Luke’s internal awareness screamed danger: 5 HP. One graze, one stumble into the trench, one puff of residual venom, and it was permanent oblivion. Beside him, Lestor leaned heavily on his staff, his knuckles white, his face grey with exhaustion and despair. He was completely out of mana, reduced to a spectator in the final act.
The Queen focused her remaining fury on them. Her multifaceted eyes, clouded with pain and ichor, fixed on Luke. She dragged herself forward on her functional legs, the crippled ones leaving trails of green slime across the stone. Her mandibles clicked weakly, but her stinger tail, dripping with venom, twitched menacingly. She was dying, poisoned, burned, frozen, impaled, and crushed – but she had enough hate left for one last kill.
“Luke...” Lestor whispered, his voice cracking. “Get behind me. Maybe I can…” He made a futile gesture with his staff, trying to conjure a spark that wasn’t there.
“No,” Luke said, his own voice surprisingly steady. Fear was still present, a cold knot in his gut, but overlaid now with a strange, fatalistic calm. Maybe it was the proximity to death, maybe it was the influence of the Mark of Fate, maybe it was just sheer exhaustion breaking through the panic. “She’s focused on me. Keep back.”
He raised Calistas Analce, they felt heavy in his hands, extensions of the very creature he had to kill. He needed an opening, one clean shot. He thought back to the Truth Seeker information, the fragmented pieces. Antennae sensitive… joints vulnerable… underbelly weak… primary weakness… OVERLOAD… The primary weakness remained unknown. But the antennae… Lestor had already severely damaged them with the fire blast. Could he finish the job?
The Queen lunged, slower now, hampered by her injuries and the frostbite. Luke didn’t try a fancy dodge. He simply sidestepped, activating Basic Evasion, letting the Queen’s clumsy momentum carry her past. As she struggled to turn her massive body, Luke saw his chance.
He darted forward, ignoring the screaming protest from his ribs, and leaped onto the Queen’s broad, damaged back, scrambling upwards towards her head. He didn’t really have a plan, all he knew was a weakness and without magic all he had was his daggers. She thrashed, trying to dislodge him, but her movements were sluggish, uncoordinated. Luke used the Analace like climbing axes, finding purchase in the cracks of her scorched carapace.
The Queen screeched and Luke held on for dear life. He felt like one of the old bull riders from Earth excepct his bull was a multi ton bug that could spray poison.
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He reached the base of her head, right where the charred remnants of her antennae sprouted. They twitched feebly, receptors likely fried by Lestor’s spell. He raised both daggers high. This was it. His one chance. He focused his remaining strength, his remaining will, channeling everything into this final strike.
He brought the daggers down simultaneously, driving them deep into the sensitive nerve clusters at the base of both ruined antennae.
~ Damage Dealt: 23~
~ Damage Dealt: 25~
~ Critical Hit! ~
~ Vulnerability Exploited! Damage x3! ~
~ Total Damage: 144 ~
The Queen’s reaction was instantaneous and catastrophic. Not a shriek this time, but a full body convulsion, a violent spasm that rippled through her colossal frame, driven by an overload of pure sensory agony. Luke clung desperately to the hilts of his embedded Anelace, knuckles white, arms screaming, feeling the massive creature shudder beneath him like a collapsing mountain. Her legs buckled violently. Her massive frame slammed onto the platform with a ground shaking thud that nearly tore Luke from his perch. She twitched once, a massive, involuntary lurch that sent cracks spiderwebbing across the stone beneath her.
CRACK!
The stone edge of the platform fractured under her immense weight and death throes. With another violent shudder, the Queen pitched sideways, sliding off the broken edge and crashing with a tremendous, acidic hiss into the bubbling green trench below.
"LUKE! LET GO! GET DOWN!" Lestor’s voice, raw with urgency, barely cut through the Queen's final, gurgling roar from the trench.
Luke still had a death grip on his Anelace, dragged partially over the edge as the Queen thrashed below, submerged in the corrosive liquid. Acid fumes seared his nostrils. He saw chitin dissolving, flesh melting away in horrifying streams. Panic spurred him. Praying to any god listening in this forsaken reality, Luke planted his boots against the Queen's convulsing carapace and pulled, yanking the shadowsteel blades free with a sickening squelch. He threw himself backwards, away from the crumbling edge, tumbling onto the relatively solid center of the platform.
The world swam. He saw the angry red flicker of his own internal health awareness – barely there, a sliver from oblivion. 2 HP. The fall onto the platform felt like hitting stone, jarring his already broken ribs. He braced, waiting for the blackness, the cold pull of death.
It didn't come.
A wet, guttural screech echoed from the trench, followed by the scrape of claws on stone. Horror, colder and sharper than any pain, lanced through Luke. He scrambled upright, spinning towards the sound.
Rising slowly, agonizingly, from the steaming green abyss was the Queen. Or what was left of her. Two of the legs that had fallen into the trench hung limply, chitin and muscle pockmarked, dissolving, eaten away by the potent acid. The other two legs that had been submerged deeper were simply… gone, ending in ragged, steaming stumps. Vast patches of her exoskeleton were missing, revealing pulsing, grotesque innards beneath. Green ichor oozed from countless wounds. In several spots, Luke could see straight through gaps in her ravaged torso to the cavern wall beyond. She looked like something dredged from the deepest circle of hell, an undead horror fueled by sheer, agonizing hatred. And her remaining multifaceted eyes were fixed directly on the screaming Mark.
"You have got to be kidding me," Lestor breathed, stumbling up beside Luke, his face pale with disbelief and exhaustion.
~Formica Queen~
~Health: 23%~