My heart sank. How could they have caught and killed their fiend so quickly? Lauren’s jaw hung open as she stared into the sky. She looked lost. It was my turn to be determined.

“They’ve won nothing more than we can,” I said. “It’s only the last team that will be ejected. Catching the creature in five minutes or fifty doesn’t matter as long as we get there before the last team.”

Lauren looked at me, a smile forming on her lips.

“Yes, you’re right” she said, her voice strong.

We returned to our chase, our urgency greater now. After several minutes, Lauren paused and said, “What if it stayed in the water?”

“What?” I asked.

“The stream is shallow, only a few feet deep at its deepest parts,” she explained. “If a fox is fleeing the hounds, it might travel in water to help make its scent harder to follow.”

“You don’t think a fiend is smart like that, do you?” I asked.

Lauren nodded. “Father said they come in different shapes and sizes, in mind as well as body. Some, he says, seem almost as cunning as a man.”

I paused, thinking. Lauren’s father was a lord, and they held a large castle in the countryside outside the city, governing many fiefs and villages. They commanded a strong company of mounted soldiers. Fiends were exceptionally rare, but when they did appear, it was a lord’s duty to hunt them down, to protect their people.

“Well, which way? Should we split?” I asked, regretting the suggestion as soon as it left my mouth. The idea of facing the creature alone filled me with dread. Lauren tensed at the suggestion and I think she had the same fear.

“No,” she said quickly. “The stream flows down and away. It was already traveling down the slope. There’s no reason to believe it doubled back. Let’s go together.”

“Of course,” I said.

We walked down the stream, watching the banks for any sign of disturbance. We reached a bend in the river, where it turned around some harder material in the landscape, forming a wide, deep pool. The water reached our waists, green fronds of weed trailing against us, small fish darting around our legs.

It was sudden. Too sudden to react to. One instant, the surface of the water was smooth, lazily flowin past me. The next it erupted and the thing emerged. My sight was filled with a wall of muscle and fur.

The fiend lunged at me, its movement awkward in the water but driven by feral fury. Its claws raked across my armor, scraping off the metal with a grating screech. One claw found exposed flesh, tearing into my side. Pain seared through me, and I felt the warmth of blood on my water chilled skin.

It drove me down into the water, the weight and strength of it overwhelming. I struggled to surface, panicking as water filled my lungs. I flailed, trying to push it off, but its bulk kept me submerged. The world blurred as my head went under again and again.

I surfaced for a brief moment, gasping for air, only to be driven down again. My limbs were heavy, the cold seeping into my bones, my movements slowing.

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Suddenly, the weight lifted. I scrambled to my feet, coughing and retching water, my vision clearing enough to see Lauren. She had pulled the beast off me. She pushed the fiend against the high bank, trying to get a hand free to reach for her sword.

I tried to move toward her, tripping and fumbling in the water, coughing water from my lungs. My hand found the hilt of my sword, and I drew it. They were only fifteen feet away, but moving through the water it felt like miles.

The fiend twisted, throwing Lauren off balance. She fell on her back on the bank, the terrible jaws rising to strike. The creature’s teeth, grey and terrible, glistened with saliva as it loomed over her. It had a claw on her head, pushing her chin back, exposing her throat.

Lauren emitted a tiny, desperate gasp. I could only imagine what she felt. We had only imagined such moments. I don’t know how much any of us had ever dwelled on the moment of our deaths, but the terror in her must have been immense.

The fiend’s maw plunged down. Blinded by need, I didn’t think. I was unaware of what I was doing. I thrust my sword forward and flexed the new mental muscle that had just become part of me the day before.

The miracle of the beam lanced out from my sword, striking the beast. It sent the creature rolling and tumbling, a ragged heap, onto the ground beyond Lauren.

I rushed to her, panicked, helping her up. She touched her throat in disbelief, looking at me, wordless. Even as I fixated on her face, on the sensations of shaking terror receding from my body, she turned, her mind focused on the task at hand.

The ragged heap of the fiend rose, its body more sagged now. It regarded us with hatred and hunger, but now, for the first time, also fear. Blood dripped through its fur, one side of its body more misshapen than before.

Lauren drew her sword and advanced. The creature seemed to consider her. I scrambled out of the water, behind her, marveling at her fearsomeness. If the creature stood, it would be her and it alone for seconds before I could join them.

The creature turned and fled, faster than we could follow, but slower than before, loping and limping.

"We need to finish this," Lauren said. "It's wounded, but it’s still dangerous."

I nodded, my heart still racing from the close call. "Let's go. We can't let it get away."

We followed the fiend’s blood trail, its stench stronger now, mingling with the smell of its blood. Lauren led the way. She could follow the blood now. I kept close behind, my sword ready.

We chased the trail across the forest, the trees growing older and larger as we went. Their canopies created a dim, shadowed atmosphere. The undergrowth thinned, making it easier to move. Lauren led the way, following the blood trail. She paused occasionally, allowing me to catch up and scent a direction when the blood became harder to see.

We emerged into a clearing. On another day it would have been a pleasure. Long grass swaying gently in the breeze, butterflies flitting through the air. The sun was rising higher, bringing some warmth to the day. To our left, where the stream meandered through the trees, we could hear the vague sound of shouting. Another team was nearby, hunting their fiend.

Lauren examined the blood trail. "The bleeding must be getting worse. These patches are bigger than the others."

"That, or maybe it's slowing down, pausing more," I said. "More blood accumulating at each spot."

"Either way, that's good for us. Maybe it will drop dead," Lauren said.

"Wouldn't that be nice," I said, dreaming of finding the creature's corpse. While I didn't relish the prospect of having to hack its head off, the idea of not facing the nightmare again was… appealing.

There was another distant whistling as rocket was set off. We stared into the sky, across the clearing, over the trees that verged it. An explosion of dense blue smoke filled our window into the sky.

"Gideon's back with his fiend's head," Lauren said.

Two of the five teams had completed their task, we knew another was nearby. We had no time to waste. We had no idea how far the other teams were from their quarrie, or from the hilltop. For all we knew circumstances may already have proceeded to the point where there was nothing we could do.