In his defence, Byleth isn't used to fighting humanoid creatures with tails. Normally they were wyverns, or demonic beasts, which required a whole different approach to fighting them with just a knife. As it was, he only noticed the tail swinging for him a split-second too late, and could only mitigate it by twisting his body like a cat in mid-fall so that it clipped his arm and shoulder, as opposed to catching him hard around the waist.
It still was enough to throw him off balance, and instead of clumsily staggering in an effort to stay upright, leaving himself open, he let the momentum of the blow and gravity pull him downwards. He hit the ground in a combat roll - away from Gavial - and leapt back onto his feet with his knife at the ready and a blindly thrown fire spell cast in Gavial's general direction, if only to buy himself some precious seconds to orientate himself.]
no subject
Yes.
The tail.
In his defence, Byleth isn't used to fighting humanoid creatures with tails. Normally they were wyverns, or demonic beasts, which required a whole different approach to fighting them with just a knife. As it was, he only noticed the tail swinging for him a split-second too late, and could only mitigate it by twisting his body like a cat in mid-fall so that it clipped his arm and shoulder, as opposed to catching him hard around the waist.
It still was enough to throw him off balance, and instead of clumsily staggering in an effort to stay upright, leaving himself open, he let the momentum of the blow and gravity pull him downwards. He hit the ground in a combat roll - away from Gavial - and leapt back onto his feet with his knife at the ready and a blindly thrown fire spell cast in Gavial's general direction, if only to buy himself some precious seconds to orientate himself.]