Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Wrong move, gents!" yelled the man. A flash and a second later, shards of shrapnel and a loud boom exhaled from all around the surrounding area.

"Looks like I used a bit too much powder.." muttered the man as a cloud of dust began to pour through the small clearing.

Several men screamed in pain, the shrapnel taking its toll on a few of the individuals.

Pulling out his rapier from the scabbard on his lower back, the scarred man tumbled from under some now low-leaning trees and headed into the fray.

"Look around while your still alive...!"

It sounded like a very good idea in theory, so she immediately complied, throwing her weight to the side and then whirling around so that she stood back-to-back with her erstwhile captor. However, they were surrounded, and so Merro simply found herself facing a different rogue from the one that had charged at her initially.

They all looked alike to Merro...unkempt, filthy and ragged. Just like her. But her mind registered that this one held a short sword rather than twin daggers, and this she at least had some knowledge of how to fight. She dug her feet into the ground, grabbing grass with her bare toes as her attacker made a direct thrust at her torso. She brought her sword up quickly, but only let it meet and run along the other blade in order to deflect the thrust, betting that she had not the weight or strength to block and hold such an attack. Using the other's strength, she pushed away against the blade as well and hastily stepped aside out of the brigand's path as he continued forward, having met neither the resistance of flesh or steel against his blade to stop him.

The short sword missed Merro and was deflected enough to pass by Letalus as well, and as the man stumbled and cursed past her, Merro raised her sword high, screamed in a rush of fear and adrenaline and brought the bright blade slashing down through the air across the brigand's side.

Her strike was not deep nor fatal, but it opened the man's flesh from shoulder to hip, bringing forth a spray of bright blood and a strangled cry of pain and anger. The sword, still sated from the wolf's life force, drank in the rogue's blood greedily and transferred the power to its bonded master.

If she had the presence of mind to analyze the feeling, she might have written it off as battle lust and adrenaline. As things were, however, she merely opened her eyes wide and sucked in a deep breath as a tingling rush hit her, energizing her from head to toe. It was better than her best healing spell. It felt like waking into a new body. It reminded her of killing the wolf.

In between heartbeats she suddenly strung together all the moments in the past days involving the strange sword. Her bright blood seeping into the tarnished metal. The discoloration and dizziness. The game hen. The bright silver sheen of the newly blooded blade. The wolf. The energy and endurance.

Without making any conscious decisions, Merro suddenly set to with determination and purpose. Her eyes still wide and giving her a rather fey, wild look, she reversed the blade over the stumbling rogue and pierced downward in a killing stroke. Under the guidance of a whimsical Saint or the influence of something darker, the strike hit perfectly home, sliding in smoothly between two ribs to rend through flesh and organs. An upwards tug and the assistance of gravity brought the blade free, and even before the dying body hit the ground, she was whirling around to find another foe.

Keeping instinctively at Letalus' back as he danced back and forth, trying to defend her from everyone at once, Merro slashed and hacked at everyone who came within her bloodthirsty sword's reach. Her technique suffered rather than improved as she fought on instinct rather than by memory, but her weapon fed her strength enough to keep her alive and on her feet.

But for how long, against such numbers?

It was no wonder Letalus couldn't find their ally among the chaos of the battle, as quickly as he was moving. But he could sense the man, and when he mounted a horse and came right for them, Letalus was pressed not to take notice.

Wordlessly, he picked up Merro and put her over his shoulder, bowling through their remaining attackers before the mysterious stranger pierced them along with whoever his target was.

He dimly realized his charge might not like where his hands were.

"What the--" registered Tomlin under his breath as he saw the man lift up the girl on his shoulder.

Then a thought registered in his head.

Pulling the reins on his horse, he changed his direction. He sheathed his rapier, instead pulling out three daggers. They looped shiftily around his fingers, having been balanced for throwing. He looked around quickly, the men starting now to converge on the two people in the middle of the fray.

He swung his arm wide, aiming a bit lower than he should have.
But then again, the daggers weren't meant to kill, just distract as he leaned down and reached with an outstretched hand for the girl.

Hopefully she doesn't stab me, he thought with a grin on his face.

Merro looked up in startlement as daggers rained down from the clear blue nowhere into two brigand calves and an unfortunate brigand backside to find a grinning man(iac) reaching for her as he thundered up to them on horseback.

The daggers and the man's appearance marked him as not being part of the group that had been attacking them, and Merro recalled the mysterious voice and explosion from the forest. Almost before deciding that this stranger probably wasn't an enemy, her free left hand was reaching out to grasp at his wrist.

Letalus had been holding her, not pinning her, so with a mighty heave on both the stranger's part and hers, Merro practically flew from her first rescuer's grasp to the new one's. A bit of luck and scrabbling from Merro and a great deal of admirable upper-body strength and balance from the stranger had her neatly seated behind him on the horse's rump before she could say "Letalus." Which she did. Piercingly.

She made a rather ineffective poke from the horse's back at one of the few remaining brigands as the horse's long strides carried her past Letalus and in a panic, she dropped the sword thunk! right into the grass as she tried to poke a brigand, slap at the stranger's shoulder to get his attention and not fall off the horse all at the same time, all the while trying to say something sensible and appropriate to the situation and only managing to yell,

"Wait, wait! Letalus! No, stop! Wait! You!"

Leana could hear the commotion going on nearby, and horse hooves around them. She kept herself hidden, and hopefully no one would see her.

But then she heard yelling coming from above her, and suddenly someone smacked into her from the air. It was a bandit, one of the few that had been in the mayhem she'd seen.

Ignoring her confusion as to why the bandit had been falling out of the air, she dodged his first attack and, due to his clumsiness, was able to stab him in a few vital spots and run off. Great, she thought, now I'm involved.

She ran onto the path just in time to see a horse with two people racing towards her. She yelped and rolled out of the way as fast as she could, smacking into a tree at the end of her maneuver.

Keeping a tight hold of the stranger's shoulders, she twisted in the saddle to keep her eyes on the battle being left behind. Merro was still about as wide-eyed as she could get, so it was hard for her expression to convey the mix of awe, horror and amazement that she felt at seeing Letalus mow through the remaining brigands like so much goosedown, but she managed fairly well. She came awake to the fact that the stranger was speaking to her and felt the necessity of answering, though the strange, tingling elation was making ordered thought difficult.

"He's not my friend," she began rather lamely. Facts were simplest to deal with, but sadly this one was not useful or explanatory at all. Saints, look at that! Letalus was a natural disaster! She wondered why he hadn't simply stuffed her in a bag and hauled her back to her father if he was so powerful. Her eyes lit upon a silvery gleam in the field and she gasped.

"My sword!" And without further speech she slid down off the horse's rump (landing on her backside with a hiss) and began to run back towards the open field, probably cementing Tomlin's opinion of her as a head case. Letalus, after all, seemed to have the brigand situation well in hand.

The actual head injury case nearby was sadly overlooked by Merro for the moment. Merro tended toward tunnel vision at times.