For a brief, weird moment I witnessed the front of my car crumpling like tin foil, vainly trying to protect me from the consequences of my carelessness, coming straight at me. Then a bright flash. I was in the room again, sight almost clear, lungs heaving to draw breath, muscles spasming.
Pain cut through my side as if I had a knife stuck in-between my ribs.
I screamed. Mostly because I saw the huge blacksmith furnar charging. He had his head lowered, his metal hands spread out at his sides, fists clenched. I would not survive another of its love taps. A punch with a running start would turn my bones directly into glue.
[ADRENALINE SURGE] flared to life and I bought myself moments. The pain was blinding, even dampened by the surge, and devoured my whole perception of the world. I tried to rise but my legs wouldn’t obey me. I could barely even breathe.
Was I crippled?
Had I broken my back?
No!
Pure adrenaline coursed through me. My blood sang and my will flexed under the weight of what I demanded of myself. I hadn’t died in the fucking mine, I would not wait to be pulped when so close to the end of this miserable adventure.
I forced myself to rise, one arm pushing down with the shield, the other hand gripping desperately to the smooth, cold stones of the wall.
By the time I had my legs under me, the furnar attacked, our subjective speeds matched. Those fists blasted my way like cannonballs.
I got the shield up in time to block, but my back just wasn’t into it. The blow slammed me into the wall and a fresh dose of pain showered me. The world went white and flashing again, darkness crowding at the edges of my vision. I think my shoulder snapped. Or my arm? Something had, but I couldn’t be sure what or where.
Everything was a sea of pain.
My faith in the thorn enchantment was well placed, but too optimistic by half. The furnar had broken one fist against my shield, his whole mechanical arm reduced to a ragged stump at the end of his arm.
Unfortunately, he was still armed with three other fists, each the general size and shape of a millstone. In my addled state, they may as well have been meteorites.
Something rattled in my chest when I breathed in. It hurt. God, did it hurt!
I couldn’t focus on activating anything aside from the surge. [IRON FLESH] failed on command, my attention too fractured on all the points of pain to be able to pinpoint one area to harden. I didn’t even get to try [BULWARK].
A fist headed for my face. I watched it approaching in slow motion and found myself staring at the front of the truck again, pushing the front of my car inexorably towards my fleshy, unprotected self. I remember then. The truck was a VOLVO. I’d seen its name in my last moment of life.
I leaned back, laughed at the absurd thought, and fell. My knees gave out with a final jab of pain. The furnar punched the wall just above my head with stone-shattering force. I was slipping into oblivion anyway. It didn’t need to finish the job.
I wouldn’t be getting up.
The ant-like inexpressive head turned my way to regard me as if I were a particularly offensive piece on dung in the pristine temple. I saw my death in that slow, cold gaze. I would’ve killed me too, were I in its place. It was just good sense to kill the enemy if you weren’t going to negotiate.
No! We’re not dying here. My inner asshole shook me by the ears and set my head right.
I snapped my eyes open when my ass hit the ground and pain lanced me from tailbone to crown. It jolted awake whatever part of me had been so desperately keeping me alive so far, and a single thought formed in my head.
I still had one thing to try. I wouldn’t and couldn’t give up without trying every single option. I never had before and I never would.
[SECOND WIND]
The skill did not activate. I reached out for it, almost begging, but nothing happened.
I gritted my teeth and tried again. The furnar shook loose the remains of another hand shattered to scraps of metal. Then he raised both remaining fists above his head and the intent was as clear as could be. Hard to be a threat if my head was caved into my chest cavity.
[SECOND WIND] still didn’t activate. I watched the fists join above the fucker’s head. Heard the electric whine of his metal arms, crying with the abuse of those two failed blows. Felt my heart beat faster and faster and faster as I kept trying to get the blasted skill to do something.
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The furnar exploded. Or was blasted forward. Fire engulfed its top half and the darkness filled with blobs of after light. I blinked them away in desperation, still cringing, waiting for the blow to fall. Another fireball blasted into the furnar’s head and sent me momentarily half-blind. The creature turned around as if nothing had happened, though I could clearly see half of its head melting down to a chitinous skull beneath.
He turned and stalked out of my field of vision.
Cold seeped into my bones. It started in the soles of my feet, then climbed up to my ankles, then my knees. Then it was in my hands, going up my arms, headed for my chest.
It all hurt so much, but it was going away. Not in a good way, I realised with a jolt of horror. In spite of that fresh surge of adrenaline, I was fading. Fast.
Melenith screamed.
“Human, I need your sword.”
The words came muffled, as if underwater.
“You—” Blood fountained up from my stomach and I bent double, vomiting all over myself. It was all red. Only red. I drew in a ragged breath and forced the words out. “You can… use it.”
The cold was now in my throat and in my stomach. The only heat I felt was of the blood all over me. Something was shattered inside my chest. And something else was ruptured in my guts. I couldn’t breathe.
Melenith screamed again. The sound of metal striking metal. A crash of metal striking stone. Another scream. Faded. Distant.
No! Not here.
Another flash of consciousness. More pain. No strength left, but plenty of anger burning deep in my guts. I didn’t even know if the surge was still active or not. I didn’t care.
I marshalled all my remaining will and cast it at the fucking skill. Demanded its aid. I imagined myself reaching out to Eternity, grabbing hold of the little bastard dragon, and shaking it as if candy should fall out.
Candy fell the fuck out!
I blacked out with the sudden pain of healing. Came back to Melenith’s screams.
Rose to my feet in a single, agonised movement. But I rose! I could stand!
Fuck. Yeah!
[SECOND WIND HAS ENTERED COOLDOWN]
[TIME TO NEXT ACTIVATION: 60 Hours]
I raised the shield. Felt the twinges and pops of my bones knitting together with frenzied speed. A cast around the room and I found my target.
Melenith was on the floor, on her back, swinging my sword desperately at her attacker. She was keeping the furnar at bay as he made grabs for her remaining leg. Each of her swings cut a gash across the monster’s armoured body. He didn’t seem to feel it, but he was protecting his head.
The skill had also regenerated my MP. Not fully but well over half. I activate the surge and blasted forward, shield held up, my shoulder braced against it.
The furnar didn’t know what hit him. I rammed into him from the side when he made another grab for the fallen woman. I sent the fucker stumbling, then pitching sideways, and finally falling. He hit the ground like a log struck by lightning.
“Human!”
Melenith threw me the blade and I caught it from the air, already moving towards the blacksmith furnar. Something was different about the weapon. I felt it the moment I gripped it, like a pool of power suddenly in my hand that I had no idea what to do with. It stopped me in my tracks.
“It needs blood,” Melenith wheezed. “Bleed on it.”
I chanced a look at the sword. On the blade, just above the cross guard, there was a single word scratched into the metal. My [RUNE CRAFT APTITUDE] activated for a brief moment and I felt something from the word. If I focused enough, I could understand it, I could get it.
I could learn it.
And this was the absolute worst possible time for that. I did as Melenith demanded and wiped the blade across my shirt. There was enough of my blood all over me to count, right?
You’d think you got used to absurd shit after a couple days of stepping in it at every turn.
You don’t really.
Because when my blue sword burst into dazzling red fire, I nearly crapped myself. I almost dropped the sword, then and there. The flame came alive with a woosh and banished that lingering cold in my bones.
Then that something in me that was desperately trying to keep me alive… snarled in.
“Fuck yeah!” I roared and burst forward, my surge still going but on its last dregs of MP.
I slammed into the furnar just before it got to its feet, the edge of my shield catching it in the mouth, shattering whatever apparatus it had there. He staggered back and I felt the force of that blow all the way into my core. This kind of healing felt brittle and haphazard, like duct tape over a critical failure. It kept me upright, but my body warned me clear enough not to take it for granted.
The next slash was with the flaming sword. The furnar tried to block the strike with his arm, but I wouldn’t give it the chance.
My first strike cut deep across the metal arm, sparks flying, flames dancing in the air. The second blow severed the arm completely, somewhere around the elbow. Molten metal dropped in large drops to the floor, cooling to black slag. The furnar was down now to its last hand and he was using it to push himself back up.
I wanted it to say something. I wanted it to give a single sound of pain or worry or anything.
I wanted to know I was hurting the thing behind this whole disaster.
The monster remained silent even as I kicked it as hard as I could right in the chest. He crumpled back on his ass.
I tried to bring down the sword on the furnar’s head but my surge winked out that very moment.
“Shit!”
I slowed, stumbled and, in the next instant, was face to face with the standing furnar.
I caught his punch on my shield. He didn’t strike as hard now, likely trying to keep his last hand. But the strike was powerful enough to at least send me back a step. Then another. His blows rained on my shield like a jackhammer. Whatever damage he suffered, my shield had it worse, heating up with each strike.
Soon it would be too hot to hold and I’d be in it again.
A second flare of inspiration struck me. I quickly opened my skill list and dropped one of my skill points into the first skill available. I didn’t even see what it was and blinked away the notification.
“Yes!” I cackled like a maniac as my MP refilled entirely and I dropped right back into the surge.
The next blow from the furnar got parried.
The one after that got dodged.
And the next one didn’t come at all because I pivoted around its huge body, and my flaming sword snapped his head clean off his shoulders.
[CONGRATULATIONS]
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED: FURNAR MASTER BLACKSMITH DEVIANT x1]
Which was all fine and so on. But in the frenzy of the fight I hadn’t kept my eyes on the vines. The blacksmith may have fallen, but I was now surrounded by thorns and writhing black vines, caught in a literal cage of the things.
As one, they struck.