The cambion who had been her guide - Zhaanam - rose from where he had knelt before the chief for the entirety of his conversation with Clara and silently beckoned for her to follow him. The chief had already returned to an affected lounge in his throne; despite the restful posture, Clara could see that he was still tense with rage at Holden and, by association, at her, so she wordlessly followed Zhaanam from the tent.
“We’re setting out immediately?” Clara asked when she realized that the cambion had already brought her to the edge of the camp.
“Best for you to be away from here if the chief changes his mind. Best that, if he does see you again, it is after the beast is slain. Besides, I doubt that you would be satisfied with one of our tents.”
“Very well,” Clara said. She had to admit that she would prefer to spend only as much time amongst the cambions as was necessary. “How far lies the beast’s territory?”
“Only a few hours to the edge of it. It might be a day or two longer before we actually encounter it.”
“And have you seen it before?”
Zhaanam shook his head. “Only a few who have have managed to return to us alive.”
“Wonderful. Our chances don’t sound very good.”
“You may leave at any time,” Zhaanam said, motioning to the woods encroaching around them. “But the strength of your magic may prove enough to fell the beast. Do you have experience with it in combat?”
“Some. I’ve been unfortunate enough to have been forced to use it against goblins, human bandits, a fellow infernalist, a hellhound, and two Paladins thus far,” Clara replied, counting off each encounter on her fingers.
The cambion’s stopped and turned to look at her, his brow rising as she continued to list them off. “You are young to be such an esteemed warrior,” he said after a moment, with respect in his voice. “How many years have you been learning under Sealbreaker?”
“Years? It’s only been a few months. Is there any cause to be so astonished?” Clara asked as Zhaanam seemed even more surprised at her response - as surprised as she was by his reaction. She hadn’t considered it anything more than sheer luck that she had survived the turmoil she had found herself in since getting entangled with Holden.
“Pagnam’s current apprentice was chosen eight years ago, and he is still considered a novice. Sealbreaker must be harsh in his tutelage for you to have become so strong in such a short time.”
Clara nodded in answer, remembering how Holden had stood back and watched while Jak’s summoning went awry. Though she still wasn’t sure that the cambion had the correct measure of her ability - not that it bothered her to be overestimated by one who could just as easily have been foe rather than friend - it did seem that her instructor was more interested in results over the safety of his charges. “He is not a terribly nurturing mentor,” she agreed.
“Some say that infernalists are best forged in fire. We don’t have the population to treat them like that - not after Sealbreaker took so many with him - but it seems that the man took it to heart himself. Full glad I am that the chief decided against making an enemy of you.”
“Took so many with him? I’ve not seen any cambions among his followers.” Not that Clara had seen more than Jak and the nameless door guard that she only assumed was another warlock, but the cambion did not need to know that.
“Of course not. They wouldn’t let them into your pristine human cities. But Sealbreaker did not abandon us alone. No, he swayed all of our mystics but for Pagnam and many of our warriors and took them to fulfill his ambitions. Pagnam claims that they are out there, enacting his will in places far from civilization. But come, we have wasted enough time on words. The beast awaits us.”
Clara bit back more of the questions that she had about the cambions: where they had come from, how they were related to true demons, how many of them lived in the kingdom’s borders, and more. Zhaanam had already been more forthcoming than she could have hoped to expect from someone who had been pointing an arrow at her a mere hour past, and she would not ruin that by pressing him further. Instead, she gestured for him to lead the way.
Zhaanam turned back towards the trees and stalked off into them, appearing to melt into the foliage before Clara’s eyes. She realized, with a small sigh to herself, that it would be far more difficult to keep pace with him without her Nightmare doing the bulk of the work, but there was nothing to be done for it but to catch what glimpses of him that she could and try to follow along.
“Is there any need for such wariness so near to your camp?” Clara asked after the third time she had lost track of Zhaanam in the undergrowth and been forced to call out his name to gain her bearing again.
“The beast is not the only danger in these woods. With it claiming such a vast swath of the forest, the rest of those that once hunted in its domain have grown hungry enough to prey on whatever they can find. We also share this area with a clan of beastmen. While they are not exactly our enemies, we’ve not been fast friends either. So yes, the caution is necessary.”
Clara clicked her tongue, but then a thought struck her. “Would you take any issue with keeping my companion close at hand, then?” she asked as she coaxed her imp out of its hiding place amidst her baggage. “Unfortunately, I must admit that I can hardly follow you in these conditions, but it will be far easier for me to locate you through my imp.”
The cambion took one look at the miniature demon and bowed his head. “It would be an honour.”
From its perch in Clara’s palm, the imp stood up to its full height and puffed out its chest. “Enough looking pleased with yourself. You’ve a job to do, little one,” Clara scolded it. It had the good sense to at least look chastened, though it grumbled softly to itself as it bunched itself up to leap from Clara’s hand to the cambion. Zhaanam was stock still as the imp landed on his forearm and scurried up to a fresh perch on his shoulder.
With Clara’s supernatural tether to the imp, it was much easier following Zhaanam - after he’d gotten over his awe at the infernal creature sharing his personal space and continued forwards, at least - and they set a fair pace through the dense woodland.
Despite Zhaanam’s warnings - or perhaps because of his caution - they hadn’t encountered any trouble by the time the faint sunlight that made its way through the canopy overhead had started to fade. Still, the cambion urged for them to camp without fire, so Clara sat in the dark while she chewed on one of the tough strips of cold, smoked meat that she had been offered and fell asleep huddled under the scant comfort of her blanket while her imp dutifully kept watch.
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Early the next day, the forest started to change. It did not take any expertise in woodcraft for Clara to notice the signs of the beast’s domain; much of the undergrowth had been roughly slashed, burned, or trampled down and even many smaller trees had been felled and strewn about the forest floor. The very largest trees were the only ones still standing in any significant number and even those had great gashes and scorching along their trunks, some as high up as to be out of Clara’s reach.
“We have entered its territory,” Zhaanam said in a low voice, and Clara had to bite back a remark about how obvious that had already been. “If we were cautious before, we will have to be twice that, now. It will likely catch our scent before too long, so we had best find a good place to make our stand against it.”
Clara nodded and resumed following him - a much easier task with the ground as clear as it was, but that also worked against them. Where she had been annoyed by having to move through the underbrush just minutes prior, now she felt terribly exposed in the bare spaces between the trees.
Zhaanam, for his part, appeared unperturbed as he stalked through the sparse woods. He still seemed to disappear from sight when he pressed up against a tree, something that Clara didn’t feel she was replicating at all when she tried to do the same.
The harrowing trip deeper into the beast’s territory felt as though it took hours, with Clara jumping at every rustle of the leaves up above or twig snapping in the distance, telling herself all the while that if the creature was as large and terrifying as the cambions’ stories claimed then she would see it coming long before it saw her.
Zhaanam silently held his hand out as a signal to stop after either a few minutes or a few hours - either one felt as likely to Clara at that particular moment - just as a deer bounded into sight. Clara let out a sigh of relief that caught in her throat as another, much larger shape barreled out of the trees and into her line of sight.
The beast was every inch the monster the cambions had described. At first Clara thought she was looking at a lion straight from a knight’s heraldry, only far larger than she expected a lion had any right to be - the thing stood almost twice her height at its shoulders, which would have been a formidable enough threat on its own. But another head thrust out from between the lion’s shoulders, that of a great horned goat with smoke trailing from its nostrils. Its hindquarters were covered in the shaggy fur of that selfsame goat and its back legs ended in hooves, but that was not where the surprises ended. Where the lion’s tail should have been was a great sinuous length of scale and muscle that stretched on for at least the length of the rest of the beast and ended in the head of a snake that looked of a size to engulf a man whole between its jaws.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
It hurtled after the deer, which in hindsight had clearly been fleeing it, and after two prodigious strides it hunkered down into a leap that carried it the rest of the distance to its hapless prey. It landed with one massive paw on the deer that bore it to the ground, screaming, and wasted little time in setting to its meal, pausing only to clamp its teeth around the deer’s neck before it started to tear away mouthfuls of flesh.
It was then that Clara noticed Zhaanam urgently tugging at her sleeve. For the few seconds it had taken for the beast to show up and make its kill, she had stood transfixed in equal parts awe and terror both. “We must go, now, while it is distracted by its kill,” the cambion was hissing at her with desperation. Clara let herself start to be pulled along, still absorbed with watching the beast, when she saw its ears twitch. It looked up from its repast and started to sniff the air, ever so slowly turning towards its would-be hunters’ location - and then its eyes locked unmistakably on Clara.
The beast rose and gave one shake of its massive bulk, then stretched its head towards the sky and roared. The sound cut through the forest, rumbling across the forest floor with such force that even the earth below shook, and it caught Clara like a physical wave that resonated in her very bones. When it finally stopped, the last vestiges of the roar’s echoes dying out as they bounced between the trees, the forest was silent but for the clamoring of branches overhead that had been set astir, and Clara was still trembling - whether from the force of the roar or not, she could not tell.
“A challenge,” Zhaanam observed, as phlegmatic as ever. “Though I’ve not heard of such from this particular beast before - perhaps it recognizes your strength. Will we accept?”
Clara tried to gather herself, leaning on her staff for support. Her breath did not come easily as she stared at the beast, which had settled expectantly back on its haunches after - apparently - issuing its challenge. “It’s a chimera,” she said suddenly, the words tumbling from her. “I just remembered that I’ve read about them before, in a book that my father bought for me. I should have put the clues together before, really. The goat’s head breathes fire, while the snake’s fangs carry a terrible poison - on top of being able to swallow either of us whole without a second thought. That isn’t very fair, is it?”
The cambion shrugged at her. “Did this… book tell you its weaknesses?”
“That’s the wonderful thing about it - it doesn’t seem to have any in particular. Whatever its component animals would be weak to, which I suppose just means sharp objects and anything else we can throw at it.” Clara barked out a short, frantic laugh, then breathed in deeply. “I have to kill it, don’t I?” she said a second later, in a slightly more controlled tone. “I’ll like as not be unable to find the nerve again if we retreat, so it may as well be here.”
Zhaanam quietly checked his bowstring, drew an arrow, then tilted his head towards the chimera. “After you, then.”
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As the chimera was still patiently awaiting her, Clara took an extra second to etch two summoning circles in the air with threads of fire, summoning both her hellhound and her Nightmare. She studied her foe as she climbed into the saddle, trying to devise a strategy in her head. Would pain debilitate, or merely enrage the creature? If it breathed fire, would it have some immunity to it itself? The blades she could make out of shadows were sharp - sharp enough to cut through the chimera’s hide?
By the time she had situated herself atop the Nightmare, she had only more questions for herself, with no answers. So she raised her staff up in one hand and mentally commanded her Nightmare forwards. The chimera hauled itself to all fours in response and started stalking slowly around the outer edges of the arena that it had chosen. Clara set her steed circling it too, watching for any signs of its next action.
Which came suddenly, as the great beast pounced forwards and covered half the distance between it and Clara in a single lunging stride. Her Nightmare surged forwards without the need of a command, barely avoiding the chimera as a second leap brought it crashing down on top of where the infernal steed had been a moment before.
Clara turned in the saddle and aimed her staff at the chimera. Flames raced up from her hand and collected into a loosely constrained ball at the end of the staff - something she had been practicing with at Holden’s manor. The fiery globe took a second to form, then it streaked through the air and exploded against the monster, momentarily enshrouding it in the inferno.
But only for an instant. The beast stepped out of the conflagration, tongues of fire rolling off of its lightly singed form. The lion’s head gave a low, rumbling growl, and the goat’s head was bleating wildly. It took one step towards Clara, but before it could get any further an arrow materialized from the treeline and took it in the throat. It sunk in only as far as the arrow’s head and dangled there as the chimera turned to finds its source, roaring in what Clara interpreted as frustration.
She took the momentary lapse of the beast’s concentration on her to wheel her Nightmare around and weave another attack. Thin tendrils of shadow coiled up her staff and then stretched towards the chimera at Clara’s bidding, flattening as they traveled into blades that she lashed against the beast’s hide.
The umbral blades came away dripping blood, before Clara allowed them to disperse into a fine, dark mist. They had not cut very deep, however, and now the chimera turned back towards her with another angry growl emanating from the lion’s throat.
A distraction, she thought towards her hellhound. The demon shot from where it had been awaiting orders amidst the trees and leaped. It soared through the air and crashed into the chimera’s serpentine tail, where it locked its jaws around the base of the snake’s neck. Its fangs tore through flesh and scale alike - Clara could almost taste the chimera’s blood through the bond she shared with the demon - and then it started to thrash its head. The snake surged and rolled against the infernal hound’s grip, but to no avail.
Clara shut her eyes to the fight and pushed the sensations being fed through her infernal bonds away - she needed concentration as she catalogued her options. Though her blades of shadow had drawn blood, it hadn’t been very much, and it would take the rest of the day to worry away at it in that manner. The beast’s fur had been singed by her fire, so it didn’t seem that it was immune to the element, just resilient. She was better at working with fire, too, and an idea started to form.
She would need something hotter - hot enough to burn through the beast’s mighty defenses. The sort of heat that she imagined would need to be contain to a small area, however; a conflagration of the magnitude that she required was beyond her capabilities, she thought. A single brilliant point that burned with as much of the utmost intensity of the Hells Below as she could manage.
As the image of her weapon formed in her head, so too did her magic give it material form. Her eyes snapped open, and she saw how the fight had progressed in those long, few seconds.
The lion’s head had curled around in an attempt to dislodge her hellhound, which still dangled from its tail and kicked at the lion’s questing maw, keeping it at bay - for the moment, at least. The serpent’s movements had become sluggish as it had lost some of its spirit from the vicious treatment it had been receiving. The goat’s head had finally found its own nerve and a gout of fire was streaming out of its mouth towards the hellhound, but the infernal beast was unharmed by the flames.
And Clara’s answer to the problem shone in the air at the end of her staff, a bead of burning infernal energy no larger than her thumbnail that nonetheless blazed with such white-hot severity it hurt her eyes to look at. She leveled her staff towards the chimera and let it be loosed.
It seared through the air so swiftly that it seemed a single bright lance of fire had been burned into Clara’s sight. But the chimera seemed to sense its impending doom and looked up just in time to bound to one side. The molten bead still tore through it from shoulder to flank, leaving a blackened ruin of charred flesh to mark its path, but it had not struck anything vital.
The chimera roared in pain and fury, and then again as the snake’s head went slack under the hellhound’s savage assault. The lion whipped around, a sudden blur of feral speed, and its jaws snapped shut around the hellhound’s lower half. With one jerk of its head the infernal beast came apart into two pieces, and its grip finally loosed enough for it - or one part of it, as it were - to fall to the ground. It still pawed and snapped at the air for a moment as the last of its dark, demonic blood watered the earth, and then it finally went still.
Stunned by the pain and fury fed from her hellhound in its violent final moments, all Clara could do was watch as the chimera spit out the hellhound’s hindquarters and roared at the sky in triumph, with no concern for the serpentine third of it that also lay limp on the ground.
The chimera did not glory in its kill long; a moment later it turned back towards Clara and lunged at her, claws flashing. Her Nightmare danced away, but not fast enough. One claw raked across Clara, ripping bloody furrows from her shoulder to her hip and tearing her staff from her hand as it bore her down from the saddle.
She slammed into the rich soil of the forest’s floor and rolled to face her foe, just in time to see it step over her and open its mouth to deal the final blow. In that cavernous maw she saw her inevitable death approaching, with no more than a split second to conjure up some evocation to save herself. But nothing came to her - all she could think to do was raise her hand in some ineffectual attempt at warding off the beast, and then the split second was past and the chimera’s jaws were snapping closed again.
They locked around her arm, just below the shoulder, and before she could even scream at the pain the chimera jerked its head once more and ripped her arm away. Clara screamed, then.
And where she had tried to approach the fight with reason until that moment, it gave way all at once to a fire that consumed her mind, fueled by the waves of fear and pain that flew through her. Raw instinct gave it form with far more haste than the last, and by the time the chimera had turned back towards Clara another molten bead was burning within her remaining palm.
It shot straight into the lion’s forehead and scorched its way through the entire length of the beast in an instant. All of the strength went out of it, as most of its internal organs were no doubt left in cinders. Its knees buckled and it slumped to the ground, the lion’s jaws working feebly at the air as the creature started to die. But Clara was not quite done with it. She hauled herself to her feet - with some difficulty - and pressed her hand into the lion’s mane, calling upon the infernal well of magical energy that still roared within her to tear the last of the chimera’s vital force from it. It flowed through her, filling her with yet more infernal vigour, and she could feel her wounds start to knit themselves shut.
On a sudden impulse, she drew her hand back and snapped her fingers. The air around the dead chimera burst into flames that grew in intensity as Clara continued to feed energy into them. She slowly stepped back from the funeral pyre she had created, the heat of it too much for even its maker to bear. She fed all that she had left to her into it - and even that did not prove enough to fully scour the beast. When the last of her sorcerous flames finally dwindled out, a vaguely chimera-shaped lump of claws and teeth and flesh and bone remains, most of it charred black. So she stepped back up to it and kicked at what used to be its head, causing bits of it to crumble off like charcoal.