“I said unhand him, fiend!” the Paladin yelled, taking a step forward as he let the razor whip unfurl. In the tree above him, the cockatrice arched its serpentine neck backwards at a sickening angle to peer down at the interloper.

“Uh, this isn’t what it looks like,” Szeth said, the weakness of his claims apparent even to his own ears.

“A Paladin? What’s he doing here?” Patrick asked, blinking at the man.

“These woods aren’t safe, sir. I’ll deal with this abomination and escort you to safety. Please, just remain calm.”

“I am calm. But you shouldn’t call Seth an abomination. He’s a goblin, not a demon.”

The Paladin held the whip up in front of his face and it started glowing, like cold, liquid silver. “Demon. Goblin. Fairy. I don’t care, they’re all an affront to God and it is the duty of every God fearing man, woman and child to stamp them out wherever they are found.”

The cockatrice was intrigued now. It flipped upside down on the branch, holding on with one claw while the other clutched its meal, and let out a soft trill. Unfortunately for the Paladin, his intolerant ramblings drowned out the sound as his own voice grew louder and more frenzied.

“Mister Paladin, please, I’m not trying to hurt Patrick, I’m trying to get him back safe too! But it’s very dangerous here. I think you should-”

“Silence, wretch!”

“But if you would just look u-”

“I. Said. SILENCE!” the Paladin roared, cracking the whip with a sound like thunder. He raised the weapon again, preparing to lash out at Szeth, but in that moment a single drop of blood fell from the cockatrice’s beak. It splashed onto the Paladin’s cheek and the man froze. Slowly, he raised his hand, wiping a finger through the streak and peering at it. Realisation dawned on his face, and with growing horror, he looked up into the branches above him. The cockatrice tilted its head, trilled once, and dropped off the branch with a screech. The man tried to swing his weapon, but he was too slow. The cockatrice crashed into him from above with bone-crushing force, ripping and tearing with beak and claw.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Patrick yelled, recoiling in fear as the man shrieked and crimson ribbons of blood spun and twisted through the air. Szeth seized the opportunity and forced the vegetable into the old man’s gaping mouth, clamping a claw over it to make sure he couldn’t spit it out.

“Just… eat the damn thing!”

Patrick was still reeling, and he dutifully swallowed the small green ball of yuckiness before his brain had comprehended the taste. He batted Szeth away and started pawing at his tongue, but the damage was done. The glassy look disappeared from his eyes and he looked around, alert and bright.

“By God, what is happening here?”

“No time to explain,” Szeth said, grabbing Patrick by the hand and pulling him back towards the home. The ripping sounds were still distressingly loud, but the Paladin had stopped making noise, which meant his meat wouldn’t hold the cockatrice’s attention for long. “We need to get out of here.”

He half ran, half dragged the old man through the rain, trying to keep both himself and Patrick upright. It was a lot harder, and therefore slower, than he would have liked. The brush whipped at their clothing and the ground was slurry beneath their feet. It seemed they couldn’t go more than a few feet before tripping over a root or clambering over a block of stone. So it was surprising when said terrain saved their life.

Szeth was helping Patrick clamber over a fallen tree when the old man slipped on a patch of moss. He cried out in surprise as he slid, dragging Szeth up and over with him to splash into the small pond of muck on the other side. The goblin felt a rush of wind at his back, accompanied by a throaty snarl as he fell, face first, into the mud. He pushed himself to his knees, spitting gunk from his mouth and wiping it from his eyes, and looked up to see something large and furry glaring at him from a few paces away.

A werewolf. One of the anthropomorphic variants from the look of it. It stood erect like a man, but with backwards jointed knees, flexing its clawed hands as saliva dripped from its fang lined jaws. Coarse, shaggy brown hair carpeted its back and limbs, exposing leathery black skin on its underbelly. It snarled again and took a step forward.

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Szeth yelped and fumbled Betsy out of her holster, pointing it at the monster with shaking hands.

“Get back! Take another step and I’ll shoot!”

The werewolf cocked its head in a manner bizarrely reminiscent of a household dog, its glowing red eyes narrowing as it stared at the revolver. Its lips pulled back, fully exposing the sharp teeth in a horrific imitation of a smile. It took another step.

Szeth screamed and squeezed the trigger. The kickback took him by surprise and the barrel of the weapon snapped back, cracking into his face with the double whammy of cold iron and good old-fashioned momentum. He almost dropped the gun as he blinked back tears, but he brought it back to bear, pointed in the general direction of the wolfman. As his sight cleared, he found the monster staring down at a ragged hole in its chest.

“Yes! Take that, fiend!” Szeth shouted as he triumphantly waited for the beast to keel over. Instead of politely dying, though, the werewolf looked back at him, a ragged, snarly sound coming from its throat as its shoulders bounced up and down. It was the nastiest laugh Szeth had ever heard, and his first indication things were not going as well as he hoped.

He watched in bemused horror as the wound began stitching itself closed and the monster resumed its advance, reaching out for the goblin as it did so. Szeth squeezed the trigger again, managing the recoil a bit better this time, and opened up another hole, this time in its leg. He kept firing, each shot staggering the beast but failing to put it down, until he was met with the sound of the hammer smacking against an empty chamber as the cylinder cycled uselessly.

“Ah, fiddlesticks.”

The werewolf tensed, the striated muscles in its legs straining against its skin as it prepared to launch. Szeth pushed Patrick behind him protectively, braced for the charge. He racked his brain, desperately trying to think up a solution but coming up blank. There was no way he could cast a deceptive Weave this close and with so little time, and his talent for healing wouldn’t come in handy until AFTER the wolf had ripped them limb from limb.

He flipped Betsy over in his hands, holding the revolver like a baseball bat.

“Patrick, when it attacks, I want you to run.”

“I’m not leaving you, young man.”

“Either one of us dies, or both of us die. And if YOU die, how long until these things find the home?”

“There has to be something-”

“I don’t think there is, old timer.”

Szeth could hear Patrick grinding his dentures, but he knew this was it. He was out of moves. Old gods willing, he might manage to choke the bugger on the way down its gullet, though. The thought gave him a small measure of relief, a tiny drop of positive emotion in the overwhelming sea of grief as he realised he would never see his beloved again or meet his unborn child.

The werewolf leapt at the same moment a trilling sound whizzed over Szeth’s head, the juvenile cockatrice crashing into the furred monster mid-flight. They crashed to the mud, rolling and flailing as they snapped and clawed at each other. But there wasn’t time to question the luck of the moment, Szeth just grabbed Patrick’s hand and started sprinting.

A human voice shouted somewhere to their left as they crashed through the underbrush, answered a moment later by a terrifying roar. Something resembling a giant, inflated stomach burst out of the woods on their right, bouncing across their path and back into the vegetation as something large and reptilian streaked after it, before the patch of forest they had disappeared into exploded in a ball of fire. Splinters of wood and giblets pelted Szeth and Patrick, but they kept running as the surrounding chaos escalated in intensity. A winged monster fell from the sky, smashing into the ground in front of them with a Paladin standing on its chest, his spear driven through its body. The man stood up, ripped his weapon free and levelled it at the two fugitives before a gang of redcaps swarmed out of the forest and dragged him off.

“What the fuck is happening?” Patrick screamed as a burst of machinegun fire ripped through the leaves overhead.

“Just keep running!” Szeth shouted back as they burst out of the woods and into the clearing surrounding the retirement home. Gladys was standing at the gate, a sleek black assault rifle barking in her hands. She stopped firing long enough to shriek at them to hurry, then sent a burst of fire over their heads into the forest behind them. Something detonated in the damp field, causing Szeth to stumble as it threw clods of dirt and grass into the air. The detritus rained down on him as he regained his balance and resumed his sprint. Something screamed in rage behind them, before another burst from Gladys turned it to a shriek of pain that receded into the woods. More human shouts came from the tree line nearby, demanding they stop, but the commands were immediately drowned out by a deluge of roars, screams and inhuman shrieks and Szeth’s world narrowed to the shrinking strip of land directly between him and the gate, until he finally belted past Gladys into the courtyard. The old lady emptied her magazine in a wide spray, then slammed the gate closed behind them.

Szeth doubled over, planting his hands on his knees as he sucked in air and Patrick sank onto his arse on the wet ground.

“On your feet, boys,” Gladys barked. “No time to waste. O group in the dining room in five. Don’t worry,” she added with a wink. “There’ll be tea and biscuits.”