White and yellow coats collided. I stepped back once, feeling the force of my adversary pushing against my grasp. His eyes were cold, far from the ones of a maniac, and I was breathing uneasily. I ducked and let him break the stalemate, the tepid drool of the dogo dribbling on the back of my neck.

“¡Mirá, un dólar!” I said, and pointed behind him.

I seized the split second afforded by my trick and drove Mariana’s tail-handle into his rib, shaving out 5% of his Hp. He turned and tried to decapitate me with a sideways slash that Mariana’s edge stopped.

“So, uhm, bitch, are you single?” asked the Dogo.

“I am not plural,” answered Mariana.

The other bandits were betting how long would it be until I died.

I warded off the Dogo and went for a kick against the broken guard of Matador. He dodged to the side, let the dog go and rolled backwards. The dogo rushed to him, both of them now out of Mariana’s reach. I tried to take a step back, but I felt the dry touch of granite against my bare elbow.

“Te dejaste acorralar, petón.”

“This is like that evening I spent dying against the Capra demon because I kept on rolling against walls.”

“Jefazo, déjeme usar la de los bully,” requested the dogo.

Matador nodded. “You should have gotten a dog with battle aptitudes.” It was a miracle: he was speaking in English. Maybe because he thought it’d make this moment cooler, or because he wanted his underlings to understand him. “Bloodline blessing swap, Bully!” he announced like he was a goddamn sexy shonen protagonist.

Blood-colored light flowed into the dog, and his eyes started shining with the same color. He started snarling, drooling excessively, as if he was rabid.

“Do you need to call out the technique or is it just performative bullshit?”

“I need the dog to know I want him to use it. Performative bullshit is pretty effective at that. Come on, invoke the power of the Retriever god. Call him down to aid you like the bully god aids me!”

“There is a Retriever god?” asked Mariana.

“Wait, you wield a dog.” He lowered his weapon.

“Correct.” I smiled and nodded.

“And you two don’t know about the dog gods? One for every breed group?”

My sword and I shook our heads.

“¡Pero si serás pelotudo, flaco!”

He charged with renewed hatred, dogo in hand, going for my heart. I liked my heart, it did a good job of pumping blood into my body, and, so far, had only given me up once. So I used Mariana, whom I liked slightly less than my heart, to hit the dogo and deviate the blow.

The dogo was driven into the wall, boring a hole into the granite. My sword lost an eight of her hp.

My knee and his groin decided to be total sluts and have intimacy on the first date. When he winced and contorted from the pain, I scurried away, putting distance between both of us and checking on Mariana.

“Would you be so kind to, like, tell me something? Are dogs used as swords supposed to be hurt?”

“Bully, blessing, increased, damage, to, dogs,” he said, grabbing his crotch with a hand while pulling on the dogo with the other.

“Jefazo, déjeme matar a la piedra,” said the dogo. It means something like “Boss, allow me to teach this impolite amalgamation of felsic minerals some proper manners.”

“Cada reputísima vez que usamos el linaje de bully te volvés un descerebrado, Mamotreto.” Or “Every time we use this accursed bloodline your delicate and gentlemanly attitude deteriorates, Mamotreto.”

“¡No digas mi nombre en público!” Or “Monetary emission causes inflation, I swear on my name.”

I snickered. Great name for a Dogo Argentino, Mamotreto. Big and useless. Just like his owner’s enviable pecs.

I could go for a strike while he was unarmed, but it was risky: if he managed to dislodge the dog as I went for the throat, he would have a very good opening to aim for mine, or hurt Mariana.

I decided to play it safe and gave silent orders to my belts. They were discussing the morality of slavery.

“Listen, if you want your slaves to live long, you must water them every day, three times a day,” was saying one of them.

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“Are you stupid? Water is running out, you nincompoop. We cannot afford to water slaves more than once every two days,” retorted the other.

They made me proud. But it was no time to indulge in any capital sin but anger. One of the belts grabbed the dagger from its sheath and held to it. I let Mariana go, and another couple of them, still attached to the belts in my arm, wrapped around her torso.

“So Mamotreto has pit bull blood, right?”

“You surrender so easily? I won’t let you off alive, you know. But you are right. Blood of the glorious but extinct Córdoba fighting dog too, as it is natural…” He said, and with a clicking sound, eh finally dislodged the Dogo from the wall. “Any last words?”

“Mariana, fetch me a cactus.”

Mariana zoomed past them, going directly for the entrance.

“Nos vemos en Disney,” I waved my hand goodbye before the belts tensed and dragged me behind Mariana.

So my transition from man to sled was swiftly completed, and I learned how rough a granite floor can really be when you are bolting out of it at an awesome 1 Excited Golden Retriever/hour. The only relief I had was a pool of blood (dicksourced, probably) that smudged on all of my body before we came out into the sunlight.

I looked behind me and smiled. Mamotreto had got loose and was running after us, with eyes that shown no soul nor thought behind them, tongue out, and his tail wagging. He wanted to play tug of war, and we were the rope.

My cheek got a good old desert exfoliation. Dermatologists hate me.

“¡Mamotreto, volvé para acá, pelotudo atómico! ¡Cambia el linaje, cambia el linaje la concha de tu madre!” Matador yelled with desperation, running like possessed behind a dog he could not catch. By the way: “Mamotreto, come back to me, my soul-bonded pal! Change the bloodline, change the bloodline for my heart, my reason to live, oh!”

I sent a thread of belts against the dog, with the one in the business end holding the dagger. With some deft movements of the arm that wasn’t attached to Mariana and a bit of clever magic —controlling a rope made of different zombies is no easy task— I managed to give our pursuer a few cuts in the snout. That barely made a dent into his hp bar. I commanded the belts to return to me.

I spat some of the sand I inevitably swallowed as Mariana used me to plow the dunes. I thanked the gods for the passive HP regeneration that let me retain my skin—it holds sentimental value for me— despite the rough terrain.

The woodchipper made into a dog was closing in, and I wasn’t on the mood to play the role of the local age-of-consent-denier. I had not much time, Mariana would eventually reach the cacti or, if the dog grabbed me first, leave me to be playfully dismembered in the middle of the desert.

I sent out the belts with the dagger again, but this time aimed for the eyes. I struck the nose, but Mamotreto didn’t stagger. Blood ran down his face and let a trail of droplets on the sand, but he was not going to stop. He was never going to stop.

He forced me to kick to avoid him getting a deadly hold on my feet. I send three of my belts crawling through my legs, and ordered them to leap onto the dog’s head. They attached around the snout, muzzling Mamotreto, who didn’t stop running after us. I held my dagger tight, looked directly at the dogs now shaking head and gave the reins that kept me tied to Mariana the order to unbuckle. She kept on running, and I was left alone against the monster that came after us.

The dog, still disabled, came over me and tried to go for my neck. I viciously stabbed his ribs once and again. Wishing my muzzle belts would resist long enough to allow me to keep some items of interest equipped—namely, my trachea.

The claws dug into my skin, and the animal felt like it weighed the same as an horse. I kept burying my weapon below his ribs, twisting it, watching his health bar slowly go down.

“¡Mamotreto! ¡Aguantá Mamotreto!” I heard the voice of the man coming after me.

I changed my strategy, and trusted my blade into Mamotreto’s left eye, the jet of blood resulting from it washing over my already bloodied face. Then, I went for the other eye. The dog still didn’t back down, but had lost a significant part of his health, and was now blindly aiming his head at where he though my face was, With it unable to defend himself against what I was going to do I grabbed his snout with both hands to shift his focus and try to reduce the shaking. A belt grabbed the dagger and sliced his throat, dropping the HP to zero, making his waving tail to slowly come to a halt.

I looked behind us. Mariana was nowhere to be seen. I pushed the dead, bleeding, white potato bag off of me, and saw Matador standing there, bewildered, frozen, with trembling hands. I promptly stood and began walking away as if nothing had happened.

“Lo… lo mataste.”

“I think it still has a pulse.”

Matador rushed to the corpse of his friend.

“¡Mamo, respondé, Mamo!” He slapped the dead dog. “Te estás haciendo el muerto, ¿No, Mamo? No me dejes solo entre angloparlantes, Mamotreto. ¡Mamotreto!”

“Just find someone to use a resurrection spell on him, drama queen.”

He started both sobbing and laughing at the same time.

“Did your parents confuse the baby bottle with the toilet cleaner? Who told you the dead can come back?” he said, eyes full of spite, voice drenched in pain and anger.

“My dog.”

“Well, she lied or misread something. Here, too, only the divine can give life. How does this make you feel, now?”

I examined the deepest nooks and crannies of my soul. I found no trace of guilt.

“Your dog wanted to kill me. But I am going to choke Mariana until she tells me why the hell she lied… As soon as she comes back, which could take a while.” I mimicked the motion of looking into a watch.

“You kill someone’s dog and that’s how you react? Hijo de remil putas.”

He stood. His first step took a while, and was short, like that of Parkinson’s patient. Then, with explosive speed, he rushed towards me, hands extended as claws.

“¡Asesino! ¡Te voy a arrancar esos ojitos de chetito lindo que tenés, salame!”

I felt sexy for a moment. There was this warm swelling in my chest after a compliment, even if it had been intended as a threat. Threat he would never be able to fulfill, because, as always, I was one thousand steps ahead.

He suddenly stopped, and opened his eyes wide open as the realization dawned upon him.

“Lucas, Luquitas,” I sang mockingly, “first rule when facing a necromancer: Don’t do it during a funeral.”

I turned away, trying to imitate one of those film scenes where the protagonist avoids looking at an explosion.

“Mamotreto? Would you be so kind to let my ankle go?” he said with a thin voice that hung at the edge of breaking. I don’t know why he said it in English. Maybe he thought that would save him.

But, just as there was no explosion, there was no mercy under the desert sun, only a zombie Dogo Argentino and cold blooded murder. I will never forget the screams. Could have made a good ASMR with them.