“WHY?!?”

My ears were ringing when I realized that a fist was coming at my face. But while my brain knew the punch was coming, my body couldn’t move.

I felt my nose break.

Somehow that knocked me out of the fog and my body doubled over as I cradled my nose.

I should have saved Aelin. She couldn’t hit that hard.

“YOU KNEW I WANTED YOU TO SAVE HER!”

I was able to sidestep the next swing.

“You can’t heal yourself!” I pointed at where the snake was. "She can harden herself, so heal her and QUIT TRYING TO KILL ME!”

I angled to the side, to hopefully draw the snake’s attention, but I was pretty sure that it had figured out the kill order to ensure that we couldn’t win the war of attrition.

“DASH!”

I sped across the open room, then spied something that might make the boss rethink its plan. I ran over to the head of the ax and picked it up. I palmed it in my right hand and started running.

“DASH!”

The snake had wrapped itself around Aelin and was squeezing her. The bad news was that it looked like Aelin was having to cast and recast Harden on herself and she was barely keeping it up long enough for the almost constant blue light to keep her healed.

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The good news was that as long as it was holding on to Aelin, it wasn’t moving.

I gripped the back of the ax head with my hands as I swung at the side of the monster. It had been ignoring me as a low threat and that let me get close to it. I didn’t chop off a section of spine, but I chopped into one. The monster screamed and it started to uncoil as it focused on the new threat.

I dodged the snapping jaws and kept taking swings at it, while it tried to get itself where it could try to tail swipe me again.

The monster managed to uncoil faster than I thought it would and I dodged its jaws only to get taken out by its tail.

Unfortunately for me, Aelin was still using Harden on herself, so I took the full impact. I’m not sure where the ax head went, but I rolled for a while after I got hit. I knew that I had to get up, but my body didn’t have the energy.

I felt the healing magic cover me, which helped, but I had finally reached my limit. I was able to push myself up, but my legs were not going to last another dash without a rest.

The monster had locked in on me and was charging. It wasn’t trying to coil and strike, it was just aiming to run me over.

I clasped both of my hands together, so that my hands made a double sized finger gun.

“Pebble shot!”

Only two projectiles shot out, but they were larger and gouged bigger holes in the monster’s head.

The monster staggered, then continued its charge.

“Pebble shot!”

Two more holes the size of my fists were knocked loose.

“Pebble shot! Pebble shot!”

I started getting light headed and wondered if this was what mana depletion felt like.

I realized this was as far as we went. Even if Aelin and Justia were able to harden and heal me, I didn’t have any fight left. It was just going to keep running me over until I was dead and then move on to the others.

I’d led them to their deaths.

I raised my hands for one last act of defiance. But I didn’t have another shot in me.

I stared down the barrel of my finger gun as the snake ran over me.