Nick pressed the trigger at the last possible second, firing the wand from point blank range.
The cone of force slammed into the rat’s armored leg, knocking it to one side hard enough to sweep the foreman’s feet out from under it. Caught by surprise, it fell heavily to the stone floor, accompanied by the grating screech of tortured steel. With the first display of emotion that Nick had seen so far, the rat growled as it rolled back onto its feet.
The wand isn't strong enough to do much damage through all that armor. It's probably tougher than the other rats as well. The ratman was slow to rise to its full height, momentarily disoriented by the force reverberating throughout its body. Before the foreman could recover and resume its offensive, he darted over to its side.
He slipped the wand back into its loop while unclipping one of the metal canisters from his belt. Without allowing himself to hesitate, Nick opened the ratman’s visor with one hand, and popped the lid off the tin with the other.
Before it could pull back, he poured the tube of caustic chemicals into the foreman’s helmet, burying its face beneath a layer of toxic salt all the way up to its eyes. He slammed the visor down, narrowly avoiding a savage bite to his hand, and darted back, gaze locked onto his armored foe.
In the heart of that fateful moment, Nick knew that what happened next would determine whether he would survive the battle. Or at least decide if he still had a chance. He knew that regardless of the exact mechanism by which the parasites controlled their hosts, the rats’ bodies were still vulnerable to attack. The corpses he had left rotting in the sewer were a testament to that fact.
Given the precautions they took to prevent their skin from touching the stuff, he was gambling that the salts were toxic to the ratman hosts, the parasites within, or ideally both. Although it didn’t seem to need its eyes to see, Nick was hoping that he had managed to poison his opponent, wounding or weakening it to some extent. Perhaps even dull its senses enough that he would be able to fight the foreman on even footing.
Nick soon discovered that while the salts were as toxic to the Crimson Blight as he had hoped, instead of collapsing or convulsing on the floor, five seconds later, the foreman went completely fucking berserk.
The ratman writhed, screaming all the while like a banshee driving a firetruck. An unearthly, piercing wail that bit into Nick’s eardrums like teeth. In an explosion of motion, the foreman leapt onto its feet and started running around the room, flailing at its face in wild, uncontrolled slaps. Armored gauntlets slammed into its helm time and time again.
For the first dozen blows, the metal held firm, withstanding a series of strikes that would have burst every organ in Nick’s body. But then the steel plating, weakened by decades of exposure to the moist air, started to buckle and bend, spews of salt flying out from the slits in the visor with every strike.
He was forced to leap out of the way on several occasions, ready to drive his dagger into the rat’s neck the moment the helm came loose. It gave him a few seconds to recover, although he was too stressed and exhausted by this point to use them to plan.
At last, with a ripping groan of suffering steel and flesh tearing in unison, the helm broke free from its moorings in a geyser of salt and blood. The face that was revealed as the chemical mixture fell away would haunt Nick’s dreams for months to come. A ruined, weeping mess of scorched skin and fungus that ran like wax. The foreman’s eyes and lips were simply… gone, revealing the shocking white of bone beneath, but the creature still drew breath. As if driving that point home, it slapped itself to cast off the remaining salt crusted to its molten flesh and turned to face him once more.
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The moment that the helmet came free, Nick charged and raised his dagger, poised to strike with everything that he had left. Before he could attempt to land a critical blow, the foreman wailed again and then darted in an unexpected direction, heading away from him and over to the far side of the room. It leapt headfirst for the hole in the crystal container, forcing its head and shoulders through the narrow opening like an eel, shedding tissue and fragments of steel as the top half of its torso disappeared inside.
At first, Nick thought that the dungeon’s boss was running away to recover; that he would have no choice other than to follow it and hope that he could end things in the handful of heartbeats he had remaining. But that was not the case. What happened next was much, much worse.
Before he could close the distance, the foreman’s movements shifted. It ripped its torso back out of the gleaming container, trailing ribbons of shredded skin and tendrils of crimson fungus, as black blood dripped from its gaping wounds.
For a moment, Nick thought that the parasite’s host was falling apart. But then he saw that the rat’s lacerations were sewing themselves closed, noticed the sword clasped between its hands. The arm-long weapon was ragged and warped. Its blade was etched and full of holes, like drops of solvent had eaten away at the metal, leaving a tattered edge like the blade of a saw.
Before he could decide how to respond, the foreman took the option out of his hands. It came whirling at Nick like a walking blender, twice as deadly as before. In the heart of that dark moment, all the damage that he had managed to inflict felt meaningless. The situation was even worse than he had feared.
The first swing of the sword nearly cost Nick his head. He was still adjusting to fighting an opponent who didn’t need eyes to track his movements and had underestimated how much the blade would extend the ratman’s reach. Its arms are longer than I thought.
He leapt back at the last possible second, a drop of blood running down his throat as the tip of the blade scratched his skin. Although he had avoided a lethal strike, in his haste to evade the blow, Nick bungled his footing. He stumbled as he landed, twisting his ankle, although he couldn’t feel any pain through the torrent of cortisol and adrenaline electrifying his nervous system. Half a heartbeat later, well before he could hope to regain his balance, the foreman followed up its slash with a flowing combination of attacks.
Holding the sword seemed to have strengthened the parasite’s control. Or maybe the rat’s body had ingrained using the blade to such an extent that its muscles still knew what to do. In either case, the weapon enabled the foreman to unleash a blurring frenzy of attacks. Each of which would have been sufficient to shear Nick’s limbs free from his body. As he ducked beneath a wild swipe, he saw that the links of chain running beneath the rat’s right armpit had torn from the stress, creating a slit half the length of his thumb.
He didn’t have enough experience to anticipate the rat’s strikes. But somehow, Nick was able to stay just beyond the reach of this living flurry of steel, although his efforts cost him almost all of his remaining stamina.
Despite his exertion, his heartbeat was starting to slow, casting a shadow across his mind. In that moment, he knew that he was dying; that his organs were being subsumed by the parasite altering his insides. He began desperately searching for any opening that he could exploit. Despite his fervent focus, Nick could discern no way to end the fight in his favor. When the ratman’s fluid combination failed to claim his head, it reversed its grip and took a step forward to adjust its stance.
He had just enough time to blink before the foreman sent the blade streaking up in a diagonal slice intended to eviscerate him from navel to nostril. With no time to dodge, Nick let gravity carry him to the floor, the sword’s razored edge screaming through the space that his heart had occupied a fraction of a second prior. At this point, he had no choice other than to play out his hand and hope that it was strong enough to save him. Focusing with every scrap of concentration he could muster, he tucked in one shoulder and executed a clumsy roll.
Nick was hoping to spring back onto his feet inside the foreman’s guard, but he wasn’t particularly nimble and had never performed the maneuver before. Thus, by the time that he completed his roll, the foreman had changed its grip once more. It now held the sword over its head, the blade angled to face Nick.
He had just enough time to realize that he was in trouble before the foreman took another step, and the blade came down.