The kynokephalon’s rancid smell immediately permeated the interior of the shelter and struck Kosta like a bludgeon as that awful mix of rotting meat, body odor, and animalistic musk came crashing down upon him. Kosta wanted to gag, but he was far more concerned with its four outstretched hands at the moment.

Each one of them could pop his head like a grape.

But Kosta wasn’t without his own tricks. Sleep had restored his strength. He held his hand to the shelter’s roof while the other clutched his staff. Power trickled outward, pulsated through the stone, and Kosta gave a simple command as he flexed his willpower.

Shatter.

The kynokephalon yelped as thick stone came crashing down upon it. It wounded Kosta’s soul to damage the carvings and etchings that he’d made in the stone last night, but he saw no other way. Part of the roof remained, and while the enormous creature sagged beneath the crushing weight of the stone, Kosta pulled his sword from its sheath.

On its own, the chipped xiphos was nothing special. The blade was battered and bent in some areas, half-broken already. But Kosta’s magic flowed through the metal. It wasn’t as receptive as something of his own creation might be. In fact, it even resisted his touch somewhat, as if recalling that he had wrenched it from its last owner’s dead hands.

Steady power infiltrated the bronze. A grey haze settled about it, then solidified into a broader, sharper blade.

Thicken. Strengthen. Heavy! Razor.

The beast was still trapped beneath the rock, although one of its arms and shoulders had become exposed. Its other three arms scrabbled beneath the rock, long nails scratching at the stone as muffled grunts and whines came from beneath.

Kosta viewed the furry limb, raised his sword, and brought the magic-enhanced blade down upon the kynokephalon’s bicep with all his strength.

It bounced off the creature’s solid muscle and thick hide. Only a small red line appeared for his efforts. A bead of merlot blood dripped and stained its soft brown fur russet. The kynokephalon howled, its arm grasping madly for whatever struck it, and Kosta barely managed to yank his blade away before it would have wrenched it out of his hands and twisted the metal into a knot.

Oh hell!

Stone shifted as the creature seemed to find itself more aware of its surroundings. Kosta made the executive decision to run. He eyed the open hole in the shelter’s roof and managed to haul himself out and onto the boulders that he’d constructed his shelter within.

Kosta heard a vicious snarl from beneath and the grind of stone as it slowly moved. Kosta’s heart pounded in his ears as he scanned his surroundings for anything that might help him. His blade had only scratched the beast, and he didn’t fancy his chances up close. If that monstrous strength could batter down stone, his barriers would only last so long.

The most he could hope for was to put distance between him and the creature.

Forests rose up like brown-green spears all about, full of knotted roots and little nooks and crannies. Part of him thought to simply dash deep into the forest to evade the kynokephalon, then circle back around to find the silver path’s argent glow, but Kosta had no doubt that the kynokephalon would outlast him.

It had found a seemingly easy mark alone and unprotected in the wilds. The kynokephalon would hunt him until it found the chance to devour his flesh and the magic intrinsic to it. Monsters such as the kynokephalon would often steer clear of caravans or armed groups, but the moment it sniffed him out it would give up nearly anything to consume him.

Creatures of magic like the kynokephalon and the manticore would trade a mundane auroch for a human who had gone through their Dòrognosis and awakened their power. Perhaps it was a mercy, for many monsters had little interest in those children who still hadn’t opened their eyes to the true nature of the world unless they were out of options. A good meal like Kosta might sate the kynokephalon’s hunger for a week or more.

Kosta didn’t intend on helping it out on that front any time soon.

The forests spelled death. Instead, Kosta looked to the mountains that jutted up all around him. He would have to venture from the silver path in this case as well, but Kosta thought it worth the trouble.

He might bend the stone of the mountain to his will. He might topple the kynokephalon and let the fall do what his blade could not.

A black nose and fluffy ears revealed themselves as the kynokephalon’s two free hands shifted some of the stone off its head. The creature was covered in dust and sneezed, but its dark eyes glared murder at Kosta.

Time to run!

Kosta’s magic flowed through his legs as he tightened the straps of his leather pack, leapt from the boulder with staff in hand and sword in sheath, and winced as the impact resonated within his knees. The magic abated the jolt somewhat, but Kosta was no expert like Clymere or one of the militia.

But he focused his power inward nonetheless. It was likely raw, inefficient, but the magic suffused his muscle fibers and offered greater strength and vigor than Kosta might muster on his own. He set his eyes upon the nearest mountain peak, spied a sheer cliff a hundred feet or so above, and managed to identify a potential path upward.

Kosta ran.

A howl surged behind him as Kosta sprinted over rocks and soil and treacherous roots, dipped beneath scratching branches, and shifted aside saplings in his quest to climb high. It was a gentle slope, but a few minutes of this would put him close to the cliff.

Another howl, closer this time, although the menacing sound was broken by a dusty sneeze.

His heart pounded so loudly that he could hear the blood rushing through his ears.

His enhanced legs burned.

Birds fled at his approach. A distant deer sniffed the air, looked behind Kosta, and pranced away.

His arms ached as he climbed the steep vertical cliff, magic bleeding from his fingers to carve grooves into the shale and sediment of the mountain’s surface.

Footsteps below him, heavy and brutish and deadly.

He hauled himself over the edge and panted. The cold mountain air was refreshing, permeated with the scent of pine and elm, and Kosta peered down the cliff to watch the black-eyed kynokephalon glaring up at him. Its nose was pointed to the sky, sniffing, and its four muscular hands clawed at the air, as if imagining carving bloody furrows into his flesh.

Kosta was about fifty feet above it. He expected it might be able to climb with its monstrously powerful arms, but it wouldn’t be swift or easy. It offered him a chance.

The kynokephalon’s lips peeled back to reveal those great white teeth again. Kosta shivered as drool dripped from its lolling tongue. Rippling muscle shifted beneath its dark coat with every movement. The kynokephalon’s tail had ceased its happy wagging.

No, it had only hunger left.

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Kosta saw the moment it made up its mind. The dog-headed man’s ears were pointed and upright, excited, and the blackness of its eyes seemed a hungry void as it stared upon him. His fingers tightened around his staff, his own plans taking shape.

But he had only a moment to think, for the kynokephalon’s hunger wouldn’t allow inaction for long. The beast snapped at him once, howled to the sky only to sneeze again, white dust from the stone puffing out, and snarled as it leapt upon the mountainside and clambered up the cliff with terrifying speed. Its strength allowed it to haul its enormous bulk with ease, and it threatened to reach Kosta in mere seconds.

Alas, it found a slate grey barrier in its way.

The kynokephalon yelped as the unexpected wall broke its grip. It fell, scrambling for purchase, and found a stray root that slowed it. That offered just enough time for one of its other three hands to catch a groove (Kosta scowled when he realized it was one of the ones his fingers had carved) and managed to stay dangling on the cliffside.

He cursed, but eyed a rock the size of his head that rested near his foot. Well, it had worked in—

No time for that.

Kosta hefted the heavy rock, peered down to meet the kynokephalon’s hungry gaze, and simply dropped the stone off the cliff. He let gravity do the hard work.

He was met with another yelp as the stone brained the kynokephalon, although the creature’s skull was far too tough for that to put an end to this. But it at least stunned the monster. Kosta peered over again to see the damage, but his eyes widened at the sight of the dog’s head growing closer and closer, driven by its enormously powerful limbs. Fury empowered it.

But another thick slate wall of magic appeared in its way. Kosta held the dendrac staff tightly in his grip. He could only marvel at the swiftness with which the barrier was Projected. His magic flowed easily through the dendrac, amplified by the power of the phaetra core at its tip and the wisps of himself embedded during its creation, and manifested smoothly beyond him.

It was so easy. So quick. If only he had this during—no.

The kynokephalon failed to catch itself this time and howled wrathfully as it came crashing down to the woods below. Kosta felt a little surge of relief as it landed heavily upon one leg and winced, although it managed to rise again.

The leg wasn’t broken, but perhaps that would be a weakness that Kosta could exploit in the future—at the very least it might slow the beast down. The kynokephalon seemed to favor the other leg, although its terrifying four arms seemed as strong as ever.

But the injury didn’t stop it. The kynokephalon scrambled for a grip on the cliffside again and began its climb for a second time. It growled ferociously all the while, undaunted by the challenge. All it cared about was sating its hunger.

“Aretans above, it’s dumb,” Kosta said aloud. That should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. The kynokephalon might not be the sharpest chisel in the workshop, but it was strong. Durable. Relentless, driven by nothing more than a desperate craving for meat and magic.

A more cunning predator like the manticore might have realized that it was at a disadvantage. That its prey was too difficult to catch. That it was likely to sustain injury.

The kynokephalon cared nothing for those pragmatic concerns.

It might win because of that stupid belligerence. It would throw itself at Kosta without regard so long as he ended up in its stomach. The kynokephalon would break its own arms battering down his barriers if it meant an end to its hunger.

Dread settled in Kosta’s stomach, but it was eased by the simple comfort of his current advantage. The kynokephalon was dumb enough to throw itself on a spear to get closer to its prey. He doubted that it would think to try another approach for a while yet.

His dropped stones and simple barriers did little, but perhaps they would exhaust the creature. Clymere spoke of kynokephalon that she had hunted who could command nature with a clawed fingertip or summon packs of wolves to their aid, yet this one seemed like a dumb brute lost to its hunger.

Its magic focused inward, not outward. That meant the kynokephalon wouldn’t have many tricks at its disposal, but it did mean that it was nigh indestructible to someone of Kosta’s power.

The kynokephalon climbed. Kosta stopped it with a heavy boulder he shoved over the edge.

The kynokephalon climbed. Kosta blinded it with a flare of bronze light from his staff, then Projected a slate wall that hurled the kynokephalon down.

The kynokephalon climbed. Kosta blocked it with a barrier, but this time the beast’s held on with two arms to prevent it from slipping. It howled with victory…and got another rock to the face.

He was starting to run out of rocks.

The kynokephalon climbed. Kosta’s barrier failed to stop it. It came closer than it had before, but Kosta pressed the tip of his staff to the mountainside.

Break.

The kynokephalon yelped as it was buried in a small rockslide, but after a minute or two it managed to dig its way out with its powerful arms. It limped, but was otherwise unharmed. It peered at him distrustfully, white teeth exposed, but its simple mind decided that it was time to try again.

The kynokephalon climbed. Kosta…

The kynokephalon climbed. Kosta…

They played this game for an hour. While Kosta would have been exhausted by now if he were working purely under his own strength, the staff provided enough aid that he only felt a slight fatigue settling in. His spirit hadn’t been wrung dry quite yet thanks to the well-crafted focus.

Boredom was as deadly a foe as the kynokephalon itself. He settled into a routine broken only by the occasional rockslide. The cliff was a mess now, more and more of its edge collapsed to stall the creature, but that also meant that the creature had a slightly shorter climb.

But the kynokephalon was relentless. Old injuries healed before his eyes. The limp was gone, although it was replaced by a few black and bruised fingers from an occasion where the dog-headed man’s full weight had fallen upon them.

Even Kosta winced at that crunch, although it didn’t stop the kynokephalon from getting right back up and trying again. It had three other hands to climb with, after all, and surely this would be the time things worked out.

Surprise, surprise, it wasn’t.

Still, Kosta had no doubt that those broken fingers would heal soon enough. The kynokephalon showed no sign of exhaustion. It would come again and again until it finally found a way to mash him to a pulp. He thought of running the next time he buried it, but Kosta expected that it would catch up in a matter of minutes without him here to keep it stalled.

Its nose and ears twitched every time that he used any form of magic, whether it was shattering rock or Projecting a grey wall. Kosta had been unsettled when he realized it could likely sense his magic directly by smell and hearing, however that worked. Perhaps a factor of the Lifestitch’s creation, a gift to his children. They had been his loyal hounds, after all.

Kosta sorely wished Clymere were here. She would have laughed in the face of this stupid slavering beast; her flames would have devoured this creature in an instant.

The best he could do was stop it. Clymere would have slain it. Kosta scowled, tossed another rock at the stupid thing, and only felt a tiny measure of satisfaction when it clunked against the monster’s skull.

It snarled at him, hauled itself up the cliffside with terrifying speed and dexterity, only to be stymied by a solid wall that Kosta Projected with his staff. Again and again it battered its broken fingers against the barrier, scratching at it with bloodied claws, yet it found no relief. The kynokephalon snarled again, swiped—and then came a whistling sound, high and keening as it split the air, and the monster screamed.

Kosta jerked, broken out of his boredom-induced reverie. Who would have imagined stopping death in its tracks could ever be dull?

Yet the kynokephalon howled as its fingers gave and it tumbled down the cliffside, four arms flailing. It screeched with every new bump. Kosta stared at it, wondering what he could have missed, and blinked as he spied a great arrow sticking out of the kynokephalon’s flank.

The projectile was finely made, though clearly not the product of some mass production facility of the great cities. It was shaped from a reed, pruned by magic, and Kosta realized that the arrow was actually moving, brought to life by some unknown power.

His enemy howled again as the arrow twisted and turned in the wound, scraping the kynokephalon’s insides raw and bloody. The kynokephalon had no hope of regenerating as the arrow renewed the wound with every instant it spent embedded in its flesh.

The weapon seemed sadistic, honestly, as if whatever intelligence that guided it was interested in maximizing the damage caused by a single arrow. When the living arrow pulled back to reveal several inches of its bloody shaft and then drove back in, Kosta realized something.

Firstly, the arrow had actually managed to pierce the kynokephalon’s flesh.

Secondly, the archer was nowhere to be seen.

Still, as the kynokephalon writhed beneath the sadistic ministrations of the reed arrow, he felt an immediate surge of relief.

Perhaps he might live to see another dawn after all.