He fought a machine of a thing, all instinct, and it wasn’t a machine that learned. It sought to continue doing what it was doing, but as it fought to open his mouth wide and shove itself within, it tried to use the leg that was now damaged, pulling and throwing its weight to one side. It lurched, lost some of its hold, scrabbled to retake its prior position, and did it again. Each time, it scraped, scales dug, legs scrabbled and scratched, and the part of it that he could damage was only in his reach for a second at most—a second where his vision doubled and everything was slick with moisture and fluids. An acrid, chemical smell flooded his world.

He did enough damage to the shoulder that the limb hung on by a thread. The shoulder was like a knot and the knot came free, so he started digging within. To scrape for something vital, in a chest cavity larger around than his own, to scrape at connecting tissue that held shell plates together, and when that failed, to take handfuls of fluid from where they belonged and drag them out.

He found something that bound an upper half of his enemy to the lower half and held on, twisting and wrenching until it broke. That gave him a chink in the armor that he could consistently use; a gap now ran between head and shoulder, opening and closing like gnashing teeth or two blades as the creature rocked and moved its body, but if he chanced to put his fingers or hands inside he could reach the parts that connected body to head.

His other arm was only a flipper, if it could be called that. Too broad and rounded to be blade, too hard to be a fin, not long enough to be useful. Its scrapes to find purchase on the ground beneath him were what told him that he wasn’t just lying there with a monster perched on top of him, but something monstrous lay beneath, dead, a staring and unmoving eye as large as his head staring up at the sky that was depositing so much of the moisture on the scene.

It took three tries to get at the neck-bundle. The second try saw the two pieces of shell come together and slice at two of his smaller fingers on his hand.

In getting his hand on it and tearing, he killed the monster that had been fighting to get inside of him. He felt it go still, its legs curling up, releasing his ruined mouth.

In the stillness, moisture splashing down around him, he became aware of other movements. His eyes weren’t good, and it was hard to make out more than silhouettes in the dark.