Break…

The Word Of Power resonated in Winifred’s mind as her Crux flowed throughout her body. Her every movement was boosted far beyond a normal human’s limits, as her considerable physical strength was multiplied beyond her wildest dreams.

A veritable swarm of black tendrils shot towards her from all directions as her Chosen foe threw its whole being into trying to defeat her. It clearly wasn’t going to go down without trying to take her along with it.

Scythe-like blades aimed for her neck, barbed tendrils sought to grapple her in place and the occasional thrusting tendril was launched straight toward her face at almost breakneck speeds.

Each and every one of the attacks would have been more than enough to utterly pulp a random Dray’Mel citizen, the unlucky idiot would be dead before they could even register the threat. But, with her Crux fueling her, Winifred wasn’t overly worried.

A small, well-practiced, shuffle of her feet had her shooting to the side. She crashed bodily into the wall of tendrils that were trying to surround her. The sensation caused her stomach to lurch dangerously, but the impact was so much worse for Survix’ body.

Just the simple impact of the brawler's body’s sidestep into encroaching tendrils was enough to send a rupturing ripple through the Chosen Shade’s twisted form. The air was suddenly filled with a cloying acidic smell as dozens of the tendrils burst apart under the sheer force of Winifred’s body coming into contact with them.

For a moment, she thought she was choking to death. The acidic cloud seemed to be everywhere, wrapping around her throat and filling her lungs. She could feel her chest constrict painfully. It was gas but she was drowning, drowning, drowning…

And then, just as quickly, she could breathe again. No doubt this was yet another bonus of her Chosen status, as yet again she felt herself growing stronger. Growing… more. She wasn’t out for the count yet.

Unfortunately, neither was her foe. The dozen or so tendrils that had burst into blood and acid only took a few moments to fully regenerate. Winifred’s eyes could barely keep up with the shifting flesh as the Shade’s flesh pulled itself back into shape, the tendrils already grasping towards her before they fully recovered.

Her feet haphazardly, yet firmly, planted themselves on the writhing pile of corpses that had become her battleground. Throwing a backhand toward the largest mass of the black swirling mess, Winifred felt the power of the blow surge forward past her fist. Her eyes opened wide in shock as a mallet of air was created between them.

The mallet hammered into the Shade’s body with enough force to shake the ground. It buried itself into the writhing flesh and seconds later, it was as if the body exploded from the inside out. Blood and gore rained down on the Arena. More than half of the Shade’s body was just…gone. In less time than it took for her to blink, Winifred had turned one of the greatest threats to her life into nothing but meat paste.

She breathed out heavily, wiping the gore from her face and flicking it onto the floor. Her entire fist was red. The level of strength she’d just displayed could rival any legends Winifred had ever heard of.

So why in the Hells did she feel so… hollow? It was the least satisfying fight that she’d ever been part of. Throwing herself into battle with a Chosen was meant to be the ultimate thrill, the perfect battle. She was at the peak, fighting against foes that would make most folks shit themselves, even as they fled.

The brawler barely even noticed as the Shade began rapidly recovering from a single piece of corroded looking flesh. Winifred had demolished the Chosen’s body a few times now, and it barely seemed to phase the Undead.

In less than a handful of seconds, the Shade would finish repairing its broken form, and the pointless battle would continue. Already Winifred could spot some of the tendrils coiling themselves together as they prepared to launch their bladed tips at her vitals.

But she really couldn’t care less. Each time the Shade recovered, Winifred would just crush it again. Honestly, she couldn’t recall a single fight that had appealed to her less than this one.

And that included her early days in the Pits, fumbling through sloppy fights where neither fighter was worth betting on. Each and every single one of her early fights were abysmal showings, where she was just signed on to whet the appetites of the spectators before the real warriors came out to battle.

Those early fights though, those were some of her fondest memories. Blood pumping in her ears, the roar of the crowd, the dance on the razor's edge. That was the sensation Winifred craved, not whatever the Hells this was.

The spoiled little rich girl, who dreamed of throwing herself into pitched battles with anyone who looked at her wrong, now had more power in her little toe than most could ever dream of but the price of it was beginning to gnaw at her.

Winifred had never really understood how most folks’ minds worked. They all seemed so happy to accept their lots in life, spending the entirety of their time in the City being… less. All too content to safely stay put and give away their autonomy to anyone who’d promise them protection and an easy life.

She’d fallen for that herself, hadn’t she? Gone deep into Dragon’s Blood addiction because it made her feel safer…

The first time she’d seen Blackmaul training her family’s guardsmen, she’d been immediately enraptured. The bulky Dwarf had been more muscular than any mortal she’d ever seen, but even then he was half the size of most of the Human guards that he was commanding.

It had astounded her that someone who looked so… small could command so much respect from those around him. She’d assumed, even as a kid, that he was the estate’s trainer through virtue of knowledge, not actual strength of arms. So to see him walking up to those trainees and throwing them around the training pit with ease? It had immediately enthralled her young mind and heart.

Every single knitting or decorum lesson that she’d skipped was all in chase of that dream. To get to the point where she could rush into battle with anyone she saw, to be able to go toe-to-toe with foes twice her size and come out on top. It was her lifeblood, her reason for living.

And now? Well… what now?

It was a morose thought. There seemed to be no flair or skill to her ducks and weaves, it had all been instinct. Her feet had moved on their own to kick out at the disjointed torso of the Chosen Shade to crater its solid flesh.

When the brawler had first charged into the corpse-ridden Arena, the poor Succubi playing host to the Shade was fairly normal looking, outside of the blood-red skin and the short twin horns peeking through her blackened hair.

Now though, little of Survix physically remained intact, the Shade twisting the poor woman’s flesh into demonic tendrils that lashed and moved in inhumane manners. At first, it was just a few sprouting out wildly from the Demoness’ flesh, but Winifred was now struggling to see if her blows were landing on anything -but- the damnable tendrils.

The Shade had become nothing but a tentacled monstrosity at this point, hundreds of blades swinging wildly in all directions. Winifred could see it being an effective tactic against most fighters, especially those like herself that moved into melee range of the Undead.

Throw Skrakch or Ornn into the damned thing's attack range and they’d be nothing but giblets in no time. Hells, Winifred had trouble with them at first too, forced to barely manage to deflect with her wrists, accumulating little cuts all over her body as her arms began to bruise and tire.

Yet Winifred’s Crux pushed her to keep up with the swinging blades, each new tendril flying at her neck helped Winifred break through her body's limits. Each tendril she ripped free of the Demonic mass made her feel stronger than ever.

Now, she was more powerful than any creature Winifred had ever seen, with more strength in her limbs than she’d ever dreamed of. She was moving at such speeds that she doubted anyone could even make out her movements, completely dominating her Chosen counterpart.

Break…

It was beating in her chest, the Crux pushing her Mana out of the way as it fueled her every motion. A small flick of her hand ripped the Shade into dozens of pieces, yet Survix’s regeneration easily managed to keep up with the damage being piled on it.

Winifred could tell that the source of the Shade’s healing power seemed to be coming from the corpse pile beneath their feet. Each time the Shade reconstituted its form, the bodies beneath them dwindled as they drained of fluids, their bones turning to brittle dust as Winifred stepped across them.

But even with that knowledge in her head, the Brawler was struggling to focus her attacks on the thicker tendrils that connected what little remained of Survix’s torso and the corpses. Each time her body moved to throw an attack at the Shade’s center of mass, Winifred was left mentally screaming at herself.

Another one of the thick, grasping tendrils tried to grab her ankle and force her to the ground. Her legs blurred as she weaved her way around it, lashing out with a swift kick to turn the offending tendril into mush. As she kicked out, another tendril moved to pierce her left shoulder. It thrust so fast that Winifred could barely follow it with her eyes and yet her body grabbed hold of it and pulled, pulping the flesh with its grip alone.

Break…

Faster and faster, her body was moving to defend Winifred from attacks that she could barely perceive. Her Pact was pushing her body to incredible heights… but it was doing nothing at all to bolster her mind.

What was the point in moving so quickly that you could catch a speeding arrow, if your eyesight couldn’t track it?

What was the point of being strong enough to lift a colossal weight as you would a feather, if you could barely keep track of what you were holding?

The only thing that was piloting Winifred’s physical being was the years of dedicated training she’d endured, her figure reacting to immediate threats with an alacrity that frankly shocked Winifred. Her body was a confusing blur to her, leaping over the Shade’s tendrils, smashing through any attack that threatened her.

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That was, unfortunately, the rub. As powerful as she felt, without being able to track the battle as it unfolded around her, Winifred was nothing more than a spectator. It was exceedingly obvious that the Chosen Shade was drawing strength from the corpses underneath them, but without the ability to act on that knowledge, she was left ineffectively swiping at a foe that could heal from her every attack.

The only blessing was that the Shade was just as mindless as her physical form, the damned thing simply attacking her recklessly after it healed from the last attack. They were locked in the most pointless fight Winifred had ever heard of, and all she could feel was a sense of nausea as her body jerked to and fro.

“I should have just used the Placating Brew the wee Ratling gave me as soon as Survix stood up after having her head smashed into bits.” Winifred scolded herself, trying to distract herself as her body did some sort of overly fancy flip as it dodged and weaved.

When the wee Ratling had come running into the Plagued Rat spewing his inane nonsense about a great opportunity, Winifred couldn’t have cared less. However, once the wee beast had mentioned a foe worth scrapping, she’d been on board instantly.

In fact, trapped as she was at the moment, Winifred was beginning to regret her haste. She had to admit that she’d been a bit too excited at the prospect of throwing down with another Chosen. There’d been a time when she’d first joined up with Zacharias as a Pit Fighter that she’d happily taken up any scrap that happened to come her way.

Now though, years later, Winifred had already proven that she was just as deadly as any who graced the underground Arenas.

“So why in all Hells did I jump at this bloody chance tae fight a Chosen? Fucking thing is terrifying!” She muttered to herself as her body tried to grapple a tendril that shot out toward her waist, only for her strength to squash the tendril before her body could… drop to the floor and attempt an armlock?

Landing amongst the drained bodies littering the floor, Winifred corporeal form grappled the shit out of an already deformed tendril of flesh, managing at last to defeat a single of the Chosen Shade’s thousands of tendrils.

Worse yet, Winnie was all too aware that the second her body let go of the tendril, it would recover near instantly.

All she’d managed to accomplish was kicking up a cloud of dust that had once been a spectator’s flesh, the withered remains burst apart after even the slightest touch.

“Aye well, looks like I’ve got all of me instincts and none of me brains,” Winifred said to herself sarcastically. “Just goes to show the wee Half-man was wrong about me just being muscles. Clearly, I had some impact on me fights!”

Winifred grimaced, her instincts had apparently guided her physical body upwards, throwing herself onto her feet and lashing out with a haymaker as a dozen tendrils tried to stab her exposed flesh.

Of course, the Shade burst apart once more, more acidic blood sprinkling down around Winifred as she idly noted the Chosen begin to reconstitute itself. “Bloody waste this is.”

For a blessed moment, Winifred’s body remained still amongst the blood-soaked remains of her regenerating foe. She was standing, not only on the pile of corpses but in puddles of blood and the mushed-up remains of the various tendrils she’d managed to tear off or pulp. It seemed that she finally had a second to try and mentally catch up.

Her body, however, still wouldn’t comply with her attempts to move thwarting any chance she had of grabbing a bottle of the placating brew.

Thankfully, she was facing toward her companions and although she had no way of calling out of them, she was fully capable of staring, gobsmacked, at the Arena’s newest arrivals, a bloodied Halfling and the biggest Undead she’d ever seen.

Winifred hadn’t the faintest of clues about what or where the massive Undead monstrosity had originated from, but she watched, breathlessly, as it charged straight for Zacharias’ prone form.

From its sheer size alone, she’d expected it to move sluggishly, but instead, it practically flew forward as it smashed its oddly bruised-looking hands down in an explosion of stone fragments and debris. Small chunks of stone and grit flew upward from the impact and, completely rooted to the spot as she was, Winifred could feel them hit her, though her enhanced flesh barely registered the contact.

She wanted to yell out, to warn the wee man or just cry out his name in panic, but she remained frustratedly locked in place, forced to watch as Skrakch desperately started to yell and wave his paws toward the hulking Undead creature.

The Ratling was clearly trying to draw its attention but, as the massive beast turned its eyeless face toward him, Skrakch visibly blanched, turned tail, and started to run.

Whatever in all Hells this creature was, it only took a moment to begin its charge. It was clear that Skrakch wasn’t going to be able to dodge in time, panicking and lunging to the side, just in range of the beast’s claws.

Winifred wished that she could turn away, not wanting to see her another companion smashed into a bloody pulp. However, just as the Ratling was about to be crushed, a faint shimmering wall of light momentarily flared into existence between Skrakch and his imminent demise.

The golden Barrier shattered almost as quickly as it had appeared but it was just enough to delay the Undead, and save Skrakch from being crushed beneath the giant’s massive bulk.

Eyes darting over to Meekknuckle, Winifred watched as the Goblin seemed to waver on his feet, his yellow-green skin looking remarkably pale as he dropped the hand he’d pointed towards Skrakch.

Winifred hadn’t even known Meek could summon a smaller version of his Barrier, and from the surprised look on his face, the Goblin hadn’t known either. Nor had he expected the Undead to immediately whirl towards his position, now that the Ratling had barely dodged the onslaught.

The hulking abomination had smashed a hole in the Arena walls, but the falling bits of Rodyr’s mansion did little to deter it as it began to focus its building speed towards Meekknuckle. Winifred barely had time to watch the beast as it threw itself forward, when her body suddenly lurched to the side.

Unsurprisingly, the Chosen Shade had finished healing the damage she’d inflicted on it and had mindlessly begun throwing out more ineffective tendrils towards her. Instincts kicking in before she could even try and resist them, Winifred fell into a boxing stance as she wove around the tendrils, before letting out a few jabs.

That was the most frustrating part as her instincts chose the “right option” in the moment. All the training the brawler had put herself through was with normal physical prowess, not with the sheer power running through her limbs.

She was ducking and weaving like she was facing another human, albeit at a massively increased speed, but the damn Shade couldn’t handle her strength in the slightest.

“Just fucking punch it!” Winifred mentally screamed at herself as her head narrowly dodged a dozen blows with perfectly clean instincts. “Let the damned things hit us, they cannae do anything.”

It felt as though she was going through hours of needless and seemingly endless to-ing and fro-ing but, in reality, it was no doubt only moments. Her body lashed out with a proper punch as her torso twisted to deliver the blow. The resulting blast of Shade-possessed flesh was impressive, but it all felt so damn hollow.

No, the important part was that it had left her staring at her companions as they struggled to handle the Undead beast. Or, more accurately, it let her watch as the Undeead mindlessly smashed the ground where Meekknuckle had just been standing.

Her stomach was doing flips as she desperately pleaded with her eyes to move around and find some sign that the Goblin had managed to dodge the attack. Thankfully…she was rewarded as she finally noticed where the diminutive creature had ended up.

Hovering near the ceiling of the Arena, just off to her left side, and wildly flailing his limbs, Meekknuckle was floating upside down in the air. His skin had paled to being nearly white even as the blood rushed to his face and fear consumed his features.

It was clear the Goblin hadn’t been the agent of his own safety, and it didn’t take long to notice Skrakch laying in a crumpled heap where he’d landed from his own close save.

The Ratling was completely prone but shimmering in the air in front of his furred and glaring face was a glowing Rune, crackling with Arcane Mana. Winifred hadn’t the faintest clue how he’d managed it, but the Chosen could help but heave a sigh of relief at the sight.

Still, the Undead Abomination was clearly too much for her companions. If she didn’t move to save them, who would? She still couldn’t see any sign of Zacharias after the monstrosity had leaped toward him, so who else would smash the fucking beast?

Break…

Her body threw itself to the side as her instincts took over, but Winifred barely noticed. She could feel her heart pounding heavily in her chest. She needed to help her companions. But it was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to force her empowered body to respond to her mental commands.

There was only one option she had that made any sense. As her body continued its empowered movements, Winifred tried to keep track of each blow the Chosen Shade threw at her.

“Come on, ye ugly sack of shite!” She growled internally. Her head felt as though it was going to split open with the sheer force of will required to keep up with the blurring combatants movements. “Ye’ve done it before! Throw one of those bloody grabbing tendrils at me!”

Winifred nearly missed the moment she’d been waiting for, as her foe finally shot one of its enlarged, regenerated tendrils toward her in an attempt to grapple her, at breakneck speed.

Brea-

One moment she was moving through the battlefield with all the grace and speed of a rampaging bull, the next she was screaming in pain as every nerve in her body rang as though they had been lit on fire.

Cutting the connection her Crux had with her physical form wasn’t something that she’d tried before, but it had been surprisingly, almost frighteningly, easy. The issue lay in the complete absence of Mana in her body, as the Crux fled her form.

One second she was a God amongst mere mortals, and the next had her wallowing with the rest of them. Suddenly bereft of her strength, Winifred’s body began to slump in place, unable to move and feeling every inch of her wounded, battered, and bruised form.

And then the tendril hit her. She could feel her ribs as they shattered, the Shade’s attack launching her in the air. As powerful as Winifred’s hide was from years of training, there was no contest between her mortal strength and the Chosen’s enhanced might.

If it had been any other attack from Survix possessed body, Winifred wasn’t sure she’d have been able to withstand the blow. The grasping tendril had been trying to, well, grasp her. Not simply mush her into a thick congealing paste.

Still, as she was sent careening out of the sand pit, Winifred only had a moment before she would collide with the stone walls, no doubt still splattering into pulped meat.

Break…

Thankfully, Winifred had planned for this eventuality. Her body was refilled with energy as she desperately righted herself. By only momentarily severing her connection with her Pact, the brawler had managed to regain full control over herself. And, with that helpful push from the Shade, she was well on her way to being able to help out her companions.

Interestingly, she could feel her body hadn’t regained the same level of strength even as the Crux returned to her. Still, she managed to flip herself forward so her feet could take the impact of her landing as she streaked across the room.

Winifred had originally expected to collide with the wall nearest to the Undead Abomination. What she hadn’t expected was to collide with the massive beast itself, effectively turning herself into a human javelin as the Chosen’s feet crashed into the Undead’s torso with a sickening crunch.

Thrown off balance, the Undead went down in a heap of oversized limbs as Winifred rolled to her feet. It seemed her Crux hadn’t fully taken over her body yet, so Winifred was able to look towards her gobsmacked companions as they tried to understand what had just happened.

Shooting a grin towards Skrakch and Meekknuckle, Winifred rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles as she watched her newfound target pull itself upright and roar in her direction.

“Switch!”