Smashed through buildings

Except his tail swung out of the way and snaked up, lightning fast, to curl itself around my middle.

Herakles’ grudging respect resonated in my belly, even as I brought my hands down to grip at the slim cord of scaly flesh that had wrapped twice around me with room still left over. Even with the utterly inhuman strength I had, now, I had difficulty wedging my fingers in between my cuirass and Leviathan’s tail.

Then, I started to rise as he lifted me higher, and I realized a second before it happened exactly what it was he intended.

His tail whipped down and slammed me into the road, cracking, shattering the pavement like a rotten egg, and the impact rumbled through me and shook my bones — to no avail. It wasn’t enough to get through Godhand.

That didn’t stop him from trying again.

I didn’t have even a moment to get my bearings before he whipped me back around and dragged me through a nearby building, through the glass windows whose jagged shards glanced off my skin, through the concrete and steel support beams that bent and snapped under my bulk, through the sturdy floors and the electrical wires that sparked impotently against my bare arms and legs, and then around again through another building. Then, he slammed me twice more into the ground with earth-shattering force, as though I was a hammer he was using to pound in a particularly stubborn nail.

I felt it the way I felt everything through Herakles’ invulnerable skin: as pressure, as the sensation of impact, as the rumble of vibration through my body and bones, but there was no pain, no broken bones, no cuts and scrapes and bruises that dug deep into my skin and muscles, because this? This wasn’t enough.

When he seemed to have thought he had finally gotten me, he swung me around to his front, still dangling from his tail, to examine me.