@altsmultimuse continued from X
When one sees a beast roughly ten times their size hurtling toward them, one's best option is to get out of the way. Alas, this particular bard has no such luck. He is quicker with his fingers and words than his feet. The monster — for that's what it is, right? — crashes into him with a rough thud. Thusly Jaskier begins to fear for his life. Surely the next step is to be maimed or eaten. Is it one of those golems? Or a troll? He has only heard of them from Geralt's retelling.
"Fuck. O-hooh, fuck." As he articulates his panic, he scrambles to stand and grab his lute. Which was snapped at the neck during the collision.
In Bruce’s defense, he had mistaken the lute for the hilt of a weapon; while travelers tended to avoid the troll’s path and keep him at a distance— for better or worse— there was always some human looking to make a pretty penny with parts of him. And while other trolls tended to readily fight and protect the bridges under which they dwelled, Bruce had no such luxury and no territory. Which, if one was as massive as a troll tended to be, meant being out in the open many a times… and thereby quite vulnerable.
So it wasn’t quite an overreaction on the troll’s part to immediately jump to the offensive before the stranger made the first blow.
Bruce’s clawed hands swept underneath the human’s legs and down the stranger tumbled, accompanied by a fibrous snap! of the ‘weapon’. As the stranger attempted to rise again, the troll’s hand pounced onto the human. There was restraint in Bruce’s movements, though; most of the time, he could manage to scare off would-be adversaries without so much as leaving them a few bruises— and maybe a bruised ego.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you, li’l morsel,” Bruce’s voice rumbled, his hand still pinning the stranger against the ground.