The Death Mark took hold immediately. Black tendrils spread from the point of impact and the creature's front leg buckled, the muscles and tendons degrading so fast that the limb simply stopped working.
The leopard crashed to the ground and slid past me, its remaining legs scrabbling at the dirt in a desperate attempt to keep fighting with a limb that was rotting off its body.
Javier appeared from nowhere and put both daggers through the creature's skull before it could recover. His face was splattered with ichor and he was breathing hard, but the notebook still sat safely in his chest pocket, probably already containing mental annotations about leopard anatomy and attack patterns that he'd transcribe later if we survived this.
"FALL BACK! FALL BACK TO THE RIDGE!" Misato was pulling the squads toward higher ground, her remaining three clones forming a retreating screen while the originals on both teams moved in whatever direction seemed least likely to contain more leopards.
