The Wretch vs. Lung 1

As Lung brought his wrist to his mouth, the volley struck home. Spikes that were ten feet long impaled his legs and fixed them to the ground. Others caught him in the chest. One struck his face and knocked a mouth-part free, and sent the burning hand flying.

At his back, wings unfolded. He opened the various mouth parts to drool out the last chunks of his hand.

Wretch, one hundred and ten percent. I flew at him.

Fires swelled around him, faster and larger than before, and where purple flames still burned, they caught the fires and made them swell.

While Lung was missing half of his right arm, shoulder to wrist, a pectoral and his left claw, I had slim opportunity.

The Wretch seized one spike as we passed it. My first stab was uneven, mis-aimed because the Wretch didn't coordinate. Lung swatted the point aside with a stump of a wrist at the end of a long limb. He exhaled, and breathed a plume of fire my way.

It swept over the Wretch, but it didn't ignite her. As I passed over him, his snake-like neck let his head rise, point straight up, then point back, with no difficulty.

***

And then another moment, as my racing heart contracted, where he gripped my weapon, catching it in one hand. Even with half of his arm missing, he managed to fight the Wretch's strength.

He jerked the weapon to one side, his strength matching the Wretch or catching it off guard. The handle of the weapon tore through my forcefield.

There was no fire immediately around us now, but that was because Lung and the Pharmacist both wanted to keep Lung away from the purple fire. Both used their ability to extinguish flame to maintain a clearing.

Which didn't mean it wasn't roasting here. Sweat ran down my face in streams. My hair was wet against the back of my neck, and my body was drenched in it, armpit to ankle.

My body.

I have eight hands that aren't Victoria Dallon's.

I caught another fallen weapon, trusted the Wretch to catch yet another. While Lung's hand was occupied with the lance I'd used, I attacked him with two more weapons, aiming to impale him.

His wings flapped, and he was working on freeing himself from the spikes that nailed him to the ground. The Wretch drove him back down, bringing two more points down to his position.

He reached out, breaking one- manipulating flame with the other, to drive me closer to him. I went up, back, and down to the ground again, feet sticking into sucking mud.

Tristan's mass of spikes was an arsenal. The Wretch's invisible hands gripped stone, gripped the spikes that Goddess had driven into the heart of this structure.

Fire washed over the Wretch. If it broke, I would burn or I would choke in the heavy smoke, but it was stronger against sustained onslaughts.

- Gleaming 9.11