The carnage wouldn’t leave my thoughts. Every time I blinked my eyes, the images came back.

A calf, its carcass, splayed open, limbs loose and floppy because they had no bones. The remnants of a once proud, shaggy head cut to ribbons to remove the skull, the brain scooped out and tossed onto the ground without a thought.

I haven’t stopped moving since I found the child. I gathered my herd, desperate to keep them safe from whatever predator had committed this horrible deed. And as we buried the calf, as my thoughts dwelled on what had happened to that innocent child of the herd, an image burned itself into my thoughts.

A creature that must be destroyed.

I don’t know where my certainty came from. There’s so much I don’t understand about what has happened to my mind since we came to this world. Once, I was happy to eat, roam the plains, and end each day with a long, dreamless sleep among my herd. We lived in a world where trees were not cut, where the earth was not raised into strange structures to house tiny creatures, and where nothing dared to prey on my people.

And then we followed the whispers of a strange voice to this new place. Dreams invaded our sleep. Words we’d never imagined burrowed like seeds into the fertile, fallow fields of our minds. New thoughts blossomed into sentences, and something in our mouths changed to allow us to speak them. In the span of a few days, my people became something more than we’d ever been, but we have lost so much of what we were. I don’t know how we’ll survive.

I never wanted war before, never craved violence. But after seeing my dead child, its bones defiled, the meat of its body left untouched by the creature that had killed it, a new word infected my every waking moment.

Retribution.

That diseased desire spread through my herd. Our hooves trampled the plains as we returned to the place where we’d fought, where we’d killed, to find the corpse of our enemy stripped bare. We gathered around the creature and breathed deeply of the corruption that had infected its flesh. But we smelled much more than rot.

The creature’s carcass still held traces of the foul magic of its life. The strange power we now know as mana. I am no bloodhound, no wolf on the prowl, but my people are sensitive to magic and those who wield it.

And we would follow this tainted sent to others of its kind.

As we hunted for our enemies, I had to wonder over the strangeness of this new world. The bones of another world jut from its red soil. The power that changed us also changed this place. I wonder about the small creatures who call it home, and pity them for the transformation they never asked to suffer. Have their minds expanded, like mine? Are they wracked with strange new emotions they’d never experienced before?

It is hard for me to wrestle with these thoughts. I do my best to make some sense of all this. As my tribe followed the scent of dark magic, I did my best to not think of the horrors to come.

Perhaps that is why it took us several days to find our enemy’s camp. Not because our long legs couldn’t cover the distance more quickly, but because the duty that lay at the end of our path disturbed us more than we could admit, even to ourselves. The small ones had to pay for the crime they’d committed against our child, but exacting that price from them would cost us dearly.

We would lose one more thing to this world, and once it was gone, I did not think we could ever go back to what we were. Because the price we had to pay could never be replaced.

Sacrificing our innocence for vengeance was like cutting off our horns and hooves. But it was a price that must be paid.

“You can turn back if you wish,” I told my people, in the strange, rumbling voice that sometimes I still do not recognize as my own. “What happens next will mark you. I cannot ask any of you to bear that brand.”

The younger bulls in my herd tossed their heads in denial, sparks dancing along their horns, static illuminating the coarse hairs of their beards. Most of them were not even three summers old, practically calves themselves. But their hearts were fierce and pure, and they were no less tormented by what had happened than me. I would save them the pain that would follow them from this day on if I could, but denying them revenge was not a kindness, merely a different kind of cruelty.

The females of the herd gathered close to me, their eyes deep and grieving. There was no greater pain than a mother’s loss of a child, no fiercer anger than the drive to defend your offspring. These members of our herd raised that calf, each treating them as they would their own, and their communal loss lies across a gulf that I could never cross. This was their war, too, and they would not turn away from the bloody task at hand.

“So it shall be,” I say, the words quiet, but every bit as final as a fall from a cliff.

We waited out of sight of the enemy’s camp for the sun to descend to the horizon. These creatures could see as well in darkness as my kind could in the light of day. We had learned that from the scout we had trampled. He was clever, and might’ve evaded us entirely, if he had known our minds were already growing. He thought us dumb animals and paid the price for his arrogance.

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As would the rest of his kind.

With the sun low behind us, its dying rays cloaked our approach as we charged into the small ones’ camp. My hooves smashed through tents made of ornately embroidered canvas and snuffed out campfires, along with the lives of the creatures that surrounded them. The lightning from my horns knocked the small ones sprawling in the dirt, their bodies convulsing as the power of thunder wracked their muscles.

There were two hundred of the monsters and only twenty of my thunder bison, but the end of this fight was never in doubt. We were strong, and our enemies were shockingly frail. Our initial charge through their camp killed dozens of them, and our hooves were slick with blood as we turned to stampede through their host again.

“Trample them into the mud,” I told my people. “Leave not one of them to crawl back to their home for reinforcements.”

A volley of black arrows streaked away from their bows as I spoke. The missiles were little more than biting flies to us, though, and the sharp stings only focused our rage. The little creatures foolishly gathered in the center of their camp, weapons raised in pathetic defiance of our might. The fools thought they could win this battle.

We would show them the error of their ways.

Our hooves pummeled the earth as we charged again. Thunderheads gathered above our bristling backs, a sign of our magic strengthening as our hearts pounded and rage consumed our thoughts. Bolts flew from those dark clouds to blast craters into the red earth and hurl small, fragile bodies into the sky. The smell of blood and burning hair coated the battlefield in a miasmic cloud. The stink sickened me, but I breathed it deeply. One must not look away from such a grisly task.

Our enemies did not falter in the face of our charge. They held their positions on ground that trembled beneath our hooves. They wore second skins of metal plates and woven chains that sparked with foul magic. Their eyes widened in fear as we bore down on them, but their leader barked harsh commands that stiffened their spines. Despite their obvious inferiority, these creatures would not break and run. They would face their horrible death.

In that moment, tendrils of fear crept through my rage and found their way deep into the dark recesses where my animal mind still lurked. We had just stomped so many of their number into the dirt, and yet these creatures defied their fate.

Something was wrong.

But it was far too late to redirect the stampede. My people were committed to this charge. We had become the storm that could not be swayed. I lowered my head, lightning dancing in a deadly crown above my horns, and closed my eyes to protect them from the impact.

A sound even louder than the crashes of thunder from the clouds above us rang out across the battlefield. A hammer blow landed atop my head, driving it back into my shoulders. Our momentum was too great to slow, much less halt, and my teeth crashed together as my body hammered into a wall I could not see.

My people cried out in one voice. We were stunned and bruised from the impact with the invisible wall, and then further injured as our bodies piled up against it. Young bulls all around me bellowed with rage and pain as their horns snapped against the wall. Two of my teeth exploded into bloody shards inside my mouth, and stars danced in front of my eyes.

I cursed my rage, the bloodlust that had pushed us to make this attack. I’d underestimated our enemies, now my people had paid the price. Even as I struggled back to my feet, I heard the sounds of the wounded all around me and knew many would not rise again.

“You are defeated,” the leader of the small things spat at me from behind the protection of its unseen barrier. “There are only two ways this ends for you. I will let you decide which path your people will now follow.”

“Come out from behind that wall,” I demanded. “Face me with honor. Let our battle decide the fate of our people.”

The small thing held one arm out to his side, then rotated his hand until its palm faced the earth. Power pulsed from that hand, carrying him into the air until his eyes were level with mine. His hair, shaved close to the skull on the left side, hanging long on the right to cover that side of his face in a black veil, stirred listlessly in an unfelt wind. His one visible eye was an amethyst spark set into his dark, gleaming midnight blue skin. His armor was both heavy and supple, a strange combination of magic and metal that moved with him as naturally as any living creature’s hide. But it was the sword in his left hand that held my attention in a fist of cold iron.

A sword made of bone.

“There is no honor in such a duel,” he said. “Our powers are not equal. You are a massive thing of storms and flesh. Given a chance, you would grind me into the dust beneath your hooves.”

“Yes,” I agreed, my eyes glued to that evil blade. I knew where it had come from, but even then I could not admit it to myself. “And you deserve no less for what you have done.”

“You killed my scout,” the small thing said. “And I killed one of yours that came too near my border. That is an even exchange. But now you have killed dozens of my people. Some of them were irreplaceable. The ledgers are no longer balanced, beast.”

I glared at the speck of a creature floating before me. The urge to reach out and destroy the vile creature was a red-hot coal burning in my heart. If the wall wasn’t between us…

And, yet, it was.

The stink of my people’s blood was thick in my nostrils, and I heard the pain in their lowing moans. Many of their injuries were too great for them to continue the battle. I had failed them.

“What would you have of me, then, villain?” I asked.

“The bones of your people have power,” the little creature said. “I would have that might serve me. Whether the bones are inside you, or outside, is your choice.”

As the vile creature spoke, more of its kind pushed a cart forward. It was a low-slung conveyance floating on a field of purple light so faint I had to strain to see it. It took me only a moment to recognize the raw materials of its construction.

The calf’s leg bones made up the sides of the cart. Its ribs were an arched cage around the stark white of its skull. Horrible runes dug deep into the bones, focusing foul energies into the unseeing eye sockets. The floating cart had a terrible gravity that made me want to trample it to dust.

But it also held a compelling presence that demanded—no, commanded—me to recognize its dread authority.

If I defied this slender fiend, it would do this to me.

And to all my people.

Despite the vast differences in our size and strength, this creature had defeated me as surely as I had defeated his scout.

My horns and hooves were no match for the sinister strength of dark magic.

“What would you have us do?” I asked, heart sinking.

“First, you will swear fealty to me, Lord Kurz of the Grungyr Elves,” the foul creature said. “And then you will serve me in battle.”

“And who will we wage war against?” I asked.

“There is a human to the west,” Kurz began.

And as he explained his plan, my soul shriveled within me at the evil my people would do.