“Are you alright?” Murunel asked in a worried voice. Kay had basically sprinted out of the area of the standing stones, and he’d run for the rest of the day until he’d been forced to rest by the setting sun. Even after sleeping through the night, he was quiet, tense, and moving quickly.

“Have you ever just known something?” He asked as he jogged across the open plateau, “Call it an instinct or a sudden burst of knowledge or whatever.”

“Yes.”

Kay nodded decisively. “Whoever or whatever it was that fought those constructs, they’re bad news. And they’re basically behind everyone. I want to get back quickly and warn them.”

“That’s fine, but you need to slow down,” Murunel ordered him.

“What?”

“You’re going to wear yourself out at the pace you’re setting. If you run into something that wants to fight, you’re going to be tired and not fight as well. I can list more reasons, but you’re not going as fast now, so I think I don’t have to.”

Kay wore a grimace as he stopped to breathe for a moment. “You’re right. I really don’t like it, though.”

“Don’t worry so much.” She patted the glass of the ball like it was his shoulder. “Eleniah should be able to hold off an enemy long enough for a retreat at the least.”

“What if it’s something that can take her, though?”

“It isn’t,” She replied instantly. “You can tell from that fight scene we found.”

“How do you know?” Kay stretched his legs and started walking again. “We didn’t see any bodies to tell what was bleeding; there were just those broken constructs.”

“Exactly. Or no, not exactly, but yeah, that’s what tells us that they really aren’t that strong.”

He glanced down at her. “Okay, educated me.”

“You saw the amount of blood on the ground. It was a lot, so either something really big bled a lot, or lots of smaller somethings died in there.”

Kay started slowly nodding. “And there’s no way something big enough to survive bleeding that much would fit in that room.”

“Right, so I think that whatever we have inside the plateau, it’s a lot of smaller, weaker enemies. Because those weren’t strong constructs, and they killed a whole lot of enemies. More than half the floor was covered in blood.”

“Why do you say the constructs weren’t strong?”

“The materials they were made out of were pretty standard stuff. It looked like regular steel and some easier-to-find gemstones for most of it. That means they aren’t that strong because constructs’ power comes mostly from what they’re made of. Even if you have a really high tier person making the construct, the materials will still limit the power that can be put into them.”

“Alright.” He sighed in relief a little, “That’s reassuring. How do you know so much about constructs, though?”

Murunel blew out a poof of smoke and rolled her eyes. “’ So much’? That was bare-bones stuff. One of my favorite ancestors had a tier six golem-making class. I can go on about constructs for ages!”

“Oh, then can you tell me-”

A massive roar ripped through the air, making the ground tremble beneath Kay’s feet. It lashed through his ears a second time, then a third, too fast to be from the same throat.

Kay slowly looked over his shoulder in the direction the sound had come from. It came from slightly behind him and to the right.

“We have to go check that out, right?”

“Well, we can’t just ignore it. What if it’s a threat to everyone?”

“Good point. We don’t have to fight it, though, right?”

“Well, I’m not going to attack unless I have a damn good reason to. At the moment, you wouldn’t be much help in a fight.”

“Right. Be careful.”

Kay started jogging towards the unknown monster. “Why do things have to keep happening right as I’m about to ask questions?”

“Comedic timing?”

An involuntary snort-laugh escaped from Kay. “I keep getting interrupted because it’s funnier that way?”

“Maybe the gods want more comedy when they’re watching you.”

“You believe in gods?”

“I’m open to the possibility.”

“See, I’ve always thought of myself as agnostic.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, it’s-”

Another three-part roar vibrated the air, even louder as the distance between Kay and the source of the noise decreased.

“… Did you hear screaming in that tiny bit before the roars started overlapping?” Kay asked Murunel.

She nodded. “I think I did.”

“Dammit.” Kay swept his halberd off his back and started sprinting. “Theology will have to come later.”

He hit the edge of the plateau a minute later and slid to a stop. He started glancing around, looking for… well, something! Whatever the hell was happening! Some movement below him drew his eye.

An armored figure was running between the scraggly trees that dotted the area. “Here it comes again!” They spun in place and threw up a massive shield. A gigantic snakehead appeared as if out of nowhere and struck at the figure. They expertly shifted themselves, and the snake’s fangs slammed into the metal wall and slid off.

“BOHICA!” Someone else shouted. Kay glanced in that direction and saw a small group of people fleeing the monster, most of them riding on a small cart that was being drawn away by a desperate horse.

“Shut up, Cindy!” A thin woman in a robe stepped from behind one of the trees and threw her hand forward. A spear of fire formed at the tips of her fingers and shot at the snake, slamming into its scales.

The snake reared back and hissed in annoyance; the only mark from the attack a small scorch mark on its head.

“Oh shit.”

Kay glanced down at Murunel, who was staring at the monster. He followed her gaze to see the snakehead rear up, where two more joined it. The three heads glared down at the retreating group and let out the three-part roar, one head after another letting out a blast of sound.

“A Serisek Hydra.” Murunel groaned.

“Tell me what you know.”

“Hydra with a snake body instead of a lizard body. Same thing about the heads; cut one off, two more grow back. They don’t have breath attacks or spitting attacks, but its venom is incredibly nasty, so don’t get bit.”

“Anything else?” Kay asked as he started backing away from the ledge.

“Not that I can think of. What are you doing?”

Kay gathered blood from his canteen and started wrapping it around himself as he got farther back. He covered himself in a secondary layer of blood armor over his regular leather armor, adding a helmet as he worked. He coated the head of his halberd in blood as well and made it into a massive spear point. He stopped about a hundred feet back from the edge. “Getting a running start,” He answered Murunel and sprinted forward.

Right before he hit the edge, he collected as much blood as he could right under his feet and made a massive pair of springs. With a collective effort of his body, will, and magic, he launched himself from the edge of the cliff, directly at one of the monster’s three heads.

Rocketing forward fast enough to make his eyes instantly water, Kay smashed into the middle head of the hydra, giant blood-spear point first, and rode it down into the ground. The snakehead, the size of a car, flopped around as it hit the ground, and the other two roared in pain as they glared down in shock at the sudden interloper to the battle.

The head that Kay had pinned to the ground made a combination hiss-growl as its eye rolled wildly in its socket.

Kay jumped back as one of the remaining heads struck in his direction. He formed a shield out of his bracer and braced for impact, but nothing came. He glanced over the edge of the shield to watch as both the remaining heads started to rip apart the neck of the dying head.

“Well, fuck.”

“I didn’t know they could do that.”

Kay held out his hand and took control of the blood that was spilling out as the monster ravaged its own body. He created spikes and blades to attack the creature as it worked to free itself of the dead weight of its middle head. Sadly, he’d reacted too slowly, and he could only watch as the bleed from the neck-stump suddenly stopped and two fleshy lumps began to quickly swell out of it.

Thundering steps announced the arrival of the armored figure that ran up to Kay. They slammed their massive kite shield down in front of him and crouched beneath it. “Get down!”

Kay stared at them for a second, then hit the deck as a wave of heat crawled over his back.

A beam of fire thicker than a tree shot over top of them and scorched one of the two growing heads to cinders. A blackened half-formed lump of flesh collapsed to the ground as the other new head finished growing.

“Dammit!” The fire mage woman from earlier screamed. “It fucking dodged!”

“Well, do it again!” The armored man yelled back as he jumped backward, getting to his feet, and blocked another bit from one of the heads.

“I need to charge it up, dammit! The little spells don’t fucking hurt it!”

Kay rolled out from behind the shield and unleashed the compressed blood attack he’d been charging as he was lying on the ground. It shot forward, a compressed blood cutter reworked into a bullet. It pierced through what could possibly be called the torso of the creature and left a hole the size of a soda can in the hydra. The three living heads turned to stare at him.

“I was hoping that would do more.” He muttered.

“Move!”

Kay made another pair of springs under his feet and backflipped over the three heads as they all tried to bite into him. He failed to stick the landing and had to scramble back to his feet after sliding back a few feet.

“Keep it fucking busy!” The mage shouted, and Kay leaped back into the fray.

The next few seconds were harrowing. Kay dodged and threw out ineffectual attacks as the hydra went into overdrive, trying to bite him. He didn’t have more than a single moment to compress his blood, and his strikes just weren’t powerful enough to get past the hydra’s scales.

A glowing heat started to grow from between the cupped hands of the fire mage, and one of the heads turned to look at her.

Kay jumped forward, his halberd’s head still the shape of a blood spear, aiming to impale the hydra’s body and distract it from the coming fire spell.

The middle and left heads slammed into the dirt as Kay sidestepped them, but the right head ignored him and lashed out at the mage. Less than a second before the fangs could come down on the unarmored body of the mage, the armored man body-slammed the head and knocked it away from her.

“Fuck you!” She screamed and pushed her palms outward. Another, even larger, beam of fire rippled out from her and started to burn the head that had just tried to kill her.

The hydra screamed in pain and writhed around as its head began to crumble under the heat of the spell. The middle head roared at them and began to rip at the neck of the burning head, which was almost entirely bone at that point.

The mage glared at the hydra. “Oh fuck no!” Smalled flames began to gather around her hands.

The tail of the creature, until this point unused, suddenly lashed out from behind the hydra and sent the mage and the armored man flying as swept around, it struck them both. The armored man bounced off the ground and knocked a tree over while the woman went flying into the air.

The hydra managed to make a new wound on itself as the remaining head kept Kay at bay, and moments later, it had four heads, all glaring down at Kay.

“Go left!” A voice screamed, and with nothing better to do, Kay dashed to the left. He managed to duck under the two fanged maws that tried to impale him and spin out of the way of a third follow-up attack.

“Can you make that piercing attack from earlier even bigger?” The voice asked.

“Yeah, but I need to charge it up just like your mage!”

“That’s fine! Jump back once, then dive forward!”

Kay did as the shouting woman said and managed to dodge the hydra by a hairbreadth once more. “I don’t really have time to charge it up right now!”

“You will in just a second! We just needed the other two to catch up!”

“What?”

The ground underneath the monster shuddered, and suddenly vines and roots shot out of the ground and started to wrap around the hydra. It thrashed and tried to break free, but the plant life managed to completely encircle all four heads and drag them down to the ground.

“That! Start charging!”

“I hope you’ve seen this, Cindy!” Someone new that Kay couldn’t see yelled, “Because it’s going to break free in a second!”

“Parts! Where’s Chitel?”

“Here!” Another woman shouted from behind Kay, “Where should I go?”

“Claudia got thrown that way!”

“On it!”

“It sounds like they’ve got a whole party,” Murunel commented as Kay forced more and more blood down into a sphere.

“Sounds like,” He parroted her as he pulled as much blood as he could from where the hydra had coated the ground in red.

“Are you ready, blood dude!?” The commanding woman asked with a yell.

“Almost!”

“Well, get ready faster! It’s almost free!”

The hydra roared in anger and finally ripped one of its heads free. Chunks of dirt and plant matter flew everywhere as it tore itself loose one head at a time. It roared in the same manner as earlier, with four mouths this time, each roar starting as the previous one began to end, like some kind of monstrous call and response.

Kay took one step forward and braced himself as he threw forward his hands. A spiraling drill-beam of compressed blood blasted away from him, thicker than his previous attack but less than half as thick as the sideways pillar of fire the mage woman had launched. It drilled into the body of the hydra and began to tear chunks of flesh out of it as it ripped its way through the monster.

The hydra screamed as Kay’s attack gouged a hole bigger than he was into it, and it began to thrash around and crush trees and rocks as it began flailing its death throes.

Kay backed up quickly, remembering some old lesson about snakes still being able to kill you even if they were mostly dead.

Someone stepped up next to him, and he glanced over. A woman grinned at him. “Well, that was fun. Now then-”

“Cindy!”

Kay watched in slow motion as the hydra went from thrashing in fake death to lashing out with deadly intent. The closest headshot at the woman, one of the huge fangs aimed directly at her heart. He jumped forward, shifting his armor into a massive shield of blood that he put between the monster and himself as he hip-checked the woman out of the way. The fangs punched through, crumpling the solid blood like glass in a traffic accident, and one of them slammed into Kay’s shoulder.

Kay screamed in pain as he retaliated with a blood-blade formed around his arm in the hydra’s eye. The hydra jerked away as it roared, ripping the fang out of Kay. He slumped to one knee and tried to push himself back to his feet.

He managed to prop himself up by using his halberd as a makeshift cane when a wave of burning pain unlike anything he’d ever experienced drove him to the ground.

Liquid fire ripped through his body as he screamed and screamed and screamed. The pain became the only thing he knew as he felt it spread from his shoulder down his arm and across his chest.

An eternity of pain passed when suddenly a flash of blinding light made him flinch, the light powerful enough to notice past his pain.

He vaguely noticed his body being flipped over so his face wasn’t digging into the dirt and indecipherable voices shouted at each other, but it was all eaten away by the all-consuming pain.

“Push it out!” Someone screamed in his ear, loud enough for him to actually notice. “It’s in your blood! Push it out of you!”

Sluggishly, fighting the venom that was killing him with every step, he managed to take control of the blood inside of him and slowly push the venom out of his body.

Bit by bit, in tiny, tiny amounts, Kay managed to force the venom out even as that same venom ravaged his body and brought him closer and closer to death’s door.

╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦╩╦

Murunel watched, cursing the man that had had her imprisoned in the fucking ball even harder than ever before as one of her newest friends died in front of her. At least these random people Kay had just saved had listened to her when she’d started screaming at Kay. Her voice had been too quiet for him to hear, but one of them had heard her and started shouting as loud as they could directly into his ears, even louder than his pain-filled shrieks of agony.

She watched as tiny drops of blackened, dead blood were forced out of Kay’s body along with a clear liquid that could only be seen for a moment as it flickered in the light.

The woman who’d been shouting slid to a stop next to Kay on her knees, a box in her hand. She ripped the box open and yanked a strange cylinder of metal out. She flipped open a lid on in and started scooping up bits of the dead blood and poison into the object.

“Cindy, what is that?” One of the onlooking people asked. It might have been the man in armor, but Murunel was watching Kay.

The woman, Cindy, held the device up to the light and watched as the stone on the front of it began to slowly fill with green light. When the light completely filled the stone, it flashed once.m Cindy twisted the cylinder, and Murunel watched as a needle suddenly shot out of the bottom of it, and she jammed it into Kay’s arm next to the puncture wound from the hydra’s fang.

Cindy sat back and stared down at Kay. “It’s that thing I spent all my money on before we left. It’s an enchanted antivenin maker. Put in a sample of the venom, and it makes an antivenin in moments.”

“So you saw this.”

She shrugged, “Not really, I just knew we’d need it.”

A flurry of movement as another woman ran up, her robes flapping around her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” A pair of hands slammed into Kay’s chest and began to glow. “Dammit! I don’t have any healing spells for venoms!”

“Just keep him alive,” Cindy ordered her and tapped the device she’d stabbed Kay with. “Between this and his own magic pushing the venom out of his system, he’ll be fine. Just make sure he’s alive long enough for it to work.”

They sat there for almost an hour as Kay writhed in pain, screaming and moaning for most of it, and blood poured out of him. Slowly, his color began to recover, and he got quieter and quieter. The venom and dead blood began to flow out less and less, and soon enough, there was only clean, red blood spurting out of the hole in Kay’s shoulder.

“That looks like it’s the last of it,” The healer woman muttered. She stretched her hand out and covered Kay’s wound, where it sealed before Murunel’s eyes.

The healer sat back on her legs and deflated. “And I’m officially spent. Couldn’t heal a paper cut at this point.”

“Thank you,” Murunel whispered, still staring at Kay.

“You’re welcome, tiny dragon. He saved our lives too, so I’d have to be a lot worse of a person to just let him die in front of me.”

“What do we do now?” The armored man asked, looking at Cindy.

She kneeled down and gently touched Kay’s chest, her eyes closed. After a moment, she stood up and grinned at the man. “We put him on the cart and head roughly a day’s travel in that direction.” She pointed through the cliff, her finger aimed directly at the settlement where Eleniah, Darten, and the dwarves still were. “And then we’re there.”

“What?” The group of people started clustering closer, wide eyes and smiles on their faces. “Seriously?”

Cindy pointed down at Kay. “This guy that just saved our asses? He’s the one we’ve been looking for.”

They all looked down at Kay, covered in blood and gunk, still pale from his dance with death.

Murunel glanced between them, all of them with some kind of expectant expression on their faces as they stared at her friend. “Who the fuck are you people?”