“I don’t know, hide?!”
Markus could barely think. Massive reptillian monster was staring at him hungrily, all three heads trained directly on him. This one was live, energised, feral. In the background, numbers were still being incrementally shouted in a sickening, arrhythmic pulse that substituted the beat of his own heart.
Chaos thundered through his skull as he gripped his weapon harder. He still wasn’t used to the feel of this thing, but with Overcharge and the strength increase, he could hold it much easier. He imbued it with mana instantaneously, pumping E Grade Spirit Mana into the blade as the weapon glowed hot red, drinking in the new power.
“I’m not hiding,” came a familiar voice from behind him. A blue-skinned, skinny reptillian man came into view, shirtless, covered in red and black tattoos, his face lightly scaled and carrying a long scar. “I knew this would happen. I was right. I didn’t say I wasn’t ready to face it.”
“Don’t be stupid, you’ll die! You need to—”
Markus glanced to face the man, but all too soon, Daven began chanting in an unintelligible string of words, immediately causing lightning to cackle across his hands and far up his arms. In an explosion of power, he shot a chaining, arcing bolt directly at the trimander’s red head, singing it, leaving a black scorch mark where his power had struck as it bounced towards a far wall, narrowly missing a second head.
“Apologies. You do not need to hide.”
“Stop talking and fight!” yelled a tremulous voice from behind him.
“Ooh, did you see that, honey?! It’s barely scratched! Three-hundred thousand!”
Markus wanted to scream at everyone to shut the fuck up, but they were right. He didn’t have time to waste. If that thing got close enough, it’d definitely kill everyone. He needed to take the fight to it.
“Can you zap me?” Markus asked as he walked to the front of the cart, preparing to leap off.
“What?”
Ah, fuck this. He didn’t have time to explain. Life, Blood, Spirit, Frost, Flame, Mystic, Divine. That’s what was in his repertoire right now, and that’s what he’d have to work with.
Markus walked slowly in the direction of the monster, planning to speed up his pace exactly when Daven fired another bolt, but after five seconds and still no more lightning, he was forced to pick up to a jog. The spell must’ve had some kind of limitation to it, and he had no time to waste.
Markus cast Empower, coating the tip of his weapon in ice.
The Frost Mana was the easiest for him to command, and he had plenty of it. He had to be careful about his Overcharge, he was only at 115% of his capacity right now and he could easily dip under if he spent too much. Luckily, with his recent mana increases, each percentage point represented about 20 mana, so he still had a fair bit to burn through.
He began running flat out at the monster, as fast as he could with the heavy weapon still in his grip. He crossed the distance a fair bit faster than he usually would, Agility boost clearly at play, and arrived before the creature with a flourish and swing of his glaive, aiming squarely for the third, rightmost head, the fire one, angling his weapon and delivering as much power as he possibly could.
The glaive felt heavier on the way up, gravity at play, and when he completely missed the fire head on the first swing, Markus decided to change his tactic. He ducked under the lowering neck of the middle acidic head, running past and aiming a swing at the creature’s torso. He found his blade chinking against natural armour, much like it had against the bulleater, but this time, it was even worse.
The weapon bounced, the creature not even appearing to be wounded.
[Trimander has resisted Frost Damage.]
Shit. Its body was immune to Frost? Was it immune to Flame too?
It wasn’t immune to Shock, and that was all he knew so far. Markus swung a second time, the remainder of the Frost Mana dissipating from his weapon as Empower ended. He planned to enact a third, unenchanted strike just to see if it’d have any more effect, but before he could do so, the trimander reared and smashed one of its heads directly into him, knocking him to the side.
He stumbled, struggled to remain on balance, fell to one knee, and the second that Markus got up, he jumped in an attempt to avoid a swinging tail strike as the creature quickly rushed past him.
He didn’t react fast enough, and the bottom of his feet were clipped by the monster’s hard, crystalline tail.
Thankfully, while he landed flat on his back, he’d not fallen hard enough to wind himself, and both of his ankles still seemed intact. Markus used Manifest to summon a solid block from his hand, pushing it against the ground and extending it as he moved to push himself to his feet, but the moment he put too much weight on it, his confidence slipped alongside his concentration. The blue block of mana vanished instantly, causing Markus to tumble back to the ground as the trimander stared down at him.
It didn’t waste time, immediately lunging at him with its middle head and attempting to bite his head off.
Markus grabbed the glaive in both hands and brought it up directly against the creature’s mouth, holding it horizontally against the swelling tide of its gaping maw as it tried to crush the resistance out of him, snarling, pendulous, freezing tongue dangling so close to Markus’ face that he could practically feel the cold air radiating against him.
[Freeze I resisted.]
Shit, his mana core from the bulleater was putting in work. It’d been so long since he’d gotten it that he’d almost forgotten he could resist basic levels of freeze.
He laid in a perpetual struggle, feeling the resistance being crushed out of his arms as they began to grow so heavy that they were numb, the impossible weight of the creature pressing down upon him as he attempted to enact a counterattack, lungs burning, eyes streaming from the pressure to the point that he could barely keep them open.
He cast Frozen Tomb with immense effort, feeling a blanket of magical ice run over his back as the creature continued to wear down on him. It resisted the slow, completely unaffected by the ice, but this wasn’t why he’d cast it. He drew upon his resolve, pulling in a huge breath, and screamed at the top of his lungs…
“Dagen! Zap it!”
“But I’ll hit you too!”
“I know! Do it!”
The handle of his glaive was beginning to bend, the intense creaking mixing with the trimander’s whines in a tinnitic medley that scraped against his senses and obfuscated his thoughts. If the weapon broke, he was fucked. If Daven didn’t hit him soon, then he was fucked. If the thing suddenly realised two heads were better than one, then you can guess it…
He was fucked.
Speaking of which, there was now acid dripping on his leg and bubbling against the ice below. Fuck, that hurt!
Come on, come on, come onnnn…
The lightning finally struck, jutting straight into the creature’s face and ricocheting down to the ground, electrifying Markus and the trimander both as they remained locked in perpetual struggle, Markus struggling to remain upright, to remain conscious, as suddenly, Markus felt the Shock Mana beginning to flow into him following Daven’s attack and immediately used Empower to turn Frozen Tomb into a static field of bouncing electricity.
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The creature finally relented, squealing from one mouth as it roared from another, its tongue zapped and fried as the handle of the glaive conducted the electricity coursing through Markus’ body.
…not his most painless trick, but it’d worked, and the creature jumped back to avoid the danger zone, convulsing a little and shaking its middle head so hard it crashed into the others and knocked itself off-balance, looking dizzy.
Markus immediately ended Frozen Tomb as soon as the creature jumped out of its radius, the ice and electricity immediately dissipating. He attempted to stand, but realised with a lurch of his body that something had changed…
He wasn’t in Overcharge anymore. He’d used enough mana in that last exchange to knock him out of it. He’d be slower now, and his strikes wouldn’t be as powerful, as well as any temporary hardiness he might’ve been graced with having swiftly left him.
Luckily, losing the effects of Overcharge didn’t seem to increase the severity of his existing injuries, and he was still able to stand in spite of the fresh burns on his left calf, though it was markedly more difficult than it would’ve been otherwise.
He fished his glaive into both hands, noticing the difference in weight now but less so than he might’ve usually. Was it because he’d spent some time in combat with it already? The malichor was reacting and making the weapon feel lighter. If he could keep on attacking while the monster was recovering, his strikes would only continue to get faster and stronger.
He jogged with a limp, trying to cover the ten feet gap between them as quickly as humanly possible without losing his balance. The bidding was continuing in a flurry in the background, and he heard cheers alongside a number beginning with 500 being shouted as he approached the monster and struck at it once more, this time pressing his attack, going for the rightmost head and coating his weapon once again in Frost Mana as he did.
It’d been immune, but if his hunch was correct…
He struck true against the flaming head, cutting it just below the jaw, and no flash of his system sought to signify him of an immunity as the blade sizzled against the monster’s flesh, not this time.
Perfect.
Markus stepped forwards and struck again, uppercutting with the blade and looking to skewer the monster’s throat, but while he only managed to get the tip of the blade in, the warm blood that sprayed out over his body like oil confirmed to him that his gambit had been a success, even as he screamed and recoiled, barely managing to keep hold of his glaive as the heat danced around his body.
Flame and Frost Mana were brought to bare in the worst areas, mitigating some of the damage as blood continued to leak from the neck of the creature’s right head. He’d cut it well enough to leave a sizeable gash somewhere critical, and while it continued to bleed, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to reach the creature’s neck to drain it. The reach of his glaive was the only reason he could even connect with the monster. Getting his hand up that high would be impossible.
Unless…
Markus considered his options. Manifest was a difficult and clumsy thing for him. If he tried to do the ATAT thing from Star Wars he was almost sure he’d fuck it up and die. If he tried to do something a fair bit simpler, however…
He wasn’t sure if this would work. He needed to not get eaten while he tried this. The acidic head shot caustic spittle in his direction as he endeavoured to Manifest something with some degree of slack over and over, barely dodging the barrage of acid coming his way with each new attempt.
He just needed something that wasn’t a complete solid. Something he could pull taut. Something he could wrap around that creature’s neck…
…it wasn’t happening. Every object Markus attempted to Manifest was solid, rough, unevenly shaped, and useless. He couldn’t concentrate on this properly, not with the monster starting to bite at him too, having to stave the heads off with repeated parries and deflections using both blade and handle of his glaive, which was still holding it together well despite the abuse it’d recently gone through.
He decided to go back on the offensive again, swinging suddenly and fiercely as he did so, but no luck. He didn’t hit anything he’d been aiming for, and the creature was able to force him back with little effort. He’d already used the time it was distracted in to injure its neck, but he wasn’t going to get any more free shots on it, it was too guarded. Having three movable heads allowed it to cover its bases all too well.
It also made fighting the creature feel incredibly overwhelming. It only struck with heads two and three, and while it occasionally tried to attack with its long tail, it at least never tried to stamp on him, meaning he could at least focus on a couple main areas of defense, his head, shoulders, and chest.
That was all thrown for a spin whenever its third head spat acid, however. Dodging that was becoming increasingly tiresome, and the creature never seemed to run out of ammunition. Try as he might to keep up with it, he was faltering quickly without his Overcharge buff, and it wasn’t long until he finally got hit with enough acid around his legs that he stopped being able to dodge entirely, squaring in one position and fending off strikes with his glaive as best he could.
Still, this was getting increasingly tiring… if he didn’t find a way to exploit some weakness of this creature or another soon, he was gonna be freeze-dried toast, coated in acid. That blue frozen head was injured enough from the shock blast that it was biting less, and while the flaming head hadn’t lost any of its speed or power, that neck wound…
Daven hadn’t struck again. Maybe that last attack had taken everything out of him. Maybe he still needed time to charge. Screams behind him from the other prisoners only enforced the irony of the situation. He’d been the doomsayer, and he was the only one of them acting. If anything, that sorry lot didn’t deserve Daven and his incessant naysaying.
A momentary distraction, a lapse in thought, that was all it took for Markus to slip up further.
It was a simple mistake. A mistimed parry. That was all it took for him to lose his grip on his glaive, the handle flying out of his grasp as he tried desperately to hold onto it, the only fragile defense that he had left.
The angling of his body as he attempted to grab the weapon out of thin air was all the opportunity the trimander needed. It went straight for Markus’ outstretched hand, wrapping its jaw just past his wrist and biting down hard.
His vision danced. Sounds gained colour. The world became still. The pain of having his hand chewed up and crushed by the trimander was indescribable, and while his first instinct was to pull, to tug, to try and get away, a single jolt from his mangled arm was all the indication he needed that he could not do that.
Because in spite of the pain wracking his body and assaulting his spirit… this was his opportunity.
Markus felt power radiating through the chargrilled, spasmic mincemeat of his arm even as the monster attempted to chew through it. It didn’t realise how grave of a mistake it’d just made. If it wanted to live, it’d better make a clean break and snap off his hand right fucking now.
Nope?
Okay. You fucking asked for it.
Markus channeled as much Frost Mana into what remained of his hand as he possibly could. It numbed some of the pain and slowed the creature’s chewing. Good. He needed to maintain this connection for as long as possible.
Next, he tried to initialise the drain. The prompt wasn’t forthcoming, and he had to really focus on pushing his mana into the splintered vestiges of his broken hand in order to try and get some form of a response, but with repeated effort, with many attempts made in the span of two agonising seconds, he finally managed to feel a pulse of life.
It radiated all the way through the monster he faced as he felt its spirit entwine with his dominating will. He began to drain the trimander’s essence in earnest, causing the creature to howl in pain and for its head to droop as it attempted to fight the sensation. Markus’ hand frayed further within the trimander’s mouth, barely maintaining the drain, barely remaining attached to the rest of his arm.
It didn’t matter. Markus felt himself entering Overcharge once more as the creature’s head drooped, immediately sticking his right hand into the warm, bubbling blood of the creature’s neck and intensifying the drain.
He drank greedily from the monster’s neck, and as he tried to rip further and further still into the creature’s flesh as it howled and attempted to shake him off, too pained to yet coordinate an accurate strike from one of its neighbouring heads, flailing and screeching ineffectively, Markus only continued to rip chunk after chunk from the horrific creature as he continued to feel new power flow into him, to feel his hand attempting to reforge and regrow itself even as still the monster tried to recoil from him.
It wasn’t even trying to eat him anymore, it was just desperate to end this agonising contact, this total invasion of mind, body, and soul.
And yet, in the deepest pits of Markus’ soul, beneath the fear and the anger and the pain and even the hope, there was another, more residual feeling. A subtle notion that waxed in his mind, one that told him that in spite of everything he was doing here right in this very moment, he could be doing more.
Markus empowered his right hand with stolen mana. He ripped.
He empowered his Regenerating hand with his own frozen energy. He grasped his prey tighter.
He brought both hands together, ripping and tugging with all of his might until finally, finally, a new possibility settled into his mind, a culmination of all the actions he’d taken so far and all the ones he still wished to, something he’d felt deep within him in each moment he’d had something taken from him, he’d had something stolen from his own body as each of these disgusting monsters attempted to pull and tear from his flesh as if he were some fragile toy to be used for their satisfaction.
He felt every ounce of his past pains echoing through his body alongside his current ones, he felt the agony of having a limb all but torn from him, and in his ceaseless connection to the trimander, he understood not only the sensation, but the means, the instinct necessary. His feral goblin soul entwined with his spirit to push him to a new discovery, one fuelled by rage, instigated by the vulnerable blood leaking from a fresh, accessible wound.
Targeting the tear in the creature’s neck, drawing on each injury that flowed through his body, screaming in pain and defiance, Markus activated [Rend] for the first time.