>>6051582You could almost make it.
The first swing, especially promising. You put everything into it, past the pain, past the small black bursts going off at the edges of your vision. You strike at the thing, a blow aimed at his leg. You would skid to the left and let it crash against the wall, you would—
You would have to be just a little bit quicker.
“Ahhh!” You scream as your strike misses his limb, barely. The next blow it’s his, of course. He raises his other leg and hits you straight in the sternum. You collapse like a castle of cards, crumpled in two, barely holding onto your sword. No. You won’t let it go this time.
Then the third. You can hit it in the foot. You can…
“Nhha—” you gasp as the talons instead swipe from your right. Holding up your sword at the last moment you avoid them slicing your head off. Instead, one of the black-coated hooks hits your armour, and it presses against the thin space between your plaques.
And it pierces your skin.
“—hnf,” you can only wheeze and tremble, biting your lips and struggling to keep it away as the heat and pain spreads through your body.
Then you fall to you knees, again.
But this time there is a new sensation spreading straight against your chest, right where the creature is pulling out his talon, a thin line of blood and ichor connecting your flesh to the hook.
It’s already inside you.
The world swims, and you lose your grip and you slip and lie against the floor, your eyes rattling inside your skull, panting like a captured fish.
You have to stand up. You have to fight.
But your body does not move. Whatever it was in those claws it’s pinning you down like a moth skewered by a steel nail.
No. No.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this. There was so much more you could do. For Master.
For your family.
And for your new friends. Ah, Starless Night, you had even started to make some. Rubida opened up to you, Salicera as well.
And you saved Soralisa. Blinking on the floor you almost can see her eyes, her face looking back at you.
You blink.
No, wait. Isn’t that…
Soralisa’s face right before you, looking at you with worry and fret in her large brown eyes. She raises her hands to reach out for yours.
[cont.]
