RE: Monarch

In the brief second I had before everything went to hell, staring at the descending darkness, my mind couldn't quite make sense of it. It was too large to comprehend, a mass of black that spanned the entire ceiling, plunging like a headsman's axe.

Then it hit.

The impact slammed me against the stone ground, hard enough to knock the wind out of my lungs. There was an unquenchable reflex to gasp, but from the way the black ichor plied at my mouth, my nose, a single breath would be my last.

I fought the urge, writhing beneath the endless mass until there was enough room to rotate off my back and onto my stomach. Palms flat against the slick stone I pushed, trying to get enough momentum to "swim" upward, but the ichor pressed down on the back of my neck, growing taut, attempting to keep me from rising.

My skin burned, stinging and searing.

It was a clever gambit. But an arrogant one. Subtlety had failed and now the thing was trying for brute force. The problem with that plan was that it was effectively putting its entire form—or at least, a significant portion of it—at risk, trying to snuff out its invaders all at once.

Yet a submerged flame did not carry the same properties as an open one. Perhaps it was aware. Maybe the wretch believed that anyone it ensconced would be too concerned with self-preservation, considering the immediate and scalding consequences of super-heating a substance they were currently immersed in.

It was wrong.

I flooded mana through my chitinous arm, kept it low, away from the direction of the surface, called the spark, and boiled it.