I fell to the ground because of some damn tree's damn roots.
My body hit the scorched earth hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs. Pain shot through my shoulder and hip, but I had no time to even curse properly as I looked up and saw a dog—all three of its mouths open wide, strings of saliva connecting serrated teeth—coming straight towards me for a headshot.
Or head-bite?
Time seemed to slow, the way it does when your brain realizes you're about to die and decides to make you watch every agonizing detail.
Many thoughts and plans ran through my mind in an instant. Roll left—dead. Roll right—dead. Try to get up—definitely dead. Kick at it—maybe delay death by two seconds. The one plan I'd been thinking about ever since the peace talks were so rudely declined was probably the most effective one.
But I was hesitating.
Because in this plan, it was going to hurt. A lot.
In all my other options, there were only two outcomes: die painlessly, or die gruesomely without even my body intact. Maybe the Duke would get a nice urn with "Here lies some bits of Rishi" engraved on it.
But in this plan? Survive, maybe. But painfully. Very, very painfully.
I had no mood to debate with myself about which option was philosophically superior, so I instinctively chose the plan that had even the tiniest ray of hope.
When the dog's mouths were mere inches from my face—close enough that I could count its teeth and smell its rancid breath—I thrust my left hand forward.
Right into its center mouth.
The jaws clamped down.
CRUNCH.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
I screamed as loudly as I could, the sound tearing from my throat with such force that I tasted blood. The pain was indescribable—like my hand had been thrust into a bear trap made of molten steel and broken glass. I felt teeth punch through flesh, scrape against bone.
The hound's center head thrashed, trying to rip my arm off, while its left and right heads snapped at my face and shoulder. Hot blood—my blood—poured down my forearm, steaming where it hit the blackened ground.
But that was the plan.
While the beast was focused on destroying my hand, I used every ounce of strength in my already half-dead arm—strength born of desperation and the enhancements of this new body—and lifted it.
The hound's eyes widened in shock as I raised it off the ground, using its own grip on my hand as leverage. Its body came up, up, twisting in the air, and suddenly its neck was exposed—a strip of vulnerable flesh beneath the thick fur.
My right hand was already moving, reaching for the spatial storage bracelet.
A kitchen knife materialized in my grip—not a proper weapon, just a pointed blade I'd stored away for cutting rations. But right now, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
I stabbed upward with every bit of strength I had left.
The blade sank into the hound's throat.
I was surprised by how easily it penetrated—sliding through fur and flesh like it was butter rather than monster hide. Maybe because it was still juvenile. Maybe because I was high on adrenaline and fear and the particular brand of insanity that comes from having your hand inside a dog's mouth. Maybe both.
The hound's three heads made a strangled, gurgling sound. Its jaws went slack, releasing my mangled hand.
I twisted the knife and pulled it sideways, opening the wound further. Dark blood—almost black, like its mother's—gushed out in a hot spray that covered my face and chest.
The beast collapsed on top of me, twitching.
I shoved it off with a grunt, my bloodied hand screaming in protest.
The other dogs had frozen, shock written across their monstrous faces. Their pack mate—one of their siblings—lay dead at my feet, its blood pooling around my boots. For a moment, just a moment, they stared at the corpse as if unable to process what had happened.
One action does not decide the reaction. Many other factors are involved in getting the outcome. But just one action starts a chain reaction toward that outcome.
But I had no time to discuss philosophy.
I didn't waste the opportunity.
I quickly pulled my bloodied hand from the beast's mouth—the hand that now looked like minced meat, blood gushing out like a fountain, skin hanging in strips. But my fingers could still move. Barely. The noble clothing must have had some protective enchantments woven into the fabric, or maybe the dog simply hadn't had proper time to enjoy its delicacy.
Either way, I could still use it.
I grabbed the dead hound by its tail—the body was heavy, easily sixty or seventy pounds—and with a roar of effort, I threw it.
The corpse sailed through the air and slammed directly into the face of the dog closest to me.
The scarred one. The pack's supposed leader.
I hadn't been completely focused on escaping during our chase. Yes, escape would be nice—wonderful, even—but I'd also been observing. Calculating and Planning.
The scarred one was the oldest among them, which was why they all followed him. He was the strongest, the smartest, the most dangerous. He was currently the only one in the pack who could breathe fire from his mouth—not as powerful or as quickly as the mother hound, but he could do it. He'd even tried to light me like a candle during our short cat-and-mouse chase through the crimson trees.
That made him priority number one.
I'd thrown the corpse at his middle face—the one that breathed fire—and was already running toward him before the body even made contact.
The scarred leader snarled, shoving his dead pack mate aside with his left head. His middle head reared back, throat glowing orange as flames built inside.
I was three steps away.
Two steps.
One.
Fire erupted from his mouth just as I dropped into a slide—my body moving on pure instinct beneath the gout of flames. The heat singed my hair and I felt my eyebrows crisp, but I was under it.
My momentum carried me between his front legs, and I came up behind him, the kitchen knife already swinging in a wide arc.
The blade caught him across the back left leg. Not deep, but enough to make him stumble.
He spun, faster than something his size should be able to move, all three heads snapping at me from different angles. I ducked under the left, rolled away from the right, but the middle head caught my shoulder—teeth punching through the enchanted fabric and into flesh.
I screamed and stabbed blindly upward.
The knife found something soft. An eye, maybe, or the inside of a mouth. The head released me with a yelp of pain.
We circled each other, both bleeding, both exhausted. His right head was bleeding from the mouth, the middle head kept blinking with one eye sealed shut and weeping dark fluid, and the left head wheezed from where I'd caught him in the throat.
I wasn't much better. My left hand was destroyed, my shoulder bleeding freely, and I was pretty sure I'd cracked a rib when I fell.
But I was still standing.
And I was angry.
The scarred leader lunged, all three heads coordinating for a killing strike. I saw it coming and instead of dodging backward like he expected, doing same move which caught mother hound off-guard, I lunged forward .
Right into the attack.
The left and right heads snapped shut on empty air. But I was already inside their reach, too close for them to adjust. My working hand grabbed a fistful of matted fur at his neck, and I pulled myself up onto his back like some kind of deranged rodeo rider.
His middle head—the one with the ruined eye—twisted around, trying to reach me.
I drove the kitchen knife down through the base of his skull.
The blade went in up to the hilt.
The scarred leader bucked once, twice, then collapsed, his legs giving out beneath him. All three heads hit the ground simultaneously, their yellow eyes dimming to nothing.
I fell off his back, landing hard on my ass. My vision was swimming, black spots dancing at the edges.
But I wasn't done yet.
The other hounds were closing in, their shock wearing off, replaced by pure rage at seeing their leader fall.
I grabbed the scarred one's middle head—the one that had breathed fire, the one I'd stabbed through the skull—and with my one good hand and a lot of desperate sawing with the kitchen knife, I cut it off.
The blade was dulling, the work messy and gruesome. Blood soaked my arms up to the elbows. But finally, finally, the head came free.
I stood on shaking legs and held it high, my own blood and the hound's blood mixing together and dripping down my arm.
And I roared.
The sound that came out of me wasn't human. It was pure rage, frustration, pain, and the particular insanity of someone who'd already died once and refused to do it again. It echoed through the twisted forest, making the crimson trees shudder and sending ash falling from their branches like snow.
"IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?!" I screamed at the darkness where my instructor had disappeared, at the hellish forest, at the universe itself. "IS THIS ENTERTAINING ENOUGH FOR YOU?!"
The shout rattled something loose in my chest, and I coughed, tasting copper.
I came back to my senses slowly, the red haze of battle-rage clearing from my vision.
The other hounds had flinched back, their yellow eyes wide. Seeing me completely covered in blood—both mine and their kin's—screaming like a beast with their scarred leader's severed head in my hand had apparently given them pause.
Some looked uncertain. Others looked terrified.
Good.
I met their eyes, one by one, and saw the exact moment they reconsidered their revenge plan.
I threw the head aside. It landed with a wet thump in the ash.
"Who's next?" I asked, my voice hoarse and cracking but still defiant.
Nobody moved.
Then, from somewhere in the pack, a smaller hound—one that had been hanging at the back—whimpered and took a step backward.
That broke the spell.
Seeing this opportunity, I turned and started running again. Because while I might have killed their leader and put on a good show, they were still too much for me. Just fighting two had left me half-dead, bleeding from multiple wounds, with one hand that was more liability than asset.
And there were still a dozen left.
My legs pumped, carrying me forward through the twisted landscape. Behind me, I heard the moment the pack shook off their fear.
Bhauu! Bhauu!
They came after me, more furious than before, their barks echoing with renewed hatred.
I'd killed their mother. Then I'd killed two of their pack mates. Including their leader.
They weren't going to stop until I was dead.
Or until I reached whatever safety lay ahead in that clearing I could see in the distance.