Draque's next strike nearly opens the bugbear's neck - the kukri flashes towards the meaty jaw, only to have the bugbear shove his arm into the way.  The blade gouges beneath the armor plate, digging a deep furrow into the flexing flesh.  For a moment, the blade is caught in the iron cluster of the titanic muscles.<br/><br/>A moment is all that is needed.  The bugbear halts his muttering, choking it off, as he brings the club's hilt crashing down.  Its tonnage drives the knot of the pommel into Draque's shoulderblade.  Something important and rigid pops inside him.  Agony washes cold through his body, from the rims of his lips to the sudden shaking in his heels.  The clatter of one kukri hitting the ground is Draque's only indication that his numbed arm has dropped it.<br/><br/>Fern's lashing strike glances off the bugbear's back.  It only grunts.  Then the dark, tarry muttering commences again.<br/><br/>And on either side of the combatants, danger lumbers in.<br/><br/>The Beast snatches up the girl between his legs in a single paw.  Immediately, her pale, bare little body is gardened in blooms of red, green and gray from the body of her fellow captive, squirting from the Beast's mitt.  She arches in pain as the heedless strength of the thing grinds into her, scratching and kicking, suddenly silenced.  It does not touch the attention of the Beast.<br/><br/>That is fixed on Fern.  And out of it boils a hideous howl - one louder than the roar of moments ago, one that seems a component of that awful, alien smell in the way that it immediately blemishes the mind, working cancerous into all reason and sanity.<br/><br/>Your blood is ice.  Your thoughts seem bleak, far away.  The terror of the howl drowns everything out - everything but animal desperation.  An instant later, your will clamps down, fighting away the weird panic, fighting thoughts back into place.  But the awful sound, and its perverse hypnotism, sounds on from the monolithic Beast.<br/><br/>Opposite the Beast, the bloodied, shaking bugbear raises himself up.  He hikes his club high, rushes for Draque's back.  Miaren's arrow nearly snaps his neck halfway.  He tilts like a falling tree, gurgles, and smashes to the floor, clawing at the shaft that skewers his sprained neck, transfixed by pain as his life sprays out on the ground.<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote from: O.O.C.</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote"><em><strong>Round 3</strong></em><br/><br/>Draque hits once, fumbles with the other; Fern misses, and the Muttering Bugbear deals 13 damage to Draque.  Bugbear 2 gets up.  The Beast howls, but no one is effected by its panic effect.  Miaren's arrow scores a critical, killing the luckless Bugbear 2.<br/><br/><strong>Damage:</strong><br/><br/>Draque - 13<br/>Fern - 7</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>Draque's fingers feel like emptiness and electricity; they skitter on the ground and snatch up the kukri all the same. Closing over it, he bounds back as a sweep from the Muttering Bugbear misses with a stroke that would have decapitated him.  The beast bears in, Fern's blows against the fortress of leather on its back only serving to blunt her dagger.  The Bugbear heaves, breathes brewing air over Draque, and lunges with its fists in a short, swift bunt.<br/><br/>The club cracks into Draque's breast, blowing his wind from him.<br/><br/>Over him, the Bugbear looms, lifting his club high in the model of a killing strike.  Miaren's arrow zips by him harmlessly.  And Draque sees that, as horrid as this image is, even worse - so bad it strains the limits of sanity - is happening behind it.<br/><br/>The Beast moves.  It moves by tossing its whole bulk forward in a pounce so swift and sudden that the air literally screams in surprise:  Air bangs with a terrible crash as it is emptied in one vast space, shoved aside in another.  The Beast's propulsion - its gangly arms and stubby legs - kick and batter with a speed that is sickeningly fast.<br/><br/>It does not move that ton heavy, twelve foot bulk without intent.  Before the air's snap has ceased to resound in the chambers, the Beast has set upon Fern.<br/><br/>Miaren and Draque could see the Beast move - they're sure they could; their memory resonates with images of those tree-trunk arms moving loose as whips, that glutinous size twisting through the air, the drumming of its piston legs.  But they only remember it.  It was too fast to react to.  And memory aches with all that speed crammed into a single atom of time - some lean fraction of a second.<br/><br/>What they can see now is that it has Fern in one hand, encircling her waist in a band of rubbery fingers, steel strength.  It is lifting her toward its gaping, moaning mouth - toward the fang-rimmed drain of that mouth.  It gibbers, rolling its joyous eyes in bestial ecstasy, as it prepares to feed on a new delicacy.<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote from: O.O.C.</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote"><em><strong>Round 4</strong></em><br/><br/>Draque hits and collects his fumbled kukri.  Fern misses.  Muttering Bugbear smashes 6 points of damage into Draque.  Miaren misses.  The Beast grapples Fern, but she is not pinned and may act.<br/><br/><strong>Damage:</strong><br/><br/>Draque - 19<br/>Fern - 7</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div>