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~~((The National Chocolate Pudding Day Special -- page 10 of 10))~~
"I'm not entirely sure myself," said Hector, "but I think you were struck by lightning."

'Ah...'

"...How are you feeling? Can you still move everything?"

She let out a kind of chirpy groan and began testing all of her limbs. 'Bit groggy. Slight headache. But everything still seems to be in working order.'

"Really?" Hector was not able to conceal the surprise in his voice. "I don't think a normal human wold be able to walk away from a lightning strike that easily..."

She stood up more rigidly, perhaps to demonstrate her wellness. 'Worry about me later. What happened to the Beast?'

Hector thumbed back behind him, toward Chort's motionless figure. The woods were still on fire around it, but Roman had arrived and was dampening the flames with his ability. The Rainlords were slowly coming closer, too. They seemed to have captured the remaining spawn and were pulling them along, but they were clearly still wary of being attacked again. 

'Is it dead?' said Pauline.

"I can't really tell," said Hector. "Can you?"

'Hmm.' Pauline started waddling stiffly over to it.

Hector made sure to stay in front of her. He was still paying close attention to Chort's body via the Scarf, wanting to discern anything he could. The flow of air around it was a bit confused, perhaps due to lingering heat distortion, but Hector was fairly certain that he could sense several large holes that had not previously been there.

Holes about the size of the cubes he'd launched at it.

Given the many explosive impacts he'd witnessed, Hector would've imagined that Chort's body would've been more shredded than this, but it looked more like some of the cubes had gone straight through.

As they got closer, Hector was able to use his eyes more, and indeed, he could see the steam rising off of the creature in the moonlight, as well as the scorch marks all over Chort's body.

Hmm.