I slipped towards the door, but he saw that coming as his gun was aimed at my back when he fired two bullets. I take the pain as a hand pops out of my back with its index finger pointed at his chest. I fire the bullets right at him. He took it without losing momentum.

I turn, and his blade is aimed at my thigh. I put the shield in front of it. Hot metal sparks fly in the air as his blade scraps the full width of the shield. I swing the shield up and knock him off balance. Leaving an opening for me to land a punch right where I fired on his chest. Thats my best plan, hit him in the same spot and make his regeneration work overtime. The spell is trying to heal his burns, but if i keep wailing on him, I have a chance.

During this, though, he cut my forearm. Luckily, it is still attached, but it burns. I match it with a fist to his ribs. He slashed my side, and I went for a punch to his cheek. He fires at my leg, and I slam the shield right into his strong jawline.

We returned blow after blow, each taking a chunk out of the other. However, there was one difference. I could feel my energy drain and my mass dwindle while Crimson, on the other hand, kept getting faster. My plans of draining his energy feel futile. No matter how hard he gets hit, no matter how much Source he uses, he keeps going. This man sips at a fountain that never stops producing. An endless flow surged into him.

His smile screams maniac, but his eyes display his true emotion. Determination. I don’t know what drives Crimson. I remember his words earlier about his dream of being king. Could that really be what drives him? The ambition of power to go to the lengths of murdering a child for a crocked man, to endure all this pain, continues. He is a man; his fountain will dry, but with this level of determination, we don’t know when.

My goal wasn’t to win but to hold his attention. During this barrage of blows, I saw Emanuel run down the hall in the opposite direction. Perfect. Now I have to wait for the signal.

Crimson’s speed soon outpaces mine as he would get three on me for every blow I would land. If I hadn’t had this shield, he would have sliced me up as I blocked a few hits. Then he stabs the shield right through the metal. The blade is centimeters from my stomach. He pushes forward until my back slams onto the metal garage door. He pulls the blade out once more and stabs with great force. I block it with the shield, but it makes a new hole in Emanuel’s family heirloom.

With one strong push, the blade pierced my shoulder. The heat is intense, and I can feel my slime bubble up.

“I will give you props, false god, " he says, staring into my eyes. “Never have I met anyone who can take damage like me.”

His blade starts to move down my shoulder and drag across my chest. My vision blurs as my form becomes unstable. All I can think is, “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.” These are simple thoughts, but it was a pain that would bring you back to your infancy.

“I am going to miss this. I know we just met, but you left a real impact on me. One I will take with me after I kill you. Hey, maybe you are a god because your boiling ooze reached a soul like me.” He grins.

I grab his hand with a multitude of arms flying out of my body. This didn’t stop him; all it did was slow him down. I look into his eyes, and his face is coated in bloodlust. He claims he wants to be a god, but I can recognize what he really is. He's a human on the path to becoming a devil.

Then I see it. A stream of blood went down his face from a scratch I had made earlier. The blood pours as the wound remains open. The burns on him stopped healing. I think my plan is working.

“Shut… up.” I spit back at him.

“No funny joke?” He laughs back at me. “Here I was thinking you were the god of jokes.”

“I… would…love… to be that.”

The blade is halfway through my chest. I may not know the biology of my body or how everything works, but I have never been more grateful that I don’t have vital organs. There must have been a hundred times I would have died during this fight if it wasn’t for me. By the look he is flashing, he is downright gleeful that the fight is still going on.

Then I hear it from outside. Even though he is shouting, Emmanuel sounds like a whisper from inside the mansion.

“Lo-caw! Lo-caw!” Emanuel gives the worst Burvuan Fethered Flyer impression I ever heard. Granted, I had never heard a Burvuan Feathered Flyer before, but he literally said the words Caw Caw.

“Was that Burvuan Fethered Flyer? Out here?”

It was then that I realized Emanuel is amazing at animal impressions, and it will be a talent I utilize. What matters more is that this abuse can end.

My focus now shifts from buying time to getting out. With his attention split, I push on the shield. Crimson stumbles back, setting up my next attack.

I need to create distance between us, so prepare a last-ditch plan that only someone near death is as a genius, desperate, DESPERATE person would do. I add slime to my left arm, where my shield is attached, and crystalize it in the shape of a bow. I don’t fully harden the slime forming the string, just enough to give it a pull. The shield lays on the bow attached to the string.

My right arm splits into four arms. The migration of slime to my arms made my body thinner and shorter. All four hands grab the shield, and I pull back as hard as possible, with my eyes on Crimson.

I harden the slime of my arms to give them more strength. The areas you would consider my elbow fire out slime threads at the metal door behind me. The threads pull more of my arms back, pulling on the bow string.

Crimson charges at me, and I let go of the string. With all the force of my pulling back and the fact that the string is a part of me, so I give it an extra force, the shield fires from my bow with the force of a bullet.

The pointed end of the shield pierces Crimson, sending him flying down the hall and impales him on the living room wall. His screams echo in the house, as they are of pain but more so frustration. The blade drops like a running faucet from where he is insoles, but he isn't focused on the pain; instead, he is trying to free himself.

I dropped my form and slithered under the door, not without paying the price of losing a leg's worth of slime hardening and getting stuck under the door, though the crystalized goo reinforced it.

The pain was immense as my vision blurred, but I couldn’t stop. I went through the pantry door again. I expect him to be stuck on the wall, but the shield is on the living room floor, in a pile of blood. I turned to see Crimson focused on cutting the last hinge of the door like we wanted him to.

I reach down, careful not to make noise, and pick off the shield. It’s heavier than before, as my strength and half my slime are gone. I placed it on my back and let the slime wrap around it like threads.   I booked it at the front door, no longer in my humanoid, an oval, but taking on an oval, slug-like shape.

Emanuel could tell by the way Crimson fought them that if it came to a foot race, he would beat us to his vehicle, easy. So we came up with the plan that Emmanuel would sneak off on his own in search of Crimson’s vehicle. When he did, he would alert me by making the distinct, ugly call of the Burvuan Fethered Flyer.

My fight bought Emanuel the time he needed to escape and search for the bike, at the risk I could die. At least it meant I was able to help someone. I don’t mind dying. Scratch that I DO MIND!

I forged past the pain that pierced every cell, past the logic proclaiming me to give up, past the exhaustion begging me to stop. I moved through the house. No need to be silent anymore. Crimson is hyper-focused on getting through that door with the electricity piercing his body and fueled by the rage of me escaping twice.

I made it outside when an intense wave of heat hit my body. Wooden floorboards and charred pieces of clothes I could never afford hit the sky like balls of sapphire flames. The shockwave of the mansion's explosion flung me across the yard and past the fence.

Emanuel’s plan worked. Using the wire and green crystal Crimson set up to explode the ceiling, he tied a trap to trigger as soon as the door opened or what I assumed fell. To add more heat, Emanuel shove the green crystal into the fuel tank of the Solar Sail.

I crawled forward as the fire surrounded the lawn. No longer in my form, it was a slithering puddle no bigger than a basketball. My vision was getting darker, and my hearing was fading. Embers hit my body, burning the slime, and the shield covered me from most of the blast.

“No! CID stay with me!” I hear Emanuel’s muffled words call to me. “I can’t lose you! Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone!”

Darkened eclipse me as I sift away.