Chapter 69: Quest’s End

She could not breathe.

Lexi stood, completely frozen in place, unable to do anything but watch in horror as her first follower, her best friend, her lover was quite literally torn to pieces before her eyes. Gretel’s death — for there was not even the most remote possibility that the mage could have survived being bitten and ripped in half — locked the paladin into a paralytic torpor, every muscle in her body fixed solidly in place as her mind struggled to wrap itself around the shape of this awful new reality.

... Gretel is dead...

Like a ping pong ball, the collection of words bounced around inside of Lexi’s mind. However, in her state of extreme shock, the words bore no meaning. They were null pointers, referencing no semantically valid objects within her consciousness. The paladin’s vision began to fade, growing dim and black around the edges, as she still did not draw a single breath. A system alert popped into her now hazy peripheral, but the content did not penetrate through the paralysis to reach Lexi’s understanding.

A shrill feminine scream penetrated faintly into the fog threatening to completely overwhelm Lexi. At first she could not place it. It could not be Gretel, because she ... was dead. So, what could it be? Did it even matter? Did anything matter now?

It was only when Lexi was physically jostled by a small burry figure that her body inadvertently gasped for a breath. Vivid color and animated motion bloomed back into her field of vision, and her ears were filled with the roaring cacophony of sounds resulting from the continued battle that raged all around Lexi. She watched mutely as Danica, still shrieking madly, fired off two more arrows at the tentacled monstrosity. Both shots found their marks easily, feathered shafts thudding hard into the creature’s pendulous left breast, to penetrate deep into its chest cavity.

“Gruahhh!” the creature bellowed, the overwhelming force of which actually shook Lexi, the sound waves produced by the enormous creature vibrating sensation back into her body, bringing her mind more fully into awareness of the situation still developing around her. The constant and continued blood loss was not helping things either. For every inch of conscious volition that crept back into the paladin, a near equal amount of vitality literally flowed out in a red river of blood from the gaping and shredded ruin of her right shoulder.

“Kyaaa!” came a deep voiced shout from just beside Lexi, shocking her almost fully back into herself.

Samantha’s huge form, bronze muscles rippling with exertion, flew past Lexi, as the monk quickly closed the gap between herself and the creature. Taking advantage of the momentary confusion created by Danica’s expertly placed shots, Samantha leaped in, delivering a brutal flying elbow directly to the side of the engorged beast’s head. So powerful was Samantha’s elbow, that Lexi heard the skull of the monster actually crack from the blow. This finally managed to stir something within the paladin. Although the only thing she really wanted to do in that moment was to lay back and join her lover in the embrace of death that was wrapping its arms around her more steadily with every spurt of lost blood from her wound, Lexi staggered to her feet.

“Fuck what I want,” she said to herself, fury and rage slowly filling the void that had been her mind. “Gretel wanted us — wanted me — to live. If we don’t finish this, then she fucking died for nothing.”

And I’m running out of time!

Sublimating the pain and debilitating weakness that practically defined her current existence, Lexi struggled to her feet. Off balance from both the massive blood loss — to say nothing of the missing arm — she staggered, just barely able to keep from toppling back down at first. The paladin closed her eyes, took a single deep breath, and found her center. Channeling every ounce of strength remaining within her wrecked body, Lexi sprinted forward towards the engorged monstrosity that had murdered Gretel.

“Die, you murdering bitch!” the paladin yelled, so fiercely that her throat was almost instantly hoarse and raw.

If the creature heard Lexi, it made no indication. Letting the lower half of Gretel’s body fall to the floor, it held her severed torso above its head, mouth open wide to drink the rain of blood and offal pouring out of the dead mage’s eviscerated guts. So occupied, Lexi, even in her injured state, was able to reach the hilt of her sword unimpeded. The paladin wrapped her remaining hand around the hilt and twisted her body in a full three-hundred and sixty degree circle. Pulling the blade free from its place lodged in the gigantic goblin’s stomach, she sent it flying in a huge diagonal arc, only to have the blade cut deep into the creature’s neck — embedding itself in the spine.

“Gluarg!” the engorged goblin gurgled, as enormous volumes of blood poured both from its mouth and the now gaping wound in the side of its neck.

It dropped the upper half of Gretel’s body to the ground with a sickening squishing sound that snapped whatever self-control Lexi might have had remaining. Letting go of her sword entirely, Lexi dove forward, colliding with the monster’s beach ball-sized head. The paladin clenched her steel-shod fist, and punched out straight into the pupil of its enormous eye. Her gauntlet easily penetrated the thin cornea, plunging her fist deep into the vitreous fluid that filled the nearly foot-wide eye’s cavity. Further yet, the enraged paladin’s cold steel hand dove, punching out the back eyeball — burying her fist deep into the creature’s brain, while her own arm sank down into the wreck of its eye socket far past the elbow.

This was not enough for Lexi.

Sobbing and screaming hysterically, she yanked her fist out of the dying creature’s eye, spewing a mixture of bright red blood and gooey gray brain matter all over herself. And, as the creature fell back, the enraged paladin crouched atop the giant green head, slamming her fist into the destroyed socket, churning the goblin monstrosity’s brain into a stew of gore. All sense left Lexi. She cried uncontrollably, screaming out the wordless pain that gripped her soul as she pummeled the creature far past the brink of death. It was only when a pair of enormously strong bronze hands gripped her about the waist and pulled her bodily from atop the gory corpse that the red haze began to clear from Lexi’s sensorium.