FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The scenery sent him back, to the confines of that termite-eaten room in that broken alley; his intended antechamber from which he awaited the exhortations of his uncle, yet the only place he could call a resting spot.

There, in his rightful search for escapism, he glued his eyes on the myriad of pages whereon authors related the features that the Seed of the World’s den exhibited. Spacious as castles; dark as the deepest waters; dunes of gold, bronze and gems were likewise common. That and many more were the similes that depicted a dragon’s home as a glorified bear’s cave that mirrored the greed of men.

But now, with the lens of childhood laid aside, Marek saw through; and Gods above, the impact of having his nostalgia crushed by reality almost made him lean back on his heels! Spacious as a palace was an understanding: a fortress— no, half Võshla, could fit inside. There was no hump of precious metals or rocks to be seen, but treasury was engraved in the very walls, with a crystalline facade and two rings of vertical columns, each as broad as a tower, each connecting to the upmost top, as if holding the cave itself.

The place glittered and sparkled as diamond, illuminated as much as the land during a moonful night. How could that be when they stood yards underice? A scrutiny — or better said, a contemplative gawk — revealed that the culprit hung off the ceiling. And what a masterpiece the culprit was!

A chandelier of crystal-frosted mass, semi-helical, dynamic, and jagged. Have you seen the crown of water, formed when stones plunge fast and liquid splashes up? It was that, albeit frozen into an ornate. Moreso, it depicted cracks that let light beams flow inside.

A lightwell! Built around what he could theorize to be a hole to lit the dwelling. To think dragons possessed an eye for art that bred such magnificence!

The scenery left him speechless for a time he would later be ashamed to admit, jaw practically lolling ajar during the whole experience. It was as he was beholding an art of architecture from times long forgotten!

Only a noise managed to break his entrance and make his jaw and posture stiff back: a heavy reverberation, a boulder grinding along another. His eyes then shot to another icy framework: a ring of icy sawteeth within the inmost ring of pillars. The noise that made the air shake stemmed from whatever it held inside its center.

“Is that a nest?” He uttered.

“I care not what it is but of what it will become,” Mørk commented, not far from where Marek stood. If he was as astounded as Marek, he did not show it. “A tomb.”

The northman trod past, uncaring about a view a few had the luxury to behold. After reminding himself that he was an actor and no spectator, Marek shed his awe and followed him, until the ring’s wall stood right in front. Nearer, the vibration the snores produced could be felt on the surface and even beneath their boots.

“When we see the beast, you think we go mad with fear?” Mørk made the inquiry.

“I don’t think so,” responded Marek, eyes staring high and studying the row. “Their aura is linked to their mood; if asleep so does its aura. Or so I’ve read.”

“Or so you’ve read,” echoed Mørk.

“Any inquietude?”

“It isn’t easy to confirm such an anecdote.”

“I did my homework. Occultists might be close-lipped, but I know how to get valuable information out of them.”

“... If you say so.” Mørk sounded unconvinced but Marek could not confirm it: his visage was as stale as usual.

“Let’s surround it and see if there is an entrance to get us inside,” Marek suggested.

They set off in opposite directions, both fighters with drawn axes in hand, and began surveying the structure from the base to the top. Their surveillance ended as soon as they crossed paths again.

“No entrance,” Marek announced.

“Unsurprising,” came in Mørk’s response.

“No choice but to climb.”

Mørk hummed and began to reach up for the first handhold, but before lifting his leg, Marek interjected.

“Wait. I need you to climb from elsewhere,” a sideglance fell upon him. “Were the worst to happen, both would be within the range of its icebreath. Besides, in case we get cornered in a risky situation, I’ll need someone to draw its attention while I aim or reload.”

His brows drifted together as the spark of emotion ignited.

“You want me to be bait.”

“If you are suspicious of me leaving you—”

“Screw that, Blakesley,” his tone dangled at the edge of growling. “I am no buffoon. I’m not here to make the beast dance. You will not relegate me to such a pitiful task.”

“Keep your voice down,” requested Marek. “Understand, I must make account for the worst; what is necessary for our survival. I won’t let the beast reach you, I promise.”

Mørk’s eyelids narrowed further, and the corner of his mouth began to jerk, flashing a hint of his teeth. But as fast as his face warped it relaxed back; a lapse of evident pain, which caused him to rub his temples and squeeze his eyelids shut, had stopped his mood from escalating.

“... Fine,” he stated, his about-to-overspill ire now gone, then he turned back. “You and I want this to be done. No use arguing further.”

“I won’t let the beast reach you, Mørk,” Marek repeated, but given the lowness of his voice, Mørk must not have heard him.

When his hulky frame disappeared past the curve of ice, Marek let out a sigh and rubbed the back of his head. His partner’s last demeanor reminded him he still needed to explain Sigrid’s existence to him.

That preoccupation was withal driven away to the pits of his mind as soon as another heavy rumble reached him. After that, Marek began to climb, using spikes and other surface irregularities as hand- and footholds. After many twinklings, Marek managed to carry himself to the top.

As soon as his head peered over the top, Marek’s oaken eyes shot wide open and his lips parted to let a lungful of air in: in the middle of the nest-crater, a body too much like a mountain, covered by a layer of membrane, pulsed up and down, like a galleon pulsed while on tidewaters.

Those parts not shrouded by leather of its wings were coated by a plating of scales, which depicted the very landscape of the Frostscape in a pallet of snow white and frosted granite, like a mountain hit by a fortnight of snowstorms. Even shrunken and coiled onto itself, the beast covered more space than a church.

Marek suddenly felt light, and not only because the presence of that magnificent beast blasted him like a gust of air, but also because his body leaned back way too much and now found itself falling. He caught himself quickly, nearly letting a squeal out, before flattening safely against the ice.

Many breaths Marek let pass so as to get accustomed to the wyrm’s presence, but the impact hardly waned and his eyes would but narrow a tad. His heart was a different matter, as it dared not to pace down, as preparing Marek to scram away at the dimmest hint of movement the dragon elicited.

“Seolvor’s immutable aegis,” he could not stifle a murmur.

Marek prayed that the information the many occultists fetched him was, up to certain degree, inaccurate. If the dragon’s presence was so overwhelming when asleep, he did not want to imagine the effect its aura would have once awakened.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

My dreams break apart — Pandemonium has found its way into my home.

I smell the hurt — the dare to stain the land of mine with the proof of their impotence.

I overhear their voices — like weevils, they click at sleepers’ ears.

A sundry of odors; murmurs that made up one buzz — the straight features of a swarm; too afraid to stand against the sigh of the Eternal Glacier, they try their luck in my dwelling.

Preposterous. Suicidal. Like hatchlings, they ignore the clues; the very scent that paints every corner and every crack simplified as just another natural stimulus.

But this is no drey; this was no shelterbelt. No one but my kind was welcome here.

Shall I stand and make myself clear, or do I try to regain sleep? Flying all the way to the human capital had made my wings sore; hearing their screams had drained my mood and therefore my energies.

What, then, If I let them scuttle a bit longer? What harm could they impose upon me beyond the noise of their insignificant steps?

Pondering wears my sleep off. I will linger in my nest longer.

And when my slumber comes to an end, I better not smell, hear nor see anything strange to my homeness.

For my own good and theirs, the invaders shall not lodge here.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Her nerves were behaving like lightning in a stormy night: erratic, unpredictable, flashing intensely before waning into a calm that quickly burst anew. And like a cup amid a stormy night Sigrid felt: exposed to the lightning and the gusts and the hazard that the winds tore from its roots.

It is stalking you!

It is hunting you down!

Her wings had shed their stealthiness and now fluttered like those of doves. Her ears could not focus — they spun to and fro, checking for ghosts. Her owl eyes, although showcasing a glimpse of focus in the sole light source ahead, underwent tunnel vision; the background had merged into a singular mass of blurriness.

It creeps nearby!

A smell she had perceived once pierced her nostrils. Damp limestone, dug-up ore, oils extracted from the most refined fat. Even though the scent could not be considered thick and failed to shroud Marek’s trail, the sensation brought about painful recollections.

Look out! Look out!

Collect yourself, she thought, but her heart withal bumped fast.

Her instincts betrayed her; they, above everything, craved Sigrid’s survival, a deed deemed unlikely as long she flew inside the lair of the wyrm. Thus her instincts advised, demanded, and entreated her to flee, to take the secure path and prolong her existence.

Look out! Look out!

Naturally, such an alternative had to be rejected.

No one is here, she insisted upon herself. Nonetheless, the echoes of her beast facet was making her will waver, and thus hindered her focus. An unfortunate conflict of interests; for Sigrid, Marek’s whereabouts — for her instincts, the wyrm’s whereabouts.

Driven to the edge of anxiety, Sigrid sought for emotional support, which she only found in the medallion resting on her tuft. The warmth of its former owner, Sullivan, remained embedded on its surface.

Consider yourself blessed. Sullivan’s words echoed in her mind. For you now count with her very protection.

I don’t feel protected. I don’t feel blessed. She pressed the medallion harder. Spirits. Glynn. Please. I am scared; I can’t do it alone. Help me. Help me—

Tinkle.

Her wings stretched wide and her pace slowed down. Speed no longer distorted her environment, and now, with eyes wide like plates, Sigrid could discern the outlines of each rift and every chunk.

Had that been— “A bell?”

In a strange turn of events, the ethereal tinkle brought about a bubble of clarity, long enough for her composure to gather up and focus to sharpen. And past the veil of that intimidating scent, a new range of smells flew to her.

Warg blood. Manticore blood. Human blood.

Rotten blood.

The last particularity made her forget about the jingle that rang mere eyeblinks ago.

That is… rotten flesh what I smell? A ghool? Couldn’t be Madakai — he has never given off—

Whispers crept to hers. Speech — a language foreign to everything she had heard. Unintelligible as it was, its inflection betrayed its source: human’s lips; it also came from above her.

She turned her head up; she only managed to catch a blaze of dark blue colors flaring in her direction. It landed upon her, and a foreign sensation washed her over. It bit as no flame she had touched — whatever had struck her made her mind screech as if a set of claws was grinding along it.

The anguish shut down her wings, orientation had lost meaning, and gravity seized the chance. Falling was the natural consequence.

Time and again she bounced off obstacles, and just as often did her face meet the hard embrace of glacial mass.

It went without saying that, once the epic tumble concluded, multiple hotspots of sharpness had popped up across her body: flesh groaned whenever she shuffled straighter, ligaments popping like corks. Yet, all soreness considered, she was fine.

Breathing flowed smoothly, and limbs, even though aching, benefitted from operativeness. All signs of well-being. She must be grateful for that sonorous interruption: had she slowed down back there, her momentum would have led her to absorb greater damage.

Howbeit, a feature, or lack thereof, planted a seed of anxiety in an experience that would otherwise be deemed a mere setback: her eyes caught nothing but black.

Head turned to the right — nothing.

A spin to the left — pitch black.

Head gyrated a three-quarter circle — still no boundary between darkness and shade and light.

Up and down had lost all visual distinctions, as well.

Sigrid had gone blind.

T-this cannot be. Her talons went to stop before her face; they waved, and when that did not help, they proceeded to touch and rub the orbs. She confirmed her eyes had not been pricked hollow or were otherwise bleeding; not even an ounce of pain tormented them.

No, no, no. I haven’t underestimated the damage. My eyes should be fine! The flame— whatever hit when flying— did this to—!

Tinkle.

There it was again: the jingle. The sound set Sigrid back to a state of lucidness, all alert; and within that state, wherein her senses grew acute in the absence of eyesight, the whispers reached her. Short afterward, the flare made her ears wince.

“—!”

She strode off and instants later the ice behind burst with noise.

A yelp escaped from her beak as she darkly crashed against a horn of ice; she withal managed to round and run past the obstacle before her previous position exploded with ethereal noise. It had been but the prelude of a rain of aggression.

Whispers, flaring, evasion, explosions. She was free not of harm, diminutive as it was; blindness and speed were a disastrous knot that tripped her toward crashes, making dodging not always possible.

And whenever the missiles struck her… how to describe it? Stinging?

She came to evade the latest attack, her own impetus driving her behind a mass of ice; her senses grew accustomed to her surroundings, and she had not run into an obstacle during the lastest sequences of attacks.

Sigrid remained expectant of the next volley thereafter, but the whispers had stopped; an interval where no noise of any nature appeared led Sigrid to believe she had found coverage.

“Quite the slippery devil, don’t ya?”

At last, a language she could understand. Too coarse and — Contemporary? Idiomatic? — to belong to Madakai, Sigrid assumed it was one of his ghouls. But hold fast — were not ghouls supposed to be mindless and devoid of speech?

“Few can outspeed spells, much less while blind. Master has been on the nose: ‘thy firk shalst not be belittled.’”

‘Spells’? That was witchcraft! So that was what had been peeling her feathers off!

She carried out scent detection at once; although the thinly veiled smell of rot lingered in the air, it led her to no spot in particular. Only her ears proved useful; the enemy was located high and not far, but she had not pinpointed the exact location.

“Wh— Who are you?!” Shouted Sigrid.

“Fried me in sauce, it speaks!” He burst with dubious shock. “Oh, the rewards I’d’ve gotten by handing ya to the guilds…” The air hummed with chuckles. “Of course, that ain’t possible, so I’ll’ve to settle for bisecting ya… granted, ya got out in one piece.”

Sigrid failed to restrain a hiss. Unlike ghouls, the man was full of what could be deemed a personality; a grotesque personality.

“Answer me! Are you a ghool?!”

“Pfff, Hah! Look at ya! Think yaself in position to demand answers!” The man laughed further before stopping with a sigh. “But, hey, no everyday one has the opportunity to hold chit-chat with a chimera. Ya may call me Imants— No, Greatmaster Imants, The Risen. Fuck, that’s brilliant as shit…”

The name Imants rang a bell: so that man had been one of Sullivan’s friends.

“Ah no, ya ignorant halfbreed. I am a vampire: a high-class undead! Life and humanity were but a single cocoon left behind. I am ascended!”

This was worse than she had anticipated. Not ghouls — Madakai could now rise to unlife entities as vampires!

“You are a monster! You and the monster you serve!”

Chuckles. “A monster labelling me as a monster… Ironic.”

“Madakai killed your friends. He now threatens your kind. How can you help him do evil?!”

“What part of ‘but a single cocoon left behind’ ya can’t fathom? I owe humankind nothing.”

Sigrid crouched low and peered past the mass that served her as shelter. The ghoul’s self-centered behavior had given Sigrid the time to pinpoint his exact location. Next to the inner wall of the cave, possibly standing in a suspension.

“Time no longer stands between me and my goals. I’m free to do what I desire. And if for that I’ve to fulfill the wishes of a pretty boy and kill a chimera, then so be it.”

Sigrid prepared to attack. Her enemy was fast, a manipulator of weird forces, and to add salt to the injury, her eyes were deprived of eyesight. But in her skirmish with magical energies was something to go by, was that the spell needed to be chanted, formulated by speech before going off in pursuit.

If she reached Imants before he could utter chanting, the battle would be reduced to brawls and claws, which she was confident to win, even against a vampire—

Tinkle.

The brassy noise rang; her ears bolted straight and her legs froze in place.

“Owl caught ya tongue, Firk? I bored ya stiff? Or ya wanted me to babble so ya can pinpoint me with ya dog ears?”

“—!” A faint hum, no more than two yards away from her, caught her by surprise.

“Played ya! I was doing exactly the same.”

She heard the air snap, and hum soon distorted into a buzz, then a violent whizz.

And then, into an explosion.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

My rest cannot resume.

They are scuttling closer — are they younglings by any means? No animal is so fatuous. No animal except… humans.

Oh, clarity strikes me stunned. To think they managed to get this far.

Such a noteworthy deed almost makes me lay aside my indignation.

Almost.

The nerve this inferior kind bears.

Not satisfied with the profanation they perpetrated in my domain seasons past, they now seek reprisal by invading my lair.

As if their magic-treated blades and incantations could achieve what their siege weapons could not.

The impetus of my slumber lingers; my bodies anchor itself to the land of respite, but my anger grows fast.

Lucky they are — this shall be their only chance to take their leave.

Should my ears pick up the faintest of murmurs again, their journey of vendetta shall end.

My patience is shallow.

Moreso for those responsible for making my world smaller.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Marek adjusted himself at the top of the row, between two large ice spikes. One boot pushed against the surface so he would hold stable; coldness bit his side, but that was a mandatory necessity: the recoil might send him rolling down, so firmness was quintessential.

He saw Mørk from afar; one ax secured him to the ice, whereas the other was unsheathed in front of him. The latest discussion led Marek to think the man might do something reckless, that he might hurtle down for an attack; for his relief, not only did his ally do nothing dangerous but also bid a gesture Marek recognized as a nod.

Everything was rolling smoothly.

Marek’s eyes landed on the dragon’s curled form. Wing membrane screened most parts deemed vulnerable, head included. Only region that could be considered vulnerable within his line of sight was the thick of the neck.

Vulnerable might be a stretch, though, for he had seen castle facades and siege wonders depicting more flaws. Exposed — that was more like it. Easy to hit, but to break? A whole separate equation, one he needed to solve with limited tries at his disposal.

And he already spent two of these tries. One with a stone tomb, and another with a glacial cave filled with spiders.

He better make each shot worth it.

The rifle levelled perpendicular to his height; his eyesight aligned with the slightly dent barrel. His breathing took the time to steady, even waiting for it to synchronize with the dragon’s; large as it was, each inch that heaved up and down counted.

When he evaluated that he had the breathing, both his and dragon’s, in check, Marek sucked in one last time before pulling the trigger.

But the trigger never clicked; his finger had stopped at the last moment. The interruption stemmed from a distant noise, as audible as a button falling at one side of the road.

His concentration broke; he glanced over his shoulder, past the palace of ice all the way to the entrance, to what could be hiding in the darkness.

… Sig?

Such an insignificant lapse of concern would cost him dearly.

Another noise emerged, less subtle, heavier, like the grumble of an afterquake. The noise soon evolved into a judder that travelled below his feet and past.

He turned his gaze in front and there it was: shudder, movement, a shift in breathing.

His eyes caught the leather stretch and his heart jumped up to his throat — the beast was awakening! The prelude caught him the way a knight caught the hand of a thief in his saddle.

Think fast! Act fast! Aiming should be easy; pulling the trigger was but a triviality. The target was too large, there was no room for missing. The beast should not have the time to rise, stand firm, and detect him — it should not!

Yet, among a warren of choices, Marek chose stillness. Nothing stopped the awakening — He did not stop it. The beast was stirring out of its slumber, utterly uninterrupted, and he was doing a damn thing.

His inaction, the way his breathing was hitching more and more, how the rifle trembled within his grasp as much as his lower lip did, led him to confirm what he had studied: dragon’s terror aura did only work when awake.

And now, the force that the beast’s presence inspired did not only make him cling to helplessness, but was driving him to take the easy path.

A wing winced, sporadic and up, and the breeze it produced slapped Marek; everything went down the drain after that. Before Marek could lament his missed chance, a sharp hiss burst from behind the curtain, like water rushing over red-hot steel.

It sent Marek into panic.

He hardly bit down an undignified gasp.

Any intent of attack was thrown away — his only immediate goal was to flee. Turn around and scram; he did not even send Mørk a signal to retreat. Protocols like that were redundant — and who knew better but Mad Ax himself?

He slid down the wall, uncared that he was a mistake away from smashing headfirst to the floor, uncared of the many cuts the ice inflicted upon him.

Then, it came a moment wherein a pressure seized his chest, from shoulder to waist, and movement halted. But the rumble behind zoomed closer, uneager to provide the little bit of advantage. The presence grew unbearable so it could match his desperation, to the point he thrashed.

A tearing sound and whatever was holding him in place released him; he lurched forward, falling onto four only to scram upright and keep bolting. He convinced himself that humans could not outspeed dragons: he went for a place to hide; and the broadness of an ice column barely managed to cover his need — even still, his heart raced mad.

Curses. Curses. Curses.

Posture tight, rifles squeezed against his chest, Marek did nothing but hear the ice thump and crack as a monstrosity shifted out of its bed. Soon, the air got filled with snuffles — inhalation that appraised the atmosphere, weighed his mistake, drew him to judgement.

Whenever they increased in intermittency — whenever they paused — his mouth went drier. And what a desert his lips were, when the judgement fell silent and the verdict glided toward him in the form of growl.

“Intruders, why hide yourselves?”

The verdict could not be uttered in the language of beasts — it had to unfold in human speech.

Marek’s heart failed, face going pale.

“You had the nerve to march this far. You had the nerve to defile the privacy of my home.”

The voice rang throatful but not rough, harmonic but by no means soft. Rich in authority, the words were pure admonishment, as if they had the right to make the river feel guilty by simply snaking across the fields.

It was, too, feminine.

“Where, then, has all that boldness gone? What has been of that insolence that swells your chests?”

The ground reverberated; the dragon had left the nest, Marek noticed. His heart beat faster, so he grabbed his chest tight in an attempt to ease it down.

Curses. Curses. Curses! I blundered badly! You damn imbecile! I got ourselves killed—

“But the frost of the most obstinate storms melts before the smallest of candles,” another tremor traveled forth, “and your nerves, that which led you to commit the biggest of follies, could not stand in my presence before melting away.”

Her voice sounded from many yards away; there was no hint of her finding Mørk. He, like Marek, must be cowering out of sight.

Cursescursescurses! Fuck! I should have stayed behind. I should have passed my last days with Sigrid. I’m stupid. So damn stupid— Marek stifled a groan as he squeezed his eyes shut. A thin trickle of blood began cascading down his mouth. No— No! These thoughts were long discarded. This mind trickery… it coerces me to surrender!

His eyes cracked open, and with the rifle still against his chest, he sidled along the pillar until he caught sight of a tail. The dragon was two pillars away from his position.

The tail whipped the ground and Marek backed behind the pillar. He nearly squealed aloud.

He shut himself back to the darkness behind his eyelids and waged battle with the preternatural effect. Hand bunching his chest, clenching teeth and jaw, biting his own lip. Fear was one thing, but the impulse of fleeting another — he must subdue these intrusive thoughts.

Remember the good times. Remember Sigrid. Do it for her.

The next seconds were devoted to regaining courage, recollecting the good moments he passed with Sigrid; he needed to remind himself why he was fighting for. The mediation paid off, at least partially — no concerning heartbeats, no blows through teeth. In a scenario of possible death, he found calmness.

Too much calmness.

Why had the ice stopped cracking? Why were no trembling beneath his boots?

Whatever he found, it was no calmness: it was foreboding; and it now clawed deep in his psyche.

With sweat beginning to build up on his brows, Marek pried his eyes open. Eyelids open into slits, Marek saw the same diamantine background; but sooner did his eyelids gap further, and there he saw it: foreboding clothed in scales and teeth, suspended many feet overhead, boring a moonlit dagger at him.

His mouth felt like breaking off the rest of his head. The stomach clenched into a convolution, and bilis burned in his throat. All the calm he gathered up the instants prior had pushed him into a state of stillness wherein heart and lungs skipped many cycles.

“Find you at last.”

The flash of rows of long fangs hooded by scaly lips blasted him with chills.

“Intruder.”

The sight before him stripped Marek of the control he held over his legs. He fell with a thunk, and so did his rifle, with a clank.

The slit of the dragon’s gaze thrust to him like the point of a stabsword, holding him in place, open-mouthed, speechless, frozen. A scream cleaved to the walls of his throat.

Fear constricted his sight to not see beyond the beastly features. The fangs, the horns, the spiked frills; the lengthy neck separated the rest of the body of his tunnel vision, yet the size of the head, larger than Gruhulla himself, evidenced the magnificence of a titan.

Then there were the eyes — the final confirmation that whatever he faced stood above the realm of reptiles, dinosaurs, and monsters. A maelstrom of primal intelligence and unmatched ferocity whirled behind that steely slit.

“What’s the matter?” Her voice echoed anew and Marek could not help but flinch. “You dragged yourself before my presence. Why let the weapon drop off your hand? Pick it up. Arm yourself. What is a man if disarmed?” Her muzzle shifted closer; the air her nostrils exuded made the atmosphere crisp. “What is a man without his trusty weapon?”

Marek barely registered her words.

The voice itself shackled his will; it denied him any possibility of attack. Marek hardly mustered the resolve to extend his hand to his rifle.

The tough feat of grabbing the device attained, the dragon elicited no more than a flex of lips; only her stare held intense, daring the fighter to take the initiative, to ‘draw steel’ and lunge forward. But as had been proven in the previous passages, Marek was in no position to indulge her. Both he and the wyrm knew it.

So, when his rifle was secure within his grip, Marek went for the only choices his body allowed him to take: spin and run away.

Heartbeat out of control.

Swarms of shudders worming beneath his skin.

Lungs at the verge of bursting with outcries.

All red flags prior to a lost battle.

He had yet to win a war against the destructive turmoil that that fear was. Until then, he could not stand firm against the greatest menace. Running the clock was the only choice at his disposal.

Sprint, without seeing back.

Sprint, so the fear drained away.

Sprint, until he had no other choice but to turn back and bite.

All while earthquakes bit his heel, like hungry bears.

The difference between seconds and minutes seemed fuzzy during the whole sequence, and it was not until an earthquake caught up with him that time wound up to normality.

Disarmed of balance, his impetus drove him toward the next column, sliding helpless until his back smacked solid ice. He kept the rifle against his chest but could not prevent a blast of air from escaping his mouth.

“Pitiful,” the dragon muttered. “But unsurprising. This sojourn of yours was but a fit of stubborness. A spark that ignites and extinguishes quickly.”

His eyes shuddered half-open to see the scaly pattern on the dragon’s snout with detail. Still lying on his side, Marek shrank further into fetal position, but still refused to scream and tear his gaze from the dragon.

For Seolvor’s sake, react! Give me strength. A bit of strength! I need it to stand — to pull the trigger! I ask for nothing else!

His teeth pressed tight but his achievements did not go beyond that point. Meanwhile, the dragon was inching closer and closer to the point beast and man shared the same air.

“Before I hand you to the entity you pray, tell me: where are the others? I smell more of you, and there is no way a single man came all the way here on his own.” Sniffles resumed, and the fog it generated stung Marek’s skin.

“Hold on…” The sniffles increased in cadence. “This smell—” There was a sharp ejection of air, a suddenness that caused Marek to squeeze his eyes shut and gasp. “It coils all over you… It wafts in my lair.”

The air pressure that suffocated and stung him vanished. By prying an eye open, Marek confirmed that the dragon had backed up. The edge of the dragon’s stare was still over him, but a hint of something more than an air of superiority adorned it.

“The Twisted Bloom… You have brought the Twisted Bloom to my home.”

Twisted Bloom? Marek managed to register.

“No, no. Humans could not violate the privacy of my home on their own merits. It had been the Twisted Bloom that brought you here.” The wyrm looked astray and shifted her weight from leg to leg, seemingly… uneasy? eager? “Yes. That explains it. It all comes together. At least, it has finally decided to make a move. To deliver the strike!”

“Wha— what are you talking about?” He had not been aware, but he had gained the strength to knelt up.

“Don’t play ignorant, human!” She roared back and smacked the floor with her tail, sending forth a ripple. Marek winced but nevertheless remained on one knee.

“The scent betrays you! Like a second skin it wraps you! The abomination led you here to kill me!”

Marek could not explain why, but the grip fear had on him had loosened. He had now regained control over his mouth and the words it created.

“There’s… no way you speak of—”

“It is here, isn’t it? I hear beastly cries. I smell the effervescence of magic.” The dragon stretched her neck tall and her eyes dashed all around. Marek felt a sigh of relief leave him as the draconic gaze left him aside. “It hides. It awaits the opportunity to strike. It wants you to soften me so it can slay me easily.”

Calmly, Marek brought himself to two feet. Heartbeat, lungs, senses — all brought under manageable levels of control.

The dragon’s demeanor, which contrasted with that mighty image of an ancient entity, had caused his resolve to strengthen. His subconsciousness must have interpreted it as a sign of weakness, hence, the draconic aura lost effect.

We still have a shot.

The dragon had not recognized the menace he represented; Marek was certain the dragon had no idea the might the piece of metal in his hand held. The path was clear to him — He only needed to aim.

“It matters not. The opposite, this is the perfect opportunity. The Twisted Bloom had doomed itself by coming to me.” The dragon snapped her head back to Marek, forcing him to take a step back until his back flattened against the ice.

As expected, the dragon did not care that the rifle was aiming directly between the eyes. However, the last sudden motion brought the dragon closer until only a few feet separated her from Marek. If he forthwith pulled the trigger, he would be caught between the column and the fire.

Bloody thing — back up!

“Foolish thing. I’m not to be belittled! I am the true Seed of the World! A nest of humans cannot stop me! What difference could one or a handful of these insects make? The masterstroke is flawed. I’ll foil its scheme. I’d kill its pawns!”

The dragon expanded its jaws and showed an unobstructed view of the tomb of fangs that was her maw. Marek pressed his teeth until they ached; if he had to choose between dragon fangs and combustion, we would choose the latter. The odds of surviving that one were higher.

“Go meet your patron, pest!”

The finger rested on the trigger, and all his body shuddered with embracement.

“Die a pawn of the lesser kind—!”

But a roar resounded; short-lived, by no means thunderous, and, above all, human. The finger that held the trigger halted, and so did the neck of the beast. The draconic features displayed the slightest signs of confusion, hesitance, and discomfort.

The neck curved sideways and glared back to where her tail rested.

“Taste steel, damn monster!” Boomed a vigorous voice.

Mørk!

“Pests! Learn your place!”

The dragon prepared to deliver retribution for her grazed tail, but Marek would not give her the freedom.

She had left her neck and side of the head exposed — exposed and many yards away from him.

Marek did not hesitate, did not think. His rifle angled up by sheer instinct, and the sequence played like well-oiled machinery.

Aim.

Firm.

And pull.

Clnk.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Her wing had reacted fast; it managed to spread and create a barrier between her and the wave of arcane energies.

Without the heat of flames it burnt. Without the touch of cold it bit. Her wing stung whole as if immersed in acid.

Remiges were giving off smoldered air, her nostril distinguished; but the smoke, if it could be called that way, was not abrasive to her beak nor it felt noxious. It smelled of incense, soft incense.

Birch tar. Resin of flowers. Her own natural oils.

Sigrid could stand still and discern a season of scents across her harmed wing, but her senses required an urgent allocation elsewhere. A hum that mimicked the latest was creeping nearby.

She bit down the pang and hopped away, past a couple of icy blocks who had her encircled. To her chagrin, the hum continued noising nearby. Growing annoyed, she swerved, a whole shift in trajectory that pushed her past many blocks, but the noise persisted in its pursuit.

This spell follows me?!

Like a resentful wasp it did. As a response, her movements became more complex, zigzagging and pivoting past obstacles; within instants, the ominous noise was but a distant drone but still present.

Slow, but I shouldn’t be careless. There explosions are something else—

Chanting found her ears.

The buzz of energy came in no long afterward.

“Gyh!”

Right — coverage; she had left it behind. Curse her wits! Imants played her a fool!

Despite being caught in the open, Sigrid managed to duck flat and avoided the first volley. The second round would prove to be not as easy, and she resorted to using her wings as shields. The few missiles that hit the mark splashed a hazardous ‘substance’ that pricked her skin.

But aside from inflicting mild pain and incensing her fur and feathers, the round of spells attained little effect. Or so Sigrid thought, until the obstinate hum returned.

It was too close, and before she could dash away, destructive energy saturated her.

Fwoomp!

Sigrid’s form was dashed against the closest slab, pain throbbing with both physical and mental pain. Without eyes, damage could not be appraised, but the smell of incense was intense.

Fook! It hurt! She staggered off the wall she had been plastered to. I hate magic. This is my first time facing this force and I already hate it!

“Bullshit. These explosions can split trees yet ya remain not only alive but standing?!”

What was that? Her ears had not tricked her: she heard griping.

Despite the beating she had undergone, it was the wizard who grew frustrated. Maybe — just maybe — Imants might have overestimated his magic the way she had. If blindness and explosions was the best that his magic could achieve then she might have worked through the worst.

And speaking of blindness, it turned out it also had limits. Her eyes managed to recognise shades, outlines that separated tones of gray from tones of black.

Her eyesight was improving.

“Whatever. Ya can’t keep up this much longer.” His words morphed again. Sigrid raised her head and with her obscured vision she saw two flame-like spheres spark to life many from yards away. They droned calmly and drifted with little hurry.

He will try to catch me between these two magickal things.

She crouched low.

Let’s see if he is up to the task.

Her wings thrust downward and her body lifted up and off the ground.

“No way ya can still flap those!” She heard Imants yelp; melody to her ears. “Off with ya!”

The spheres shifted their trajectory at the same time lines of energy dashed forth in her way. Their trail led her to the silhouette of a human wearing thick garments. Imants had switched from place, but now she had him tracked, it was all the same.

Sigrid only needed to play dumb a little longer.

Thus she was flying low, close to the ice protrusions for coverage. Missiles flared and burst back and front, some managed light damage whereas others only noise, all while the two target-seeking spheres ‘sneaked’ their way to her.

One moving low, through the alleyways; the other humming overhead.

The former was closer, too close. His constant blasting was leading her to a trap, or so Sigrid let him believe. Whe she and the sphere of destruction were about to cross paths, her wings sprang wide and flapped to lift her higher into the air.

No sooner had her course changed, the sphere exploded. A wave of arcane force bit at her heels and the tip of her tail, but there were no noteworthy injuries. Her maneuver paid off; whether that trick thwarted Imants’ tactic she could not confirm.

First, there was one last sphere to deal with. The very sphere that waited her overhead, just where she was leading to.

This was it — afly she had the vantage point. Imants was within her handicapped eyesight but not within her range. A little push might do.

And when the sphere hummed agog and hungrily, but a wingspan away from her, her wings stretched wide and her weight angled toward the vampire.

The hum expanded into an eruption, and Sigrid knew this was her moment.

The shockwave was to her wing like rapid wind was to sails. The burning pain at her back be damned. The circumstances had transformed her into an arrowhead, her swooping twofold faster than ordinary. The boom had filled her ears with a rang; she heard no swears, but his expression was enough evidence.

Her trick had pierced through his expectations.

The undead-turned-man had not reacted, perhaps this variant was not as fast as a weakened Madakai. One yard separated them, and still no signs of defensive maneuvers about to be pulled out.

Sigrid brought forth her talons ahead in preparation to tear the vampire apart.

Thwing-kreeh!

That was not the sound of flesh being ripped like paper. It was sharp, resonant, edging crystalline. Neither it felt soft; it was like she ran her talons across glass.

Two feet separated them both but further advancement was denied; something invisible was standing in the middle, something Sigrid could not bring herself to understand.

“What t—! That medallion! It cannot be!”

Sigrid noticed how Imants’ shocked face displayed more than discomfort as he plucked off something from his pouch that soon glowed with magic before flying in her direction.

There was no room for evasion: the shot was clean. Yet, when the shades whose silhouette resembled beasts landed on her trunk, Sigrid felt little more than a bite of a wolf. These spells, which were not accomplishments of chanting, were underwhelmingly weak.

It was not enough to stop her. Whatever stood in the middle, would collapse in pieces.

Her claws swung wildly and the air screeched.

“Stay off!” Imants staggered backward, an arm raised and gradually gaining bright.

Kree-krak!

A rupture. With a vision each-second clearer, she saw crazing lines manifest midair. The spell Imants cast to keep her away was falling apart.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck—” His free hand kept retrieving components he immediately threw against her. They had little to no effect.

Skree-Crash!

A claw pierced through. The boundary of defense gave out, and the set of knives cleaved swiftly and smoothly through his throat.

“Fuck!” He put his hand on the injury, face twisted with utter desperation. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Tinman!”

Sigrid picked up the noise of metal grading against metal, closer with each heartbeat. More interesting yet: the scent of rot that had been swimming in the air was becoming more intense.

But Sigrid had no intention in diverting her attention.

Act quicker.

Attack wilder.

Overwhelm the wizard with a flurry of slices — reduce his magical shield to shatter.

If he could not utter a word, he could not cast a spell. If he died on the spot, his aid would be for naught.

She could hear fragments of the spell tink at her feet.

The victory was unfolding before her eyes. Nothing would stop her.

Nothing… but the howl of the very Icing Boundary.

The walls and ceiling trembled. The air quivered as if it had cowered.

A thunderous roar that washed over her, piercing deep into her, into her psyche.

It sent her back.

Glacial architecture was replaced by a snowy forest exposed to the sky. Horns and tusks of hard ice transformed into humble abodes of wood, less clustered, more wrecked.

Her enemy was no longer a man a cubit smaller than she was but a quadrupedal monster. Colossal. Scaly. Unstoppable.

Not more an enemy: a force of nature.

A force that made her cower, shudder, and freeze in place.

All the helplessness of the World invaded her; her unblinking eyes could only witness how the disaster unravelled; how the might of the Frostscape itself lifted its tail and unleashed its fury upon a human shackle.

And upon the innocent who hid within.

She got no time to see how that recurrent and painful recollection played out — a pain on her stomach brought her to the glacial scenery.

The destruction of the boundary between memory and present often led to confusion; this time was no exception. Unable to tell how many seconds she had let slip past, her eyes darted everywhere.

A ghoulish creature, clad in gray and yellow metal, held her by the hip in place while chewing her belly.

Imants had distanced himself. And the hand he had kept overhead, now blazing and flickering with an intense indigo, lowered and pointed at her.

“Ya fucked up, Firk!”

No!

By the time she caught up with the turn of events, it was too late. Chains of dark energy sprouted forth from his hand and coiled around her with supernatural strength.

Arms. Legs. Wings. Waist.

Not even the armored ghoul was safe: the magical binds had pressed him tight against the chimera.

When the chains stopped rattling, Sigrid lay immobilized.

“Ass-biting banty,” with a hand still holding his neck, Imants emitted an inhuman growl and bared his fangs. “Ya hide is mine!”

Directly after making that threat, Imant’s mouth began to move and murmur chants.

“Let me off!” She shrieked before threshing about.

The she-monstress yanked and pulled at the chains, but they did not give in, they only rattled. Many were not fixed to a solid surface from where they could be yanked off — they were fixed in the air!.

The plates on the ghoul armor was grinding wildly, and his head was exuding foul smokes, product of his proximity to the medallion. He did not mind the pain; the monster was not stronger than any other ghoul she had faced, but that did not discard he was making her endeavours harder.

The struggling continued, all while whirls of energy surged around Imants. He had one arm extended high, and perpendicular to his palm a sigil depicting weird symbology manifested. At last, a length akin to an uniform spear sparked to life.

No larger than an arrow at first, the length was growing in volume with each series of words.

Desperation kicked in. Sigrid turned to the ghoul and tried to get rid of him, but between restriction of motion and armor she attained nothing but ear-scratching noises.

The spear crackled larger, and so did her urgency.

Tearing the undead apart was not going to improve anything, so she pulled her arm as close as she could to her head and then snapped her beak. The she-monster managed to catch a link with her beaks and then exerted pressure.

More, more, and more pressure. Gnawing and twisting. Until her beak ached.

Until a metallic snap resounded.

Her arm broke free. The chanting experienced an abrupt pause but it forthwith resumed.

The spear-shaped dweomer was now nearly two yards long. Attaining freedom was impossible; Sigrid only had one choice.

Fate rested upon her free arm, which she extended toward her right wing. Hastiness led her claws to fumble, drawing a red line across the inner part of her wing. The pain was worth it, and when she took hold of the chain, the exertion of her force succeeded in destroying it.

A wing flapped free. One more — just another wing for her to use.

But the magic — but the ghoul! The wing was forced outstretched far from her free arm. Too far. She could not release herself.

And when the chanting fell silent, replaced by crackling sparks and an otherworldly hum, the chimera realized — the time ran out.

“Die!”

He threw his hand forward, and the indigo spear blurred forth.

That gap was but an insignificant factor; the spear flew with a speed that dwarfed arrows and might as well match lightning itself.

And when it found its target, a piercing bang ensued. It shook her bones, flooded her with a pain as foreign as intense.

Right after, of all her senses dulled.

The eyesight she had gradually been regaining immersed into the blackest of darkness.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

“Magistellus damn it!”

Imants became victim of the aftereffects of his own spell.

Ice shatters.

Plates of armor flying wild.

Gusts of dark energy.

Distance proved itself safe, at least for a vampire, and the only consequence was an erratic surge that drove him many feet backward.

Gracelessly he fell and now lay on his rear, hyperventilating. Such pulmonary condition should be nothing short of outmoded given his new undead body. But there he was! Lungs clinging to an old habit.

“Freak…” He gasped out. “What does the beast think she is? Shed the blindness away. Missiles were boxes of matches to her. It also broke through the chains. The motherfucking thing broke the chains!”

He heaved himself on two feet, one hand still clutching his neck. “Buncha bullshit. She shouldn’t’ve seen. She shouldn’t’ve broken the binds. Mundane weapons such as claws shall not!”

Imants shot daggers at the fog of indigo floating around the impact center, result of his arcane spell. Residual magic occasionally manifested as sparks, too much like dim flashed after a rainstorm.

“My neck.”

His scowl was soon discarded as he remembered his neck injury. He loosened his grip over his injury and moved his hand away, his eyes wide with anticipation.

There was little blood. As soon as the wound was cleaved open, his blood vessels sealed, preventing streams of red liquid from spluttering.

An injury otherwise lethal to any living being was not only painless but also unhindering. And after a couple of minutes from being created, what should be a rift cascading with blood was but a thin, red line.

“... Heh. Heh-heh,” Imants chuckled. “I am truly immortal.”

Roars erupted at his back and his laughter diminished.

“Fuck. Shit hit the windmill.” He turned his sight at the entrance that led to the dragon and his master.

“Immortal or not, no way in hell I face a dragon. My master—” hawking, “fuckinghatethis— said nothing about giving him company. My task is done.”

Imants turned and observed the chimera’s body, now fully visible, evidently charred and with wings sprawled. It showed no hints of life.

There was no sight of that silvery piece of metal, neither.

“She had Sully’s emblem. The beast must’ve found his corpse and taken the medallion.”

A frown emerged across his visage. His hands bunch tight with such strength that his nails sank in his palm.

“Whatta joke of a Goddess. It protects one guy. It protected a dirtbag of a monster—” His eyes landed upon the destroyed remains of Ulrich.“—But it couldn’t protect us.”

Ulrich’s resurrection as a ghoul had been a pleasant surprise back then, Imants had to admit, and his master took the trouble to explain to him the gist of his dark curse. The armored man had risen as his servant, who by proxy was also Madakai’s servant; not finding a role within his scheme, Madakai gave Imants full control of the ghoul.

Now, scorched beyond recognition, everything left of Ulrich was his upper body with only one arm attached; the only features that identified as the warrior he was in life was his alchemy-treated armor.

Another roar reminded him of his necessity of leaving the glacier.

“Past’s past. I’ll await Master—” more shudders. “—next to the rune.” There was a last scrutiny over the dead chimera. “If this place doesn’t go to pieces, maybe I shall retrieve ya body,” one corner of his mouth bent into a wicked grin, one he held even after starting to depart.

Inhuman speed drove him silently past the chimera, a single leap enough to send him two stories high and twofold that amount far.

Terrific were the faculties of the vampires. Bearers of body supremacy, one hand was more than enough fingers to count their reduced range of limitations.

Sunlight.

Silver.

“Grrh!—Agrh!”

And of course: their underestimation over the beating hearts.

The air sizzled as if fire was consuming a pile of pine cones. Smoke popped up from behind. The origin was his back.

The vampire cried in pain as gravity seemed to take hold of him, dragging back to the ground with a whack and many other thuds.

“Hothothothothothot!”

The entity who had once bragged of immortality now rolled on the glacial floor like a barrel during a bar fight.

“My back! My back!”

There was a coil of smoke around his form when Imants thrashed to his knees. Right afterward, he tore his robe to bits and chucked the scraps away.

Choking with blasphemies, Imants reached out for his back. Red shone through his linen tunic, as if ember burnt beneath; his frantic touch caused ash and matter that could be described as charred bark to slide down his back to the floor.

“Why?! What could—!”

Wind whistled at his back, and he turned right in time to see a beast with the colors of ashen snow.

His magical barrier was long destroyed, and he disposed of no time to cast another. His arms were his only defense. And as expected of a man who spent his years honing the arts of magic, his melee defense performed poorly.

A first claw, cutting deep into bone. A second strike, splitting clean an arm from the rest of the body.

“Imposs—Wah!”

One arm short and without spells up to his sleeve, no amount of vampiric strength prevented Imants from being rammed relentlessly toward the nearest chunk of ice.

Ice and ribs cracked at unison.

A lapse of inaction came to be, during which Imants saw two claws impaled in his stomach before making eye contact with his attacker. The round, owl eyes shone like silver itself, pointing at him the way an assassin’s dirk pointed at the neck of his victim.

“Damn ya…” breathed him. “Damn ya!”

His sole arm lashed out, but a feathery limb deflected it mid thrust and pinned it against the wall.

“How could ya be still alive?!”

“... My wings serve as good shields. And so did the armor your ghoul wore.” She commented, holding an intense expression. Although smoking, she did not seem hurt.

“Whatta?! Ya yanking my chains?! Wings and rusty armor protecting ya from my strongest dweomer?!”

Sigrid remained silent.

“Bullshit! That could’ve blasted a portcullis off its rails! The medallion ya have— it made ya impervious to magic!” Utter frustration drove him to savagery and now he thrashed, gashing at the wing that held his arm off the monstress’ face.

“Gods damn ya, Sullivan! And Gods damn ya, too! Ya halfbred freak—”

Tired of his resistance, the chimera unsheathed her arm off the vampire and sliced his only available weapon. Now, his last arm hung limply by a thin thread of skin and ligaments. Bereftness of pain did not stop horror from contorting the folds of his face before such disfigurement of his own flesh.

“Why?” The chimera spoke with a tone that clashed with her demeanor. “Why do you want to hurt him? Why do you want to kill him?”

“Eh?”

“Marc… has a goal. A future.” Her talons sank further into Imants’ flesh, and his face warped further. “Why do you want to take that from him?”

“Marc? This Marek?” He forced out. His face blanked for the following heartbeats, mouth half open and lips quivering. Then, in a paradoxical turn, Imants chuckled.

“Ya think all this gimmick is for getting him killed? This Marek is, what Master calls, a pawn. A tool to soften the dragon so he could get the kill.”

“Kill the dragon?” Her stare abated a bit. “Why?”

“Feed ‘Thy Gift.’ Please the Princes. Grow in power. Blablabla. Can’t get shit from what he says.”

Sigrid’s sight went unfocused, as if seriously mulling her options.

The pause was too much for Imants to bear, and he found himself forced to speak.

“Let me go. Cannot fight anymore. I don’t even have arms left. Can’t cast shit.”

Glowing steel bored deep into him once more.

“I can’t,” the softness of her voice tenderized the threatening label of her words, despite the implication. Her lids had narrowed a tad, too, and her ears bent lower.

“You are an extension of him.”

“Wh— wha?!” he scoffed, wearing an awkward smile. “Ya speak like I own that fucker my gratitude. I value my life over his!”

“You have no life to value. Madakai had taken that from you. He owns you.”

The statement shocked him, eyes wide as shields and mouth falling ajar. Even for an undead, he was breathless.

The vibrations of a distant battle filled the air as both vampire and chimera fell in silence.

For a moment, it seemed like Imants wanted to keep arguing, to make Sigrid understand that he no longer held desires to prolong a lost battle; that he did not need to die.

But something stopped him; it knotted his tongue so it would not give pleas or excuses. Vacant eyesight. Trembling lower lip. All his body slackened. Imants opposed the idea of dying for someone else’s wishes, his body language displayed that much.

Yet, he could not surrender, for there was someone else who opposed the idea of yielding.

“... Heh. Heh heh.”

Imants began to chuckle. Then, laughter. Whatever sentiment pestered his mind, Sigrid did not share it; her face remained unchanged.

“Ya right, Firk. There is no life to spare. No one to set free. Sully‘s right. Body and will are no longer mine.”

He parted his teeth and flashed his fangs, lustrous as knives.

A shadow of cruelty was cast over his features.

“Those are now tools at my Master’s disposal.”

No sooner did he let his intentions clear, another roar rippled all the way to their location.

Sigrid’s fur stood erect, just like her ears, and all her body winced still.

Imants had not been ignorant of the draconic’s howl’s effect over his enemy. When the symptoms of paralyzing fear manifested in her, Imants seized the moment.

And fast came his next attack.

Trembling arms failed to keep him at bay and he pushed free and close, way too close, until his fangs sank into the monstress’ shoulder.

And like a hungry hound, he clinged with teeth and fangs.

No drop of blood dripped down the bitten zone; Imants sipped in each bead of precious red off the wound. His flesh hissed — the line on his neck completely closed, and at his elbow bone rattled together.

Soon, all wounds inflicted during the battle would be rendered nonexistent.

“No vampire—” growled Sigrid. “—You are still a ghool!”

But ‘soon’ was an entire stretch of time he could not afford. Sigrid broke her fear trance and now stood fit for defense.

Her talons gripped the back of his head before tearing him off her shoulder. Now with the parasyte suspended at a safe distance, Sigrid was ready to end the fight, but Imants, with his arm healed back to functionality, was not done.

With scraps of her meat stuck in his fangs, he tore his pouch off his waist and smacked it against the chimera’s abdomen.

“Damn ya to hell!”

The pouch caught fire, and one heartbeat later, it burst into a cacophony of rabid beasts and flaming indigo.

Claws, talons, fangs; ethereal beasts discriminated no one — they hit everything in the vicinity, vampire and chimera alike. As result, both were dashed in opposite directions.

For Imants, the arm he regenerated was now gone, and his chest, exposed to the elements, showcased injuries that would make the bravest writhe in agony. Muscular tissue exposed here, a row of ribs flashed there.

His face fared no better, for half his skin was peeled off and even hung in certain parts.

“Heh heh,” he stood up. “Serves ya right.” He sighed as if victory were his. Nothing farthest from reality.

When the indigo remains cleared, he saw Sigrid picking herself up. There was more black across her trunk, and blood dripped down her shoulder, but she was otherwise fine. His latest spell attained nothing of significance.

“Blow me. It’dn’t been the medallion,” incredulity seized his voice; “ya have natural resistance to magic.” And after experiencing shock, his mien underwent a jarring change: a toothy grin sprouted on his mouth. “Tough luck. If I had known this, I’d’ve left the dipshit of my Master reanimate Ulrich.”

Sigrid staggered a bit, clearly affected, before walking forward. There was a detour in her approach, stepping aside to retrieve the wizard’s robe. Wrong — not the robe, but what hid underneath. A silvery medallion.

“So that was what ya threw me earlier…”

With the medallion in her possession, Sigrid kept her course straight, eyes sharp and ears firm.

The most that Imant could do was to stand idle as she moved closer.

“Cheeky one, fighting me with a metal made to kill me. Spoil me: Where ya found it? I’dn’t find Sully back then, so I presumed he tried to flee, even on his last legs. Ya killed him on sight? Ya ate him?”

Sigrid stopped.

“When I found him, he was dying. But before leaving, he entrusted me with this,” she stretched her arm forward and exhibited the silver ornament. Shining light shone off Ethne Glynn’s tree. “He asked me to help him to get rid of your Master. To get rid of our kind.”

If the metal’s reflection hurt Imants he did not show it. “Aye. Leaf Lover chose to pass his blessing on ya. Of course he did. He valued ya stinky beasts more than us, his peers,” he spat and lowered. “Pathetic… His cult. His Goddess. His everything-is-going-to-be-fine demeanor… Simply disgusting.”

A beast took over his face.

“Glynn. Mast— Madakai. You. Ya all disgust me. Go all to hell!”

Lurched he, roaring like mad, spearing fast with his only weapon at his disposal: his fangs.

“Gah!”

He attained little — his desperate attack led him directly to his bane. At the level of his stomach, a clawed fist thrust deep into his ribcage. Plumes of smoke started to emerge from many points of his body.

“Sorry—”

Her arm penetrated further, and Imants, whose face was contorted with utter shock, burst with cries.

Black spread from his insides, searing flesh and reducing it to ash.

The smell of his own scorched body made him sick, to the point he would be throwing up. But his undead physiology denied him of that foul relief.

There was only screaming. Only pain.

It did not stop when his lungs fell apart in a hump of ashes. Or when his tongue melted inside his mouth. Or when his jaws burnt to the bone.

Only when his organs were nothing but dust, when his spine bereft of ligaments broke apart, and when his eyes dried inside their cavities, did the screaming — and thus, the agony — end.

“—I know you didn’t choose this.”

Lamented she before a charred skull plunged to the frigid floor.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Distance turned up safe by a miraculous margin.

Enough to avoid the bite of conflagration but not the abrupt shove of air pressures.

The impact made the back of his head and his spine ache, and now a persistent ring harassed his ears, isolating all other noise off him with the exception of his own beating. A beating that now guided his pace.

Thump-thump — writhing to his feet.

Thump-thump — rubbing the headache off.

Thump-thump — fighting the distortion and gathering his senses.

A cloud of smoke hovered ahead and overhead; the firestorm’s origin, he could tell. And beneath it, a scaled mountain lay, no longer roaring; no longer baring her fangs.

Thump-thump — it stayed there, spread.

Thump-thump — it brought about the illusion of security.

Thump-thump — a hunch of victory swelled in his guts.

He toppled a calamity — a majestic entity had been stripped of her dignified stance. And the culprit was no one but himself. Was this the moment to celebrate? The time would prove that choice hasty.

Th-thump — the smoke began to dissipate.

Thump — the ringing grew more silent; the heartbeat lost his presence.

Thmp — movement; more and more erratic by the instants.

A tail whipped against the ground. Wings wavered high. A neck flailing wildly.

No more ringing. No more heartbeats.

The distortion was gone, banished. It abandoned Marek along with the illusion and left him alone to face the consequences: enragement.

“What have you done to me?!”

The roar brought him up to speed. Not enough — one bullet was not enough.

A sudden heat surged inside his bloodstream and Marek passed to urgent action. Hand went for one of his dirk sheaths and plucked out one bullet.

His fingers battled for a few eyeblinks to insert the cylinder inside the chamber. The lock clicked, the bullet slid inside, but before he had the time to aim, a tail swipe rushed in his way.

Too tall to cover in one jump, Marek pivoted back and ran up along the ice column until he gained the necessary impulse to perform a somersault. He did, barely so; then, in a not-so-dignified way, he plunged on his side.

“Human!” Roared the dragon, sending forth a quake with every shake of her body, which in turn also brought her to stand on four.

Streams of smoke rose from the right side of her neck and right shoulder. The explosion scorched a blemish across her scales: frosty tones replaced by coal ones. Beyond that, there was no injury to speak of.

“You pay! You pay!”

She thrust forward, closing the distance in a blink, fangs bared like two ranks of spears.

Marek scooted to his feet and dashed along the pillar, half sliding, half sprinting, until he stood in an angle wherein structure offered protection. Surely it was protection — a dragon could not destroy such a solid formation of—

Krrk-Koom!

A whole chunk the size of a store was blown from the side of the pillar, and a volley of fragments scattered everywhere like hail, some pieces as big as Marek’s body. He evaded the worst, but the speeding hazard nevertheless made him trip and fall.

He missed no beat to flip onto his back. The beast snarled just as emerging blue light intensified from the depths of her gullet. Then the shift of temperature hit him: everything became colder; much more colder.

What was about to happen was as evident as flashes inside dark clouds. He bothered not to calculate the distance; and from the floor, he angled his rifle and aimed. Then he pulled the trigger.

Another explosion.

Another roar of anguish.

The two shook the lair’s very foundation.

“What magic is this?!” Screamed Hissing Wing while she thrashed about, coping with a pain Marek bet she had not felt before.

The latest explosion drove him many feet away, and he was in a better position than before, one not so compromised. The weapon’s chamber was ready to receive more ammunition.

But in her thrashing, wings as wide as buildings flapped and called upon the force of a hurricane. Marek stood firm, but his fingers fumbled and the shell was swept away.

His tongue clicked: consider it lost; better pluck the next bullet out.

The next bullet was held between his fingers when the air surrounding him stung colder. His head tilted up, and there was Hissing Wing, a blizzard gathering up within her maw.

And then it surged forth.

He felt his heart leap up to his throat.

Warg’s breath attack whistled — a dragon’s blared. Gruhulla’s stripped trees off their leaves and branches — Hissing Wing’s stripped buildings off their planks and brick.

He was lucky the blast trailed through the floor rather than dashing directly for him, otherwise dodging would have not been possible.

Thus, the blast roared past, not without stinging his unprotected skin, as if pure ice was pressed directly onto him. The breath attack also carried a vortex, a hurricanic suction that sought to swallow him whole.

Time felt like one of these nightmares wherein one could not escape from its pursuer. It took him an ample amount of effort to escape the drag of the vortex. The whole event should have not lasted more than a few seconds; and when Marek finally broke the grip of the swirl, he found himself behind another column.

The attack finished, Marek witnessed what could have been his tomb. Serrated as the teeth of a fish; taller than any village’s wall; breathing with stabbing fog. Mere thirty feet separated him from this wonder — thirty mere feet! The breathing blast had been off the mark by a considerable margin yet he had felt it biting at his heels.

Considerations for the future.

Reloading resumed, and so did the trembling below his boots.

Marek turned left, expecting to encounter a draconic snout peek past the corner. His choice made the loud crack at his back more unexpected.

“Argh!”

Size did not deny the wyrm stealth.

The top of the newly-created wall burst and debris rained over Marek. He spun with his rifle aiming high, but only saw a tail snaking through the surface. Not a head or a claw, as he had expected. Which meant…

Thrck!

A quake stripped him of his footing. A crawled arm had lashed out and struck dangerously close. Then, did a long neck and a snarling head become visible.

“No hiding, pest!”

She lunged forward in a blur, not giving Marek the time to fire. Not like he could survive the blast while standing that close.

More ice exploded at his back as he dodged the strike at the expense of maneuverability. He was now standing restricted between the dragon’s hefty form and the pillar. He was in a situation wherein a mere jolt of neck would mean being smashed.

That must have been the dragon’s thought — she did exactly that.

Head, neck, and arm; all thrashing. A brute trying to step onto a cockroach.

Her weight overwhelmed him, pushing his nerves to the extreme. The floor crevassed open; shards sprayed around. The scratching noise of claws running along ice was torture.

A misstep — a lapse of focus — and he was done for.

“What has been of your weapon?! I dare you to shoot, human! Shoot!”

The constant barrelling led him below the creature’s underside, which in turn left him at the reach of her claws. In moments like this, he had to rely on his trusty weapon.

Iousterard practically teleported in his right hand and quickly began to slash at the legs that stomped way too close. The blade proved itself sharp, enough to slice through mineral-hard scales, but the cuts it left were shallow, just enough to extract hiss of discomfort from the beast.

Not necessarily a good response as proven by the unrelenting tramping that followed. More than once Marek stood at the brink of being turned into smashed viscera, but he withal danced and veered back and forth, leaving the signature of his blade across the legs whenever was necessary.

Then he noticed a flex on the four legs, a collective tensing of anatomy — Hissing Wing was about to drive downward.

“Crap!”

A last-second roll spared him a swift death; the evasion drove him behind the monster, out of her sight, but if Marek thought he would have a break to regain his footing he had been wrong. A serpentine shadow was plummeting over him.

The light around him grew almost absent when a projectile hit him by the side. It blasted the air out of his lungs, and might as well have broken one of his ribs, but the scaled mass thwacked with solid ice, with him out of range; whatever hit him had saved him.

“Don’t go down now!”

He got yelled at. The voice belonged to Mad Ax himself, who proceeded to lift Marek off the ground, ever so brusquely.

“Blast it!” Mørk turned to the wyrm. “Blast the damn thing dead!”

“Wait!”

His protest was drowned out by the northman’s battlecry; true to his epithet, Mørk charged wildy, one ax for each hand.

Set of runed belts flickered with intense blue, and whatever magic they evoked allowed Mørk to jump high. With the help of his weapons, he clung firm to the scaly surface before rushing up.

“Off me!”

Hissing Wing bent her neck to her back and expanded her jaws.

“Watch out!”

Swiftly spun Iousterard from his grip. The silvery edge impaled itself on the dragon’s eyebrow; the injury edged the inconsequential, but it did the trick: thwarted the attack and gave Mørk the time he needed to evade.

The berserker then trampled further across the dragon top, maneuvering through scutes and spikes. Few would hold their position for long, but Mørk preserved his footing with strength, willpower, and unadulterated rage. But let’s abide by the notions of reality: no one could stand atop a moving mountain forever — thus, a violent jerk eventually threw him off her back.

Only his axes saved him from a painful fall, hacking into the wing membrane and drawing two tears across.

Hissing Wing was none too pleased. Thus, a fit of ferocity ensued.

“Shoot, damn it! Shoot!” Screamed he as the win he clung to flapped and fluttered madly.

I can’t with you standing that close!

Mørk’s diversionary tactic was not wasted and Marek distanced many yards from the encounter; nevertheless, his course of action would lead to nowhere if Mørk refused to detach himself from the dragon, there was little he could do. Marek could not bring himself to shoot him.

And just as he was pondering his next step, the wyrm reared. Wings spread to their widest. Taller than ever — more imposing than ever. The view stole his breath.

And soon, it would soon steal him of his balance.

Hissing Wing let herself fall with devastating heftiness.

Every pillar and every corner jolted; not even the ceiling was safe, ice chandelier vibrating and shards raining about.

Marek could not help but fall prone.

The enemy was not done. Hissing Wing kept replicating the last motions, except this time the wings flapped and streams of icy currents swept across. It all made the act of picking oneself up harder.

The gusts would cease shortly afterward; by the time he tilted his head straight, it was too late — the wyrm detached off the ground. Leaping high; drawing an arc; diving fast. Directly toward Marek.

Krrak-Thrump!

The jolt, which he felt in the bones and made his stomach turn, told him that he threw himself out of the nick of time. His head, too, ached, and the sense of orientation got out of his hands. It was rare that an indirect strike felt like a beating.

How far did the dragon land? How far did he throw himself?

Was he beside the dragon? Before the dragon? Maybe behind?

A current of air blew behind his ears and nape. Behind — he definitely stood behind the dragoness. Right within the reach of her tail.

There was no need to peer behind his shoulder: the way the air stirred at his back told him the tail had gone in pursuit.

No beforehand impulse. No magic to propel him high. Marek could only embrace, to prepare the way a vessel would before a breaking of a tidal wave.

And like a tidal wave it broke upon him.

Relentless. Suffocating. Inescapable.

His body was at the mercy of a vertiginous force that crushed him against the tension of the air itself.

Weirdly enough, he felt no intense pain during his trip — that only washed him over when the tail found the end of the trip and his body parted from the limb, sending him rolling hundred of yards, until the foot of the nest stopped him dead.

He writhed; he grunted; air was sharply sucked in through his teeth. Iciness and roughness of terrain had abraded regions of exposed skin; none was free of bruise.

The aftereffects of wounds should be faced later: he picked himself up as fast as he could, staggered a bit, and set his sight firm, right in time for it to take in the dragon’s stare spearing at him.

Then, she flapped her wings, widely and fast.

Mørk’s resistance met its ends and was sent wheeling across the ice. Marek could not see where his ally had been dashed — lashes of air were overwhelming him.

And when the exhibition of galeforce came to an end, the floor began to drum anew.

She insisted with the wild charges! Of course she did — it overrode distance, giving Marek reason not to blast her with fire.

Little she knew, but Marek took her challenge personally.

His posture went firm, undaunted before the earthquake that drummed closer and closer. His aim shivered with each stomp; his target acted in rapid motion, but it was also massive.

Not whether he could hit her or not, but whether he could hit her and walk out alive.

Time would tell. And when Hissing Wing was raising her upper body, spreading her arms wide, and drawing her neck back, he knew the time was now.

There came the trigger — there came the conflagration.

It struck not the head or the chest, but the left wingpit, the place where the back and the wing joined.

Equilibrium was disrupted by the explosion and her body spun, one side was driven high whereas the other lowered. The result was deviation — a considerable deviation.

Right after the trigger was pulled, Marek was relegated to spectator.

He saw the monumental form obscure his sight.

He heard ice thunderously burst at his back, and the debris landed upon his shoulder and head.

The event that unfolded during those dense heartbeats was something he could not defend against, so he just cowered in safety. When everything stopped shaking and battered him no longer, he sideglanced to his left.

Hissing Wing had shattered through the rampart that was the edge of her nest; half body inside, half body protruding out.

Not seeing the wyrm showcase its fit of enragement almost made Marek fall into the illusion that everything was over; but within a couple of breath cycles, glacial mass popped and cracked with lethargic motion.

How much punishment could that monster take?!

Hand frisked his sheath. Empty — he ran out of quick-access ammunition. Time to go for his wrappings.

“What?”

The amiss: the strap across his chest was absent. He patted down — around his waist, at his back — nothing.

Where did it fall? When did it fall?

During the first explosion? After the second? No way it fell during the third.

Maybe the breath attack tore it off him. Maybe it had been the tail swipe. Or maybe it had been that one leap!

His mind whirled wind. Where could his belongings possibly be?!

“Ah—!” A silent gasp of realization. “When I was under the effect of fear— the nest!”

The tail protruding in the outside part of the nest began to sway. There was no violence in these shudders; Hissing Wing tried not to attack but to recover her footing.

She’s stunned. I must go now!

And Marek hurried, rounding past the tail, legs, and debris. His legs drove him to the other side without so much a problem, but he still needed to find his stuff. Hissing Wing was already standing straight.

“I see… I have underestimated it,” her voice vibrated and grated as much as the debris. “It put its mind into this coup. Its desire to dispose of me borders the admirable.”

A thick neck and fierce snout peeked over the nest. Her plating of scales emitted a screen of smoke and embers; tendrils of fog ghosted out of her half-open maw.

“But its endeavours are for naught. It’s all for naught! Fyrrgramr favours the pure-blooded! He favours me! His blood won’t undergo replacement!”

Her words struck confusion in him. The way she ranted about her enemy told him whatever had her in that state of paranoia was a mastermind.

Yet, Marek could not help but narrow the suspects down until one individual came into his mind.

‘Cut it,’ he thought to himself. The dragon’s obsession was the least of his concerns, not when stomps rumbled at his heels.

And speaking of rumbles, they resounded with greater torpor. Moreover, there was a particular grind along the ice, one not only attributed to a slithering tail.

There was no doubt — the wyrm was hurt! Not seriously so, but enough to make her limp. Of course! And that grinding sound must be her left wing: she now dragged her behind after the latest shot.

They were half-way through it. The last nerve-wracking experience was paying off.

A little more — just a little more and the victory would be theirs. He just needed to find his belongings and reload his rifle. The rest would be a trite choreography.

He kept his eyes at the nest’s outer edge, anxious of finding the mocca textile he was so familiar with. The stomps kept rumbling and his legs kicking as no hanging fabrics came into view. Instead, a beam of metallic light struck his retinas.

The bright beacon drew his eyes from his left to his right, toward the inner ring circle. There he saw the flat of a blade, held by the handle by an arm, which was waving up. A call sign from a man; and it looked like brown fabrics were hanging from his shoulders.

Mørk! He is fine!

Marek changed his course and sprinted toward Mørk’s position. The task was not easy: between the nest and the inner ring, tens and tens of yards filled with nothing but open space stretched. Were he to leave, he would be exposed to the wyrm’s breath attack.

A roar boomed at his back.

Shit! I can’t afford another lap. I must go now!

His legs were pushed to the limit until they burnt. The sensation lasted little as sheer cold lapped his back, but that brought him no relief. A blizzard hissed to his ears — freezing energy brewed far behind his back.

The vortex erupted, and Marek pulled out a last-moment slide. Rifle and ax helped him to maneuver, enabling him to shift his weight and hook at the wall once close enough so he would be exposed at minimum. The incident was as rough as it was frigid, and by the time his slide lost impulse, there was a chunk of diamantine ice lying tall right where the breath attack had hit.

“Fuck…” He sighed out. “What a arsebuster.”

“Tell me about it.”

Marek turned to see Mørk approaching. As for healthiness was concerned, he fared no better than himself: purple and pink wherever his skin lay exposed.

“I presume you sought this,” he let the wrappings fall to his side.

Marek scrambled to his belongings, his quick nod speaking volumes of his gratitude. Meanwhile, the floor vibrated more.

“The dragon… it moves slower,” Mørk let out.

“She does, indeed. The rifle works and she is hurt. Mørk… we might have the upper ground,” Marek revealed, his tone as enthusiastic as urgent, not taking his eyes and hands from his bag.

“Even now, she limps and struggles to keep up with us. We are close.”

The rifle cocked ready, but Marek rummaged further, seeking out for more ammunition.

“Let’s just make sure to keep our distance. If the next shots can cripple her legs, shooting her head shall be easy.” His hand picked up bullets, then it stored him in his dagger sheath one by one. “By all means, try not to climb atop the beast. I wouldn’t be able to shoot if you are—”

A hunch had Marek halting all preparation.

He felt chills and ehe hair at the back of his neck stood up; the coldness had not been accounted responsible because, against all reason, heat rose at his back. His hand had been holding a bullet high ever since the intuition struck him, and on its pewtery surface, he saw a faint orange flick.

Then, it flicked again.

Marek spun right in time to intercept a heavy blade strike with his rifle, which caused a sharp clunk to travel forth.

No one other than his ally was holding the attacking blade.

“Mørk!”

The northman charged his blow with more strength and pushed Marek backward until he could no longer hold his balance and fell on his back.

“Wh— what are you doing?!”

He got no response; not a verbal one at least. Mørk raised his left before letting his other ax, charged with crackling energies, plunge upon Marek. It was blocked by the butt of his device, but even an indirect blow from this battering ram of a man was enough to make every fresh wound throb.

“You jackass! Have you gone mad?!”

Brutal came down his right, fizzling with fire. Marek escaped the press just in time to roll out of the way. He barely got up in time to parry the next swing of an ax, compelled to use his rifle as a shield once more.

Marek was careful to divert the heavy strike and not only because the blade wore the firearm down with each strike. Detonative ammunition and magical fire and electricity, or any fire and electricity for that matter, did not mix. Were heat to suffuse through the chamber wherein the bullet rested, and both humans were goners.

“What devil possessed Mørk to do this?!” Yelled Marek before being shoved a few feet back, then he rolled on his feet and used the butt end of the weapon to bat the large man aside. The result was the opposite, though, for Mørk and his strength were too much for Marek to divert; rather, it was him who was batted aside. Notwithstanding, he attained the intended result: disengaging, even if temporary.

And speaking of the berserker, he was unnervingly quiet. He did not rage; his face did not warp and his mouth parted to allow breathing but nothing more. A mask of impassiveness on his face, whatever wince his features elicited was but a natural consequence of his powerful attacks.

Marek was no acquaintance of the northerman, but based off the short time they spent together and how he sported his brutality with the dragons mere minutes ago, he could tell Mørk was not being himself.

But there was no time to figure out this drastic turn: the floor trembled and ground louder.

“Snap out!”

He did not, and both axes drew two parallel lines in the air, from top down. The latter reacted and hiked his rifle, the length connecting with the blades’ handles and locking them up.

Just there Marek’s eyes met Mørk’s. They evinced no shine of emotion, no quiver of strain. These were the same eyes he had displayed during their chatter in their way here.

Maybe a devil possessed him after all.

His attention would be disrupted when a shadow emerged at the foremost cornest of his view. His eyes broke contact with Mørk and his eyes bulged wide in the act: a fuming, reptilian snout loomed up menacingly.

Sweet was breaking out across his forehead.

Escaping was not impossible, but the price would be extreme. His rifle, his sole effective weapon, and packaging, filled with ammunition and flasks, would have to be relinquished.

Mørk, too, would have to be left behind.

Damn his luck!

The entire turn of events escaped the foreseen, almost as if weaved by a greater power!

He saw frigid power building within the dragon’s mouth and his whole body tensed in anticipation of the greatest act of withdrawal.

Then, it echoed with grim raucity, cutting through the tension the whole battle had built until that point.

His sight strayed from the dragon. No — his whole focus strayed from the dragon! following the source of that harsh yet short-lived cry.

And there he saw it, a sighting as distinctive as a fountain amid a desert.

A raven.

The hunch that evil forces were meddling with his fight was no more a hunch but a sign of ill omen. A raven! This far in the North, inside a dragon’s lair!

No matter how out of place the sighting was, a raven should not hijack his focus off the ancient wonder that a dragon was. And yet, there he was, mouth parted ever so slightly, too enthralled to notice even the dragon had halted all movement, just like he had.

The bird, flying around with daring freedom, cawed a little more and circled a couple of times before casting its eye, one that shone like a gold nugget, upon… him? Mørk? the dragon?

Whatever the target was, it induced a current of sheer gelidness to travel his bloodstream.

Why did he feel as if something more perilous than a dragon was watching him?

His very question would be answered by an uproar of agony, which broke his trance and forced his sight back to the colossal monster.

He caught up blood, a spurt of blood raining from high, the very blood he needed conditioned so he could aspire to see himself of old age. The origin: the eye; more accurately, what used to be the left eye.

But the most baffling thing was not the gruesomeness of the injury or the energy the dragon put into her outcry, but what was sticking out where the wound had been made.

A humanoid silhouette, with long, flowing hair as dark and black as the raven he witnessed the instants before. For the next heartbeat, and perhaps the heartbeat that followed, the image printed on his eyes clued him with nothing but utter confusion.

It was not until that mane of blackness waved aside that Marek caught a glance of a gilded spark shining off the head of the attacker. Distance proved not hindering at that moment — the image rang a thousand bells — and when his mind sorted out the puzzle, he felt his stomach clench and tasted his bile at the bottom of his tongue.

“Impossibl—”

Aching spread from inside of his stomach, and right there the sense of mystery ended, although his shock had not lessened in the slightest.

Mørk, showing the least interest at the newcomer as if his senses filtered everything but Marek, had landed a kick and sent him staggering back. Marek recovered quick enough, right in time to greet the northman’s next onslaught.

Marek’s movement, although accurate and swift, lacked definition, product of his whirling mind, which still coped with the revelation. Left and right legs shifted out of impulse and survival, and so did his arms holding the length of treated materials, but he aimed for no counterattack. He could not.

He could not believe his eyes, which stared at the spectacle that had begun parallel to his own.

Why?

Why was he not dead?

And his body… He seemed whole, no longer decrepit. How was that? He came to realize the answer for that: what he gripped was a bladed tool Marek was all the familiar with.

Damn it all! The Gods could not curse his luck even if they so wished!

Why can’t his situation refrain from worsening further?!

“Mørk! Stop!”

Marek tore his sight off the other battle and made himself heard amid the clanks and clunks of metal against metal. He passed to conscious action, delivering rifle strikes on Mørk’s sides left exposed.

He kept yelling, trying to reach out for the battle-entranced fighter, but Mørk never showed the eagerness to trade words, only lethal attacks. Marek bit the inside of his cheek until it hurted, then slipped round the enemy’s flank and deigned a smack on the hip.

As expected, the northman did not growl albeit he expressed the would-be-pain as a teeter. In retaliation, he swung for the Marek’s head, but the rifleman read through the attack and bent low; half-crouched, with the head at the level of Mørk’s belly, he launched a punch, a low punch, straight for a place deemed off-limit everywhere but in filthy inns.

Oh, and how did his partner growled this time, even if through teeth.

Within that period in which the attacker bore the pain with a half-stifled posture, Marek stretched his right arm with the palm open, at which Iousterard teleported forthwith. A roll of his wrist and a subsequent sweep of his ax, Marek disarmed Mørk of his flaming ax, while drawing an arc before dropping onto the floor with a slide, now no longer engulfed in flames.

He yelled at Mørk again, and even threatened to further his pain, but the man lost the ability to hear, or so it seemed. Thus came Trym, its sparks fizzing with hunger; Marek managed to block it with the rifle, but as he feared ever since the beginning of their sparring, the whips of lightning hit the right conduct, and what should have been a shield become a medium that allowed lines of electricity to find its way to his skin.

By an act of pure casualty, the bullet within the chamber did not detonate, but the shock blasted Marek and sent him back with a sudden leap. The pillar stopped him, but with smoking skin and nerves rendered a mess, Marek arranged no effective defense before the next charge.

He stopped the ax from embedding itself in his flesh by raising the rifle before him, but now Mørk had been pressed, almost crushed, against the cold surface, denying him the freedom of fleeing.

“Fuck!” He croaked out. “Come to your senses, damn it!”

Marek speculated what could bring Mørk to his normal self; yes, his normal self, for Marek was convinced the berserker would not turn against him in normal or extraordinary conditions. Killing him would bring him no benefit but a quicker way to die.

Madakai Striigori — yes, the undead twice-returned, the human seethed — was, without the smidgest of doubts, the culprit. Recalling his studies, or better said curious skimming of pages, he recalled that records had mentioned of vampires and how they used their ‘allures’ to bind the mind of the ill-willed living, a power that so far, and luckily, Marek had not experienced firsthand.

Could that be? Could those words be taken outside of metaphor? And Madakai, body now restored back to his prime, could make use of an ability he had been deprived of? The guy escaped death, not once but twice, so everything was possible.

Marek evaluated and concluded that he should test that theory. If what possessed Mørk was the will of the lieutenant, then he was imprisoned by a mental charm, which could be broken if Marek poked the ‘right spot.’ If he wanted to save his latest ally, the shot was worth it, and he better do it quickly, for the hold Mørk exerted upon him was taking the air out of his chest.

“This is it, then? This is what you want?!” He shouted. “Murdering your sole ally?!”

Mørk bid no response, and his press intensified.

“Even if that means leaving the tormentor of your people alive?! Free?! To play natural disaster with the people that trusted you?! To keep tormenting Lilli?!”

A wince. The hold remained strong, but it no longer increased in strength.

The ‘right spot,’ that had been.

“One day, perhaps this very tenday, she will look up, see a dragon circling high, and what will she think?! That you died and failed, all for naught!”

Mørk’s features contorted subtly.

“People trusted you! Your comrades trusted you! Your niece trusted you! And when you had the chance to bring peace to all of them, what happened? You kill your partner and leave the damn beast alive to get revenge upon your people!”

The berserker now bared his teeth, a deep growl beginning to resound from the bottom of his throat.

“And that monster you saw, that entity of grave we call a vampire.” Marek strainedly tilted his head toward the ongoing battle neighbouring their own. He noticed Mørk’s eyes darting to the dragon and back to Marek.

“... Madakai.” Mørk finally uttered.

“You know him! You know what he is capable of! And unlike the dragon, he moves like a ghost! Creeps through the night and kills without warning to tell! A demon who, other than murdering, also turns your beloved ones into monsters! Is that what you want to achieve?!”

“... No…”

“You want him to turn Lilli into a slave! Into a witless animal lusting after the blood of innocents! Into his lap dog!”

“No!”

Marek could not help but think he overreached himself with words when the force exerted upon him started to rise again and the electric ax heaved high, preparing to bore into his head.

His eyes squeezed shut as he prepared for the slice. The air whished right before him and his body helplessly winced; then, ice ruptured by his right ear and his whole body jerked, his mouth releasing a gasp.

Passed the heartbeats and, after noticing he had not left this world, he pried his eyes open. Mørk laid trembling before him, clutching his head with one hand while heaping the other around Trym’s handle, which was embedded on the wall.

“... My head… Is in my head…” He breathed out, practically whispering.

“I did notice…” Marek was good in shedding the intense sense of doom that invaded him the seconds prior.

“The rings… They burn me…” He grunted behind the hand that covered his face.

“Fight it. I, too, had experienced the same from others. No easy feat for most, but you are strong if not stronger than me. Don’t let him win. Don’t let him hurt Lilli.”

Mørk kept breathing harshly through his teeth. The hand that grabbed his head tightened so much that the skin under the grip reddened. The skin would soon retake its natural color, and the grunts would likewise grow quieter.

Within a minute, the berserker, in the middle of spent pants, would remove the hand off his face and return Marek the stare. This time, Mørk was wearing a mask of emotion: tiredness.

“Mørk Hæssen,” Marek pushed back Mork’s weight back now his arm had gone slack. “I cannot defeat the dragon and the vampire on my own. And we cannot let them run amok. Join me, not as bait for the foe, but as brother in arms. I need you.”

Mørk held the semi-absent look. When he seemed to become lucid enough and his posture, his mouth began to move.

—Then, he was flying, dashing feet and feet away from Marek. Whatever happened unfurled so rapidly that Marek only got to discern the hard and painful thwack before seeing that the image of his human partner had been replaced by a taller and more furry form.

“Let him alone!” Surged forth an avian shriek.

Standing before him, covered in what seemed like soot and marred with burns, was the maiden he bespoke Mørk. The female he thought he had the chance of not seeing ever again.

“Sigrid.” His lips moved on their own.

“—! Marc!” She missed no beat to drop the beastly act and look at Marek with a mix of topmost concern and relief.

His eyes lost themselves in her mask. Oh, the times that exotic face flashed before his eyes whenever the dragon stomped or bit or breathed in his way — How glad was he to see her again!

And yet… the return of her lover considered, Marek felt none too happy.

“Sig…” His eyes landed on the unconscious Mørk. His eyes picked the chaos of an epic battle developing in the vicinity.

“You… You shouldn’t have done that.”