Screams filled the air, the cacophony of agony and effort that was war fighting to overwhelm me. The smell of blood pressed just as heavily on me as the sounds as my feet slipped across the blood-slicked ground. With a thought, I flexed my toes to dig my claws into the stone as I threw myself into battle.
Combatant's Bloodlust bled away every emotion outside of those that would help me in the fight. I ripped into the pinned spawn, its legs thrashing and smashing against me. Despite my size and strength, it moved me against my will left and right. It tried to wrap me in a tentacle and fling me away, but instead, I latched the scales on my hands to form the claws of both hands into hooks. Then, I sunk both hands into the tentacle up to my palm.
It thrashed, but when it attempted to release me, I still had both hands buried in its flesh. It let out an unholy screech, smashing me down to the ground. My legs shook, but I only drew slightly more on Spear of the Many in response. My strength grew to the point that I could completely resist the monster's attacks, and I started spearing my hands into the tentacle to climb my way towards the monster's core.
The rest of its tentacles buffeted me, knocking my head back and forth, but Combatant's Bloodlust let me see the weaknesses in its attacks and turn every one of its desperate movements into an advantage for me. With Tremorsense, I kept track of where all of my allies were, so whenever something approached me, keeping my curved claws embedded in the undulating flesh of the spawn, I snapped out with my jaws.
Thick ichor coated my tongue as I shredded whatever came close to me. Even through the taste of the beast, I could feel the difference between the spawn of today and yesterday. The liquid that filled my mouth was more substantial, not dissipating in my mouth to wisps of shadow. It almost seemed to try to choke me, but as I hummed and activated Destructive Wave on my fangs and claws, the "blood" dissipated into nothing.
Another of the spawn thundered towards me, its tentacles smashing through a squad of weaker Khatif and Kha. Despite the lack of care it showed, my people, those who weren't crippled or killed by its maddened charge at me, stood and continued fighting. It paid them no mind, sweeping only one of its tentacles in their direction toward any attacks while the rest of its limbs shot towards me.
One wrapped around my tail, all the way up to my hips, and started pulling. I gritted my teeth and held on through the discomfort. I felt my spine crack, pleasantly at first, then painfully, all the way up to the base of my neck. Remembering Victor's Spoils, I didn't pay the less wounded enemy any mind. It continued to pull on me, and I saw as the haft of my spear started to tear the wounded spawn's torso in half.
It shrieked in pain, and I grinned as I twisted with my hips and sent a Destructive Wave from my leg. The shredding sonic attack tore into the tentacle grabbing my tail and severed the top half of the tentacle pulling me back from my prey's body. It roared as it tried to attack me once again, but I'd cut off its current attack and refocused on the heavily wounded spawn in front of me.
With a roar of my own, I threw myself at its bulbous body and dug into its center mass. Tunneling into the beast coated me with its lifeblood, but I paid it no mind as I continued to tear into everything I could touch.
Like with the spawn that I had fought and killed until now, the center of its body was more an amorphous mass of physical shadow than any flesh-and-blood beast. With my magic strengthening my bite, I tore through its core, but still, the beast lived. If nothing else, I could tell because I hadn't been healed by Victor's Spoils yet.
I didn't hesitate to plunge myself deeper into the creature's insides, my claws ripping the wound wider as black gore coated my body. My secondary eyelid flicked down to keep my eyes clean, and my efforts were about to bear fruit as I pushed more of my magic to my claws and fangs.
Then, another tentacle wrapped around my tail, two more seizing both of my legs. My grasp on my prey was insufficient to keep me from being yanked away, and my body started to hang in the air between my prey and this distraction.
I roared a challenge as I drew every so slightly towards the beast, but I could feel my sonilphon's reserves falling. It refilled itself relatively quickly, but it wouldn't be anywhere near full soon. Even so, I didn't shy away from the fight that'd insisted on finding me.
As I was hauled away from my prey, a thought occurred to me, and I plunged my right hand deep into the stone beneath us. My right shoulder screamed in effort as I held myself back, just long enough to reach with my left arm and catch my spear by its haft. With a roar of effort, I twisted myself in such a way to pull the spear free and then released my hold on the ground.
"That suns-burned bastard is mine!" I shouted as I flew towards the largely unwounded spawn. My people listened to my warning, and they left the dying spawn alone as I was pulled into a writhing mass of tentacles.
The tide of battle immediately turned against me.
Without the benefit of coming from above and stabbing the spawn through the center before anything else, I'm immediately overwhelmed by the spawn's multiple avenues of attack. For the first time, I truly cursed my spear's length as limbs as thick as my thigh wrapped me from head to toe. My claws and fangs remained capable of shredding through the beast that had captured me, but I couldn't build the momentum necessary to get myself room to maneuver. Because I couldn't move very much, I was only able to inflict surface wounds on the thick limbs that bound me, and my bones creaked as I realized that I was in a very bad situation.
The constricting tentacles crushed in around me, and I felt my ribs crack and break while my left wrist, holding my spear, was twisted and snapped audibly. My spear, wherever it was, fell out of my reach. The breath was pushed from my lungs, and my vision swam as I cursed my overwhelming hubris.
Despite the agony, I thrashed, trying to free myself, but to no avail. The tentacles settled more firmly around me and crushed harder. I felt my right leg bend in the wrong direction, straightening past where the knee could and then another crack snapped through the air. The small part of me that remained rational in this, entirely due to the influence of Combatant's Bloodlust, thanked Nievtala above that the Skill sapped the sharpest aspects of the agony I was suffering.
While that thought crossed my mind, the limbs binding me settled even harder from my head to toe and started to do what I knew would be the fatal constriction.
Before my bones could snap with finality, I heard a roar, a familiar one, from outside. Then, somehow, I felt myself rise up as the spawn of Illan'Klli was hauled into the air and then smashed into the ground. The tentacles jostled, starting to loosen their grip on me, and then Brutus's claws ripped me free and set me to the side as a dozen screaming Saharliard of every caste threw themselves at the spawn that had caught me.
"You only claimed the other one," Brutus rumbled as I took deep, gasping breaths. Then, holding my spear towards me, he said, "We'll take care of this one. Go claim your prey."
I let out a pained laugh as I turned on my one good leg. Behind me, the spawn was wriggling weakly, trying to retreat from the wall, but, with my spear in my right hand, I stumbled forward. It took notice of me and tried to whip its arms at me and drive me away, but I, ignoring the screaming protests of every muscle and bone in my body, turned my body with deliberate slowness and then hurled my spear into its center.
The magic I pushed into the weapon burst out through the creature and, finally, the spawn died. As the healing from Victor's Spoils flowed into me, a part of me worried that I wouldn't be nearly back into a fighting state after the Skill was finished. Then, as my knee cracked back into place and my wrist snapped back to functionality, I remembered the Skill's description:
"When the Skill's holder slays a foe, the holder will regain some of their strength from the dead. The amount of recovery gained by the holder is a percentage of and commensurate with the strength of the slain foe."
Just as that thought crossed my mind, my breathing settled as two ribs settled from where they were currently lodged in my lungs and back into my ribcage. With a vicious smile, my own blood dripping from the corners of my mouth, I turned back towards the battlefield. There were still plenty more spawn that needed my attention.
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