The bear is still an animal, despite everything done to it. The same drives exploited to make it ready to fight now urge it to save itself and run. It falls to all fours in the rain, making a deep fretful lowing sound and trying to scramble away. Too late. The sword buried to the hilt in its body twists and after a few increasingly uncertain steps, the blood running into the dark earth, its strength goes. It collapses, wheezing with the strain, and starts to bleed out.
Lashan doesn't come back immediately. She just had to finish her preparations and call lightning on the knot of armored men and has to check that they're dead or at least not present threats and any intact survivors are too scattered and disoriented to be an immediate threat. Lightning and metal armor are a lethal combination but she can't just take that for granted when it's so hard to rely on her usual methods of monitoring people. It's made more difficult by the darkness and the pelting rain and the need to reassure her horse. A storm had been on its way, and calling down sky-lightning has hastened it and made it rage harder, the usual price. She ends up creating a globe of witchfire to hover overhead, illuminating the sheeting water as much as the landscape. When someone moves into the circle of the light, she almost shoots them.
She returns after the bear has heaved its last breath, with a cowed wet-rat of a hunter girl splashing alongside at her stirrup, an equally drenched shaggy pony following her with its head down. Troublemaking Galli is maybe seventeen and caught between resentment and shame. Lashan, her head pounding in tandem with her protesting joints and making it harder to pinpoint important details, mutters, "Gods damn it."
Commandeering the girl to help her out of the saddle, Lashan groans as her feet hit the ground. The Fighter's blessings are great but her body is an increasingly flawed vessel for them, and she can see darkness encroaching on her vision in a way that has nothing to do with rain and night. The twenty pounds of leather armor feel like lead. But she can't stop and rest now. "Damn it boy. You're alive... Where are you?"
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Lashan doesn't come back immediately. She just had to finish her preparations and call lightning on the knot of armored men and has to check that they're dead or at least not present threats and any intact survivors are too scattered and disoriented to be an immediate threat. Lightning and metal armor are a lethal combination but she can't just take that for granted when it's so hard to rely on her usual methods of monitoring people. It's made more difficult by the darkness and the pelting rain and the need to reassure her horse. A storm had been on its way, and calling down sky-lightning has hastened it and made it rage harder, the usual price. She ends up creating a globe of witchfire to hover overhead, illuminating the sheeting water as much as the landscape. When someone moves into the circle of the light, she almost shoots them.
She returns after the bear has heaved its last breath, with a cowed wet-rat of a hunter girl splashing alongside at her stirrup, an equally drenched shaggy pony following her with its head down. Troublemaking Galli is maybe seventeen and caught between resentment and shame. Lashan, her head pounding in tandem with her protesting joints and making it harder to pinpoint important details, mutters, "Gods damn it."
Commandeering the girl to help her out of the saddle, Lashan groans as her feet hit the ground. The Fighter's blessings are great but her body is an increasingly flawed vessel for them, and she can see darkness encroaching on her vision in a way that has nothing to do with rain and night. The twenty pounds of leather armor feel like lead. But she can't stop and rest now. "Damn it boy. You're alive... Where are you?"