Witnessing the defiler's suddenly turn completely silent, dead serious completely out of the blue was certain a surprise for everyone, especially the puppeteers who had had the displeasure of having them as neighbours for much too long, their reaction to the odd occurance lasted a bit too long, leaving them static, target of well placed strikes that decimated their numbers.
Not every group of student had followed the same tactic, though, all of them had been able of recognising how valuable having defilers being themselves was, the crafted abominations were dangerous enemies, few had what it took to withstand their sharp edges, and it was not like they aimed randomly, each of their graceful attacks were meant to kill or cripple, since many could not reliably block their strikes, they had to run around constantly, using the defilers as props to disrupt the performance of the puppeteers.
