The first beast hit him before he could raise the axe.
It came low, jaws snapping around his calf, and the pain that followed was deep. Cassius screamed.
Not a roar, not a battle cry. A raw, ugly scream that tore itself from his throat before he could stop it.
He swung anyway.
The axe carved wide, too wide, desperation robbing him of any precision. It caught nothing but air, and the weight of the miss dragged him sideways. He stumbled, off-balance, overcorrected and the blade snagged on a low branch above him with a hollow crack. The impact shuddered up through his wrists. He grabbed for the handle but his fingers were slick, couldn't close properly.
The axe fell from the branch.
The second beast lunged from his right. Cassius twisted back on pure instinct, felt the rush of its breath graze his cheek as it missed by a small margin.
He drove his foot into the first dog's ribs, the one still clamped on his leg, felt something give under the kick. It released with a snarl, skittering sideways into the sand.
He took one step back.
His heel caught a root.
The ground took him.
He hit hard, shoulder first, the impact rattling through every bruised muscle he had. Before he could register it, one of the beasts was on him.
Jaws dropped open, driving toward his throat. Cassius got his forearms up across his neck in the nick of time. The bite closed on bone and flesh instead. He felt the skin split, felt the pressure build like something about to snap, and a breathles scream escaped his throat.
Then the second jaw found his side.
Found the wound.
The sound that left him wasn't a scream. It was something worse. Lower. A sound that didn't belong to a human at all.
It clamped down and twisted, and white filled the edges of his vision. He couldn't think. There was no thinking. There was only the sensation of being taken apart.
He threw them away.
He didn't know how. His arms just moved, buying him seconds. He used them to run.
His leg nearly buckled with the first stride. He ignored it. He wanted to run with everything he had left.
The third beast came from ahead.
It materialized from between two trunks — pale, low-slung, already mid-lunge — and Cassius barely had time to throw his hands out before it hit him in the chest. He caught it, shoved, managed to redirect its weight enough that it scraped past, but the impact spun him around.
He got his bearings just long enough to find a tree at his back and the three beasts fanning out in front of him.
No axe. No space. No direction that wasn't teeth.
Two of them moved at once.
They took his wrists.
The force of it dropped him to one knee, both animals pulling in opposite directions, jaws locked and grinding, his arms wrenched out to either side. He tried to wrench free. Couldn't. Tried again. The grip only tightened, tendons in his wrists burning with the strain.
The third beast watched him for a moment.
Then it lunged forward and bit into his stomach.
The pain was extraordinary. Beyond anything the fight had given him yet. It clamped down and then it rotated — twisting its whole body in one violent, wrenching motion, the way a predator separates meat from bone. Something tore. Cassius felt the deep pull of it, he understood that if he did nothing, there would be nothing left to save.
He stopped fighting his arms.
He looked at the dog, at his exposed stomach.
And he bit into it.
He lunged his head down and closed his teeth into the belly. The beast made a sound he'd never heard an animal make before. A high, thin whimper of total confusion. Their grip loosened.
That was all he needed.
He wrenched his arms inward, feeling the jaws tighten once more. Before either beast could reset, he drove both thumbs into the soft and hollow throat of the third dog. It gagged, convulsed, legs scrambling at the sand. He didn't stop. He pushed his thumbs deeper, found the resistance of tissue and pushed through it.
Then Cassius grited his teatch even harder and with one solid pull he tore opened its stomach.
Warm guts spilled on the ground.
Only then did that beast release his stomach.
He saw the axe.
It was half-buried at the base of the tree where he'd lost it. Blade face up, catching the rusted light.
He grabbed the still clamped dog and drove it down into the blade
The crunch was brief. The grip was not.
He had to wrench the animal sideways before the jaw finally went slack. The axe stayed buried in the thing's ribcage, wedged deep in bone.
His right wrist was still caught. The last beast had locked on and it was holding not attacking, just holding, like it understood something had gone wrong and was waiting to figure out what.
Cassius drove two fingers into its eye socket. It didn't let go.
He grabbed it by the scruff, heaved it off the ground, and swung it into the tree trunk. It hit with a dense, wooden sound. Then again. The tree shuddered. The dog did not release.
He punched the side of its skull, right at the ear. Nothing. Punched it again.
Then he bit its nose.
Hard.
The dog let go instantly — a reflexive, total release — and in the half-second of shock that followed, Cassius shifted his grip to its throat. Fingers found the windpipe. He squeezed, felt the animal convulse, and with one hand scrabbled for the bone shiv on the ground.
He didn't count the strikes. He stopped when the body beneath him stopped moving — when the kicking became twitching became stillness. His hand kept moving for a moment after. Then it didn't.
Silence.
He stayed where he was, kneeling in the sand, chest heaving, the shiv still in his fist. Blood — his, theirs, the distinction had stopped mattering — darkened the ground around him.
His stomach hurt in a way that made him not want to look down.
He looked anyway.
The wound was bad. Worse than the one from before.
He glanced at the half eaten goblin corpse.
He exhaled through his teeth, slow and deliberate.
He was dragging himself towards that island.
"..live.."
He muttered weakly
There was nothing else to say.
He was still here. That was the whole of it.
Every other thought could wait.