Another arrow flew, thudding into a darkspawn, but not quite where he'd wanted it – the beast slowed for a moment, and then continued forward on the same path as before. The second arrow, this time landing squarely in the side of the creature's neck, had the desired effect, and it toppled to the ground. By this point, Raelias was already tracking the movement of another, eyes focused and bow taut. He kept a close watch on his partner's whereabouts, as she had gone forward to ambush the same darkspawn he was slowly tormenting with a steady flow of arrows. Careful as he was to keep an eye on her, he was working doubly to make sure that he kept track of her mabari. It was much closer to the ground, and kept jumping up almost out of nowhere to knock the creatures off-balance or tear at them with its paws – altogether much less predictable, and not something he was used to compensating for.
Suddenly there was a flutter of movement off to his side, and he turned to see two genlock, much closer than he would have liked. They were both already on their way, and without much thought, he pulled out a knife and threw it at the closest one. The growl of pain didn't last long as the animal fell backwards a few metres away, the knife sticking out of its face. By that point the other one had stopped moving, and Raelias had a moment to be confused before the fact that that was a staff, not a sword, finally registered. He barely had time to avoid the beam of lightning that came arching towards him, diving for the tree on his left and then scrambling to his feet and moving again as that one was hit with a loud crack. The smell of smoke began to permeate the area, and Raelias was running to get enough workable distance between himself and the new threat. Darkspawn were supposed to be stupid, right? This one was a mage. How did that make sense at all.
Ignoring the inherent conflict of logic, since clearly that wasn't really what mattered right now, he continued moving as another bolt came past him. This one, however, forked when it came into contact with one of the trees, hitting him and knocking him off his feet. He rolled, turning back to all but blindly return fire – he was pleased to see that the arrow hit the genlock in the leg – and then got up and moved again. He was now much closer to the other darkspawn than he would have liked, but this did have the added bonus of being somewhat distracting for the one attacking him. For now, the cat and mouse game would continue.