When Leo saw her pulling a chunk of rock from the ground, he at first expected her to throw it whole, and thus stood ready to dodge when she would. But when she launched it at him in pieces, he was left little time to improvise. Instead of dodging, he remained in place and raised his arm to protect his eyes as the hail of pebbles struck him. The more jagged ones left shallow cuts where they landed, particularly on his unprotected hands and abdomen, but nothing he couldn’t deal with. Although he’d temporarily blinded himself to prevent the shards from hitting his eyes, his sharp ears picked up the sound of her footsteps even below the clatter of falling pebbles, and he’d been in enough fights to know that she wouldn’t launch an attack like this without a follow-up.

Lowering his arm, he had only a split second left to see her follow-up coming and react to it. With catlike reflexes, he turned his chest sideways and jerked his head to the side, sending Morrigan’s fist bristling through his mane as it narrowly sailed by his face, missing him by less than a centimetre. In response, he pulled back a balled fist as well and made a powerful strike aimed at Morrigan’s ribs where her uppercut had left her wide open.