A troll's roar shook the street as it thrashed and stomped craters into the earth, bellowing like thunder.
While a cloakless me dangled off its back with both hands on the broken sword buried deep where its spine should have been.
Blood poured out hot, washing my arms as the momentum of my fall carved a wound on its back, tearing flesh wide open.
The monster staggered, as it howled, knees buckling under the cut, but it wasn't dead yet.
Trolls don't die that easy.
I planted both boots against its hide, and kicked off at just the right timing…
… before smashing through the second-floor window of the nearest house.
Glass and splintered wood tore across my arms as I covered my face, rolling through with enough force to rattle my teeth.
The sword stayed behind, still jammed in the troll's back.
[Perfect. Just perfect.]
Calling it back bled fifty percent of my mana, burning away half my tank in one blink.
And I was left with just enough for one blink, before five seconds of regen gives me another.
[Sounds easy enough…]
The thought had barely finished when the wall crashed open.
A fist like a battering ram punched straight through, smashing the room apart in a storm of dust and shards.
Missed me by a breath, maybe three feet.
But the shockwave alone shoved me sideways while covering me in dust and debris.
The troll's hand tore back, dragging stone and beams with it.
And that was the signal.
The horde poured in.
Kobolds snapping jaws, eyes yellow like rotting eggs.
Orcs shouldering through with blades already swinging.
Both funnelling into the ruin of the house like rats through cracks.
[No choice. Downstairs.]
Boots hammered wood, the staircase groaning as I bolted with monsters hot on my trail.
The hall opened up below, wrecked but wide enough to move.
I sprinted for the far wall, but the world had more nightmares to spit at me.
Through the broken window to my left stepped a child.
No… not a child.
A Fire-Gal.
Its small frame wreathed in violet flames that licked the stone and clung to it like napalm.
The heat hit first, hot enough to feel even through that window between us.
Then her blank eyes locked on me.
-BOOM!
And the world turned violet.
Through sheer luck aline, I burst through the opposite window as the fire exploded.
Glass tore my arms, heat seared my back as I hit the ground in a roll, and tumbled hard, dirt and cobble ripping skin from palms.
Behind me, the hall blew apart in a blossom of violet fire, the sound of kobolds and orcs shrieking as they burned alive.
The fire hadn't touched me, but the heat sure as hell had.
And it hit me a second later -
-AAAHHH!
My scream tore through even the roars around me.
Skin on my back bubbled, peeled, and screamed with second-degree burns that lit every nerve.
I hit the dirt writhing in pain, lungs emptying in screams that clawed at my throat.
The vest on my chest burned loose before slipping out along with the rifle mags.
And so did the rifle as the sling burned.
But the horde didn't care.
A kobold lunged, its frothing maw open wide.
Instinct beat thought.
My pistol snapped free from its holster, and I pulled the trigger.
The first shot cored the kobold's chest, yet it barely staggered.
And a beat later, more bodies poured in, filling whatever gaps of escapes still left before the smoke on the muzzle even cleared.
[This is pointless]
Adrenaline, panic, pain, and instinct - all four screamed at once.
And I hurled the sword up.
Just flung it skyward in blind desperation.
And vanished to it.
The world blinked, and the spot I had been a heartbeat ago vanished under a pile of bodies.
Orcs, kobolds and whatever the hell else there was, tore the ground into tatters where I'd lain.
Mid-air, I barely had time to suck in a breath before I threw the blade again, twisting to hurl it toward the nearest rooftop.
The steel spun in the dark, glittering with hope of survival.
And the blink that followed got me onto the roof - and into the last of my mana.
[Pool at zero… Five seconds until regen gives the 50% I need. No more fancy teleports... Just me, a pistol, a broken sword, and every monster in town with a grudge.]
The first kobold cleared the roof in a scrabble of claws.
I snapped two shots dead center.
But it didn't matter; that thing still came at me.
I ducked below the wide swing of its claws, and rammed the broken blade between its ribs and shoved with everything my burned back had and booted it off the roof.
[Five seconds… don't blow it, Vincie]
Another came low.
Too fast to aim.
I fired still and missed as its claws raked across my sleeve.
A hot sting tore through my arm.
I twisted, drove the sword flat across its snout, buying myself a second before an orc loomed behind it, swinging a chipped cleaver.
Yanking the sword out, I jumped back, barely avoiding the cleave as fire lanced across my back, and emptied two rounds into its chest.
It grunted, didn't stop ever for a second as it closed that distance in less than a second.
Through sheer instinct, I shoved the broken sword into it's gut.
The orc folded over me, spilling its weight, heavy as a wall.
I shoved it off with a snarl of my own through ragged breath and screaming back.
[Four seconds.]
A harpy shrieked, diving out of the smoke.
The sound of its shriek pierced straight through my skull, freezing my arms for a beat.
And a beat was more than enough.
It slammed into me, claws scrabbling at my face as I fell on my scorched back.
All the air escaped my lungs as pain worse than death zipped from my back.
I couldn't even scream.
In a frenzy of pain, I somehow got the sword up, and scraped it across its belly in a sloppy slash.
Not clean, not deep, but enough to make it reel as it flew away after one last slash at my face.
[Three seconds]
I had barely managed to get up before another set of wings dashed at me.
A Manananggal.
Its claws flashed silver, and I barely twisted aside, ribs howling as the burns stretched raw.
It still clipped my arm, tearing shallow furrows.
And I fired point-blank.
One round still missed.
The other punched through its cheek.
It dropped screeching off the roof, black blood spraying.
[Two seconds]
An orc barrelled through the mess, eyes bloodshot.
Ducking below its cleave, I shoved the pistol into its gut and pulled the trigger more times than I should've before it dropped.
-Thard! Thard! Thard! Thard!
Kobolds, orcs, wings, fire.
All had enough time to surround me by then.
I snapped the pistol up again, pulled—
-Click.
Jam.
The slide stuck halfway back with the casing lodged.
My breath stuttered.
I trapped the broken sword in my elbow, freeing my hand before I racked the slide back and forth in a panic, setting it free at the last second.
Snapping it up again and I dumped six rounds at the charging monsters Ina panicked frenzy.
[I'm just wasting bullets here!]
And right then, I felt it.
With 10% a second, I finally reached enough for a blink at the 5th second.
I hurled the sword up into the night.
The blade spun above me.
All the while, monsters closed in with claws swiping, and wings blotting towards me.
My burns screamed with every twitch.
And before the steel could even finish its arc downward—
—I blinked.
But I never made it to the ground…
Pain slammed through my right shoulder, letting loose the sword in my grip
Claws dug deep, tearing meat and muscle in one scoop.
I screamed again, but this one dragged a tear out of me, hot and furious, blurring my sight.
One of the horse-sized bats I'd seen earlier had me in its grip.
Its wings thundered with each beat, dragging me upward like I was nothing more than a rabbit plucked from the dirt.
And my pistol arm shook as I thrashed, blood running down that arm like a hot river.
[Oh, you've got to be kidding me.]
The bat tightened its grip.
My right arm shook, barely able to lift the pistol up, but I fired anyway.
The first round didn't even come close to it.
The second clipped wing—barely.
But the third bit home, tearing tendon and muscle, and the beast shirked as its hold loosened.
I shot twice more for good measure and felt the grip slacken enough for it to fling me free.
For a breath, I hung in the sky, weightless, with the city a quilt of smoke and stone beneath me.
Wind clawed at burned skin on my back, while the gashes on my shoulder screamed their own scream.
For that one moment, I had a bird's eye view, and it was awful and beautiful in the same brutal second.
The horde below a heaving dark sea, a living storm sweeping alleys and roofs as bodies pressed onto one another into a tide.
And somewhere at the heart of that maelstrom, on a roof crawling with monsters glinted with the steel of my broken sword, the blade that slipped from my fingers when that bat grabbed me.
[Don't have much of a choice here...]
And I blinked to it.