Piper faced down the monster that wanted to kill her. That wanted to kill Wakahn. That would surely kill many more if she fell before it. The white horse swayed its head back and forth. Its swooping tusks cleared away the debris in the smithy before its powerful legs. The path was clear. Its aim was Piper’s life.

The warden initiate flexed her new arm, an extra limb through which she could channel mana and summon flame. Piper brought her four hands together, leaving space between her palms. She injected flames into a tightly bound package. The spellcraft felt dangerous, even against her fireproof skin. It fought against its own containment, bulging and sparking erratically from within the magic binding.

Piper’s fireball danced between her hands, jumping between them. The monster waited no longer. It moved fast and the distance between warden and monster was half closed in an instant. Piper realized she couldn’t release the ball of flames. It was too volatile, too powerful. Her control lagged behind its strength.

The monster would not wait for her to solve this sudden problem. If Piper let the spellcraft fly, it was likely to explode and veer off course unpredictably. She would be completely defenseless against the charging beast. Eager death approached. Piper resolved not to release the spellcraft. She took the package of flames in hand and thrusted forward her arm. The horse’s tusks came within inches of the girl’s body.

Death, the prospect of it, distorted time. Events of the future and past crashed into an emotional kaleidoscope. Piper saw a vision of the tusks rending her flesh and tearing her guts out from the inside. She heard her mother screaming for help. She saw her father’s lifeless eyes. The path towards her vengeance fell to tatters, interrupted by this stupid looking horse. It was a reality she would not accept.

And then Piper released the flames. Her control was even less complete than she had anticipated. The explosion enveloped both warden and monster. Cerulean flames engulfed the pair. It left no air for Piper. The effort of her attack drained too much from her lungs and she fell to her knees. Her transformation made her flesh invulnerable to the burn of flames. But, she still suffered the heat and the smoke and the blinding light.

Piper awoke with a start. She could not tell how long she’d been unconscious. The debris of the smithy was still shrouded in smoke. The explosion had broken even more, turning much of the shop unrecognizable. There on the foundation was a dead monster. The horse monster’s corpse was still transformed, mutated by the invasive gwyll, but it lay limp and deceased. Wakahn was still breathing. The unconscious boy was unburnt.

Piper was back in her human form, but didn’t remember dismissing her transformation. Her body moved slowly. The strength of her form still burned bright in her mind, a potent memory of the terrible power that had danced in her palms. The training was paying off. All of the waiting and the biding her time was bearing fruit. All of the justice she wanted would be hers.

For that, she would swim through any sea of flame.

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Cyril carried the fading warden on his back, unsure if he was gaining any ground at all on the mysterious subject of his pursuit. The monster, if that’s what had attacked, had spoken. A rare trait among creatures possessed by gwyll.

Gwyll were unintelligent elemental spirits, raised into arcane parasites by the original thirteen djinn to be their foot soldiers against humans. They were a plague driven by an unnatural hunger for the emotional energy that humans produced. For one to speak they had to be old, old enough to learn the language of man. They usually also had to invade the body of a human, the most powerful candidate for hosting gwyll.

Cyril tried not to imagine the horrors it could unleash upon Lyrique if it found the city center. He reconsidered carrying the warden on his back. If he was too slow, then the warden would only be the first of many casualties. He needed a sign of its presence. Cyril made his way past evacuated houses. This housing district cut a path straight towards the bell tower.

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The warden stopped in his tracks. All of the houses were evacuated. Of course the doors were open. Cyril was following a false trail. He doubled backwards, cursing himself. The monster seemed to open everything near it, but that didn’t mean the trail of open doors necessarily pointed to its presence. The monster was clever. It had disguised itself amidst the chaos of the evacuation. Clever monsters could prove much deadlier than powerful monsters. If this one was both, then the threat to Lyrique was greater than Cyril’s revised estimation.

Cyril took another retraced step and slipped. His foot fell into the earth beneath his feet. He tried to find purchase with his other, but it missed the solid ground as well. Cyril was falling into darkness. He kicked to the side and found something solid. His body hit the other side of this strange chasm. Above him, a circular window to the clear, blue sky shrunk in size. Cyril jumped between either side of the walls and reemerged from the darkness.

The hole under him closed again. Where had he fallen? And how had he risen out of it? Cyril jumped onto a wooden house. He’d fallen into some trap cast by spellcraft. The house under him shook terribly. Everything around him seemed to rise slowly. No, the house was sinking. Cyril carried the injured warden to the next house over. This wasn’t a trap. He was under attack.

The worst case scenario was that a different monster had discovered him. One unrelated to the humanoid that had attacked the city guard. If that was the case, then this was a delay he did not need. Cyril needed to escape the fight and hope another capable warden picked this enemy. If it was the subject of his pursuit, then he couldn’t run away and leave it to run amok.

Cyril pinched the old man on his back. He squeezed the man’s cheek with the fine points of his claw. The man blinked his eyes open and started wheezing. Cyril was just glad he hadn’t expired on him.

“What… where…?”

“No time, old man,” Cyril interrupted his confusion. He pointed at the house sinking into the darkness. “Is this the power of the gwyll that attacked you? Answer me!”

The warden seemed to understand the importance of the question from his colleague. “Yes. It is. And… don’t call me ‘old man.’ I’m Ysidro Ramm, First Captain of Lyrique Guard!”

The man was more lucid. He still sounded weak, but his mind was all there. At the warden’s introduction, the neighboring house stopped sinking. The blackness under it closed and constricted the house, squeezing the middle of the place until it was all lumber. If Cyril had been slower at escaping the trap, that would’ve been him.

“You spoiled my surprise!” A voice said. Another hole opened up in the dirt road and a human figure emerged. “‘Tis I! Bow before me, creatures of the other side!” Its voice was loud and raucous. It spoke as if addressing an audience. “Bring yourself low and pray for the bounties of the depths!”

The monster resembled a human somewhat. Its skin was a sickly pale and it was tall, at least eight feet in height. Its arms were disproportionately long when compared to its body, as its hands hung down to its knees. It had no hair, but a black mark like a cloud crawled up its spine and over its forehead. Deep blue gems sat where human eyes might. It wore human clothes, an undisturbed violet waistcoat over a pristine white shirt and dark pants.

Cyril took advantage of the long-winded introduction. He dropped Ysidro and dove for the monster’s neck. His claws struck nothing and the human monster was gone from where it stood. Cyril could still hear its voice.

“Defy me and discover the power that all fear!” The monster emerged from another hole at a different spot down the road. “You are in the audience of… Mukyrt Menshen! Acolyte to the revered Calleacham!”

Cyril’s blood went cold. Why did this gwyll know the name of one of the thirteen djinn? Everything new he learned about this monster only emphasized his original aim. Cyril didn’t play its game. He closed the distance between them and made to behead the monster. He missed again. The limits of his speed wouldn’t be enough to slay this monster.

Menshen reappeared from the depths. “Not one for conversation, hm?” It asked. “Shame. Few are granted audience with Mukyrt Menshen, acolyte to the revered Calleacham. Seems a waste to spend it spilling blood.”

The distance it put between the two of them was similar to the distance of where it had emerged before. The monster had found the limits of Cyril’s speed and positioned itself outside the range where he could kill it before disappearing underground. Did it want to exhaust Cyril? Was it baiting him to attack again? Urgency and confusion clouded Cyril's thoughts.

“My ship leaves soon, creature of the other side,” Menshen declared. “I must keep your audience brief.”

“Suits me fine,” Cyril said. “The less I hear from you, the better.”