Time stretched endlessly as William swirled around within Moonwing’s attack. Every strike of broken stone or splintered wood spun him helplessly. Though it must have only been a minute inside the torrent, it seemed like it would never end. At some point he had been caught in a mass of debris, saved from the currents only to find himself buried over and over by the crashing current. Something flickered at the edges of his vision right before his burning lungs gave out and he convulsively inhaled. It seemed to him to be some form of magical shield, desperately fighting to hold back the flood. But it could just as easily have been a trick of his oxygen deprived mind.
And then the attack was over. Most of the water around him simply vanished, and William was spilled onto the ground. Instantly his body started heaving, his regenerative capabilities working to purge the boiling, bloody water from his lungs. William gasped and lay still as the dark circles in his vision faded back out of view. He had survived the attack. Somehow.
But though he had survived, William was in a horrible state. The initial wounds he had taken from the church’s collapse were already healing, but he had a lot more to work through now. It felt like his entire body had been used as a training bag. Fighting the pain, William gritted his teeth and rolled onto his hands and knees to take stock.
Moonwing’s psychic rage almost went completely unnoticed as William screamed. The white-hot pain nearly knocked the consciousness from him, but William was a fighter and held on. Blood was oozing from his mouth, a gift from the rib puncturing one of his lungs. One eye was bleary, and William was certain that an errant hunk of rock and cracked the socket. Add to that the numerous cracks and gashes and William was in poor shape. But worst and most debilitating was that his right leg seemed completely turned around. At some point in the whirlpool it must have been caught between two hunks of stone and rather than breaking the steel hard carapace it had simply spun the limb around, destroying his knee in the process.
But despite how badly he was beaten, William could already feel his healing working. From the sounds in the center of where the church had been he and the other fighter’s efforts had sealed Moonwing’s doom. All William would have to do was hold on for a few minutes to be well enough to move, albeit at a horribly hobbled pace. But the dragon was not yet dead. His love was not yet his. And William wouldn’t allow those petty little creatures to take her from him. Not at the moment of his triumph.
Raising his head, William focused as hard as he could until he caught sight of Moonwing’s ruined face. Grinning, William summoned the last of his energy and called forth his final magma shot and sent it hurtling towards Moonwing’s head. Energy spent, William’s collapsed into the pool of mud beneath him, human once more.
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