The Greybone Stalker closed in on the stronghold. The pallid chunk of flesh hanging to its side had fallen off, and the creature was beginning to look like a towering grey echidna. Except its spines were buried arrow shafts.

It pounced forward with three legs now. Its rear left leg was twisted around backwards and dragged along loosely behind the creature. Its broken joints were banded with violet bruises that spread further outwards with each step.

I faced the Stalker. My back was pressed against the stronghold gate. The pikemen behind me shouted curses and tried to pry me off the gate with their pikes, but I tucked myself neatly between their hidey-holes and ignored their protests.

I had no more magic tricks up my sleeve now. Nothing more, in spite of the electric charges surging through my body. Sizzling arcs leisurely shot out of my fingers, knees and toes, burning into the wood behind me and popping a stray rock from beneath my foot. I had no control over it whatsoever anymore. Regardless, the soil was so compact here that I wouldn’t be able to gather enough ash to trigger a dust explosion anyway.

My fate was in the hands of these trigger happy, over-suspicious tin soldiers and their magicians who were more loudspeaker than artillery.

I held my dagger out aloft. The creature passed the east and western walls. It lunged forward towards me.

All four of its legs departed the ground. Its tail swept forward from behind and whipped into a wall, cracking a huge stone brick. Boiling blood shot out from its wounds mid air. Strands of dark blood burned holes into the stone and earth. An unlucky archer copped a gob to his face and he tumbled backwards over the side of the wall with a gasping scream.

My mouth was dry, my face itched and the feeling in my hands disappeared. I watched with horrifying clarity the creature’s abdomen open up before me.

Dark pointed ribs splayed open revealing a jagged bloody maw. Layers of concentric fine teeth quivered behind the yawning opening. Foamy flecks of thick blood and caustic saliva coated the ringed teeth.

I stood frozen in place, my arms extended out before the Stalker’s mouth. Collison was imminent. There was nowhere to run.

A high pitched whine took a hold of my head and my thumping heart and screaming muscles receded into obscurity. The foul details of the creature drifted away.

Blankly, I stared at the chipped dagger I clutched. The surface of the blade was bubby and pockmarked where the caustic fluid of the creature stained it. The thin black line of a crack ran from the base of the blade out to the edge.

I peered into its muddy surface and for the first time glimpsed my own face. Through the smear I made out two deeply ringed wide eyes. They glowed like the embers of a fire. Thick eyebrows furrowed back at me and atop my head, brown hair parted messily in the middle, sweeping down to my forehead.

A halo of luminescent blue light emerged upon the tip of the blade. It broke apart and streamed down the dagger’s face. Blazing brighter still, the light dispersed across the grime and gore coating the blade, reflecting off even the darkest granules of muck.

My peripheral vision returned with a thrum and a tsunami of rolling magic cascaded from the parapet above. It cleared my body and smacked into the ground with such ferocity that the ground split apart. Blue light filled the cracked earth. Huge blocks of compact road and soil lifted into the air and soon the gleaming ocean swallowed the Stalker suspended in the air before me.

The tremors dropped me to the ground. Preceded by a deafening crash, the sweeping sound of rushing water engulfed the stronghold. Earth and brick rained down as the torrent slowed down. The wall buckled and crumbled from behind a sheet of misty blue fog as the thick wave of magic expanded and vaporised.

I lay on the ground against the wall and listened to the frantic shouting atop the wall. Blazing arrows resumed their assault, piercing the vaporous curtain of magic. The Stalker droned in a clipped and stuttered fashion and the tremors continued. The shattered earth settled unevenly across the earth, and I hacked up a thick ball of dust. I blinked through the thick miasma of the strange air that was altered by the magic in some way I did not yet comprehend.

The shining cloud parted to reveal the twisted body of the Stalker crumpled in a huge hole in the stronghold’s wall. Several feet from the ground it had punched into the blackstone. Its abdomen remained hanging open, exposing its bloodied mouth for all to see. The bare flesh within sizzled and popped. Innumerous pointed charcoal sticks peppered its hide. They were the smouldering burnt arrow shafts. New incendiaries continued to strike immobile creature as it feebly struggled to free itself.

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A few branches of its head were buried deep into intact stone bricks. The Stalker jerked about in an effort to twist its head free, but it remained trapped. Its limp legs dangled from the wide hole and bones poked through the creature’s mangled joints. Only its tail whipped about freely, blindly batting the ground, its own body and the wall.

The top of the stronghold wall was still largely intact, though fissures ran from the top of the hole up to the walkway above. An unsteady soldier crouched there, and shakily shuffled towards stable ground. Another soldier across from the endangered man reached out their hand toward him. The crouched man stretched his arm out in response, taking another slow, steady foot forward.

It was at that moment, the Greybone Stalker’s tail plunged upwards through the base of the parapet and speared the man from below with its sharp barb. The prong pierced straight through his lower back and out of his stomach.

The man’s splitting scream was snuffed out as the Stalker pulled him down through the walkway. His limp body shot out from the bottom and the Stalker whipped what I could only hope was his dead body, into the side of the wall. A bloodied splatter remained behind. The Stalker then bent its tail inwards towards itself, and flicked the end outwards with frightening speed. The poor soldier’s body hurtled from the creature, directly towards the three mages lined atop the wall.

The trio braced for impact. The hatless pair stumbled before the incoming human missile. They waved their hands about uncoordinatedly, managing to spit out a few white sparks, but nothing else. The hat-headed lead mage clapped her hands together with a resounding boom and then pushed them forward.

A web of tangled emerald thread projected from her palms. The net flew out and wrapped around the man’s body as loose threads continued to soar past him. The elastic string stretched as the man continued forward under resistance, until gradually he came to a complete stop just a few paces from the mages themselves.

The woman drew her hands close and the body suspended in the emerald web slowly drifted over to her. Awakened from their shock, the rest of the garrison resumed their attack on the trapped Stalker as those nearest to the hole retreated to a safe distance.

From behind me, I heard the whispered commands of the pikemen, and a few peeled off from the gate, and ran over to the hole in the wall, from within the walled boundary of the stronghold.

I shakily rose to my feet. I still clutched the dagger tightly in my hands, so I pointedly sheathed the blade once more before the eyes of the remaining pikemen. They didn’t make a sound.

The chaos of earlier died down as the Stalker grew limper and limper. No longer was I deafened by the cacophony of shouts and rumbling earth. All that remained was the continuous twang of bowstrings and the susurration of rushing flame.

I searched once more for the red-haired commander of this group as my nerves began to spark once more. What would my fate be now, after all of this?

I caught a gentle glow of blue light from atop the wall for a moment, followed by a flash of red that streaked towards the base of the Stalker’s tree-trunk head. The scarlet light buried deep into the trunk, and continued to blaze brighter. Hot sparks spewed out from the entrypoint, and the arrow travelled further and deeper into the wound until it passed cleanly through the neck entirely.

The Greybone Stalker’s stunted drones ceased. Its tail fell limp with a crash and the branch-like appendages split apart and collapsed, exposing their frayed bony interiors. A few additional arrows struck the corpse or clattered off the wall before a semblance of calm and order returned to the stronghold.

Looking back up to the red-haired commander, I was taken aback to discover her staring down at me with her piercing green eyes. She furrowed her eyebrows and pulled one of the mages over to her; a short, thin, man with a shaved head. He looked young, and very cold.

The pair muttered as I waited. Though the violence has ceased for now, nobody had yet put down their bows. As they debated over my life, I stepped away from the gate, and out into the middle of the shattered entranceway. I wanted them to at least see me clearly. All of them. If they decided to execute me, let it be known I was a living breathing being standing tall, not some wounded animal crouched in a corner.

The pair finished their discussion. The leader grabbed the head mage and whispered in her ear. The woman gently brought her arms up, and conjured several crystalline butterflies again. They were much smaller this time. Magic moths I supposed.

The moths dwindled far across the wall and whispers emanated behind the soldier's heads in the background. I could not hear what was said. The mages whispered some more and the leader faced toward me. With great relief, I glimpsed the captains and leaders pulling back many of the soldiers. Bows began lowering.

But suddenly, the mage with the shaved head began casting a spell. Dark grey smoke billowed from his hands. He kept it close to his chest, nodded to the commander and she returned the gesture. She raised her greatbow, pulled back the string and immediately fired an arrow.

The mage threw his arms out and sent the smoky grey cloud after the projectile. I turned. I tried to run. But the arrow hit my back and I fell to the ground. The world went dark.