Scarlet

I make a mental call to my blood shadow to return, making it immediately back away before another blow can reach it, parts of the blood making up its body dripping away past the shadows. It then begins rushing over towards me as I lower my hand, sending nearly a dozen daggers of blood each a third of a meter in length towards the fomorians. And after one initially sticks itself into the steam emitting fomorian’s shoulder making it raise its head, another stabs straight into its eye, killing the thing in an instant and giving me another stack of blood thirst as it topples over backwards and makes a thud on the ground.

The extra stack of blood thirst increases my regeneration speed, although not by much as I watch one of the fomorians finally rip its blade out of the ground and swing it, knocking aside my blood daggers. Meanwhile the one that was previously fighting my blood shadow simply raises its rather wide sword to block the daggers without much trouble.

My eyes narrow, but right when I begin to summon more daggers of blood to keep them occupied for the moment, a message plays in my head.

[Skill ‘Blood Regeneration’ has leveled up to level 6.]

Then the healing speed of my stomach wound begins to pick up the pace a bit, making me grin a little through the pain.

I glance up to find Tar flying high in the air, taking one of the remaining two fomorian’s attention off of me as it tries to raise its sword to swat at him like a fly, only to fail miserably every time.

Didn’t you say the king forbid fae from harming demons or humans? Won’t you get in trouble for fighting the demons personally?

“I never said the king forbid it! I said the royal family did!” he shouts while flying around to dodge a sword strike. “And the royal family doesn’t have any power on me as it’s my own family!”

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

“Focus on the last one!” he shouts, and I nod while turning my attention to the other fomorian who is now beginning to walk towards me and the blood shadow. But its walk slowly picks up the pace and turns into a charge. Then it raises its sword to strike right when it’s near me, only for me to duck and roll out of the way, making its strike directly hit the barrier that lets off a loud shrieking sound that hurts my ears and seemingly stuns the other fomorian as well. And for some reason, it seems to motivate the acolyte past its fear into entering the room finally, startling me when it raises its staff and sends another fireball straight at me. But fortunately, it doesn’t directly hit me. Instead exploding nearly a meter away and making me take part of the blast in my back when I try to dodge out of the way too slowly.

I let out a cry of pain as I feel the burn rip through large parts of my jacket and shirt, burning into my upper left back and shoulder, but I continue to push through the pain and climb back to my feet albeit on wobbly legs, tears leaking down my eyes in the process.

“Are you okay?!” Tar asks, his voice thundering in my head that’s already feeling shitty from the barrier being struck.

No. I’m not okay.

Another message about a blood thirst stack echoes in my head.

Okay, maybe I’m a bit more okay than I thought.

While holding both my stomach wound and my head, I glance at the shield to find the fomorian lying there dead. So I order my blood shadow to rush over and distract the acolyte who seems to be backing up a bit while it waits for whatever cooldown its fireball skill has.

My blood shadow rushes over in the direction of the acolyte and the remaining fomorian who seems to have finally gotten sick of swinging its sword around at Tar and is focusing on me again.

The fomorian begins slowly walking over to me with its sword rising up into the air, meanwhile the blood shadow begins tearing into the acolyte who is practically helpless without its magic or fomorians to guard it. Then the acolyte shouts, “Help!”

A wave of relief floods through me as I see the fomorian halt in place with its sword still raised, me not able to move as I fall to one knee, the pain growing too severe and the blood loss making me extremely lightheaded – too much so to remain standing. The fomorian then lowers its sword and turns around to charge straight at my blood shadow.

I create several more blood daggers and send them flying at both the fomorian – who seems to have written me off as dead or unable to fight – and the acolyte. Two of the daggers immediately get jammed into the fomorians neck, whereas the other four daggers fly straight towards the acolyte, digging into various parts of its body and making it collapse as well, letting my blood shadow quickly finish it off.

And one to go…

The remaining fomorian lets out a loud roar while rearing back both of its shoulders and spreading its arms out before the creature suddenly turns around and charges right at me, my eyes going wide open in the process.

Shit.

Right as I see the blade swinging down towards me, I use blood retribution and blood diffusion as a last resort. But the blade continues flying straight towards my neck in a horizontal sweep, so even if retribution does kill the thing, I’ll probably still die from the blow. Not to mention blood diffusion which isn’t a shield. All it does is disperse the attack to my blood if the attack isn’t too powerful. Like this one most likely will be.

Damnit, after all that hard work… I’m just gonna die to a lowly fomorian?

I almost close my eyes, but I decide to instead harden myself against it and keep them open, glaring at the fomorian until the blow lands.

However, at the last moment before the blade hits me, a tanuki flies through the air and slams into the thing’s arm, sending the blade off course to instead enter my side, digging all the way to the center of my chest after blatantly ignoring the blood diffusion barrier.

Straight through one of my hearts instead of my neck.

I cough out a mouthful of blood, losing any grip I had on sitting upright as I see a massive amount of red steam floating off of the fomorian amidst its own death cry. But everything begins to go fuzzy as I find myself falling over onto my side, massive amounts of my remaining blood pouring out from the wound.

It is the end after all.

“S-orry-” I try to say out loud to Tar, only to cough out more blood instead. So I just continue it in my head.

Sorry pal, but it looks like this is it.

“This again?!” Tar shouts while landing on the ground in front of me and lightly slapping me with his paw. “Don’t you dare close your eyes! We just need you to get over to a window! Now!”

I feel the little ball of fur trying to drag me by my wolf ear, which tickles a little at his touch but otherwise doesn’t really register much through the pain. And he doesn’t exactly have the strength to pull me either, so…

Ya know? Even if you hide secrets from me all the time… I’m still glad you were my partner.

Thank you, Tar.

Then everything goes dark.