Power through the pain

The instant I turn back-smash. Several tendrils work in cooperation to act like what a lesser creature might use individual muscles in an arm for-creating a heavy limb the pulverizes a good chunk of the rock it hits into a pine powder. Some distant part in the back of my mind worries that they might hear us, the sound of me boring might mean that they'll be waiting in the other side to finish the job. However, these are a tiny niggle in the back of what's otherwise a frenzied focus on my immediate survival. The heat of the stone chars the tendrils used for the act badly-and so, they are sets to the slightly easier task of sweeping rubble and dust of of the way.

My body rolls over, minimizing how much one side is exposed to the scorching ground-before the process is repeated again, a new limb to be sacrificed while the last set recuperates. The blaze beginning to form impeded my normal recuperation-so instead, mana is expended to patch things up-thankfully, my transformation has likewise multiplied the potency of this spell many times over as well as well, allowing me to preserve the mana supplies already heavily dented by my repeated changes to get here mostly intact. Well, at least partially-both vitality and energy reserves spiral ever downwards as I keep up the process-developing a stable rotation of three groups of limbs to cycle through punch my way through more boulders.

With each foot of progress, there is a tiny bit of relief, temperatures of the rocks dropping as I move further away from the burning cauldron. After a bit, the rock itself I move through isn't particularly hot-the first few feet having served as an insulator to stop it until I got here. Unfortunately, the air at my backside it not remotely as forgiving-my backside increasingly resembling a charcoal briquette from my healing not able to keep up over my large surface area, leaving a solid of layer of burnt-black flesh that cracked with every motion.