"Pain is important" a doctor.
The beast turned towards me with a hateful glare. Its two empty white eyes. I gulped. Its attention now fully focused on me. The shadowy beings used this opportunity to get away from it and keep fighting against all of the tinier creatures.
A few of the tinier creatures were about to leap on me, but one growl from the hulking beast made them cower and turn around. It had a big snarl onto its face, which kinda looked like a half-smile. There was a very clear glint of cruel intelligence in its eyes. Cosmo had told me that they weren't animals.
But if it's intelligent then it can be fooled and manipulated. I might not be a "professional spell caster" but I knew my way around illusionary magic. My horn felt sore, so I would not be able to cast many spells. I would have to use my mace to defeat it. Which did not bode well because of the massive difference in size and mass.
However we were not on a solid floor. The room was made out of many elevated platforms and stairs, I could also hear the sound of rushing water down beneath. While the room was fairly well lit, I still could not see the bottom. With any luck I could make it fall into the water beneath.
Also I was using a weapon and wearing armor made by an ancient and supposedly very powerful being.
Allegedly.
It slowly moved towards me. Each and single step makes the floor grating shake. It had the stance of a predator about to jump on its unsuspecting prey. I took a more defensive stance holding my mace up in my unarmored right hoof. I could use my left hoof (which was covered in armor) as a shield. I tried no to shake, but failed miserably. It then leapt.
I dodged to the left haphazardly to the left. Scraping my knees against the floor, they would be bleeding were it for the armor covering them. I heard a clunk sound and turned around. The bulky creature had smashed into a big pipe, as I had barely dodged it, head first. It was shaking its head, slightly dazed. I took that opportunity to hit it.
It swiftly dodged my clumsy attack. My mace left a dent in the floor. The beast looked down at the dent and then back at me. It somehow looked angrier than before. It swiped at me with its claws. It missed me, but managed to rip some of mine out.
I jumped down onto a big pipe before it could swipe again. I fell on top of a shadowy being with a beak and glass vials into its hand. The being threw me, quite gracefully, off its back and continued throwing vials at the creatures. The bulky beast followed after me. I hurriedly scrambled out of the way as it jumped onto the pipe. Its weight caused the big pipe, which was twice my size and made out of metal, to twist and bend violently. It caused me and the being with vials to lose its footing and both fall off.
We fell down for some two or three meters before falling on top of some stairs. We both tried to stand up as quickly as possible. The lumbering beast carefully jumped down from platform to platform before reaching us, throwing anything on them off.
The shadowy being ran away leaving me alone against the beast as it stepped onto the stairs. I swung my mace, but it reached short. It did cause the being to flich and bought me a few seconds. I shot a weak magic blast into its face, which made it flinch even more. But did not hurt it, only making it angrier.
It smashed both of its front legs into the stairs. The shock caused me to fall on my back. As I lay there defenseless, It flung its tail around, hitting me straight in the chests with its sharp, hooked blade.
It simply bounced off with an ugly crack.
All the air escaped from my lungs and I felt horrible pain coming from my chest. I gasped for air and to both my and the beast's surprise I succeeded. We both stared at my chest, the chestpiece and a piece of broken blade laying beside it. We then both stared at the beast tail. The hooked blade on top was now broken.
While the beast was busy staring at its tail in disbelief, I stood up and walked away wheezing painfully. I put a hoof on my chest and felt that it had only left a tiny scratch on my armor. Happy that I was alive, I jumped off the stairs onto one of the many platforms around. I landed on the tail of a three headed creature. It quickly turned its upper body and its three heads spat at me. I reflexively grabbed the three blobs with my magic and threw them back into its faces which caused it to screech in pain and fall on its back.
I moved away, wheezing with every step. The entire platform then lurched as the beast leapt onto it, crushing the screeching creature under its paws. It then lunged forward, its head sideways and maw wide open, trying to bite my head off. I failed to dodge it, but my helmet stopped it from biting. We stood there awkwardly, my head stuck into its wide open mouth and it was unable to close it. One of its two long fangs was uncomfortably close to my face.
As it tried to crush my head I simply fired an electricity spell down its throat. And while it was a very weak spell, it did cause the beast to screech in pain. This allowed me to get out of its grip. Or rather I was thrown back as the beast thrashed around. One of its fangs tore a big ugly gash through my left cheek. I quickly stood up, powered by an unnatural amount of adrenaline and ,while it was still thrashing in pain, slammed my mace in to the back of one of its knee.
It buckled and caused the beast to lose its balance and fall on its side. Before I could do anything, it started swiping one of its clawed paws around in wide arcs. I was forced to back away, if I did not want to be torn to shreds. It then stood back up wincing, as it moved the leg I had hit. Instead of leaping at me as it had been doing, it spitted a big mass of a red fuming and fizzing liquid the size of my head at me.
I dodged it and it hit a pipe. A few drops landed on me, instantly burning through my furn and skin cauterizing the wounds instantly. I screamed in pain and tears streamed down my face. While I was squirming from pain, the beast got closer and prepared to cave my skull in.
A barrel then hit it in the face before it could reach me. This gave me enough time to regain my bearings and jumped off the platform. As I jumped down I saw Cosmo waving at me, sitting on a pipe , holding a barrel in one of its hands. He then threw it into a group of creatures. At least he was helping.
I tried to climb up to him, jumping from platform to platform, going up broken stairs and crawling over all kinds of pipes. The beast was following behind me, fortunately it had some trouble climbing up as everything crumbled under its weight. A barrel wasn't going to keep it down for long. I reached Cosmo after a minute or two of climbing and almost falling off.
"Do something!" I shouted at him as he was busy throwing any kind of miscellaneous objects around. Including any kind of creature that came into reach. "But I'm doing something!" He answered with an exaggerated shrug. "Against THAT!" I shouted back, pointing a hoof at the beast, which was currently climbing up.
He just shrugged again and said. "But you're already handling that. Also from a 0 to 13,4 how useful do you find the armor to be?" "11 and Trixie is ...uhh ... too tired to handle it alone." I answered. He raised one of his nonexistent eyebrows, shifting his face in a strange way. "Well I'm already helping,..." He punched some creature in the face as he said that. "what else do you want me to do?"
"But you could help more, you aren't wounded or exhausted like Trixie." He just shrugged. I then heard a loud sound of metal breaking, we both looked down and saw that the beast had fallen down by a few meters as a pipe it had jumped on broke. That would give me some more time to talk. "It can't even move around properly." Cosmo then said with an indignant tone.
I started getting red with anger. I shouted angrily at him. "Trixie wants you to do something useful and not stand there smiling like if this were a game." His smile disappeared instantly.
He now looked irritated. Almost angry. It was disconcerting, scary even. For the short while I had known him he had always looked happy or maybe concerned, but never like... this. When I first saw him, well his eyes more exactly, they looked angry but not this threatening. He was still speaking with the same charming, androgynous sounding voice that he had, but now he spoke slower and with a threatening undertone.
"Maybe I should make this clear, you could order me to stop or even kill it and I would have to obey. But it would be against my will." He showed his tooth off. "I'm trying to make this fun and help you. But remember that I never wanted to come here and that I'm only here because of you." He jabbed me in the chest with one of his clawed fingers. "And you should not forget that."
I nodded weakly. His demeanor changed instantly.He took a nearby wrench and threw it at the nearest creature. I thought the way he behaved was annoying, but maybe I should have been scared of him. I knew so little about him, yet I hadn't thought about where he came from or what powers he might have.. And I had almost forgotten that it was my fault that we were here. He owed me nothing, yet he had helped so much. The armor I was currently wearing had been made by him. I had been really...
The beast then slammed into me throwing me off the pipe onto another platform, this one bigger and sturdier looking than all the other platforms. I landed on it with a loud thud. And then stood up, groaning in pain and wheezing from the hit it had previously landed on my chest.
I saw the beast Jumping towards me. I quickly jumped to the side before he could land on me. The platform creaked, but it held fast unlike all the others. While it regained its bearings I tried to jump or climb on another platform or pipe.
This became impossible as we were on the lowest platform. There was nothing beneath it to jump on, I couldn't even see the bottom. I could hear the sound of rushing water. I tried to leap towards a pipe, but none were close enough for me to grab on. I was stuck here. And I wasn't the only one to notice that. As I turned back towards the beast, I saw him smiling. A big cruel smile, there was no mistake. It even sounded like it was laughing.
It even stood up on its two rear legs and started cracking the clawed fingers of its front paws. I had seen a diamond dog do it once and I had found it to be an unhealthy habit. This hadn't changed and was definitely meant as a threat coming from that beast standing in front of me. It then opened its mouth, likely the screech at me.
"I'm goin to enjo'y this a lott."