There was a long moment where Hirrus was afraid. He could see it clearly. The scaled beast would rush past him. Towards Julissa. And he’d be helpless to stop it.

But as he hit the ground hard on his right shoulder and hip, the beast pounced on him instead of his wife.

The sword slashed straight down at him. With his left hand, Hirrus caught the beast by the forearm, stopping the blade right in front of his nose. Just barely. He struggled to maintain control of the weapon as he stared it down. He struggled and turned so he could add his right hand as backup. Both arms strained with all his might to keep the blade from carving into his face.

But while he held the sword-arm still, the monster snarled. He could only watch as it smashed its clawed hand down into his side. The hit did less damage than the sword had - only twelve hundred and four - but the pain ripped into his gut, making him want to turn his head and vomit.

Hirrus steeled his will against the pain, and snarled back into the creature’s face. Immediately his decision tree changed its orders. It urged him to try and get the beast off of him instead of slamming out his unusable Cleave ability.

On his back as he was, he could finally see Julissa. The early part of the fight had unfolded in the flash of an eye, and she was still visibly stunned by the monster’s appearance. As exceptional of a woman she was, she was simply unused to battle.

It didn’t matter how strong-willed you were, half of proper combat training was getting you to draw steel instead of freeze up.

“Julissa!” he shouted, attempting to break through her fog. “Get out of here!”

Her eyes snapped down to meet his. What he saw there was unfortunately the spirit that made him fall in love with her in the first place. Civilian or no, she had a fire in her.

Instead of running, she dove for the nearest overturned chair. She struggled to lift the solid piece of furniture as Hirrus struggled to get the monster off him.

Moments later, Julissa brought the chair down across the monster’s back with all her strength.

Despite the weight of the chair, the impact barely registered in the monsters beady black eyes. The chair didn’t shatter. Instead it rolled to the side and thumped heavily to the floor beside them.

The beast’s broad snout opened, showing off the row of slightly curved triangular teeth as its snarl turned into a hiss, spraying Hirrus with spittle. He expected it to smell like foul poison or rancid fish, but the cloud of hot breath surrounding him smelled like beef stew.

Hirrus was still holding onto its sword arm, barely keeping it at bay. The monster’s claws jabbed into his ribs again, this time for one thousand one hundred and ninety-nine damage. The twisting sensation of the claws scratching his skin told him it was tearing an opening in the chainmail there, digging in with the very tips of its claws.

He had to break free, or else it was just going to keep worrying away at him like a dog with a bone.

Until the hard outer shell cracked, giving it the soft marrow within.

Julissa rushed back in from outside Hirrus' field of vision, stabbing a kitchen knife into the monster’s open maw, skewering its tongue. Despite its previous resilience against the attacks launched against it, this got its attention. It tried to snap its maw closed on Julissa’s hand, but instead only jammed the kitchen knife cleanly through the bottom of its jaw. Blood spattered across Hirrus' face, forcing him to blink and turn his head away to avoid being blinded by the spray of red.

Despite his averted gaze, as soon as the monster recoiled, he rolled away and scrambled to his feet. The monster reached up into its mouth with its free claw and ripped the knife out of the wound. It cast it aside with a deep snarl Hirrus felt vibrate through the air.

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The wound obviously caused it considerable pain but it didn’t hesitate. Rushing forward. Towards Julissa. Who was frozen before the sudden charge.

Hirrus hurled himself in front of her.

The monster’s fury at the blow she’d struck was on full display. Instead of only dealing with its now-freed sword-arm, both sword and claw struck him simultaneously. The blade slammed into his shoulder, skittering over his pauldron before raking across the chainmail over his chest, dealing one thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven damage. Its claw came in from the other side, jabbing into his gut so hard that through the armor he felt the tips of the claws break his skin for one thousand two hundred and ninety-nine damage. Warm blood seeped into the padding there, and all Hirrus could reasonably do - since his decision tree started back up on ordering him to Cleave - was punch the thing right in the nose, dealing eight hundred and thirty-one damage.

“I told you to run!”

“I’m not leaving you,” she snapped. He heard her behind him, running across the room. He was suddenly jealous that her decision tree didn’t have any explicit orders limiting her behaviors in combat. “You’re going to die if I leave you to fight this thing alone!”

“If you don’t leave, we’ll both die!”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, he knew what she would say.

“I’d rather we die together than live apart.”

She grabbed his axe off the mantle - having to stand on tip-toe to reach it - and charged back across the room towards the fight.

The scaled humanoid lashed out at Hirrus again, and this time he caught its sword arm in one hand, and its claw with the other. He wouldn’t have been able to stop either limb one-handed, but catching both at the same moment gave him leverage. The monster’s own strength worked against it. Even as his elbows and shoulders complained that they were at their limit, he held.

As long as he could keep both the claw and sword immobilized, he might be able to gasp out the right words to talk Julissa into fleeing to safety.

Without either one, it couldn’t actually inflict damage on him, right?

Wrong.

The jaws snapped open, spraying an arc of blood across his face. The monster lunged down and bit his shoulder, its long snout meaning he felt the bite from his shoulder all the way to his solar plexus. Needle-sharp teeth ripped into his flesh through the chainmail over his chest, and the padding beneath his armor was soaked through with blood in a flash.

The bite did a devastating three thousand five hundred and thirty-five damage.

He felt a pair of debuffs overcome his resilience.

The first was a brief stun effect. His body seized up, overcome by pain. Taking so much damage in a single shot triggered an element of his decision tree. This trigger existed so that he could re-evaluate a threat and retreat to activate Raise The Alarm if it outclassed him individually.

It forced him to back off and drop to one knee for just a few seconds.

The other debuff was something new.

It had been inflicted by the bite itself.

He didn’t know what it meant, but it was not brief. Hirrus could sense the ID for it was some sort of disease effect, but he couldn’t tell the symptoms or effects. Only that he would be afflicted by it for about ninety seconds.

The affliction didn’t trigger any change in his decision tree.

That was worrying.

As he struggled to push through the pain his decision tree forced him to acknowledge, Julissa smashed Hirrus' axe against the monster’s chest. The trusty edge of the weapon carved cleanly through the brigandine, leaving a shallow wound there that stained the layered armor red. She was screaming, her face twisted with rage.

“Get out of my house!” she yelled as she stepped up in front of the monster. She held the axe in front of herself as she placed herself protectively in front of Hirrus.

Hirrus could only watch as the monster’s sword lashed out.

Despite her protective instinct, Julissa wasn’t a guard. As a civilian, her hit points numbered in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands.

The weapon carved into her abdomen, nearly the entire length of the brief blade vanishing into her body. It came out the other side coated in blood.

An arc of red splattered against the wall.

Julissa didn’t cry out. She let out a shocked gasp, and her legs went limp under her.

Hirrus couldn’t even scream his grief and fury as she hit the ground, glassy-eyed and still.