Garth manages to get a strike in before the assassin can react. He tries to tear her head off, but the damage roll is really poor.
He then tries to get her with his regular attack, but she does a backflip (bails)...
... and lands deftly on her feet, making a mocking gesture at the knight.
Garth doggedly gives chase, but is out of actions to attack with. The dark elf holds off on attacking even as he walks into range.
Xalen wreathes himself in flames.
"You first," he says, lashing out at the nearest bloodbinder...
She tries to bail, but doesn't jump far enough, and Xalen makes a particularly skillful strike that allows him to add range to his swing, impaling the bloodbinder in midair. The flames also jump to the other bloodbinders.
One shrieks as she is turned to ash, the other feels the flames only for a second before they go out. The bloodbinder sees little other options and makes a fateful choice to attack.
The first attack is as skillful as she could make it, but gets parried, the second is a critical failure.
"I can see why you have the undead fight your battles for you," Xalen says as he contemptuously decapitates the final bloodbinder, meaning he just killed all three in one turn. That'll do Xalen, that'll do.
The last assassin faces a dilemma. Run, and evoke a response that will probably kill her? Attack and fall to a counter? Wait and potentially get pincered? In the end she decides to throw her blade at Xalen, who she believes she can catch unaware.
Which she could've, if she didn't miss.
"Bad move," Xalen growls.
More dark elves appear behind him: a centurion (armoured with 1d8 skill and the armour piercing ability, but not the acrobatix) and two male assassins (same stats as the female ones).
"Great," Garth says, wondering how many more people he would have to kill before he could get to Phineus.
), watched closely by the minotaur.
