150 - Lizard
Sword in hand, Alexandra immediately cast Rays Of The Sun and aimed the beam toward the Gold-rank lizard. The beam connected with the scales on its shoulder, and smoke started rising out of the point of impact.
“Shit. It didn’t break through the scales.”
Given enough time, she was confident that her beam could work its way through the beast’s armor. But the lizard wasn’t going to let it happen. It shifted its mass, and the beam hit the stone behind it instead.
Alexandra moved before the beast could reach her. She opened with Inflict Weakness. Her curse took hold, and for once, had a noticeable effect on her target. The lizard slowed down, the weakness making it harder for its legs to support its massive body.
She followed up with the Drain Life and Aggressive Assimilation combo, keeping her feet moving through the cave as she connected to the beast’s lifeforce. Instead of going back toward the tomb, she went deeper into the lizard cave. She was afraid that the damaged section would collapse during the fight.
The effect of Aggressive Assimilation was something she’d already experienced before. Her mind was cooler than usual, and she could see the fight with unusual clarity. Fear had vanished, replaced by a cold determination to defeat her foe. Cold blood.
Alexandra kept trying to aim her beam at the lizard, but it was moving faster than she could adjust her spell. The lizard was slippery, moving between natural pillars and behind turns in the cavern.
Seeing that it wasn’t connecting, Alexandra let go of her spell in an effort to preserve mana and prepared to face the beast head-on.
With her sword in her right hand, she set up a Solar Blast in her left and waited for the lizard to come her way.
The beast didn’t need to be told twice. As soon as Rays Of The Sun fizzled out, it lurched with so much force that the stone beneath it cracked.
The lizard closed the distance in two bounds, jaw wide, and Alexandra threw herself sideways into the shadow of a pillar. She blasted her spell, catching the beast along the jaw. It left a black scorch mark under the jaw. If the lizard felt pain, it didn’t show it.
She was already moving. She circled right, toward a narrower stretch of cave, and swung her sword at the foreleg as the lizard turned to follow her.
The blade skipped off its scales. The lizard didn’t slow down.
It swept its tail. Alexandra ducked under it as she ran, feeling the wind pass over her scalp. The lizard moved to face her. Another Solar Blast, point-blank, into the side of its neck. The scales there were thinner. The beast screeched and jerked its head toward her, but she was already gone, sliding between two rock formations too narrow for its bulk.
She caught her breath there, back against stone, chest tight. The lizard slammed its head against the gap, jaws snapping shut inches from her shoulder. She cut at its snout on reflex, more to make it flinch than to do damage. Yet, it worked. The head withdrew.
Alexandra didn't wait. She was already coming out the other side, sword in hand, mana building for the next blast. Small wounds. Not enough to stop it, but she could work with that. Not getting hit was more important.
The pattern held for a while. She'd dart in, let the sword bite where it could, blast where the scales ran thin, and pull back before the jaws could close on her. The scorch marks were adding up. So were the shallow cuts along its flank.
"That's it," she said, backing around a pillar as the lizard turned to find her. "Slower every time. You feeling that?"
It lunged. She sidestepped and put a Solar Blast into its ribs on the way past. The lizard's legs buckled for half a second before it caught itself.
"Yeah. You're feeling that."
She kept the distance open, watching its stride. The bounds that used to close the gap in two steps were taking three now, sometimes four. Its head hung lower. She circled toward open ground and summoned her orb.
"And you call yourself Gold? You're gonna go down to a Bronze." She smiled, only panting a little.
The lizard didn't answer, but it also didn't close in on her. It watched her.
She kept herself ready to move and started weaving the shell around her light. The beam was harder to aim than the blast, but if the lizard was this spent, this was her chance to make it count.
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The beam hadn't even formed when the lizard's eyes went red.
Alexandra felt a wrongness in the air. Heat. It wasn’t coming from her. The blood welling from the cuts on the lizard started to bubble, thin threads of steam rising from them.
Then it moved.
It closed the gap in one step.
"Oh, shit—"
She threw herself back, letting her orb fizzle out. The lizard's claws raked the space she'd occupied a heartbeat earlier. She was already running, cutting hard toward the narrower stretch of cave where the pillars stood close together, the same gap that had saved her before.
It was faster than her now. She could hear it behind her, gaining ground. She didn't look back, and just threw herself into the gap between the rock formations and pressed flat against the stone.
"Come on. Come on."
The lizard didn't slow down to slam its head into the gap this time. It didn't need to. Its jaws opened with a flash of red light, and the rock in front of her shattered, chunks of stone spraying past her shoulder and one hitting her hard across the arm.
"Fuck!"
She was out of cover, out in the open, and the lizard was already coming for her, fast.
Alexandra couldn’t outrun it. She backed up against the wall and waited for the last moment to throw herself to the side, narrowly dodging its open maw. It crashed onto the stone, opening a crater.
The lizard took a few seconds to recover, enough for Alexandra to recast Rays Of The Sun and aim the thinnest, most concentrated beam at the beast’s head. The searing heat dug into its scales, sending it reeling.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t reeling backward, but toward her, and it was angry. Red light crackled around its teeth, charging up another one of its devastating bites.
She threw herself sideways again, boots sliding on loose rock. The bite came down where she'd been standing, jaws slamming into nothing so hard that the air itself shook. She didn't wait around. She was up and moving, putting a rock between them.
Her arm throbbed where the rock had hit her. She flexed her fingers. Still worked.
"Okay." She circled, breathing hard now, watching the lizard shake stone dust off its snout. "Okay, that's not good."
It came at her again, even faster than its previous peak. She cut the distance short by ducking under its foreleg instead of running from it. Her blade opened a line along its belly, shallow. The lizard screeched.
"Still bleeds."
She fell back into the rhythm, blast, cut, retreat. But it was more retreat now, and less attacking. All it would take was one hit from the lizard to end her while she could cut it a thousand times and it would still stand. Its strange boosting skill wasn’t fading away. If anything, the red in its eyes was getting brighter, and red light kept exploding everywhere its jaw snapped.
At this rate, she wasn't going to outlast it. That was fine. This strategy never worked anyway. Cold blood running through her veins, her mind homed in on a more radical solution.
The lizard didn't care. It lunged. She rolled to the side.
She had enough mana left in her for one Rays Of The Sun. This limitation was still something she had to get used to. But she was underground, and the sun couldn’t feed her. Normally she left a channel open at the front, a mouth for the beam to escape through.
But she’d just witnessed what would happen if she let her reflective weave envelop the entire light orb.
The only issue was that she wasn’t sure it would be enough. The explosion from earlier was powerful, but this was a Gold-rank lizard. If it survived, she would be out of mana. Done for.
There was also the matter of not getting swept into the blast herself.
An odd smile lifted her lips as an idea blossomed in her head.
"Hey," she called, backing toward open ground, orb already forming behind her. No gap this time. She could feel the pressure building immediately. "Bet you're hungry."
She sheathed her sword and opened her arms wide. “Come. I give up.”
The lizard took the bait, if it needed one. It surged forward, jaws wide, and snapped down around her.
She was already gone, throwing herself to the side and down. The lizard’s jaw closed around the orb instead, straight into its mouth. She didn't wait to see what happened next. She hit the ground running, dove behind the largest rock she could find, and put her arms over her head.
The world went white.
The explosion cracked through the cavern like the ceiling was coming down. Heat rolled over her in a wave. Her ears rang.
For a second she couldn't hear anything at all.
She looked up.
Then the ceiling actually came crashing down on her.
Alexandra saw massive rocks fall straight toward her. They were going to crush her.
Until a dome of shadow caught them all, making them vanish.
Speck’s excited voice rang all around her. “Alexandra. Make. Many. Rocks.”
“Just in time, buddy,” Alexandra said, pushing herself off the ground.
Where she'd been moments earlier, a charred crater marked the ground. Of the lizard, there wasn't a body left to speak of. Chunks of blackened scale lay scattered across the cavern floor, some of them still smoking, flung as far as the tunnel mouth she'd come in through. A foreleg had landed near the pillars she'd hidden behind earlier, sheared clean at the joint. As for the rest of it, she couldn't account for. Ash. Dust settling through the air.
She stood there a moment, chest heaving, and ears still ringing.
“Well.” She looked at the crater, then at the scattered scale, then up at Speck’s shadow busying itself gathering loose rocks all across the room. “I’m sure someone will be delighted.”