Sprayed by molten metal

I punched out with the buckler, my other hand going to my wrist, to push against the wrist that bore my armguard and buckler, bracing it against the force of incoming heat and flame, that threatened to throw me from my perch.

The heat swelled, metal melted, and residual heat blasted my face and scalp, despite the fact that my shield, part of the thing's arm, both of my arms, and my hood were between the source of the heat and me.

The intense burning sensation hit a dizzying crescendo, then changed to something approximating cold. Like all sensation was gone. It felt like it took half of my consciousness with it.

I barely even heard the gunshot. I did hear the ringing silence after, dimly registering the fact the flame talon wasn't firing anymore, and instead hung limp, sparking.

Thanks Tattletale. I bet you're going to be smug about this.

I tried to slide partway down using thigh-strength alone, but the fire had damaged the thing's own arm, and I wasn't all there. I hit a stopping point and nearly fell from there, but found the wherewithal to slide down a bit more, to punch my arm in the general direction of the melted section of smooth white 'skin', jabbing the contents within with a buckler of glowing metal that easily bent and smeared globules of molten steel amid dense wires and filaments. They burned with an acrid smell.

I tried to slide down a bit more, and somewhere along the line, numb, I lost my grip.

The impact knocked the wind out of me. A blinding pain at my leg made me twist away, but it was the pain and blurry vision through eyes that might have been burned that informed me my shield and arm had come into contact with my knee.

*****

"Why did you go ahead?" Sveta asked. Asked me.

My throat felt impossibly dry. I'd inhaled air that was too hot, maybe. "Needed to distract," I said, intending to say 'it', and getting only a mouth movement with no air instead.

"You did that. You followed through," she said. "Gave us that opening we needed."

***

Too much of me was numb, and the rest of me felt like it was still on fire, the skin still bearing residual heat that hadn't faded. When I moved, most often involuntarily, I found myself in contact with grit, pushing it into the wounds. Every breath was a labor, and that labor was made worse by the fact the rest of my body was struggling too, offloading issues to body parts I needed to breathe. Gorge rose in my throat, interrupting a breath in process, and receded just as quickly, leaving only acid in a windpipe that had already been in a sorry fucking state. I coughed, and that made everything else hurt.

- From Within 16.9-16.10