A lone bird spots you and glides in to attack. As you get close to it, you notice that while it's the size and rough shape of an eagle, it's not at all natural: its beak is made of bronze and its feathers are metallic and razor sharp. It attacks by launching feathers at you, or flinging its poisonous dung.
Hit points: 25 Damage: 5 each time attacked
If you successfully kill this bird, each party involved in the battle gets 10XP and rolls 1d100 to collect loot according to the following:
1-80: You gain nothing but the victory of having beaten this opponent. 81-90: Poisonous Dung: You manage to collect a vial of the vile stuff. It can thrown at an opponent once to poison them, dealing 1 damage for 3 turns. After this it is consumed and leaves your inventory forever. 91-99: Heart's Blood: You manage to collect a vial of the creature's blood. It can be used once to replenish 3 HP, at which point it is consumed and leaves your inventory forever. 100: Metal Feather: Once per battle, you can backstab with this small dagger. Add 2 to your final damage. This item is reusable, and remains in your inventory.
Mal's HP: 50 - 5 = 45 Boid's HP: 25 - 6 = 19
It made no sense to him to hide inside and allow the birds free rein outside the hotel. Free rein without anything to keep them busy and the birds, well, who knew? Better to keep thinning their numbers, and so Mal picked a door where there weren't that many birds around and slipped out of it. Quietly; he wanted to find one bird or he wanted one bird to find him, and not get mobbed or worse.
He found what he was looking for, or it found him, almost immediately. He hacked at a wing with a grunt of effort, and managed to hit it solidly-- not expertly, but at least well enough to do some damage in return for the damage it'd done him.
Darting away again, Mal got himself into a comfortable rhythm with this one, lone bird. Lunge and strike, draw back before it could catch more than a sleeve and some of his arm. It could have been worse, each time; if anything, this would keep at least this one bird busy, where it couldn't work on the defenses or breach the hotel any further.
If Mal accomplished at least that much, then he figured he'd accomplished something. A small something, but one something was at least something. It didn't leave him feeling useless and silly, like some kind of ornament.
And thinking too hard, again, instead of concentrating meant that the blow went awry. Not so awry that it didn't hit, but awry enough that it didn't take as significant a piece out of the bird as he would have hoped. He dodged back and lost a piece out of the hem of his coat, and swore-- but mildly.
He was still wearing his glasses. Crap. He was trying to get into the habit of sticking them inside his coat before engaging in battle. He'd have to remember to do it next time. He certainly wasn't going to do it now, and lose what momentum he had.
Better, was his thought as he skidded a little in the snow. Slightly off balance, the blow still landed solidly. And it had a bit more of his weight behind it than usual, it sunk deep in to the bird.
He still managed to lose some fur to a claw, though he wished, just once, that he wouldn't.
He wished that just once he could not get hit on the return, but -- oh well. And at least this time, the snow shifting under his heels and his glasses sliding off his nose, the sword bit better than deep.
The bird stopped moving, and Mal blew out a breath and jerked his sword out of it. It wasn't moving at all, so he nudged it once, briefly, making sure. It didn't so much as twitch, and Mal grimaced at the corpse and pushed it off to the side.
And then it struck him that he ought to at least look for anything that was salvageable from the bird itself, right? That was what they did in all of those video games that Finn and Alex liked to play so much.
Kill the opponent, loot the corpse, right? Right well.
It made him grimace to poke through what was left of it. He really had made a hash of the thing, it was very dead. He let his breath out, kind of a sigh, and gave up. It was definitely dead. Mal pushed his glasses further up onto his nose and rolled his shoulders-- and went back inside to wait for another bird to show up.
