Seraphina Pov

The fire obscured my vision as we leapt, but I heard the screams of pain from within as we fell towards the courtyard. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Beuforlos spin in midair, pushed by the fire in one hand so that he was facing the keep as he moved behind me. I heard an explosion and felt his back slam into mine as we descended. I couldn’t roll with him like this, so I gritted my teeth and braced myself for the pain as my feet slammed into the courtyard.

To my surprise there was no pain, my knees absorbed the shock and Mr. Beuforlos rolled over my back as I knelt so he didn’t knock me over. Before he obscured my vision, I saw a half dozen blurs, slamming into the nightbeasts and undead around us, retracting backwards towards the keep even as I spun around to deflect another of the blurs. Mr. Beuforlos was moving already as well, standing behind me with an arm outstretched over my shoulder. The glass that had been scattered across the courtyard flew up glowing red, as it melted together and formed a giant blade severing the head that had tried to devour me.

The monster that had been stalking us through the halls of the keep appeared before us a mass of limbs and flesh, easily as big as a room, but clearly the beast lacked a rigid bone structure as it continued to pour itself out of the window. Giant clawed limbs drug its bulk out and managed to keep it supported using the castle wall as its heads, each of them clearly a grotesque giant version of some of the corpses within its form. The one that had nearly swallowed me was one of several human-like ones, others appeared more bestial, all of them moved upon serpent like pillars of flesh.

I side stepped as another two heads dove for me, and Mr. Beuforlos’s blade of glass descended, returning from its upwards flight as a guillotine that severed both. The red aura of the wards flashed on the heads for a moment, before they were severed. But it did not stop the blade, and the blade did not end the heads, they wiggled on the ground for a moment as we backed up keeping an eye on the flesh hydra. Then the stumps of the hydra's necks lunged back to the severed bases of the necks and reattached. I winced at that, and again as I saw the nightbeasts and undead that had been grabbed as we descended swallowed into the beast, adding to its mass, and clearly being used to regenerate the parts lost to Mr. Beuforlos’s earlier fire. Charcoal falling from its body as black blood and gray flesh refilled the wound.

For a moment it paused, and a dozen nightbeasts charged us. I readied my blade, and its heads lashed out again, not at me and Mr. Beuforlos, but at the nightbeasts. For a moment I was confused, but then it made sense, as it consumed them. Adding them to its mass. The beast continued to lash out again and again, grabbing more and more of the beasts, gorging itself on anything in reach and growing larger on the mass of nightbeasts that had been waiting for us outside.

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The entire time its heads also lashed out at me and Mr. Beuforlos. I cut them, bashed them, even punched them away. Blades of glass sliced into the heads until they became stuck and broken, eventually trapped within its form and unable to be extracted. The heads blurred, but in a way the creature's size made this easier than it should have been. I couldn’t exactly miss, and the creature's momentum was too great to stop. As Mr. Germaine taught me, I used my sword to turn it aside, used its own momentum to slice my blade through its body.

My attacks were searing the flesh they reached and a portion of it would fall as charcoal and gray unenchanted goo with every cut. Only for the beast to ignore the paltry wounds to its incredible bulk. The nightbeasts had fled its reach, but it seems it was too late this flesh hydra thing was too well fed. Mr. Beuforlos was behind me, I could feel his magic growing as he built up to something. Hopefully it would be enough to end this monster.

When he snapped his fingers, it was like the world went silent after. And then it roared as the flames that burned from the creature's body devoured the air at an unnatural rate. Towering tornadoes of flame rose from within it, apparently bypassing the wards by being inside the beast when it exploded. For a moment I thought we had won. The beast screamed and flailed about in an inferno. Mr. Beuforlos did not let it end there though as he unleashed a rain of fireballs at the beast. A rain that was stopped by the red glow of wards still.

“Can you do whatever you did before?” I asked.

“I could only do it because it swallowed the glass blades, and they were totally destroyed by the explosions” He replied grimly.

Then it all went wrong. Even on fire, even with massive holes blown in it, the beast was not dead. The wards meant for hundreds still held it safe from the blows that would have guaranteed its end. And it moved to ensure its survival, the mass of the beast flowed like rotted water, burying the burning parts inside of its own flesh, smothering the fires in flesh and bone and casting aside pieces that were too burned to be of use. The beast shrank, but it was still impossibly fast, still a beast of dozens of the dead instead of a few hundred. Still big enough that when the pieces of it that had been blown away reconnected behind us, it could encircle us entirely.

The heads of the beast rose again, now all around us too many for me to cut with how fast it was. Too strong to overpower or ignore. Dawnbreaker pulsed in my hand as I tried to think of any way forward. The only way I could think to defeat this thing was to utterly destroy it in one go, or to slay its summoner and hope it dissipated. And it was too late to avoid it. So, my only option was clear. And it was born out as the right one as over a dozen monstrous undead heads dove downwards to devour. A glowing barrier blocked them, rebounding the beast's heads and leaving it to roar angrily. Plan C, hope the wizard had a trick.

I glanced back at Mr. Beuforlos as he intently chanted, I could feel the energy flowing off of him and into the barrier. He was focusing intently, a drop of sweat fell from his brow, and I gripped Dawnbreaker tighter. The beast slammed into the barrier repeatedly, before the mass of flesh surrounding us rose up, its heads vanishing within the mass of flesh and then…it fell down upon the barrier, wrapping us inside of it. The light from the castle and the moon both vanished and only the glowing of the barrier let me see Mr. Beuforlos as he grimaced.

The beast had swallowed us whole, and its flesh was still squeezing down, I watched the barrier flicker and wards sizzle. The barrier was flickering against whatever red protective wards this being had relied on to resist magic all night. The barrier's strength was rising and falling in a battle between one mage's power, and the cursed magic wrapped flesh of the dead that had fallen tonight. I could only hope that it ended in our favor.

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