Bab 39: Toxin
Morne's fingers curled around one of them, gripping it so that the point poked out of the side of his hand, and stabbed forward with it just as the Saxunt Lizard reared its head back around.
Morne afforded the beast no mercy, aiming right for its eye. The bone sunk into the soft tissue of its one good eye, blinding it and sending it into a wrathful confusion.
Its shrieks of pain soon became sounds of fury as it opened its maw wide and snapped toward Morne, intending to pay back this injury a hundredfold.
While before it hadn't used its claws because it wanted to taste Morne's flesh, now it forgot to do so out of sheer anger.
Morne grimaced as the hot breath of the Saxunt Lizard blasted his face as the beast roared, but wasn't distracted from his task.
The Saxunt Lizard roared again and lunged for his face, but Morne held it back, both hands on its snout.
The Saxunt Lizard's jaw clamped shut like a steel trap less than an inch away from his nose, opening and closing like clockwork as it sought to kill the human that had injured it so.
As he held the Saxunt Lizard back, Morne's mind raced as he tried to think of a way out of this.
Out of desperation, he tried Withering Touch, even though he knew it likely wouldn't work. He could only end it seconds later when his theory was confirmed.
'What now?' he thought, still holding the creature at bay.
He could feel his chest becoming heavier, every breath a chore, and his right arm was already to the point where he couldn't extend it fully anymore. The effort had also cracked open the scabs on his arms, though no blood came from them.
They had already healed to the point where there was whole, if raw, flesh below them. The stale air in the arena stung the exposed flesh, but it was preferable to losing blood.
The beast took yet another bite at him, and Morne felt his arm nearly give out.
But at that moment, when the beast reared its head back to gather momentum, Morne's eyes landed on its throat, still torn and ragged from when the lizard had escaped from the dirt wall of the arena.
But the injury itself wasn't what caught his attention. Or rather, the fact that it was there didn't. He already knew that sharp objects would go through its scales.
No, what Morne was focused on was something different, something so unnoticeable that it was no wonder he hadn't spotted it before.
The wound didn't bleed. Just like the gashes on his arm and chest.
His eyes darted to the broken tooth in the Saxunt Lizard's open mouth, and the blueish saliva dripping down from it. Then his mind went to the missing piece, lying on the floor somewhere twenty feet behind the lizard.
His eyes widened, and he suddenly realized that the beast's attacks were more wooden than they had been mere seconds ago. It was a slight difference, but now that he had noticed it, there was no unseeing it.
The Saxunt Lizard wasn't immune to its own toxin!
This was a little-known fact of the Saxunt Lizard, partially because of how rare a situation where the Saxunt Lizard would be affected was so rare.
Saxunt Lizards were cannibals, and regularly killed and ate other members of their species in territorial disputes. So by necessity, their toxin had to work on Saxunt Lizards or else they'd lose their strongest asset.
It was important to note that while the lizards were vulnerable to the toxin when it entered their bloodstream, they were perfectly capable of digesting it without issues, or else their own saliva – and their meal – would kill them.
The Saxunt Lizard also had a sense of self-preservation, which was why seeing a Saxunt Lizard inject themselves with their own toxin was so rare. In the same way a human couldn't bite off their thumb without their brain instinctively pulling its punches, a Saxunt Lizard would usually be unable to pierce their own scales.
The keyword here was "usually." Because, like every rule, there was an exception.
Whenever one's life was in danger or they felt extreme emotions, their brain's inhibitions would be lowered or removed altogether. The brain would place life over a limb or even revenge over life, and the latter was what the Saxunt Lizard had experienced.
Morne knew none of these facts, but he did know one thing.
A hopeless situation had just become a winnable one.
With another great heave, he threw off the Saxunt Lizard, scrabbled to his feet, and dashed toward the center of the arena, casting about wildly for the discarded tooth.
The beast's roars shook the air and rattled the glass that the audience sat behind, and it charged blindly toward the center, where Morne just so happened to be heading.
For once, Morne was glad that its back half was clad in stone, and that it could only release that stone for a few seconds, as it allowed him to find the tooth with time to spare.
He scooped the tooth off the ground and held it up with his left hand, his right one locked as it was in the half-bent position it had been while he was holding back the Saxunt Lizard's snapping jaws, and looked at the oncoming beast.
"Bite the bullet," he growled, struggling to make words as air became harder and harder to come by.
The tooth whizzed out of his hand, hitting the beast right in the eye. The entire inch-long length of the projectile sliced through the organ, stopping halfway through and lodging itself there.
The Saxunt Lizard roared, and Morne wisely took the opportunity to relocate, coming to a stop near the edge of the arena as he waited for the Saxunt Lizard's toxin to take effect.
The beast had taken two doses of its own medicine, once when it freed itself from the wall and again just now.
If the progression of the toxin through Morne's system was any indication, he'd only have to wait ten minutes or so before the beast could move no more.
So that's exactly what he did.
He watched the blind Saxunt Lizard as it clawed at thin air looking for him, as every swipe became slower than the last, as its neck slowly lost its flexibility.
Several minutes later, the beast stood frozen in the center of the arena like a macabre statue, limbs frozen and brain riddled with pebbles.
Hadiah
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Power 
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