You take a deep breath and tighten your grip, sweltering heat and dripping sweat threatening to send your charge blade clattering to the ground. The air smells of smoke and tastes of ash, and the ground beneath your feet is smouldering and sparking against the metal of your greaves.
Ahead of you, someone shouts in panic and throws themself to the ground with the dull clang of armour on stone. An earth-shattering roar rips through the air and drowns out all sounds, save your own haggard breathing as you press your hands to your ears. When at last it feels safe to let the world in again, the monster is on the move, bearing down on another one of your teammates.
Emerald scales glisten in the orange light of the lava, coated in a greenish-yellow slime that drips onto the ground in viscous, volatile puddles. A Brachydios unlike any other, an old one that is permanently Raging. Its fists shake the ground with each mighty punch, slime and flame combining into grand explosions that rattle your teeth and addle your mind.
Suddenly—an opening! A teammate has swung his hammer at the monster's leg, steel grinding against scale in a deafening symphony. With a great crash and a grunt of pain, the Raging Brachydios topples onto its side, claws scrabbling to find purchase on the cracked stone ground.
You grin. This is the chance you have been waiting for. Without so much as a stray thought, you raise your arm and deploy your faithful clutch claw. The device strikes true, finding its place on the monster's proud horn and pulling you through the air. You raise your blade, poised to deliver a crippling blow that will leave the slime wyvern vulnerable.
Heat steadily builds up beneath your hands, flowing up your arms and filling you with a feverish sense of warmth. The yellow slime has shifted to a bright, vivid orange. You blink; no Brachydios you have fought before has ever done this. Still, you pay it no mind. What difference will a few shades of colour make, anyway?
Time seems to slow to a crawl. You plunge your blade down and find it turned away by an impossibly hard carapace. Brachydios are tough, but they should not be this tough. Just as you pull your arm back to land another strike, the orange slime darkens into a deep, angry red. A sickly glow builds up, and for the briefest of instants you wonder if you have made a mistake.
The slime erupts in a cataclysmic explosion that draws the gazes of everyone in the area. It takes mere milliseconds, but for you, caught within the blast zone, it lasts for all eternity.
Scalding slime splashes onto your exposed face and scorches your skin into an agonising, blistered mess. The shockwave steals your breath away and crumples your armour as easily as if it were paper. Tempered steel and monster scales fold inwards and dig into your chest, so that your heart aches from without as well as from within.
The sweet nothingness of unconsciousness comes to rescue you not long after. The Raging Brachydios has bested you like no monster has before. The beast is so mighty it needn't bother to attack you—it can be assured that your defeat will come at your own hands, even as it thrashes uselessly on the ground.
Before long, you will awake at the camp, with dented armour and shattered pride, and perhaps you will return to the hunt in time. But for your teammates, still embroiled in the heat of the battle, one phrase alone echoes in their minds.
Player 2 has fainted. Reward decreased by 13,500z.
A/N: Written in half an hour based on a prompt from a friend on Discord. My first time writing in second person, so criticism is welcomed.