Noah stood over the dead creature and looked at it for a moment.
It was face down on the cracked stone floor. Its massive body was burned across most of the back and shoulders from Damien's final attack, the white oily skin charred and split in places, the green veins beneath it no longer visible.
The five horns on its head were partially melted at the tips. The two curved ones at its jaw had broken off entirely somewhere during the explosion.
It looked smaller dead than it had alive.
"Man," Noah muttered to himself. "Even after taking a attack like that, it was still standing and trying to finish him off."
He shook his head slowly.
The desire to kill Damien specifically had been something separate from simple monster aggression.
He had seen that clearly in those final moments. Whatever intelligence had been speaking through the creature, whatever had been piloting it from somewhere else, it had wanted Damien dead with a focus that went beyond instinct.
