"A minute!?" Neil shouted, eyes bulging at Emmaline's departure. For a split second, he thought the terror of the situation was too much and she had left him. Not that he would have blamed her; many women (and men) would have done the same. But he knew better, and as she went down the stairs, he decided he would trust her with his life. She had done that for him multiple times now. 

The insectoid monstrosity was going to be a problem, though. Neil had never really seen something like it before. Chaos wasn't a very well-seen thing in Marienburg, nor was it usually in Nuln or Wissenland. The beastmen were one thing, the fire another, but this was something entirely above his paygrade. Well, he never was one to stay in his lane, he thought. 

Mandibles clacking, it half slithered, half crawled along the barge deck. It was the size of a troll, but it snaked around with serpentine fluidity. Neil blinked and leaned back when he saw the malevolence in its eyes. He backstepped, sword out in front as beads of sweat began to perspire on his forehead. That thing wasn't going to just eat him. It was going to take his soul straight back to the wastes to be used as a plaything for all eternity. It was a concept he couldn't wrap his head around, but he could at least recognize that was a very bad thing. 

It reared up and struck, controlled and deadly. Neil kept his sword out, but the sharp blade ran along its skin as if hitting an iron breastplate. One of the scales had some give, but afterwards he recognized all it was, was the blade finding a nook to slip between the two scales. He didn't know if there had been meat in there, but he was too busy leaping for his life as the maw snapped at him. It bit so close, it tore his shirt. Had its teeth not been so sharp, it would have tugged him in, but it merely ripped the front of his shirt off, cutting him across the chest with its mandible. 

Neil stabbed at its eye, and though it missed it center mass, it hit where the nasolacrimal duct would be on a human. It poked in, but only a few inches. Neil saw it shudder in anger and pain, but he wasn't sticking around to celebrate. He bounded away like a frightened doe and dodged into one of the passages in the barge. The thing slithered after him, breaking wooden planks with every sharpened leg. Neil ran through an open-air corridor and ran passed the woozy guard, just getting back up from getting kicked. Neil heard him scream behind him, and he heard the scream abruptly stop and a warm, fleshy 'glurb' before the thing continued after him. 

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!"