Flips Lung

But I’d never been aiming to actually hit him, just distract him. He dodged Balmung, yes — right into my path. The heat that he gave off was sweltering and approached unbearable, but Siegfried had fought in uncomfortable situations like that, so I kept my focus, pulled back my fist, and blasted him in the gut with a full force punch.

Lung let out what might have been a scream in a human, crumpling around my arm as ribs snapped and organs ruptured. Against another foe, that single blow would have been enough to declare a decisive victory.

Not Lung. As he had proven several times, he was much harder to put down than that.

So, I reared back my other fist, and as I pulled the first away, I slammed him with another punch, just as strong, right in the spot where I remembered carving him up, before. The sound Lung made now was even more agonized, but I didn’t wait for him to recover or counterattack; as his arms came around to protect his injured torso, I grappled with one, grabbed it with both hands, then, with a twist and a motion that probably looked ridiculous from the outside, I flung the twenty-foot Lung over my shoulder and onto the ground.

The thud of Lung hitting the road was like an earthquake, and he had to weigh in excess of a thousand pounds, now, but I didn’t wait, I didn’t stop. I took one, two, three bounding steps and retrieved Balmung, then turned back around and made to deliver the finishing blow.