[Since Shin has dropped out, Phi and I are removing him and continuing on]
The mage’s tentacle slammed hard into William’s back. He’d deflected the conjuration on his way into the air but once up there, even he was at the mercy of gravity. Magically hardened darkness slammed him back down onto the Dancing Stones like a rolled up paper swatting a gnat. It felt like struck full-on by a careening wagon, and not an empty wagon at that. William wasn’t surprised to see a spattering of molten blood sizzling in a line out from his lips and chin. And he didn’t need the shifting pain inside him to know that the he’d just taken some serious internal wounds.
But the roar of his magma shot’s explosive concussion tore across the howling winds and told William that despite the consequences he’d been right to take that risk. He pushed himself back to his feet, gritting his teeth against the pain in his chest and lower gut until the blood in his mouth forced him to do otherwise.
His plan had worked, and the mage’s pillar was finally pitching backwards into the void. Even so, the motion seemed glacially slow to William as the twin tentacles continued to whip around despite the fact that their roots were in free fall. He slapped the tentacle aside as it came back down for a second smashing strike, though the motion was perhaps too rough as another wave of pain rippled through William’s core at the motion.
Get it under control, he chided himself. You’re far from finished here and have already been frozen, stabbed, and bludgeoned half to death.
William watched with mixed emotions as the mage attempted to jump from his toppling pillar only to be met with a blast of rolling green fog from the dragon circling overhead and thrown backwards to fall soundlessly into the abyss. Or perhaps not soundlessly, William mused. After all, he wouldn’t be able to hear the man’s screams over the howling wind if he tried. And William tried.
The platform had started dropping noticeably by then and William gauged the distance between it and the next one over. Now that the mage was gone there was almost a full third of the arena that was available and untouched. Far better than the patchwork he’d left near his own starting area.
That was when the reality of there being a massive dragon overhead managed to make its way through William’s concussed haze. He blinked and looked up at the dragon quickly, studying it for a moment. Then he turned to look at the massive goat creature that he could only assume was the full transformation of the satyr. She had somehow managed to return to her starting platform and looked to be healing a wound similar to the one that William had taken from the mage’s icy spears.
“Not another one,” he growled, looking at the completely stable platform that his final opponent stood on. He was going to double the words he had for the Ai’Brone about this arena and the nature of the opponents that they chose to put in it against him.
He needed time to heal and to assess this new threat. Giant goat beast, flying dragon, and a fire fox, he grimaced. What else could this creature summon against him? That thought made William pause. Something had been screaming in the back of his mind, but the addled fog in his head had stifled it. Where was the fox?
Blades of fire bit into the William’s lower back, sinking an inch into the meat beneath his armored hide. He snarled in pain, but the blood in his mouth and throat caught the noise and turned it into a gurgling, strangled gasp. William seized and hacked, coughing a cloud of blood across the top of the pillar. The burning maw bit down again, striving to sink deeper into William’s flesh, but this time he was prepared and he strove against it. The attack held for a moment against his strength before the phantom jaw snapped and shattered. William spun around in search of the giant fox, heedless of the multitude of wounds that he’d received.
He spotted it on a nearby pillar, having managed to circle around him while he was focused on dealing with the mage. He knew that he should retreat and go on the defensive. That he was not in a strong position. But being bludgeoned in the head and stoked to insane levels of rage didn’t often lead to making sound decisions. Instead, William brought his warscythe up and leapt at the fox, going fully on the offensive.
