Judge hurled his sword, his skin cracked a little more as he created another pocket. Pain creeping through the bloodless wounds.
The monster's head jerked. Instinctively, it blocked with its blade. But a sudden explosion blinded it, weak but effective.
Judge, with the last of the ether he could scrape, lunged.
His legs barely worked. His arm screamed in agony. But he closed the distance and, with a howl of effort, drove a makeshift bone dagger, forged from scavenged scraps and sharpened against stone, into the core embedded in its chest, another blast of ether exploding on the blade's tip and inside of its chest.
The reaction was instant.
The monster shrieked, an inhuman, echoing sound that made the flux itself vibrate. Its body convulsed. Ether unraveled in spirals, violent and chaotic. It exploded outward, and Judge was caught in the blast.
