Malgazar staggers towards the guards, rocking its head gently from side to side, keeping them guessing where it's going to strike.

I stick close to them, waiting to take advantage of any opening that Malgazar causes.

Noticing two of the guards giving each other a slight nod I push my locomotive tendrils and tentacles into the rock, preparing myself to unleash a strong counter attack.

With a burst of speed, the duo sprints at us, they’re not the only ones attacking either as the other guards rush us as well.

Malgazar swings its head down, slamming it into the ground with immense force.

The thunderous impact makes a few of the guards lose their balance temporarily but I haven’t got the proper stance to take advantage of this so I stay still.

Unfortunately I can’t remain stationary when one of the guards leaps over to slice at Malgazar’s exposed neck, so I lash out, smacking them aside with a tentacle.

Before I can follow up on my attack another guard lunges at me from my left side, driving his sword into my centre before ripping it upwards, tearing through my flesh.

While he’s attacking me the rest of the guards attack Malgazar, perhaps expecting me to go on the defence and try to save Malgazar.

If so they didn’t think through this plan properly.

Turning around to fully face this overextended guard, I embrace them with every single available limb I have, squeezing him so hard that his bones pierce through his skin.

I kill him just as my fellow partner begins to dissipate, dropping his broken form to the ground.

The brutal death the guard recieved doesn't seem to have damaged the morale of these guards, but it has made them furious.

Even Vaelor who has been standing carefully in the backlines this whole time moves up, hot hatred blazing in his eyes.

Just as the thought that I shouldn't have dropped this corpse and should have used it as a weapon instead crosses my mind, they wrathfully attack me.

I try standing my ground for all of five seconds before the loss of two dozen limbs forces me back.

I can’t even regrow them thanks to all the mana they're bleeding out of me.

Twirling around a tentacle, I try to attack Vaelor from an odd angle but somehow that old bastard manages to turn his head at exactly the right angle to avoid my punch.

He looks to be sixty but he's moving faster than his guards who are half his age, he’s even faster than me.

I can’t even try scraping up some sand to throw at him since there aren’t any substantial clumps near me.

Whipping a tendril at him to slow his murderous advance, I dart forward to try and bite down on a guard who had strayed just a little too close to my mouth with her attacks.

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She pulls back fast enough to avoid losing her head but I still manage to bite off her arm.

Instead of pulling back further or screaming, she just winds up her sword arm and delivers a devastating slash directly down my centre of mass, splitting my lips and robbing me of a solid half a dozen teeth.

I try backing off but instead of being able to take a few steps back, I collapse.

Two of the guards had gotten behind me while I was preoccupied with their aggressive counterpart, severing a large portion of the limbs I had been using for locomotion.

I can’t even figure out how many limbs I’ve lost because everything feels so incredibly numb.

And I’m oh so hungry.

Straining myself to my limits, I lash out with everything I’ve got, trying my hardest to keep my aggressors back while I recover.

Tendril after tendril goes flying through the air, while my tentacles are hacked into rough pieces.

Still, I don’t let up on my tempo of violence because I know the moment I do I’m going to be torn apart.

Slowly, agonisingly, I stagger upright.

Sadly it would seem I’ve regained my footing for nothing since I simply lack the necessary limbs to do anything.

I can’t properly attack, I can’t properly defend.

So I drop back to the ground, fully giving up on moving for the rest of my quickly ending life, as I use the last few appendages I have to attack them.

I don’t have any tentacles left to strike at them with, so all I can do is try and whip them with my tendrils.

It's all for nothing however as the guards are like a whirlwind of steel, slicing through tendril after tendril and dodging any form of retaliation.

When I'm at last completely delimbed, they just stand there, looking down at me with contempt.

Murmuring in their strange language of screeches and grunts the humans gesture at me, mocking me no doubt, as I slowly decay.

They don’t even need to kill me, my hunger will.

Noticing I’m dying though Vaelor strides forward, leaning over my prone form.

Then he lifts his enchanted sword up, pausing for a moment so that he’s got his attack properly lined up, before bringing it down through my mouth and into my eye.

There’s no agony like the last time I was stabbed in the eye with an enchanted blade, there's just blindness.

Blindness and death, as everything starts to become unreal.

Hovering above my dissipating form I watch as Vaelor issues hasty orders to his guards, or would they be his lieutenants?

Maybe they were both?

I stare at him steadily as his form begins to warp and twist into a nightmarish plant.

A horrific mass of seeds with rotten pollen dripping down yellow bark is all I see before this form morphs into a harsh transparent colour.

It hurt to look at it, before I can turn away though it fades into oblivion.

Casting my gaze upwards I see a nightmarish eye which has replaced the sun, it beams down at everything below it with love, compassion, care.

Then it's gone alongside the entirety of the sky, there's no gentle fading, no sudden changes, just nothingness.

And then there's the ocean, gently embracing me and bringing me into its depths