“Look out!” I warned Drayek, similarly to how he’d warned me about a sneaking Nagari just moments before.

I lunged forward, the hand not holding my spear outstretched toward him. But I didn’t need to come to his aid. Drayek was fast.

Drayek’s eyes flicked down to the silver metal of the knife, and then he danced his head around the blade just as the large Nagari lunged for his throat.

Drayek moved in a blur, finding himself behind the Nagari. He then brandished his sword in front of his body, threatening his opponent with the hot fire on his blade that consumed the air around them.

“I remember you, Nagari.”

The Nagari, with muscles bulging out through its scaly hide and who stood about two heads taller than any of its compatriots, whirled around itself and sneered at Drayek.

“Yessss….” it hissed.

I started. “Did that–did the Nagari just speak?”

No one paid any mind to me and my outburst. The rest of the Hunters, except for Krato, who lay motionless, and Korin, who knelt beside him and tried to heal him, finished off the remaining Nagari. They then pointed weapons at the massive Nagari facing Drayek.

“Master, that creature is the Tier 4 Nagari,” Codex said.

I figured as much.

The Hunters slowly approached the Tier 4 Nagari, which made my heart pound nervously.

“Uh, guys…?”

Before any of the Hunters could lunge forward at the creature, the Tier 4 Nagari waved a scaly hand in front of its slimy face. My eyes widened at the onslaught of a wave of essence as it cast a spell. And I was so shocked by what happened next, I couldn’t even think of absorbing any of the streams.

A blast of yellow light rippled out of the creature’s fingertips, then expanded all around the Hunters coming at him. The light wrapped around each Hunter’s torso, then threw them to the side and onto the ground. I took two steps back and scanned the damage around me. My comrades groaned and tried to stand up, but the Nagari’s magic held them in place.

Drayek stood his ground with the tip of his fiery sword nearly poking into the Nagari’s ribcage. It seemed the Nagari hadn’t wanted to hurl Drayek away with its spell.

“You’ve gotten better,” Drayek said.

The Nagari’s smile spread to the ear holes on either side of its head. “I cannot say the same about you. At least, not until you try to kill me. I’ve been yearning to fight you again.”

I swallowed. Hearing a Nagari speak was not something I’d have ever expected to hear. I’d always thought of them as nothing more than monsters. But I was obviously wrong. There was more to the creatures than met the eye. They cultivated, cast spells and had Skills, and could speak–in fact, they could speak the Edronan language! I knew Codex could translate most languages in my head, but Drayek could understand the Nagari, as well. How did the creatures learn to speak our language?

They must be a lot more advanced and educated than I thought.

The Nagari slithered a circle around Drayek on its spindly legs and flicked its tongue in Drayek’s face. I moved to try my hand at attacking the Nagari, but Drayek stopped me with a raise of his hand.

“This is my fight, Rayden. Stay back.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but an eager look from the Nagari, as if it hoped I would try to attack, made me stay put.

Besides, how much help could I offer against a Tier 4? Monster or not?

Without warning, Drayek swung his sword over his head in a blur and aimed it at the Nagari’s throat. The creature sidestepped the swing with ease, and then they engaged in back-and-forth combat, both lunging at the other with their weapons and both blocking and dodging each blow as they came. That is, until the Nagari spun its trunk-like tail around and hit Drayek’s feet.

Drayek stumbled, but only slightly. He returned the attack with a dash to the left, then sliced a chunk of the Nagari’s flesh off its back with a quick flourish of his burning sword.

The Nagari howled a nauseating, high-pitched scream. Its thin black lips distorted sickeningly as it cried out. But it wasn’t done fighting. Just before Drayek could recover from the force of his own blow, the Nagari waved its hand as it had when casting a spell at the other Hunters before.

I remained alert this time. I drew in all of the essence streams I could before the creature could activate its Skill, but I couldn’t take in more than a third of it. There was a lot of essence. More than my body could handle taking in, apparently. It seemed I had limits…. Well, this Nagari was three entire Tiers ahead of me. That probably had a lot to do with it.

But it did something.

The Nagari threw its yellow wave of magic over Drayek, but instead of being hurled through the air and onto the ground, Drayek was able to remain standing. He struggled, though. He gritted his teeth and grunted underneath the pressure of the creature’s spell.

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“Drayek!” I cried.

I took a deep breath and moved essence through my armor and spear–In fact, I moved a little too much. I could feel my head beginning to ache from more power and more force than my Tier 1 body could handle. But I ignored the pain and ran at the Nagari.

That was a big mistake.

A shock of yellow light shaped like a translucent boulder hurled itself at me and threw me to the ground. The force of impact threw my spear out of my grip, and it flew two feet away from me and at the feet of one of the dead Nagari. I landed on my right elbow so hard that my armor in that area cracked, and then my elbow cracked right along with it. Searing pain burned its way through my entire right arm as more than a few bones snapped.

Bright spots danced in my vision, and I could barely turn myself over onto my back without crying out in pain–the motion of turning made even more difficult by a magic boulder resting on my chest. I blinked away the spots in my eyes and tried to catch sight of Drayek once again. The Nagari ignored him for the time being, staring me down with amused eyes and its forked tongue flicking over its chapped lips.

Drayek glanced at me, brows drawn into a tight line of worry, but his glance didn’t last more than half a second. He pushed one foot forward, even underneath the Nagari’s heavy spell that attempted to force him down like the other Hunters. Then he moved forward with another foot… and another. Drayek’s sword still burned intensely with the red and orange fire from his Weapons Flame Skill, and the fire cast dark shadows over Drayek’s serious face.

I held my breath, praying to whomever that the Nagari wouldn’t notice Drayek’s approach.

Just as Drayek brandished the sword over the Nagari’s bald head, arms shaking from the grip the creature’s spell had on him, the Nagari’s eyes left my face. The creature noticed the sword’s fall before it could strike. The Nagari spun itself around the blade, and then, in a flurry of motion that I could barely keep up with, the monster plunged its thin knife straight into the abdomen of Drayek’s armor. With another heave, the Nagari dug the blade all the way through the silver plating and into Drayek’s stomach.

“No!” I screamed.

I tried to move, but both the magic boulder and the excruciating pain in my arm kept me from rising. The combination of the two also made me feel dizzy, and I had to fight to maintain consciousness. After a sharp inhale of breath, I forced my head up to witness, in horror, what happened next.

Drayek’s body crumpled forward and over the Nagari’s weapon arm. The Nagari cackled a high-pitched squeal of a cackle and leaned over to whisper something in Drayek’s ear that I could not hear.

The other Hunters and I squirmed underneath the creature’s holding spell, each of us crying out for Drayek and cursing the monster that had stabbed him.

Tears burned my eyes as I watched Drayek grow weaker and weaker. Both his eyes and his sword had lost their flame. The Nagari stood up straight once again and scanned his eyes over the rest of our party.

“Who’s next?” it hissed.

Suddenly, a flash of metal soared in front of the Nagari’s face, and the creature had no time to react before the blade sank deep into its long neck.

Drayek was standing straight again, blood spilling like a steady stream from a gaping hole in the mid-section of his armor. The Nagari’s spell from earlier no longer affected him; the light disappeared as soon as the Nagari’s head rolled off of its shoulders and fell to the ground. The creature’s body twitched for two seconds, then fell soon after the head had finished its descent.

Drayek groaned, sweat dripping off of his forehead. He dropped his sword and clutched his stomach, then fell to his knees with a thud.

I couldn’t even hear myself yell out for Drayek as I rushed toward him. The Nagari’s spell keeping the other Hunters and me away from the fight had also faded away after the monster’s death. My hurried steps felt heavy as I clutched my broken arm with my uninjured one. But I could barely notice the pain as I watched Drayek’s body fail, and he fell onto his face.

“Drayek!” I cried his name again, throwing myself at his side.

As gently as I could with one good arm, I turned him over onto his back, then cradled his head into my lap.

Drayek’s hands were turning gray as he continued to try to clutch at his bleeding stomach.

“No! No, let me.” I leaned over and pressed the palm of my good hand into his wound, trying to ignore the hot blood that gushed through the cracks in my fingers.

“Korin! Help!” I screamed.

But Korin must have fought so hard against the Tier 4 Nagari’s spell that she struggled to pull herself up. Not to mention the fact that she had already been feeling exhausted from too much spellcasting before all of this. Her arms shook underneath her weight, and her face had been drained of all its color.

“Korin!” I hollered again anyway, eyes moving back to Drayek’s face.

My bottom lip trembled as I watched his eyelids spasm.

“You’re not going to die, Drayek,” I breathed.

Memories of the hellish labyrinth test in Solomon’s cave flashed through my mind. I remembered how I had held an illusion of Drayek, just as I did now, with a similar wound in his stomach. Maybe this wasn’t real, either! Maybe I was dreaming, or maybe the Lord Solomon AI was trying to test me again.

“Rayden?” Drayek’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper, and spittles of blood landed on his lips as he coughed from trying to speak.

“Don’t,” I said, remembering what the dying Drayek had said to me in the labyrinth. “I know what you’re going to say. That you wish I could have proved myself to you–that you wish I could have been the son you’d never had. But… but I failed you, right?”

I sniffed away the blasted tears that mocked me with their threat to spill from my eyes.

“Rayden, just listen!” Drayek coughed again, and his body shuddered dangerously underneath me.

“Korin!” My voice was growing hoarse, but she was finally crawling her way over.

Krato, who she had been lying next to, wasn’t moving, and tears spilled down her cheeks as she came as fast as her weary body could take her.

“Boy! You will listen to the last words of a dying man.”

I could barely hear Drayek as he forced the words out, but I heard enough to know I should obey. I leaned in close to better hear his words.

“I am proud of you. You always were, are, and always will be my son.”

I let the tears stream down my face. His words… they healed something within me. They healed my self-doubt, my worries, my trauma-inflicted pain….

With great effort, Drayek clutched the back of my neck with his right hand and stared into my eyes. “Keep going, my boy. Don’t ever stop. You will become greater than any of us could have ever dreamed of.”

Korin reached us and pulled back Drayek’s armor plates to reveal his torn clothing underneath and a deep wound that made my stomach churn. Her eyes found mine, and she gave a subtle shake of her head.

“I–I can try, Rayden. But even if I had all of my strength, which I don’t, this injury might be beyond my capabilities.”

“No,” I sobbed, “Please, no. Drayek. Don’t go.”

“I love you, son.”

And with that, and before Korin could even try to heal him, the light left Drayek’s eyes, and his arm fell off of my neck and landed limply on his chest.