefist however, the spell seeped over Leopold's legs and bound them in stone, petrifying them and taking away his freedom of movement and causing him to hit the ground hard and slide a few feet.
Lucienās breath was heavy in his lungs, but he saw the urgency of the situation, following behind Sophia as she made for the other two. They arrived in just enough time to see Leopold crash to the ground, his back legs encased in stone. Unsure how long the advantage would last, Lucien inhaled deeply and charged forwards, unwilling to risk its teeth, but getting as close as he dared, plunging his sword to the hilt in the relatively unprotected armpit at the wyvernās front left. With a grunt of effort, he pushed down on the blade with both hands, feeling muscle and scale tear under the leveraged force, enough to permanently hobble that limb.
The wyvern roared, enraged, and trying to crane his neck around to snap at Lucien while he was still within range. The beast has exposed his blindside, however, to the other sword rapidly approaching it, and Sophia did not intend to let this go on any longer than it had to, lest someone be seriously injured. With a brief cry, she stabbed her blade straight into the exposed neck of the wyvern, sinking it in deep. She then twisted and pulled it free, sidestepping the gout of blood that was released in the blade's absence. Leopold was unable to roar now, instead clawing blindly for her, but Sophia took a quick backstep in retreat, before she leaped forward once more, timing her jump to follow a swipe. The point of her sword came down on top of the wyvern's skull, piercing through, and ending the creature's life.
She withdrew Vesenia and stepped away quickly from the jaws, wiping the sword clean on the snow, before she checked to make sure that everyone was still in one piece. There was, of course, still Amalia and Ithilian to worry about.
"I think I've had about enough of wyverns for one trip."
The Qunari woman, Lucien noted, was not killed, though he could tell from this closer distance that she appeared to have been chained, what might have been a knife discarded several feet to the side of her. He supposed that made senseāif this was really some kind of information exchange, Marcus would not want to kill the person with the information. The Magister himself appeared largely disinterested in Prosperās demise, and as soon as it was done, he spoke again. āNothing personal. Loose ends and all that.ā With a wave of his hand, the dozen or so guards that had been surrounding Prosper turned to face the oncoming party. One of those dealing with the Qunari woman dealt a heavy blow to the back of her head, and once she collapsed, those dozen started forward as well.
But perhaps the part of this situation that made it almost implausibly dangerous was that the wyvern also turned its attention towards them, its mouth opening and tongue lolling out, teeth dripping yellow-green poison to the ground, where it ate through the snow like corrosive acid. Though its first steps towards the group were slow, like a stalking cat, when it got within a hundred feet of them, it charged, forcing everyone to scatter or else still be standing in its path when it reached them.
Amalia rolled to her feet considerably to the left of the creature, eyes darting around the field for the one threat that was not obviously accounted for yet. When she found him, it was to note that he was already looking at her, as though waiting for her attention. Undoubtedly aware that he now had it, he raised a hand in a beckoning gesture, as if to bid her forward, then turned and sprinted into the woods.
āMarcus,ā she hissed. He wasnāt doing this again. He wasnāt going to escape the consequences of his deeds, again. He would not live to torment her again. This was going to end. It had to end, or she would always fear its return. Glancing once back at the others, she hesitated.
But then she bolted after the Magister.
Sophia chose not to dive but instead to step out of the way of the wyvern, as it snapped its jaws away from her, at another target. Staying within striking range, she managed to land a decent cut down its side as it passed, opening a bloody line that the beast seemed hardly to notice. This one was far more impressive than the one they'd hunted and killed earlier, and it appeared to have been tamed. She was almost curious how such a thing could be done.
Her curiosity was wiped out, however, when the beast's tail followed behind it, and swept out to the side, catching Sophia in the side either by chance or by design. It hardly mattered, as the effect was the same: she was thrown from her feet to land face first in the snow a few feet away, dazed and disoriented.
The target the wyvern had initially gone for happened to be Ithilian, who needed to dive out of the way entirely to avoid having his entire upper body clamped down on by a set of jaws. After the first attack it switched targets, allowing the elf some room to breathe, which was when he saw Amalia moving at full speed in pursuit of Marcus. There was really no question in his mind what he would be doing; he'd come here for Amalia, after all. His sight was still poor, and his breathing was agitated now that action had begun, but he would not let her run off on her own now. Pushing back to his feet, Ithilian took off after her.
One of Rilienās remaining lyrium explosives cracked on the wyvernās hide, near the base of its neck, and he knew he had successfully drawn its attention when it swung towards him. The guards were not to be counted out, either, however, as many as they were, and he wasnāt able to follow up with anything more than that before he was ducking out of the way of a longsword, bending backwards and drawing his knives on the way back up, trying to keep his feet as light as possible over the snow so as to avoid sinking into it. With two of their number off into the woods after Marcus, the rest of them were going to have a difficult time not getting killed by some combination of wyvern and man, but if they could recover their organization and figure out how to deal with the situation most effectively, they might yet succeed.
"Aurora. Help me keep it distracted.ā The two of them had range compared to Lucien and Sophia, so if they could keep the wyvern busy for long enough, then the other two could cut down the guards, hopefully quickly enough to make sure neither he nor the mage died.
"One moment," Aurora said, concentrating on a weaving a spell in between her hands. She had dodged the Wyvern as well by going away from it, and once she found her feet again, she set to casting the spell. Once she'd dipped into the fade, she threw her hand up into the air above, a dull blue orb shooting upward into the sky. Moments later a clap of thunder followed closely after, a bolt of lightning striking a guard, and forcing to him to his knees in response.. They were severely outnumbered, but a lightning storm would help even the odds.
Visibly breathing heavier at the effort, Aurora's eyes fell onto the wyvern and she nodded, "Right." Stepping forward, her arm whipped from below and she threw an underhanded stonefist at the creature. It struck its hide with a certain amount of force, but it just seemed to brush it off. Instead, it began to step toward them. Tilting her head toward Rilien, she asked, "Split up?" as she backed away, clearly not waiting for his answer.
The tempest spell did indeed help thin the ranks of soldiers, who had been rather tightly clustered into their two groups as they advanced on the four remaining opponents. It would seem they had been warned against being too reckless with these particular foes, regardless of the comparative numbers. A good half-dozen guards dropped as a result of direct hits by the lightning, but the others continued to advance forward.
Lucien, who had seen Sophia fall a few seconds prior, was making his way in her direction, believing that when it came to dealing with their human antagonists, sticking together was better than splitting up. But the first few got to him before he could quite make it to her position, separated from their peers by superior swiftness on foot or at least lightness over the snow. He was honestly glad theyād come in staggered like that, else even he might have felt the pressure of having to deal with too many at once.
As it was, he cleaved the first one at the helm with Everburn, a few would-be slashes from the others glancing off his armor. One came too close, and he drove an elbow into the manās temple, sending him to the ground. That left one more, who brought up her shield to block the feint that would never actually connect, but found herself unable to parry the bodycheck that followed, and expired when the sword punctured her chain sheathed, however temporarily, in her belly.
The others made an attempt to sweep around and encircle Lucien, but one was not aware enough to notice Sophia back on her feet, the daze mostly worn off, at least enough to put a deep slash into the back of his leg, and then stab directly down where his chestplate ended at the neck. Her sword came free glistening red, and she let him fall, taking the last few steps to Lucien.
"At your back!" she called, turning to face the foe once she came within a few feet of Lucien. They were outnumbered, certainly, but the guards seemed to have at least some understanding of who they were fighting, and proceeded cautiously. As long as they held their ground, at least they couldn't be flanked.
Three came forward on her side, the most that could reasonably attack her at once, and Sophia held her position, refusing to advance forward and open up space behind her for them to attack either Lucien or herself from the back. The battleaxe armed man in the middle of the three stepped forward first, swinging his weapon down, forcing Sophia to sidestep right. The enemy on that side lunged with her blade, which Sophia parried, reaching to grab her by the mail coif she wore, and forcefully hurling her, sending her stumbling over into the axe-wielder. The two tangled together, preventing the third from getting around to strike. Sophia struck down hard, cutting deep enough into the back of the woman's neck to kill, quickly withdrawing the blade only to plunge it into the throat of the tied up axeman.
Rilien recognized the wisdom in Auroraās suggestion. It would make the most sense of they could juggle the wyvernās attention, but it would be a dangerous gambit to focus it on one of them for any length of time, so they would have to be precise about it.
As it happened, the wyvern went after him first, and so Rilien backed up as quickly as he could, trying to draw it towards a cluster of trees, where it would have to lose most of its speed, unable to run in a straight line. If he was lucky, it might even his one by accident, but he didnāt count on that. He was still a good twenty yards from the thicket when Leopold charged, and Rilien was forced to turn his back and run as fast over the snow as he could, kicking up ice crystals as he passed.
The wyvernās jaws snapped together no more than a foot from his left arm, and he could smell the stench of its hot breath. Droplets of poison splashed onto his sleeve, one hitting his cheek with a burning sensation. Rilien clamped his jaws shut, wiping off the spot with his other sleeve, promptly cutting both off at the elbows as he ran, the wyvernās progress behind him inhibited by the trees, but not for longāthe thicket was hardly large. Now would be an excellent time for Aurora to get its attention.
It was no sooner than a moment afterwards that a fireball splashed against Leopold's hide, charring it black and melting the snow around it. Waiting only long enough to ensure that she got its attention, Aurora was off toward the thicket. She ran in a serpentine pattern, but that only stalled the wyvern for moment, choosing to move straight ahead instead of trying to follow. As it turned out, the creature was smarter than she gave it credit for, and soon abandoned the plan, instead opting for a mad dash to the trees.
She could feel it hot on her heels, so she threw a cone of cold behind her without looking, hoping the spray of ice would at least buy her a few moments more to reach the trees. It did the job, tiny icicles jabbing at its face, but it was still only by a hairsbreadth that Aurora reached the thicket, at which point she broke off hard. Or rather, she attempted to, as she slipped on a patch of icy snow, causing her feet to kick out below her. With the creature already on her, Aurora scrambled as fast as she could with her hands and feet, kicking out a stonefist to slow Leopold down enough so that she could climb a nearby tree.
Venom stained the bark just below Aurora, proving herself quick enough to scale the tree, but now the wyvern had her cornered. "Uh, Rilien?" She called, backing her way further up the tree as the wyvern followed.
Lucien could feel Sophia in nearly constant motion behind him, but with both of them paying conscious attention to it, they managed to avoid putting too much space between their backs and giving those that surrounded them an opening. From the corner of his eye, he could see the wyvern charging Rilien, but this, like everything but the guards in front of him, he could do little about at present. Keeping his left foot planted, he lunged with his right, the abruptness of the motion catching the man to his left unprepared, and with a rasp, Everburn slid between the plates over his chest and those protecting his lower torso. Lucienās extension enabled one of the others to get a good hit in on his bicep with a hand-axe, right around his more vulnerable elbow joint, but he shook it off, withdrawing his sword from the other man in one smooth motion and slicing it upwards at an angle, taking the second manās head off entirely. Two more stepped in around the bodies of their fallen comrades, one of them wielding a large hammer, which was obviously a serious threat even to his armor.
Fortunately, such a large weapon was slow to move, and when the hammer was swung for his chest, Lucien managed to catch it near the head with the flat of his blade, and drew the wielder of it towards him with a mighty heave, which he met in the opposite direction with a gauntlet-encased fist to the nose. That was sufficient to make him drop the hammer, and the rest was simple. The two next to him fell in succession as well.
Sophia had a small pile of bodies in front of her, though the fight naturally shifted, as both sides looked for better ground to stand on. She actually used the obstruction to her advantage, using her blade's longer reach to bring down a foe who couldn't strike back with a shorter sword. She was thankful that the others were keeping the wyvern busy; they likely wouldn't have seen a charge from it coming, or they would've been unable to react in time. Fighting over twenty enemies at once was challenging enough.
Once with a shield and mace managed to slip through while she struck left, getting close on her right side and leading with the shield, ramming into her trying to keep close. It was a better strategy than the rest had come up with, her sword becoming unwieldy in such close proximity, but she was still able to plant her foot, rotate such that the mace deflected off her shoulder guard, and bodily throw the man back. He stumbled and fell, giving her a moment to thrust her sword down and end him.
Their bloody work continued until all of the enemies were either dead or incapacitated, by which point Sophia's arms were growing tired, her breathing strained. But the wyvern still hounded after their allies, and she took off in its direction. "Come on," she urged, though she knew the encouragement was wholly unnecessary.
Rilien, now freed of anything that could have poisoned him even incidentally, was able to circle around behind the wyvern, his sling loosely in one hand and the remaining lyrium projectilesājust twoāin the other. He loaded both into the sling at once, knowing that he was going to have to give it a very good reason to leave Aurora alone, now that it had her up a tree. The sound of the sling cutting through the air was a soft whistle, the same sound the glass spheres made as they headed directly for the side of Leopoldās head. One was a little high, and shattered instead against a different tree, leaving a massive scorch mark in the trunk, but the second did precisely what it was intended to do: it hit the wyvern just above its eye, the resulting impact blinding it on that side of its face.
With a ground-shaking snarl, Leopold propelled himself off the tree and in the direction the hit had come from, but rather than trying to peel away in a straight line, Rilien moved with his blind spot, ducking a random swipe of his massive talons, though not completely. One caught him on his upper arm, slicing raggedly into his left bicep, parting the flesh and muscle there like it was paper. Fortunately, the Tranquil managed to pull himself away from the hit, rolling in the snow and staggering back to his feet, a red smear staining the ground in his wake. There was no mistaking itāthe wyvern could smell him now.
Aurora had to hold tight to the tree when Leopold launched himself off of it, causing the tree to violently shutter and shake with his departure. Still, she didn't descend and follow the creature, not when she had a vantage point in the tree. No, instead she wedged herself in forking branches and gripped one for stability. She watched as the wyvern clawed into Rilien, though fortunately not fatally.
However, if the creature continued to be allowed free reign of the field then it was only a matter of time before someone sustained more serious wounds. Dipping into the fade, Aurora summoned a spell in her hand and cast it as the creature as it lunged at Rilien. It had the appearance of a stonefist, but instead of striking the head or back, struck its back legs. Instead of an impact like and ordinary stonefist however, the spell seeped over Leopold's legs and bound them in stone, petrifying them and taking away his freedom of movement and causing him to hit the ground hard and slide a few feet.
Lucienās breath was heavy in his lungs, but he saw the urgency of the situation, following behind Sophia as she made for the other two. They arrived in just enough time to see Leopold crash to the ground, his back legs encased in stone. Unsure how long the advantage would last, Lucien inhaled deeply and charged forwards, unwilling to risk its teeth, but getting as close as he dared, plunging his sword to the hilt in the relatively unprotected armpit at the wyvernās front left. With a grunt of effort, he pushed down on the blade with both hands, feeling muscle and scale tear under the leveraged force, enough to permanently hobble that limb.
The wyvern roared, enraged, and trying to crane his neck around to snap at Lucien while he was still within range. The beast has exposed his blindside, however, to the other sword rapidly approaching it, and Sophia did not intend to let this go on any longer than it had to, lest someone be seriously injured. With a brief cry, she stabbed her blade straight into the exposed neck of the wyvern, sinking it in deep. She then twisted and pulled it free, sidestepping the gout of blood that was released in the blade's absence. Leopold was unable to roar now, instead clawing blindly for her, but Sophia took a quick backstep in retreat, before she leaped forward once more, timing her jump to follow a swipe. The point of her sword came down on top of the wyvern's skull, piercing through, and ending the creature's life.
She withdrew Vesenia and stepped away quickly from the jaws, wiping the sword clean on the snow, before she checked to make sure that everyone was still in one piece. There was, of course, still Amalia and Ithilian to worry about.
"I think I've had about enough of wyverns for one trip."