Soon after drifting off to sleep, I was wakened up. It wasn’t the scraping against the ground and the prodding pokes of whatever beast lurked outside, no. It was by a small whimper in the back of my mind. The whimper of a hurt dog.

Master. Hurts. Help me, Master.

My eyes shoot open, I glance around the room. Clio?

Master. Please. Hurts.

I push myself off the bed and throw on my sweat-stained clothes. I know instinctually that the voice in my head belongs to Clio through the power of the familiar contract.

“Is there no way for me to go back without shutting the door?” I ask the Shard on my arm.

“No, you need to shut it first.” The Shard responds.

As I begin to buckle the gauntlets around my arm, the scraping outside begins again. I pause for a second as the shutters begin to shake. Fuck it. Whatever it is, I’ll kill. I need to hurry. Clio was in danger. I finish buckling the armor as the scraping moves to the front door. I bend at the waist and pick up my bag and fasten it to my back. As I move the scraping against the door becomes all the more hurried and stronger. There is one thing I know about whatever it is out there — it’s big, and it wants in here. I look to the ground then I bend down once again and pick up my wand. I scrape it against the ground intentionally.

The shaking of the door got more intense. The rusted latch buckles, and the boards of the door shatter. I scramble back up the bed and press myself against the window — the shutters now swinging outwards. Through the shattered door, I see a pair of long, bone-white pikes poking through the entrance hall, and the room echoes as the cloven hoofs of a great deer stomped into the farmhouse. At the end of the hart’s body was the bushy head of a maned lion. It snarls as its round, topaz eye dart across the room and locks onto me. Arrows are lodged in its back, and fresh scars mar its face. One of its eyes has a pink scar bisecting it. White foam froths from its massive, fang-filled jaws.

As it takes its first, bounding step its antlers scrape against the low-hanging ceiling of the farmhouse; tearing chunks of the sod that held it together out, and pulling heaps of thatch to the ground. Before it could make it to the bed I was already out the window, and as a parting gift, I cast ember on the bed that I had just been laying on.

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The blankets, and the straw mattress underneath, catch like dried kindling as a back draft of hot air blows into my face. I withdraw my wand and hurry away from the farmhouse as the flames catch in the thatch roofs. Red light floods the foggy night as the lionhart screams and roars and thrashes around. Its thick and sharp antlers ripped apart the sod roof. The white tips shone in the flickering light above the crest of the roof before the entire weight of the house collapsed.

Red cinders cast to the night as it fell into its own footprint, and the large monstrous creature was buried beneath the wood and straw and clay. Despite all that, the creature rises to its feet — its front haunches wobbling as it takes a step forward out of the still-smoldering flames.

“Bombard my enemies, O’ thou servants of Gob, the magnomious.”

A stone dislodges from the ground as I finish the incantation, and follows the direction of my wand. It whistles as it flies and smashes into the creature’s head with a loud smack, which I could hear despite my distance between us. The force of the hit was enough to temporarily stun it. But only temporarily, it staggers forward again shortly after and breaks out into a mad dash at me. It bared its alabaster fangs as it neared.

As it opens its maw, I recite the incantation as quickly as I could, and a fist-sized stone near my feet tears from the ground and slams down the gullet of the approaching lionhart. Teeth shatter, and skin tears the stone smacks and buries itself in the pink flesh of its throat.

“I allow the breath of the Salamander to flow through me.”

I incant as it staggers once again.

A hot orange curling tongue of flame leaps forward and flickers into the lion’s one good eye. It roars in pain as it weakly turns around to attempt to flee.

“By the order of Gob, King of the Spirits of the Earth, seize my enemies.”

A soil hand reaches from the ground and grabs hold of the deer’s leg at its ankle. A loud snap like a breaking branch sings into the night as the lionhart lurches forward and collapses. It roars and whines pitifully as I draw the scimitar from my belt and rush forward. I stomp on its head to keep it from moving; my 300-some-odd pounds doing its part in holding it in place as I drive the point of the curved blade into the back of the neck of the creature. Blood flows freely and soaks into the grass as the lionhart dies.

You’ve reached level 10. A message scrolls across the Shard on my wrist. You have been given an extra 6 stat points and an extra skill point.

“Which stat increases speed?” I ask it.

“Strength includes your leg strength, and stamina increases how long you can run for.”

“Put 3 in each.” I say, “And unlock the Earth Spike skill as well.”

My lungs and legs burn as the stat points are distributed, and the information flows into my head. It takes about a minute for the last bit of burning tp pass, and I sprint toward the distant fogwall, in search of the temple.

“Clio, stay safe.” I transmit a message through my mind to hers. “I’ll be there shortly.”