The creature came at him with its head lowered, driving that armored mass forward like a ram while the tentacles fanned wide around it, choking off any clean exit. Trafalgar tilted into the charge and slipped across it, Maledicta dragging a dark line through the water as he ran along its flank instead of meeting it head-on.
The blade bit. The edge scraped more than it sank when it crossed the plated section, but the softer flesh near the base of the tentacles parted easily, and black blood spilled out thick into the current.
The thing wheeled on him.
It had stopped fighting like an animal. The rage was still there, churning beneath every movement, but something close to caution had crept in alongside it, and that made everything worse. The tentacles no longer threw themselves at his sword. They circled, cut his angles, measured distance, and only struck when they expected his blade to be elsewhere.
