Elise barely had time to stagger out of the way before the Chimera was on top of the space she’d just been moments before, tearing at the wall with such force that its claws stuck in the plaster. Its blood continued to spill on the floor, a gruesome marker to its movement; its hands wiped and spread the liquid even more as they madly struggled to drag its claws from its trap.

All the while it screamed; a horrible sound, the only one it had made that was distinctly recognizable as human. It thrashed away from itself in rabid spasms, as if it was trying to escape its laborious and slow death.

Regaining their footing, Elise scrambled away as the creature worked itself free. They crouched behind a wooden pallet, dread settling over them. This part of the process was never pretty.

The Chimera reared back; it was free. With the movement, Elise heard a plop; and quietly watched in horror as its intestines slowly slid out of its body and onto the ground beneath it. It distinctly reminded them of a mass of earthworms. Squirming, disgusting.

Spitting madly, it took a hand and scooped it back into some inner cavity with a surprising amount of nonchalance - like stuffing string haphazardly around a yo-yo. Even with all of their experience, even though this had been directly caused by them, Elise looked away, their courage breaking for only a second-

A second too long.

For that moment of weakness, for that single second of negligence, the creature was on top of them, and one pair of clawed arms was around their neck, choking them - the other had its full weight on their chest, squeezing all the air out of it and shredding their body armor to bits - for all of its fancy technology, it’d only hold for a few seconds - and then it would be Elise’s turn to get disemboweled.

The Chimera seemed to have an infinite amount of blood; that was probably why it and the rest of their kind could survive so long after an unmistakably fatal wound. It spilled all over them, drowning them.

It smelled so, so much like iron. It was too much. Far too much.

Growling, Elise struggled to fight against the weight of the beast pinning them to the ground - where was their knife, where was their knife, where was their knife?