You shake your head, now that the muscles necessary for such an action aren't mashed into paste, and focus on Ludwig. Djura and Steffon are doing a solid job of kiting it, as Djura's Gatling barrages give Steffon time to prime his own heavy ordinance. A cannonball crashes into the beast's second head, sending a spray of teeth and ocular giblets into the air. A milky fluid erupts in a spray from the ragged wound and you see the walls sizzle and sputter beneath it.
There's a joke there. You'll have to remember it once you've properly euthanized the bastard.
Rather than abandon its charge at Djura, however, Ludwig launches a brutal hip check that demolishes a sizable chunk of masonry. Though Djura dives out of the way, he winds up stumbling under the falling debris. His situation awareness fails him and, in his haste to get away, he winds up dangerously near his pupil/external voice of reason. The beast rebounds from the wall and shrugs off an arrow just inches from its eye to launch itself at them, its colossal form more than enough to blanket them both.
Its vertical leap defies reason; anything underneath it when it lands is leaving in a bucket. As impressive as its Air Jordan moment is, however, it gives you plenty of time to determine its landing spot. You don't have enough time for a proper incantation, but you do have your favorite four-letter word.
Ludwig crashes down in a peal of thunder. You can see Steffon careening out of the way, but don't see Djura until you look underneath the beast. Rather than dodge, it looks like the old bastard met it on the way down with a Stake Driver shot. Viscera pours over him in irregular spurts from the wound in its belly, and as he staggers out from beneath it, you see that his right arm is, in medical terms, completely fucked.
The fading roar of its impact and the lingering boom of Djura's shot are bolstered by your bellowing "
AMEN!" Ludwig doesn't have time to reorient itself or finish Djura off before a swarm of nails and pages buffet it. Its many limbs flail to no effect as the Word settles over it and, in a blinding burst, flares to life.
You can see the barrier warp and deform from the creature's thrashing, but it doesn't need to hold long. You load your freshly-regenerated hands with bayonets and let fly.
There's a sound like a cow getting thrown into a cutlery emporium as your blades meet the wall of flesh, digging down to the handles. Its many legs visibly buckle and it's forced to support itself with one of its hands while the other frantically attempts to pull its new piercings free. Your companions seize the advantage, Steffon dragging the injured Djura to safety and Simon launching arrows into its fresh new wounds.
Ludwig's losing a huge amount of blood at this point and it's not doing itself any favors by yanking the bayonets free. You know its monstrous strength could be enough to break your ward, but it's so desperate to remove the pain that it can't even thrash properly.
Before you can stop yourself, you wonder if the fight is over.
In a smooth motion grossly at odds with its current panic, the beast reaches over its shoulder and pulls its sword free. The luminescent blade, a brilliant green, seems at once insubstantial and impossibly heavy in its gnarled hand. With a grunt rather than a roar, it swings as best it can within your ward's burning confines and rends the barrier asunder.
The pages fall lifelessly to the floor, quickly lost amid the blood, and Ludwig takes powerful breaths. It looks around, seemingly as bewildered as you, before finally noticing the weapon in its hands.
"Aah," he says in a voice so unlike his prior screeching that you're almost certain he's got a backup throat in there somewhere, "you were at my side, all along."
You get the sense that you have an opportunity to finish this in front of you, but what kind of hypocrite would you be if you interrupted his monologue?
He raises the great blade into the air, its light painting the gore-soaked room a sickly green. "My true mentor. My guiding moonlight."
Rather than his usual slouch, he's gone full centaur, humanoid torso standing tall atop his ravaged form. Though his wounds continue to spill blood and other things that shouldn't be on the outside, there's a sense of serenity and poise in his features. You've got one of the greatest swordsmen to ever live standing in front of you, only he's twenty times bigger and stronger than he used to be. Have fun.
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