Lavinia clamps down on her teeth, swallowing the skull shattering agony swelling through her body as {Blood Rush} slowly numbs away her sense of pain. Eyes seeping and dripping blood, Lavinia glowers, a burning rage taking her as the Minotaur roars victorious. It celebrates, beating its chest and gurgling up a mouthful of flame. With a roar it stands across Lavinia and breathes out a rumbling force of flame.

Her [Blood Art] allows her blood to seep back into place as she kicks off the floor to her feet, dashing towards the reversed waterfall. The waterfall greets her by propelling her through its length at speed. Shot out at near the top, Lavinia swirls Essence about herself as her [Blood Art] keys onto the sliver of blood the smog Dagger and her smites drew from the beast. She dives back at the maze, the whipping wind drying her mane out.

“Blood Art; Kinesis!” With great effort, she wills the Minotaurs blood out of its wounds in a pathetic thin stream. It's fighting me! She senses the wound repairing itself, senses her Dagger sliding from its skull and the fist sized gouge stitching itself together. She wills it to stay open, struggling even to retain command of the blood stream she's coerced.

Abandoning the effort, Lavinia calls a swirl of Essence to her hand as she continues plummets, “Wave Shot!” lobbing the rapidly formed ball at the Minotaur now glaring up at her. It explodes, slicing an inch into its neck and cracking it aside. Lavinia crashes within the maze, her legs buckle even with Essence rushing through her calves. She gasps, panting within her little crater and inspects the Prince.

Even with [Blood Rush] enhancing her base capabilities, leaving a scratch on the Minotaur is difficult. Slices and stabs won’t work as well as the mighty smites of a blunt weapon and so she searches the corpses in the fugue state of hunger and rage, wishing the GroveStaff were here. Her [INT] attribute keeps her mind steady amidst the burgeoning sensory load and her control over the Minotaur's wound; even from the distance she put between them, her latch on its blood remains but doesn’t strengthen.

“Ruuaaruuh!”

The Minotaur’s roar reverbrates through the room as it begins a new callous charge at Lavinia and the walls of obsidian crystals in the way. Lavinia picks a spiked mace from a warrior’s skeletal hand and leaps unto a wall, clawing her way to the top until she can see the Minotaur ploughing towards her in all its fiery rage. A trail of flame drew from its nostrils as it crashes after her. Letting the rage and bloodlust energize her she fuels her new weapon with Essence, demanding the ancient steels greatest potential as she bursts out to face the Prince. Carrying the momentum of her leap into a flip, Lavinia spins, tucking her legs in until the Minotaur passes underneath and then, “Reais Smite!”

Aligning the mace with the butt of the smog dagger sticking out of its skull, Lavinia drives her strength into the calculated strike and nails the charging Minotaur. The dagger digs deep, skewering through its skull as the spiked mace distributes Lavinia’s generous excess of Essence throughout its shattering head. The Prince's jaws eat dirt and Lavinia lands atop it.

Not waiting to find out if its dead she glares at the gouged spot on its back, watching as her command over its blood battles the Minotaur’s natural regeneration. With a vile distaste for the creature Lavinia coats her claw with Essence. Aligning her fingers like a blade she stabs through, gouging out more flesh from its immobile form until she reaches its insides. She digs out a fistful of its bile dyed flesh and stuffs her mouth with it, cringing as it tastes worse than anything she’s put in her mouth, not even day old corpses taste as horrid.

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To her dismay the Minotaur begins to shift again, even as she digs out an organs from its backside. With her dagger and spiked mace lodged firmly in its partly shattered skull the Prince continues to rise.

Leaping off Lavinia wearily summons another swirl of Essence in her hand before dismissing it. Another Wave Shot won’t bring it down. The monster reaches at its skull, searching for the object squishing its head and yanking it out. It turns around and hangs its jaw open, Lavinia leaps onto the walls to escape its flames but it merely reaches into itself or attempts to.

Within its mouth Lavinia spots her Dagger dangling at the back of its skull, far from its thick-fisted reach and smiles. If nothing else that will inconvenience the beast for a time. Her smile dies when it reaches the same conclusion and in response, summons a white hot furnace of flame in its throat, burning the metal of the dagger till it melts from tip to hilt.

Lavinia’s eyes go wide as the beast yawns and snaps its neck to the side, its skull still recovers from her smite’s disfigurement but only a single red eye has reformed enough to settle a glare at her. It huffs.

“Crimson Blink!” Lavinia materializes far beyond it just as it begins its charge. She doesn’t look back as the Minotaur continues to plough away, unheeded by the walls or by the victims of its rampage beneath its feet. It breathes fire against the fringes of her braids as she leaps from wall to wall, feeling them shatter a fraction of a second after her feet leaves them.

Panic beyond the rage and lust of [Blood Rush] overwhelms Lavinia. She squeezes Essence around herself and shrouds further into the maze, materializing near the end as the Minotaur continues to pour flames from its mouth, its hooves trampling after her.

[{Blood Rush} Disabled!]

Lethargy like none other takes her. Suddenly aware of cracks in the back of her skull, her shoulders lop-sidedness and her hip's displacement, Lavinia crashes against a pillar. Heaving for breathes that stab her lungs with each draw, she crawls up the height of stairs rising up to a light that rings of safety, of power and strength promising to shield her from the dungeons beast.

The Minotaur bursts through another wall, screeching flames and roars as it shakes off the crumbs of crystals stabbing its body. It’s crushed head halfway healed already and bearing a second maddened eye. It finds Lavinia crawling desperately at the stairs and sneers, bowing its horns at her for one final stampede.

“Lavinia!”

A voice screams out. Her sight waning as she fails to summon Essence to aid. Then three blazing lights swell behind the Minotaur, interrupting its charge for the first time as it turns to look as well.

Three massive fireballs rage down upon its head, imploding with enough force to toss Lavinia up against a wall, singe her hairs and scald her skin. A thick scent of power, of Mana swells in the air and for a moment, as Lavinia raises her head and finds a woman in skipping from one summoned pillar of earth to another, the air billowing her white cloak as the mighty staff she wields thrums with power, she believes Lucy has returned from the grave to save her.

The woman stands atop a pillar, overlooking the smouldering Minotaur as mana swells in the air, gusting from within her. She gazes down at the monster with a glow in her eyes and with a flourish of her staff yellow lightning pours out of its tip, smiting the beast repeatedly as she chants in some strange language.

The dust doesn’t settle before she raises another pillar with the Minotaur smouldering atop it, sending it rocketing to the unseen ceiling. She lets out a strained breath, falling to a knee for a second as her pillar recedes to the earth. The woman walks up to Lavinia and sets her hand out, “Lavinia…you’re here again…come. There’s no time.”

And truly there isn’t. The pillar she sent to the ceiling begins to crumble and the Minotaur tosses itself off its precipice, crashing into the maze like a bolt. The woman snatches Lavinia and with a flourish of mana summons a warbling screen projecting a location where a lake shimmers against glimmering crystals.

Lavinia shuts her eyes and lets the woman carry her through.