'Wasn't survival the plan, genius? What happened, huh?'
Virt lay on the bloodied grass, pinned down by the ginormous Other, its hideous purple scales coated in a crimson liquid, as if it had sprouted more of its eerie eyes on its body. His breath, once heavy and ragged, now grew quick and shallow, like a fish out of water. The horrid creature's fangs gnawed away at the now invisible Light, shredding its thick layer with its now blood-red incisors.
His broken mind had long since grown silent, leaving behind nothing but the snarky remarks. Interestingly, Virt had not healed himself with his Saint powers, instead choosing to remain the broken and bloodied mess that he was.
No, it was not that he wouldn't, it was that he couldn't.
The usual green glow had surrounded him since he sustained his first injury, a rather stupid one at that–considering he tripped over his own bridge–but that had been healed by his powers.
The rat's long claws dug through the unreasonably thick Light barrier–yes, he decided to name his Light, Light.
Rolling to his side, Virt kicked off the bridge and rolled like a ragdoll backwards onto the tall grass on the other side of the creek. The rat, however, had both its claws and its teeth stuck onto the barrier.
Virt simply dismissed the bridge and barrier with a snap of his fingers, putting on a performance to the pleasure of absolutely noone, and let the disgusting thing drop into the river, hopefully drowning under its own weight.
'Goddamnit, what could have possibly led to that clusterfuck of a situation.'
Before the teeth, the blood, and that annoying ass voice that couldn't stop talking, Virt had a sole plan in mind.
Survive.
'Hah! So much for the plan.'
***
Ping! Crash! Boom!
The walls crumbled under the sieging force of the mighty monstrosity. Virt tripped–somehow–on a small bump on his uniform bridge, something he didn't even think was possible.
He lost his already slipping grip on his mind for a moment, when he fell and the world didn't wait for him to get back up. Eventually, a flicker of something wrong slipped through his cracked mind.
'Woah! It bent! How wonderful!'
'...'
He could hear the creatures breathing even from this distance away, and he could almost feel his heartbeat inching closer to him, the heat of its breath pushing him forward like a gust of wind unleashed by the Wind God, who had gone mad too.
He was pretty sure almost no God had managed to remain sane, other than he.
His own sanity was slowly slipping, though.
Still in his state of reverie, his raw survival instincts kicked in, picking himself off the smooth plastic-like texture of his bridge and surrounding himself with an emanating green glow. The small bruise he sustained dissolved almost instantly, leaving behind nothing–not even a blemish–on his knee.
However, it was too late. The creature pounced on him like a cat to a magnified spot of sunlight, its sharp claws digging into the soft flesh of Virt's thigh. It was then Virt noticed something weird, or the lack thereof.
That stupid voice was gone.
Manifesting a great wall of incandescent yellow, now almost perfectly white, in the short distance between himself and the creature, he forced it upwards, expanding his Zone into the third dimension. Of course, the searing pain of the Other's long, sharp nails being forcibly ripped from his appendage made itself known.
The only salvation was its sharpness, which had been a blessing, in this case, as it made it so much easier to pull out.
He then greatly increased the volume of the mystical matter separating the two bodies, which led him to his previous predicament of kicking off the bridge and rolling like a ragdoll onto the riverbank.
How fun!
***
'This is supposed to be the path to save her? Some fucking path. Great going, me.'
Limping on his uninjured leg, Virt's mind–now as turbulent as the river–raced to figure out his next plan, fast. After all, the sun had set upon this beautiful world, and the moon was almost showing its ethereal glow upon the dark forest, casting dancing shadows across the land.
'First, I need to wrap this damned leg, then, food, and water. Finally, shelter…preferably.'
He set down his backpack, leaning against his one functioning leg and relying on his balance to keep upright. He scoured the messy clutter of his supplies, chock full of stuff he had laying around in the barracks.
'Useless, useless, useless…Aha! Useless, useless, useless…'
Eventually, he scavenged a canteen from the depths of his pockets and approached a different part of the river, upstream, ensuring no new purple rodent could get the jump on him.
He took off his bloody tunic, dipping it into the pristine cold waters and polluting it with a crimson haze. He then lifted it above the water and twisted it as hard as he could.
He tried healing his leg again, but to no avail. Both his Saintly power and Priestly healing could not seem to mend the deep gash in his thigh, and so he had to just wrap the wound and pray it would not get infected.
He dipped his leg into the running river.
"MMMMMPH"
He muffled a scream, biting on his free hand–wary of any possible predators, both of the earthly and weird, otherworldly kind. He wrapped the wound as quickly as he could, applying as much pressure and tying as tight of a knot as possible–at least with what he could manage with his shaky fingers–to reduce blood loss.
'For fucks sake, why does mundane treatment gotta be so damn painful!'