As sensation returned to Logan's legs again, the first thing he felt was pain stabbing into his calves, his thighs, his back and even his feet, as though red-hot nails beyond count were being driven into his flesh. The air was shrieking into his ears so loud that it was deafening, his eyelids locked shut.

Leaning to one side, he tried to move his right leg, hoping feverishly that he would still feel it move. Raw agony spiked in every muscle as he did this, so much so that he cried out, making the pain from earlier seem like a pittance. However, underneath it all, Logan felt his knee rise up and bend, and inside his plate boots, he could still flex his toes.

The relief he felt gave him a small relief from the pain, and that relief grew again as he felt something squirming in his arms like a rabbit caught in a snare. Peeling his eyes open and releasing his grip, his taught muscles easing, he saw a ball of gold hair and green leaves roll out from against his chest and onto all fours on the floorboards.

"Finnan..." Logan managed to gasp. However, as he did that, the sight of the halfling suddenly blurred, the edges of Logan's vision darkening until they were almost black. The pain continued to burn all through his body, sapping his strength as though it were clawing at his flesh.

He tried to shift and push himself upwards. 'The battle is not done yet...'  he told himself in his head, but as he tried to rise, his arms ached for a second before all sensation left them, and he collapsed to floor, sight blurring once again as his jaw slammed back down and his cheek was pierced by needle-thin splinters.

Through the blur, though, Logan made out Finnan's face turn his way, a field of cream rising up from under a great mass of gold. And then he heard a childlike voice cry out "Arabella!"

Just then, Logan felt a warm caress slide across his skin, the sensation parting the agony that plagued him like a plough pushing aside soil. Every nerve of his tingled in the most pleasant way, and were he not in this situation, it might have made him smile.

The comforting feeling spread across him, reaching down to his toes and out to his fingers, and as it did so, he felt his strength returning. Within moments, his sight had cleared and pushing himself to his feet was no harder than it had ever been.

As he rose, he felt another sensation – a gentle hand on his cheek. And when his gaze flicked up, he met a pair of turquoise eyes, a button nose and a pair of full lips.

"Are you alright?" Arabella asked him.

Logan was mesmerized for a split-second before, in the corner of his eye, he saw the gleam of light on metal, and turned to see his longsword being handled by Technus, the massive cleric having retracted his shield, bent down and lifted the weapon up by the blade. His metallic fingers had no risk of being cut, and as he rose, his red bionic eye ran up and down the sword, as if inspecting it greedily.

Anger flashed within him then, and all he said to Arabella was "I'm fine," before he marched towards the enormous cyborg that had almost killed him and Finnan. Technus looked up just in time for Logan to close his fingers around the leather-wrapped grip and pull, the steel whining while sparks flared in the air.

Technus' sole living eye widened a little at that, while Logan's were staring daggers - he was of half a mind to punch the mechanical monstrosity then and there, but he remembered that Ren was in trouble.

That came first.

Without a word, Logan scooped his shield from where it had been dropped and ran for where the door had once been, stepping over the pools of pink and crimson and scattered pieces of rusted weapons that had once been gnolls. Twisting to the left, he saw that the stairs back down to the Cockatrice's makeshift docks were still intact and wasted no time hurrying down them, his armoured boots clunking heavily and quickly as he rushed downwards.

When he reached the jetty and boardwalk, Logan saw the planks were drenched in crimson, a spellbook and staff had fallen upon the floor, and Ren was slumped against the Cockatrice's stone foundations, eyes rolled back under half-shut lids, his clothing slashed open and saturated with so much blood it was near-black. Standing over him was the gnoll pack lord, his titanic neck and shoulders roiling with muscle as it leaned towards Ren's stomach, jaws slowly opening as it licked its lips!

"Hey!" Logan bellowed, slamming his sword against his shield. "Get away from him!"

The pack lord twisted towards him and snarled, baying for blood... before suddenly looking upwards. Hearing a whistle over his head, Logan spared a small bit of his attention and tilting back his head just in time to see Stalk whirling over him in an acrobatic flip while firing a crossbow bolt at the same time that sailed through the air and jammed into the gnoll's shoulder.

The creature grunted, but any pain it might have felt quickly vanished – even as blood dripped down its bicep, all that seemed to do was make it angrier. Baring its clawed hands, both of them dripping sanguine after the attack on Ren, the brute suddenly bounded forward, leaving the elf wizard behind and making for the paladin and the kenku before him.

Logan readied his sword shield, bracing for impact. However, he suddenly heard a voice echo to his right – where Stalk was standing, though it took him a second to realize it was the kenku speaking. In a much deeper voice, the avian man called out "Blood Curse of Binding!" and thrust out his left hand, brandishing his taloned fingers as he made the hand motions of a spellcaster...

... and all of a sudden, the gnoll jarred to a halt where it stood, its legs freezing in place as if they'd been frozen or petrified. The creature snarled in frustration and alarm, looking down to see why his legs weren't doing what his mind commanded, only to see that the blood from his shoulder-wound was pouring out of him and winding around his legs, the long chain of crimson liquid snaking around his legs and holding them in place like the grip of constrictor snake.

Logan's eyes widened, and he twisted around to look at Stalk, only for the kenku to stop him with a few words.

"I'll tell you later!" he called out in his own squawking voice. "For now, heal Ren! I'll hold the fucker for as long as I can!"

As he spoke, Stalk cast his crossbow to the floor to free his right hand, then immediately reached across his torso and pushed his own thumb talon into the flesh of his extended left forearm. Wincing as he did so, Logan saw the kenku's blood suddenly flow out and dance across the air in a meandering airborne stream, feeding into the river that was around the gnoll's legs.

Said river was rapidly thinning and vanishing from sight, even as Stalk's blood renourished it for a time, and as it faded, the gnoll's legs began to twitch and shudder, as if the beast were trying to pull itself free from a quagmire and slowly escaping inch by inch.

Instincts taking over, Logan nodded and hurried forward. Skirting around the immobilized gnoll, he sheathed his sword and knelt beside Ren. The reek of exposed organs filled his nose, but Logan pushed through that. Laying his hands on his companion's blood-sodden robes, Logan dared to close his eyes and whispered:

"Almighty Bahamut, First of Dragons, save this innocent from the wounds inflicted upon him."

Through the leather of his gauntlet's palm, Logan felt a fiery warmth arise, and as he opened his eyes, he saw a golden glow form, as though rays of sunlight were beaming from his fingers and reaching down to Ren. Then came the visceral sound of flesh knitting itself together.

Every drop of Logan's will was put into this, and as he heard the sound of wounds healing, even though it was muffled by clothing, he reached down and pulled the sliced strips of cloth aside. The worst of the wounds were gone by the time he did this – only a few shrinking pools of red remained on Ren's pallid, concave chest and soft, boyish stomach before even they vanished and there was no sign of injury at all.

But Ren did not move.

"Ren?" Logan asked, his heart quickening beneath his chainmail and his hand rushing to shake the wizard by the shoulder. "Ren?!"

Still, he did not move.

A sound behind him made Logan twist about – a sound like a watery explosion – and as he turned, he saw the stream of blood ringing the gnoll's legs burst outwards, the last few droplets glittering and burning away like the last embers in a fire. And with that, the pack lord's legs could move once again.

The hulking brute wasted no time – its beady eye focused on Stalk, it lunged for him and swung its claws, both hands opening and then sweeping in as it tried to grasp its target. Stalk ducked and rolled under the gnoll's left arm, hands tucking in to his waist as he did so and emerging from the roll with his two shortswords drawn, one in each hand.

However, their bestial foe suddenly whirled back around with surprising speed, slashing with his left hand and then with his right in a blur of blood-slicked claws. Stalk slipped back and dodged of the first blow, but the second came too fast even for him, and three deep cuts were gouged across his bicep as scraps of torn black feathers sprayed the air.

Logan tensed for a split-second before he roared and charged, and as Stalk staggered back from his injury and the gnoll raised its left hand for another attack, Logan aimed for the beast's exposed midriff and plunged his longsword home. The blade went in clean and to the hilt, slipping between the monster's ribs, and a howl of fury and pain turned into a gurgle as frothy red foam bubbled up from the creature's throat and stained its teeth.

But even that didn't stop it – within an instant, Logan saw the beast twist and drive its right paw for his face, and he drove his shield upwards just in time for the gnoll's claws to glance off his shield and end up slicing the air over his head. As the whistling sound filled his ears, Logan raised his right foot and kicked the gnoll in the chest, launching the creature backwards to sprawl on the jetty while freeing his blade in the process.

He couldn't even turn to check on Stalk before the pack lord was back up, however. Blood was pouring from several wounds, but even as half its body was bathed in crimson, the gigantic gnoll showed no sign of weakness, or even of being tired. The veins pulsing under its skin grew darker and darker, thicker and thicker – it seemed as if the rage and adrenaline of continuous battle was making the beast stronger and stronger, if anything.

They had to end the fight, and they had to end it quickly.

Dropping his shield once again, Logan gripped his longsword in both hands, holding the blade aloft while his golden eyes met the lone red sphere buried in the gnoll's face and he said:

"Plenty more where that came from, you sack of shit. Are you going to show me what you've got, or are you nothing more than a snivelling little pup whose too scared to hunt and kill proper prey?"

He spoke the words in the Common tongue – a language he didn't know gnolls could speak or not. But as the words left Logan's mouth, he focused on them, and felt a spark of something linger on the tip of his tongue before leaping and dancing across the air to the gnoll.

The magic of the Compelled Duel spell.

It couldn't be seen, but as his words reached the gnoll's mange-covered ears, they twitched and the beast looked even more incensed. For a split-second, it was looking back up the stairs, its eye sparking with ideas of going back to attack Technus, Arabella and Finnan.

Now that eye was locked purely on Logan, burning with the desire to see him gutted, shredded and devoured piece-by-piece.

Logan's own face twisted into a mocking grin and he asked "Maybe a toothless whelp like you would find squished cucumbers more your speed? Or can you not catch even them?"

That last remark did it – letting loose a frenzied bellowing, the gnoll charged forward, completely lost to rage.

And as it bared its teeth and claws, Logan charged to meet it, holding his blade low, then swung it upwards with every ounce of strength he had and cried out "SMITE!"

There was an explosion of light and a boom that shook the entire Cockatrice, as though lightning had burst from the blade of Logan's sword. But as the light vanished, the paladin was still standing, untouched and unharmed.

The pack lord was still standing to, its body twitching and stiff, head split clean open from chin to scalp, parts of its flesh burning like cinders and its remaining teeth glowing red-hot. It reeled backwards from Logan's attack, stumbled about for a few moments as though it were a drunk man, before finally falling backwards, a second boom shaking the building as the monster's hunched back slammed into the boards of the jetty and its body went still and silent.

Logan and Stalk were breathing heavily, both in exhaustion and relief that the battle was over at last. Turning back to the kenku, Logan met his gaze just in time for Stalk to ask "What in the name of the gods was that?!"

Logan gave him a slight smile. "Just that, as it happens – the power of the gods," he said in response. "Thanks for your help, by the way..."

Stalk clacked his beak in response and turned to look down at his wounded arm, blood pouring down to drip from his talons onto the boards of the jetty.

He then asked Logan "Heal me and we'll call it even?" and Logan replied to that with a request of his own.

"Only if you help me with Ren. We need to get him to the clerics."

At least one of them could help... he hoped.