I shifted my tentacles so they disappeared. I didn’t want them getting in the way as I stepped into the ring with this knife golem motherfucker. I approached the warlock with a light step, keeping my feet under my center of balance.

The warlock waved a hand at me. If it weren’t for my precognition I wouldn’t have known about the three blades that launched from his hand, the move was so deceptively slow. But with its help I ducked down and to the side like a boxer, the knives sailing over my left shoulder. I didn’t slow down.

The first hints of concern appeared on the monsters face. That’s right, you son of a bitch. You ain’t dealing with a nearly dead and severely dehydrated Colm Avery this time. The metal man sneered, raising both arms. Suddenly knives were flying at me like they were being unloaded from a machine gun. I had to abandon my approach to dive to the right to avoid the sudden hail of metal.

Thankfully the knives weren’t flying as fast as bullets and didn’t have the same kinetic force that accompanied the knives previously thrown. It was probably a limiting factor with his power. He can create and shoot a bunch of knives but couldn’t fire them with the same force as one of his throws. But that didn’t really matter. If enough of these knives hit me I’d literally die by a thousand cuts so I needed to keep moving.

We quickly reached a stalemate. I didn’t want to commit to using magic as I still didn’t know where the other two warlocks were, and without it I didn’t have a way to close the gap. The warlock, however, seemed content to fire metal at me. He probably (and rightly) thought that if he held me off for long enough, reinforcements would come.

Well, the more time spent faffing about helped me too. I could feel, growing around us, the islands ward scheme coming under strain. It wasn’t near breaking, not yet, but I could feel the cracks starting to form. If the islands wards were a big, twenty foot statue, right now is about when I’d wince and start backing away.

But I also didn’t have all the time in the world. Alice was fighting an unknown amount of pirates or warlocks so I needed to wrap this up. An idea popped into my head, and I executed it hoping it wouldn’t kill me.

Trusting in the toughness of the LotOS, I skip-stepped a bit into a spin. As a knife approached I used my precognition and my improved reflexes (Were they improved? Or just no longer handicapped? Things to think about when I’m not fighting for my life.) to snatch it from the air. I continued my spin, again leaning hard on my precognition to help me aim as I hurled the knife back at Ginsu the Knife-Man, going for his eye.

Something tells me that throwing his own knives back at him wouldn’t be the most effective tactic. But I also know human nature (to an extent) and there’s only so many people who can react calmly while a sharp object is hurled at their face. I was betting Edgar Knife-Teeth wasn’t one of them.

My theory proved right as the knife-skinned warlock flinched away as the knife made impact with his cheek, doing nothing but giving off a weird, pregnant sounding “thunk” off the monsters skin. But Knife Man reacted like I would, recoiling just long enough for there to be a pause in knives coming my way. I charged forward into the window, bringing my claws to bear. I hoped they worked as well on his skin as it did the metal on the ship.

Results were mixed. My claws came in and dug thin slashes into his side, but failed to penetrate more than a half-inch. My follow up he blocked with his forearm, scoring four lines of damage that seeped that same thick liquid.

He brought his other arm in an overhead chop that again was deceptive in it’s movement. If my reflexes weren’t augmented by three seconds of future sight this fight would be going very differently. As the arm came down, dozens of blades suddenly sprouted down it’s length, making it longer and larger and forcing me back twice the distance I had originally planned. His left arm was now a big-ass spiked club that looked like it weighed thirty pounds.

He jabbed his right arm at me, and this time I didn’t need my precog to know to devote my entire effort to the dodge. As it came at me it suddenly lengthened from the wrist, his hand a sudden four foot sword.

“You’re a wily cunt, aren’t ya?” The warlock said as he suddenly shot knives out of his chest like some kind of fucked up mech. I was still off balance from my previous dodge, unable to get my feet under me. I had a split second to react and I just kinda went fetal. I pulled my legs up so my shins would block my groin and belly and pulled my elbows in to block my chest and face. The result was I felt a half dozen pokes on my arms and legs and two gashes on my shoulder and hip.

Then I fell right on my ass. I rolled to my feet like I planned the whole thing (I hadn’t.), glancing at myself to measure the damage. I came away with two pieces of knowledge. The first was that the wound was on the top of my shoulder and was shallow and messy, but not something I needed to worry about right now. The other was that my LotOS was now covering more of my arm, likely as a result from having killed two people with my hands. Again, not something I could worry about right now.

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Lightning was really lighting up the night and I suddenly became grateful Alice was on my side. Australian Knife Monsters I could deal with. Someone who could shoot lightning? How the fuck do you defend against that?

The warlock shot more knives at me but there wasn’t as many as before. He seemed to be tiring, as I didn’t have to work as hard as I once had to dodge them. In fact, he wasn’t keeping me away as well as he did before. I ducked and dodged and spun, each evasion bringing me a little closer.

Which was what he wanted. Right when I dodged his latest knife spray he dashed forward, swinging his sword-arm in an arc at stomach level. I managed to just avoid the sword by jamming my toe-claws into the baked Earth of the ziggurat and reversing my momentum, but the move put me on the back foot. The warlock pursued, shooting knives and swinging with his over-sized arms until my footwork ran out and I just had to block. I guess we’ll find out if the LotOS could stand up to warlock-created metal.

The sword came in at bicep height, coming down diagonally. I had a brief, insane thought of trying to catch it between my palms like some Shaolin Monk but discarded the idea for the insane, call-of-the-void bullshit it was. Instead I brought up my arms in an X pose to catch the blade on both my forearms.

The LotOS took the blow like a champ. My arms remained attached and the sword didn’t cut through. On the other hand, there was a lot of power behind that blow and I was knocked away so hard I bounced off the surface of the roof once before rolling to a stop. My forearms felt like I just got hit with a sledge hammer and my shoulders felt like someone had just attempted to yank them out of their sockets, not to mention the bruises to my knees and hips from getting knocked along the roof.

I barely had time to gather my wits and moved in a random direction as my precog warned me I was about to be pin cushioned by just, so, so many knives. I rolled to my feet and heard several dull thuds of knives hitting the roof right where I had been.

I turned and saw the knife monster charging me, spraying knives ahead of him with no real effort to aim. I dodged while reaching inside my shirt, accidentally nicking my chest in my haste as I pulled out one of the three spell cards I had remaining.

“Þrøngva!” I shouted, blasting out a wave of force in front of me. It caught all the airborne knives and reversed them at the warlock. I followed right behind, the claws on my toes digging into the roof, giving me the traction I needed. The knife monster casually swiped his sword arm, cutting the wave of force before it could affect him, the half dozen knives clattering against him like spilled silverware. He tried to decapitate me with his back swing but I ducked it and cocked my arm like a howitzer about to fire. Claws hadn’t worked last time, lets try something new.

My fist slammed right into where I shot him, the sensation positively bizarre. For one, the Limbs of the Other Side really, really liked the thick liquid coming out of the bullet holes. Second, I could feel the holes when I punched him. It felt like punching the ends of a bunch of pipes on a rack at Home Depot or something, with one of my knuckles hitting dead center in one of the holes.

The warlock gasped out a sudden rasping breath and flailed his other arm at me. I stopped it with a stiff-armed palm, reeled back with my other and slammed it into the same spot. I was within his range now, and I guess he was in too much pain to launch his knives because he was simply fighting with his arms now.

I got in two more devastating punches before he changed tactics and tried to catch me in a bear hug. The long blade got behind me and I had to place a hand on where his wrist used to be to keep it from slicing up my back while my other hand was on his chest, keeping him from me. My foot was planted on his mace arm, one of the many blades caught between my toes.

Holy shit he was strong. I thought I was strong. Not compared to this guy. I was pushing with all my might, yet it wasn’t enough. Inch by inch he pushed me closer to him. I was yelling with effort, he was breathing heavily, a sick grin on his face.

“FUCK YOU!” I shouted.

I brought my other foot up off the ground, momentarily unbalancing him. There was a brief moment of elation on his face as he assumed—rightly—that he’d be at an advantage in a ground grapple. I placed my foot just above his groin, flexed my toes and raked them down like how I imagine a cat would.

Oh hey, his junk was metal too. That’s neat. Didn’t save him, though.

He howled in pain and the strength left him for a moment. I brought my foot up again, higher this time, and repeated the rake, this time catching a bit of his inner thigh as well. My LotOS were going bananas on whatever they were getting from this guy, I could actually feel the lower limbs rising up my hips. But I couldn’t stop. With the strength gone from him we were tipping back and I shifted, turning us so I landed on top.

“Wait,” he gasped. “Mate, listen—“

I slammed a fist down onto his gunshot wounds. Once, twice. Again. Again. And again. There was suddenly a metal rending sound as his chest collapsed. My chest and face were covered in splatters of his weirdly thick blood, but my hands and arms were clean of it. I raised my fist again but caught his expression.

He was dead.

As I watched, the metal he was made of began to fall off him, like it had been a poorly assembled costume. Knives of all kinds began to fall off him. I slowly got to my feet, unable to take my eyes off as dozens of little toothpick sized blades fell out of his mouth.

“Aaahhh!” I gasped/screamed out a sigh. “I am not cut out for this.”

More lightning. Oh right! Alice!