Green light flashed over the doors in a rippling sheet of energy. I skidded to a halt, sliding over the damp stones to avoid crashing into the barrier, and dropped the girl to the ground. She stumbled and fell, but swung back to bring her fists up at me.

"Wait here!" I reared onto my hind legs and signed to her in ASL.

That, she had not expected. Her eyes widened in shock as I put my feet back down, turned, and charged into the fray.

The temple was now complete and total chaos. The stag and the sabertooth were battling each other to the death, horns and fangs locked in a raging inferno that had killed at least three of the panicking Hell Pigs, who were in turn butchering each other. Rooster was screaming at the Hyena Boys, Clive was screaming at his Pyromaw – Blaze – a few of the Reavers were screaming at me, and the rest were screaming at the 30-foot tall, four-armed zombie gorilla that had spawned into the middle of the bloodbath. Vanara the Glutton, or whatever the fuck his name was, grabbed the nearest Hell Pig and ripped him in half like a Christmas bon-bon.

I didn't go straight for the boss, because I wasn’t fucking stupid. No, I went for the sensible target. The easy target: the flaming sabertooth. It was taking damage from the stag I’d freed and was looking worse off than the fiery deer fucking him up, torn to shreds by the Runtina’s scorching antlers. I was betting that it was also not expecting me to launch myself across the room onto its back.

"BLAZE! NO! WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!" Clive shrieked over the racket.

Blaze roared, breaking away from the stag and spinning as I landed on it and clung on with all limbs, riding it like a bronco. I snapped my jaws down around its thick throat, burying my teeth through the stinking fur and deep into its flesh. The stag spotted the opening: it bellowed, spun around, and donkey-kicked the cat right in the jaws. The blow snapped its head back and shattered one of its fangs at the base.

Blaze yowled in agony, then burst into flames. They engulfed me with searing pain: the first real pain I'd felt since arriving in this hellhole. On instinct, I arched my tentacles up and drove them into the cat's ribs from either side.

[Soul Drain activated.]

Time slowed to a crawl, and the world lost color and focus as a menu appeared in front of me.

Available Pyromaw Abilties:

Rend: Powerful claw attack that deals x2 Body damage.

Blast Shield: Wreath yourself in flames, dealing Fire damage to attackers.

Fireball: Expel a blast of fire that deals Fire damage.

After a moment of indecisive panic, I narrowed my eyes and focused. “Blast Shield.”

[You gain Blast shield. You drain 55 points of Strength. You regain 200 HP.]

[You deal 740 damage.]

As time sped up again, the Pyromaw chomped one free tentacle, its remaining saber tooth puncturing my dermal armor and piercing into flesh. I held on anyway, shoving the bladed ends of my prehensile arms deep into the creature's torso, piercing muscle, then organs. The cat stumbled to its chest, the flames guttering, muscles sagging. Clive screamed in sympathetic agony, clutching his chest.

[You have conquered your rivals: Clive Magazine and Blaze]

[You gain 273 exp. You are Level 10.]

The stag bellowed, swinging its burning crown of antlers in the direction of Vanara, who was running out of Hell Pigs to eat. I pulled my appendages out of the dead Pyromaw, and whirled around to face destiny.

Vanara beat its chest with two arms and spread the other two like a wrestler, circling us as we squared off with it. The Runtina pawed at the ground, lowering his head in challenge, while I began to pad to the right. As I focused on Vanara, an HP bar filled at the bottom of my HUD.

[HP: 46720/50000]

I glanced at my own HP. It was now just over 5000.

"Flank it!" I thought, in the desperate hope the stag could somehow understand me. Then, without waiting, I charged to the side.

Vanara swung around the room with wild haymaker blows, smashing the altar in half and flinging chunks of obsidian into the air. I skidded on pure reflex, almost running right into its fist as one slammed it down in front of me. Another fist came at me from my right. I reared up with the instincts of a human fighter, balling my front claws, and deflected the blow away before ducking in under its guard. The shock of the blow numbed my arm and shaved 500 HP off my bar, but I nailed it with all four tentacles before rolling away. Vanara was big and heavy; I was light and nimble, and I danced around it, stabbing every chance I got.

[Vanara HP: 42910/50000]

The stag finally caught on: he bounded to the other side, threw his head up, and launched a barrage of flaming missiles from his antlers that burst against the ape's back. The boss's HP dropped another 700 points. Vanara roared, twisting from the waist to try and smash the deer-like Legion into the ground, but the Runtina was already out of arm's reach. I launched myself at the boss like a velociraptor, claws and teeth out. I hit him and hung on, pulling mouthfuls of rotten flesh and stinking fur from his ribs until he backhanded me and sent me flying into the nearest wall. I hit the stone with a crunch and kissed 440 HP goodbye as I bounced awkwardly to the ground.

Oh boy.

“Lord have mercy.” Clive was barely eight feet from me, his crossbow clutched in white-knuckled hands. His thin face was scarlet with rage. "The motherfucking Reaper. You were real after all."

I gaped my jaws at him in a toothy smile, and while he was distracted by the sight of my teeth, one of my punch puds darted forward and smacked the weapon from his hands. I charged at him, snapping and snarling. He stumbled away and hit the wall, throwing his hands up in front of his face. I barely nipped one of his palms, just before I launched sidewards into the air and back into the fight.

My battle-buddy was being pushed back toward the girl, who was clinging to one of the pillars, paralyzed by shock. The stag put himself between her and Vanara, panting from pain and stress. His hooves and horns were white-hot, smoking and sparking as he tapped some core of inner strength and ignited himself once more. The gorilla raised his fists, and by the way the stag wasn't running, I knew that for some reason, he was about to lay his life down for this woman.

I bounded like a greyhound and leaped onto Vanara's back, raking the flesh down his spine. He stopped trying to crush my buddy and roared, twisting unnaturally at the waist. As he reached around, I caught his arm with two tentacles. The needles at the end shot out and imbedded themselves into the monster's limb, anchoring me as the gorilla bellowed and tore me from his back. I glimpsed filthy yellow fangs, and began kicking his face with my back feet as I snapped the other pair of prehensile limbs around his forearm, torqued his wrist, and pulled down against the joint as hard as I could.

Vanara howled as his elbow snapped with a gristly wet sound, and then blew apart. His HP dropped by a full thousand points. Other hands grasped my back: I snarled, and flexed my stolen ability, Inferno Shield. Flames roared out from my body, just as they had for the sabertooth. The fire seared the stinking fur off Vanara’s arms and caused his hands to spasm with agony. The ape dropped me, and I discovered something new about my body, then: not only were my tentacles strong enough to easily hold my body-weight, they could also propel me forward. I shoved off his arm into the air, caught the side of his head with my foreclaws, and twisted his neck with all the vicious strength in my body.

[You deal a mortal blow.]

[Vanara HP: 25110/50000]

Vanara’s head snapped around, cracking with a dull, wet sound. His motions became jerky and uncoordinated, and he crashed forward onto the remains of the altar. But he wasn't dead: the motherfucker was reaching for his own head, twisting it back into position.

Before he could finish, the stag threw his antlers up and lashed out with flaming whips of raw energy. They slashed into and sliced the huge undead creature, taking its injured arm off at the shoulder and another hand at the wrist, practically decapitating it with a hiss of foul smoke and the stench of burning hair. It was apparently an extreme Mortal Blow. The boss's HP suddenly dropped to zero, and it collapsed into the puddle of blood and guts that surrounded the altar.

The stag stamped his sparking hooves viciously at Clive and the few other surviving Hell Pigs huddled against the other side of the chamber, then moaned and turned back to the trembling girl. Panting, flanks heaving, I fell back, only to stop when a flash of white caught the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see the albino girl frantically signing. Not at the Legion, who didn’t seem to understand what she was saying – she was signing at me.

"Watch out!" She stabbed two fingers toward me, eyes wide and white in her face. "Vanara! It's not finished!"

I spun around just in time to see Vanara grasp the top of its head and rotate it back into place, gluing the severed halves of its neck with sickly green light. Then it roared: a guttural, hollow sound that probably would have made me shit myself if I'd still been human. The Runtina whirled back, eyes widening as Vanara lurched to its feet, picked up the broken altar, and threw the two halves of it: one at me, and one at the stag.

I rolled down and to the side, avoiding the ton of stone that flew past me and crumpled into the barrier sealing the door. The Runtina did not. Instead, he stayed between the path of the rock and the girl, letting out one last burst of power. The rock shattered around him, most of it slagging to magma on contact, but the force of the blow flung the Legion into the air. The girl screamed aloud as his body smashed into the temple pillar she’d used for cover. The pillar stayed up, but the Legion let out a bleating cry of pain and flopped to the ground, senseless.

“Kaya!” She ran to him.

Vanara let out another ear-splitting roar and jumped up to grasp the gap between the walls and roof: the same gap I'd used to get inside the arena. It began to swing around the upper level toward me, using two arms to monkey around, and the third functional arm to rip out and fling huge pieces of stone at me like shuriken. I let out a girly yip and sprung away, dodging and running in the hope the barrage would stop. It didn't. As long as I dodged, Vanara just kept swinging around, slowly filling the temple with rubble.

My stamina was dropping down into the orange already, thanks to all the jumping and leaping I was doing. There was nowhere to hide. I had to attack.

I gathered myself, and charged at one of the pillars, bounding forward and then up. At the apex of the climb, I jumped out, claws outstretched, and collided with the ape's chest. It only had one free arm, but it snapped around me like a vice, crushing me even as I went for the beast's throat. Immense pressure bore down on my spine, and I felt it creak. I gathered Psionic energy into a second Blast Shield, tentacles whipping around its wrist and hauling back. Burned, bleeding, and half-dead, Vanara started taking hella damage. I tore at his neck with my jaws, pulling out fur, skin, and then rotten chunks of meat. My back feet raked, claws pulling through the gorilla's belly. He stopped trying to crush me, and began trying to push me away... then dropped back to the ground, freeing up two of his arms.

The last thing I needed while fighting this thing was for it to have more arms.

"AOE! AOE!" The deaf girl finger-spelled the letters frantically, then ducked behind the pillar.

Sure enough, Vanara - clutching its head in one hand and struggling to hold its guts in with another - clawed at the air as green fire boiled up into its mouth. I bolted back up the pillar, climbing it like a bear scaling a tree, and scuttled up onto the edge of the second floor just as a burst of fetid green energy exploded out in concentric rings across the floor. There was a collective scream from the remaining Hell Pigs as the shockwave rolled through them, obliterating their ranks. The Runtina jerked and thrashed, then fell still.

Well, shit.