“The beast,” Anaakendi whispered.

  “The beast!” She repeated forcefully, shedding her human form and becoming a creature of wind as she stepped forward.

  David raced back to the group, hissing at the incarnation. “What are you doing?! Turn around, we're leaving!” He said as he picked up a meeping Niala.

  Anaakendi stared him down. “You wish to run!? To bring this beast back to the town with us?!”

  “And you want to fight it here, in the middle of nowhere, just the five of us?!” David asked, Niala in arms, who had wrapped an arm over his neck.

  The old woman straightened upward. “I am much stronger than I was, and you all have powers of your own. We can fight. We must fight.”

  Jordo spoke before David would reply. “I believe the choice might not be ours.” He said, pointing toward the darkness ahead of them.

  All heads turned, peering, and they found, in the distance, an oily reflection of David's luminous plaque.

  Niala tapped on David's shoulders. He snapped his attention back to her and found a small, reassuring smile on her face as she pointed at the ground with her eyes. He nodded and let her down.

  To his side, the blue glow of Leandro's imbuements pushed back the darkness, soon joined by David's. Jordo trudged up to the front, holding out one hand, from which sprang a red transparent disc, several metres wide.

  Anaakendi stirred the winds around them into a frenzy, picking up shards of ice and stone, turning into a small hurricane filled with projectiles.

  Niala kicked at the snow, uncovering the frozen ground beneath, and laid a hand upon it as she began weaving.

  Outside of their bubble of light, at the edge of their perception, something massive, walking on at least four legs, with a head you knew existed but couldn't perceive, approached. Its slick, black skin faintly reflected light as a multi-hued metallic sheen.

  Whatever existed at the end of its neck, three stories high, bent down, eyeing the curious little beings that stood defiant, instead of scurrying away in fear.

  It mattered not. They would die, just as everything had to. He had to collect the fragments that resided in everyone and everything, so that it could be whole again.

  It lunged.

  Through Anaakendi's whirlwind, rocks and ice shattering against its sides. It charged at Jordo, something jaw-like grabbed his red disc, pulling at it, dragging the golem along. The beast and machine played tug of war for a few heartbeats, until the beast lost patience, pulling to the side and flinging Jordo off into the forest.

  It stepped forward, met a woman made of wind, and swiped a paw at it, which met something akin to glass, its claws streaking the creature's surface, the sound of nails on ceramic biting at everyone's ears.

  Its paw came back strangely cold, just before a whip of freezing wind cracked across the appendage that formed its head. It felt a temporary scar upon its form, evaporating as quickly as it had suffered it.

  It pawed at the annoying wind-glass thing once more, this time with full force, and felt the thing's body break like an overstressed crystal. The winds quieted down.

  A large man, glowing blue, rushed up against it. Two paws met the man's charge, only to be caught with one hand each. It pressed down more of its weight, but the man barely bent at the knees.

  And then another blue glow streaked toward its top-most extremity, encased in a blue flame.

  Not flame, mana.

  MANA!

  It snapped its jaw over the flying man and crunched down, but it refused to obey and remained open.

  Something, some force, was pushing back.

  And it was getting stronger.

  The organs it had as eyes widened in shock.

  Niala did her best to keep her fear at bay, focusing on her weave.

  Her fear turned to panic as she saw David jump up at the thing and get swallowed, but managed to retain control when she saw him struggling against two... things that were trying to crush him, like giant jaws.

  And then his flame grew bigger, and he began pushing back.

  From the corner of her eyes, she saw Jordo's red eye saunter between the trees, as the golem rushed back toward the battle.

  She hardened her gaze, pushed all that she could into her story, and sent her mana racing into the ground.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Leandro's breath came in short and laboured. He felt as if he was holding up two houses, one in each hand. His arms trembled, about as much as his aching knees, but he held on.

  It was humbling to think he was not the main combatant, but he had a role to play. He would hinder and hold back, and he would buy time for his companions to strike.

  He pushed a tiny bit more mana into his imbuements and held strong to the limbs made of oily darkness that were trying to crush him.

  The creature pulled one of its legs toward its mouth, batting at the obstinate object that was fighting back. It heard a grunt, but the force did not abate.

  It was about to bat at it again, when it heard a landslide erupt, and felt its form pierced amidship.

  An ocular organ observed its body and found a rocky spike, twice as high as it was, impaling its torso.

  Curious.

  From its side, it spotted the red machine running back; the large red disc formed in front of it once more.

  To its front, the large man who occupied two of its paws.

  And in its mouth...

  It shook its head, unhinging its jaw, expelling whatever it was that it could not swallow. Snapping it back shut, it brought a third limb at the large glowing man, clubbing it aside, settling down on its front paw.

  As for the spike... it let part of its torso dissipate into oily smoke, stepped to the side, and called its form back apiece.

  It swung a hind leg at the machine, stumbling it backward and into a tree that cracked and fell.

  In front of it, a small humanoid, a hand laid on the ground, staring at its approaching doom.

  It caught a scent. It sniffed at the air, what a delightful aroma... it was from... the small creature. The beast's ocular globes engorged.

  A pluck of strings, a wave of fingers, a filament woven, the laws of the world seduced, rewritten...

  A weaver's touch, altering the tapestry...

  The small creature... It held much more than a fragment.

  The beast's “head” congealed into a jumbled mass, with three sets of jaws jutting at irregular angles, a smattering of haphazard small tentacles that ended in jagged barbs flailing around, and too many orb-like eyes, spread around like pustules,

  All of its sickly yellow eyes, with a pinpoint black iris, turned toward the catkin, unblinking.

  Niala's own eyes widened in recognition. She had seen eyes like these, two of them, staring at her in the confines of a dark corridor.

  “Fel,” she whispered, as one set of jaws gaped open and descended upon her.

  David shook himself up, groaning and holding his head. He looked up at the site of the battle, only for his heart to skip, as he saw the creature's disgusting face angling for a stunned Niala.

  “LEVIATHAN!” He called out.

  A tremor shook the air.

  His mana surged. The trees closest to him turned blue-white and disintegrated into scintillant floating motes.

  He kicked at the ground. A crater appeared where he had been, the snow gone, vaporized into steam.

  A blue comet smashed into the beast's head, shearing it clean off its neck, as both objects continued on their path for a hundred metres, crashing and digging a furrow of several meters.

  David stumbled to his feet. In front of him, a large bulbous mass of oily flesh, its hundreds of unblinking, sickly-yellow pin-pricked eyes staring at him.

  The thing's body angled toward its decapitated head and trundled closer. As it approached, a filament connected both parts, soon joined by many others, as a disgusting sucking sound marked both halves reattaching.

  David willed his body back into a fighting stance and let his mana flow once more.

  The creature pawed at him. He deflected it with a swipe of his arm. It did it once more from the other side, all while its eyes were locked upon his person.

  It was testing, wary.

  He grinned. That meant he had hurt it. If he could hurt it, he could fight it.

  Niala managed to close her hanging jaw as she regained her senses. Why had she frozen? She... all those eyes. They had seen something in her, and that thing had shrivelled in fear.

  She shook her head. Whatever that had been, it wouldn't happen again. David needed her.

  David! Where...

  She saw the blue flares in the distance. She unrolled her cargo cloth and retrieved the very worst of her throwing phials. Securing them to her belt, she got up and ran toward the battle.

  Fighting the snow to close the distance to David, she spotted Leandro, holding his side and limping in the same direction as her.

  She angled toward him, a healing potion already in hand. “Leandro!”

  The veteran turned his head toward her, relief washing over his face. “Girl, I am glad to see you well.”

  “I wish I could say the same thing! Here, healing potion.” She said, passing him the bottle, before she began rummaging in her satchel, grabbing a few more and passing them on to the man. “A triple energizer, triple booster, a focus potion, and a mana potion. Here, drink all of these.”

  She turned and resumed her dash toward David, not seeing Leandro's bugged-out eyes, staring at the mana potion. He lifted his eyes up to her. “Girl, wait. A mana potion? Those are minor treasures, where did you-”

  Niala turned her head and shouted back, not halting her advance. “Drink now, fight after, questions later!”

  Leandro blinked before reining in his surprise. How humiliating that a young woman had to remind him not to get distracted in battle.

  He drank the potions one after the other, as instructed, and settled against a tree to give them time to work. He knew the girl brewed high-quality ones; he figured a few minutes would-

  His next heartbeat shook his entire body. He seized up, hunched forward, forcing a hand to stop his fall, while he grabbed at his chest with the other. No breath came to him, as he felt his every muscle contract, his bones re-align, his joints limber.

  For the next few seconds, he was a prisoner in his own body, as it refused to heed his orders.

  And then everything slid into place. His lungs pulled in air like an ox, his heart cycled his blood like a raging river.

  He rose, renewed, reborn.

  He had the energy of his youth, the strength of his peak, his mana was overflowing, triggering his imbuements without his consent.

  Questions flooded his mind, but he pushed them back. Fight now, mana questions later.

  He pumped his legs and caught up to, and rushed past, Niala, leaving a flurry of disturbed snow in his wake.

  There was a battle to fight, and Leandro Gustall would not ignore its call.