And (N)one Shall Remain

“[Pierce the Heavens]! [Grasp the Soul]!” yelled Alissa as she activated both of her remaining skills at the same time. She charged in at the staggered, disoriented [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch], keeping her posture low to avoid its attention as she closed in. Once she closed the distance, she leapt towards the beast and thrust her spear forward, with all the momentum of her charge behind it.

 

The sharp point of her spear, clad by the sheen of energies from her two skills, found its target on the left side of the creature’s chest. The sharp metal point struggled briefly as it struck home, before the skill it was clad with helped it overpower the monster’s natural defenses and allowed it to pierce through. The entire force of the thrust, with the momentum of the charge and Alissa’s whole weight behind it, went into the creature’s sturdy flesh.

 

Sturdy sharpened steel of the spearpoint faced against magically reinforced tendons and muscle fibers, and tore its way through with relative ease. The point struck one of the beast’s rib bones, and while the force of the blow cracked the bone, the impact also deflected the thrust. As a result, the spearpoint slipped between two ribs and pierced through the [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch]’s left lung, missing its heart by inches, and almost made it out the other side before it exhausted its momentum.

 

It was decidedly a grievous wound, one that would likely incapacitate the great beast after some time, doubly so with the damage to its mind and soul dealt by Alissa’s skill. If the [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch] was a mundane beast, the injured, collapsed lung alone would have sufficed to take it down, but it was not, and because of that, Alissa had a problem.

 

Namely that she was right next to a [Berserk] beast that she had just grievously injured, wide open to counterattacks from the creature, and most likely the current focus of its ire.

 

The next thing she knew, her ears were deafened by a screech that was far louder and more piercing than before – she thought that it made no sense in her mind, since she just pierced through one of the beast’s lungs, but clearly the monster did not care for what she thought – and before she regained her bearings, she felt something strike her from the side. Hard.

 

Even with the pain immunity effect of Ethan’s skill still affecting her, Alissa felt how several of her ribs, along with her left lung, was straight up pulverized by the force of the blow. It might have been even worse, but the armor she wore lived up to its promised sturdiness and halted the beast’s claws from directly eviscerating her.

 

She was still sent flying through the air regardless, her desperate grip on her spear’s shaft only resulting in a broken spear – the other half still embedded deep in the creature’s body – left in her hand. Her [Weather the Storm] skill kept her thinking clearly, even as the world spun around her, processing what information she could grasp when her eyes happened to catch a glimpse of the battle.

 

After it had struck Alissa away, the beast struck with its second wing-arm at the rest of the approaching party. They were too close to avoid it, and the blow struck several of them, including Ethan and the Fifth Princess. Ethan was similarly hurled across the cavern, the shaft of his pollaxe shattered into bits of wood by the forceful blow despite his attempt to block it. 

 

As for the Fifth Princess, she had the fortune of being the last one to be struck, after the blow had expended a lot of its momentum, and had two of the guards shielding the blow for her to boot. Despite that, the blow still packed enough force to shatter the wooden shafts the royal guards tried to block it with and hurl them bodily into the Princess, sending all three into a tangled heap as they fell to the cavern floor.

 

The beast was clearly headed for Joshua, its massive form towering over the remaining guards that were still near the [Mage]. Joshua looked like he was in a daze, unaware of his surroundings as he clutched his forehead and swayed where he stood. Alissa recalled him looking that exact way before, when he had overused his magic, so that last magical working clearly took the wind out of his sails.

 

With utterly horrible timing at that, though she couldn’t really fault him for giving his all to the point of rendering himself insensate like that.

 

The [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch] swatted aside three of the guards near Joshua. Two were sent flying through the air with broken weapons and bent armor, but they were the fortunate ones, as they caught a blow from the beast’s forearm instead of the wicked claws that tipped its fingers. The last guard was not as lucky. 

 

He was caught mid-dodge by the claw that tipped the little finger of the beast, with gruesome results. The claw sheared through the guard’s right arm, severing it near the shoulder, before it skidded off the armor on his shoulder and ricocheted straight towards the side of his skull. As a result, the upper half of the guard’s head was sent flying into the air, his still-pulsating brain, slashed neatly into half, visible on the remaining part of his skull that was still attached to his neck.

 

Alissa saw how the dead man crumbled to his knees, the remaining bits of his brain matter falling out from his open skull as he hit the ground face-first. She herself landed from her brief flight at the same moment, fortunately falling on her back. Instinct and reflexes took over as she tucked into a roll and stopped with her feet beneath her, eyes towards the still-raging battle.

 

She could barely move her left arm. The blow that broke her ribs had likely damaged the muscles on her side and shoulder as well, as the arm dangled half-uselessly by her side, weighed down by her shield. Taking a deep breath was a chore as well, as it seemed like she couldn’t breathe as well as she liked no matter what she did.

 

The calm and calculative part of her mind knew that one of her lungs was likely deflated from that blow, maybe even punctured, though it was hard to tell due to the lack of pain thanks to Ethan’s skill. If she hadn’t been laboring under the effects of that skill, she might well have collapsed from the pain alone, so she knew to take the blessings as she could get them.

 

Of her spear, only the broken handle was left in her hand, the other half still embedded deep in the creature’s chest. Alissa rose back to her feet with strenuous effort, and forced her legs – which felt like they had lead weights tied to them – to run back towards the battle, even as her right hand grasped the handle of the blade by her waist and drew it clear off its scabbard.

 

The battle was by no means over, and their party was still at a heavy disadvantage.

 

Joshua was gone. 

 

The beast had rampaged its way to him, and while Gregorius, the last guard who was still at Joshua’s side at the time did his best to stop the beast, all that effort only resulted in his pointless death. The beast tore him apart with its claws before its jaws opened wide and it bit down, taking Joshua’s head and most of his upper body into its gullet.

 

Before Alissa’s eyes, the remaining half of Joshua’s body dropped to the ground, blood and other unmentionables spilling out from the torn organs within the remaining half of his torso cavity. Dazed and insensate as he was due to the overspending of mana, he never stood any chance against the monster, but at least the beast’s fixation with him bought the rest a chance.

 

Even as Alissa ran half the distance to the beast, Ethan tackled the back of the beast’s knee with his shoulder, almost like how he’d tackle another player on the football field. That caused the knee to fold and made the beast stumble, at which point Ethan struck it wildly with the weapons in his hands. He had the upper half of his broken pollaxe – the langets kept the upper half of the weapon relatively intact and functional – in one hand and the head of a dead guard’s glaive in the other as he struck at the beast’s inner thigh and crotch area with all the strength he could bring to bear.

 

What few guards remained also struck with whatever weapons they had left or could get their hands on, with the most effective strike being from the Fifth Princess, who used her greatsword like a spear as she drove it with all her weight at the back of the creature’s other knee. The injury was enough to disable the [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch]’s legs, which rendered it mostly immobile for the moment.

 

The too-clever beast clearly realized the same thing, as it immediately swept aside most of its attackers once more with its massive wing-arms, tossing most of them aside, while forcing the rest to break off their offensive for a brief moment. One of the royal guards was even unfortunate enough to have caught the beast’s claws which tore his legs off right at the hip.

 

Then it began to beat its wings and slowly lifted itself from the ground.

 

Alissa saw it all from afar, and understood what the beast was trying to do. It wanted to get back up into the air so it could pick them off one by one from relative safety once more. Given the party’s condition, they would be hard pressed to do anything to stop that. Ethan and the others also noticed, and those still near the beast redoubled their assault, but it was too little, too late to stop its ascent.

 

So Alissa chose a daring gamble unlike any she had ever done before instead. As she ran the final stretch, she headed towards a low, thick stalagmite not too far behind the ascending beast, and leapt straight to its top in a single jump. As her foot landed atop the stalagmite, she kicked against it as hard as she could, using its support to jump even higher from its top, propelling her upwards and forward at the same time.

 

Straight towards the back of the [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch].

 

Fortunately for her, the beast was still relatively close to the ground, and her jump was just enough for her to reach its back, which she slammed into blade-first. Her falchion only left a small wound on the beast’s tough back even though the blade sunk a third into its flesh, but the momentary purchase it gave her gave Alissa enough time to find footholds on the coarse fur that lined the creature’s back. 

 

With those footholds, she released her grip from the weapon and grasped some of the beast’s fur further above before she fell down, then started to climb the beast’s back that way, holding on tight to not get thrown off. She managed to climb until one of her feet stood firmly on the foothold her blade formed, which in turn placed her head level with the back of the beast’s skull. 

 

The beast had noticed her presence on its back, and flew in such a way that most of the time she had to hold on for dear life with her one working hand to prevent herself getting thrown off and dashed against the rocks. Alissa took a brief moment when the beast’s flight was level to draw a small dagger – one with a blade that was more like a triangular spike than a typical one – and bit it between her teeth before she held on once more as she awaited a chance. 

 

That chance came moments later, when the beast had to ascend stably after it struck at the remnants of the party below, which provided a brief moment of stability that allowed Alissa to grab the dagger, holding the blade in reverse, and stab at the beast. She stabbed with all the strength her battered body could muster right at the back of the beast’s skull, where the skull and neck joined. A fatal spot for most creatures.

 

Perhaps it was not a fatal spot for the [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch], or perhaps she just struck a too-shallow wound, but the beast did not perish from the strike. It had caused some effect, however, as the beast screeched in pain and agony and its flight cavorted wildly right after she landed the blow. The wild flight caused the beast to crash violently against a pair of stalactites that grew close together, one of them breaking itself against the beast’s right wing and also breaking the wing in the process.

 

Down to one wing, the beast fell from near the cavern’s ceiling – a good twenty yards up or so – with Alissa still desperately holding on to its back. By a stroke of fortune it fell directly on a stalagmite formation below. One of the stalagmites – the longest one – pierced through its abdomen and skewered through the [Winged Scavenger Alpha Matriarch], while the tip of another slightly shorter stalagmite happened to be precisely below where Alissa’s dagger was embedded. The impact drove the rest of the blade into the beast’s head, through a vital part of its brain, killing it on the spot.

 

A series of notifications sounded in the minds of the party, but Alissa failed to notice it, because another of the stalagmites was directly below her torso and struck her back. While her armor held together even under the forces acting against it, the belts keeping them in place broke, causing the plates to slip slightly aside. 

 

As a result, Alissa’s body was literally crushed between the chest and back plates of her own armor, as the beast fell on top of her with all its weight, while the stalagmite below held her in place.

 

Even under such conditions, her mind somehow kept calm. As a result, she felt how her chest was crushed together – though fortunately Ethan’s still was still in effect and spared her the pain – as well as the unenviable sensations of her organs bursting under the pressure. That calm kept her steady until the oblivion of death took her.

 

You have Died.

 

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