[@ImportantNobody]

[i]As Umbard devoted his arms to slowing his motion, a spindly, four-fingered hand adorned with ebony talons, whose spread could have encompassed a man's chest, twisted out of the crevasse and sought a hold upon the warrior's upper right shin. As Umbard seemed quite preoccupied with holding onto the tree, he'd be in poor shape to quickly stop the gnarled claws from stripping his meat to the bone, potentially extracting nearly his entire calf muscle. The long middle claw in particular threatened to gouge out the popliteal artery behind his knee. Fortunately Evvie would arrive not long after the monster's claws, and regardless of how Umbard handled the attempted mangling of his leg, the intense dragon fire forced the creature to release its prey. It left its severed tail still clinging to Umbard, the gluey tension between the two parts releasing as a fresh layer of slick mucous upended the terribly sticky initial layer.

Even were Evvie to pursue the creature, Umbard would still be left with a formidable challenge. The severed tail's grip was diabolical, undoubtedly cutting off circulation to his foot. Strange muscles flexed and coiled beneath the damp flypaper skin, squeezing ever tighter. It had encircled his left leg with a ring of that incredibly sticky goo, and even if he could get the meat of the tail off, he might as well have had a band of tire rubber left to remove. His foot might have even already started going numb from lack of circulation by the time he understood how dangerous the remaining bit of the monster was. Of course, that was assuming he wasn't already bleeding out from his other leg.[/i]