🗡 + 🛡 If You Take Combinations? (Can Jaskier Be The Whumpee?)

🗡 + 🛡 if you take combinations? (Can Jaskier be the whumpee?)

[stabbing + hurt protecting someone else]

“Geralt!” Jaskier shouts, clearly as a warning, and Geralt feels a spike of mingled irritation and fear at the sound of the bard’s voice. He’s supposed to be a good fifty yards further away, out of danger while Geralt fights off the remaining, larger-than-average kikimore warrior.  Whatever might be behind him, Geralt can’t actually look away at the moment, pressed up so close to the kikimore trying to hold back the beast from his throat.

There are footsteps that he doesn’t really process, a strange voice shouting in surprise, sounds of a scuffle, the smell of human blood and the scent of fear and pain as a breeze carries it past.  Fear and pain and someone he doesn’t know, and Jaskier.

He grunts and manages to leverage just a tiny bit more strength, just enough to push the sharp legs back and shoot an igni off into its maw.  It’s just enough to tip the tide, and within moments the creature falls amongst its fallen brethren.  Geralt doesn’t pause to catch his breath before whirling around, sword at the ready, and finds Jaskier much too close, holding an unfamiliar short sword to the neck of a man on the ground, both men breathing heavily.

“I get the sinking feeling, Geralt,” Jaskier says with faux brightness, “that this gentleman was hoping to wait until you’d killed the kikimore and buried a knife in your back!”  Geralt snarls, stalking towards them, and Jaskier removes the sword so Geralt can haul the man up. Geralt doesn’t want to admit that he probably could’ve been snuck up on, but between the potion he had to take at the start and the toxicity buildup from the venom, he’s not at his best.

“Get out of here,” he all but spits in the man’s face, and the man cowers, and once Geralt puts his feet back on the ground, he flees.  Geralt grunts and pulls out a vial of White Honey to cancel out the toxins and potions. “We’ll have to leave town,” he grumbles, already mentally making a note not to pass through here again if he can help it.

“Oh, yeah, that sounds good,” Jaskier says, and Geralt frowns - his voice is a little too wavery than it should be, even if scared, and Geralt turns to look him over immediately, suddenly realizing that the sharp blood smell hasn’t faded.

“What happened?” Geralt snaps, his eyes spotting the slowly-growing, uncomfortably-large red stain on Jaskier’s thigh and cursing.

“Oh, you know,” Jaskier says, his voice fainter than ever. “Just a mild stabbing.”

And then his eyes roll back in his head and he collapses.