[center][h2]A Bloody Toil[/h2][/center]

	Without warning, a second dwarf came bounding in from the side towards the boy, cutting in front of the first with a look of murder, his whole face contorted into a monstrous rage. He screamed, leading the now dual-dwarf foray with a gutteral battlecry: "FOR THE MIGHTY BEAR, HEATHEN!!!" Caleb took a step back, skidding a little on the aftermath of his previous work - the shock tripling his heartrate and accelerating his response to a purely instinctive level; the dwarf charged, Caleb swung wide AND--

--Missed by a mile, the infuriated cultist hadn't even arrived at the spot!

Cold fear serpentined down the boy's frame at the sudden realization of just how exposed he was. For an instant his aggressor's livid expression twisted into a vengeful, jagged-toothed grin, the pair locking eyes in a moment of realization between hunter and prey. The predator, arm outstretched and screaming victorious - the quarry, limbs squeezing every muscle they could to stop themselves from recoiling any farther. Instinct kicked in, or perhaps it was inspiration from all those hours of watching better knights train with the older kids, or those few of being trained himself: A flick of the wrists inverted the blade's momentum, suddenly rising the point directly on line with its target; a weight like a boulder knocked Caleb down onto his knee - the dwarf hung confused and limp, panting with hoarse breaths, self-impaled down to the hilt. 

Without even hesitating, imitating the movements he'd seen a thousand times before, Caleb rammed an elbow into his opponent's stomach, half-sworded the blade [b]around its edge[/b], unsheathed the bloodied iron from his foe's belly and promptly jabbed a warning-shot from the point into his second attacker's eye. She SCREAMED, recoiling with a mouth agape of sharply filed teeth.

Ribbon and Rainbow had made surprisingly good use of their initial ambush, weaving in and out of the vicious mob as easily as Flower sailed across the fresh sea air - those dwarves who remained clutching onto their wretched lives were quickly coming to regret it. Ochre mixed with scarlett beneath the flickering of candlelight as the blood of the dead and the dying scrawled a massacre across the sanctuary floor. 

The battle was over. They had won...

. . .

...Caleb just felt sick.