Four of six were dead, and the two lingering separatists made haste with their fleeting moments. A fugitive life lay ahead, a destructive legacy lay behind. Critically damaged, but not destroyed, Currutore's fate as the future delight of a snorkeling archaeologist was all but sealed. The final two explosives sat placed and primed, but not detonated, at either end of the upper section. The seventh member of the original crew had her wrinkled finger on the trigger and would ignite the remaining devices the very second her two comrades had successfully escaped the limits of the blast radius.
An errant block, artificially angular and colossal in mass, sloshed through the roiling waters and ran along the ongoing duel. The majesty of Alerar's ancient stonemasons fell to the looming shadow of Mother Ivra's savage indifference. The force of the bulging river drove the stone with so much power that it ploughed into the sodden mud of the river's bank. Timed with impeccable inconvenience, the freshly shoved mud pressed against K-Zu-Ziro's ankle and caused the creature to teeter just as the purple whirl of Krotar's runed beam blade emerged from the water's spray with murderous prowess. "Barrrgggghhh!" Ziro backed into a fall and Digsy's straps seemed to loosen. The rodent's vocal distress proved immaterial, K-Zu-Ziro attempted to block the incoming blade by crossing its pincers in an X across its chest as it tumbled backwards.
Impact was always agony, but this agony played the role of an accomplice to the amputation of K-Zu-Ziro's precious pincer—the left one. The iron-equivalent sword cracked into the snapping appendage and left it hanging by a single sinew. No clear break had been made at the joint, instead the insectoid's wrist was a jagged wreck of stabbing spurs. The sinew tore and the claw fell alone into the muddy waters. Ziro's fall followed, it fell onto the hulking rock; the flattened granite scraped the giant bug's back upon connection. As though it were lying in bed, the creature looked up from its prone state and at the furious mask of Krotar. A second wound meant a second oozing breach that would inevitably sap the insectoid's movement system dry.
"Dying once was bad enough. You're supposed the be the glorious child of T-Zu-Hosto. This is just fantastic."
Mux Drik's sarcastic diatribe permeated their shared mind and focused a spotlight on his own sanity; it hinged on the virtually hopeless notion that one day the back door to his birdcage might be left open. To truly perish, for keeps, locked within K-Zu-Ziro would be final horror for a life stolen. Digsy, still strapped onto Ziro's shoulder, wriggled frantically. “Come on! Let's go!!!” the rodentine member of the trio reverted to a primal state and bore his impressive gnashers at the encroaching demon.
K-Zu-Ziro—carrying two injuries, flat on the ground before a lethal rival and finding movement more difficult by the second—readied itself for another strike…
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