Cao Nyut traced his fingers across the silken darkness. Golden-yellow lines glimmerd in their wake. With a flourish, the pachyderm curved his thumb in a semicircle. Suddenly, he flicked his wrist.

The runes were done.

Suddenly, the giant gray monstrosity collapsed in on itself. Its legs buckled. It shook its head back in protest, quivering against the inevitable.

As quickly as the creature had grown to its tremendous height, it shrank back down to the earth, where Cao Nyut looked at it eye to eye, from his slightly higher vantage point.

“Now that’s more like it,” he said.

Bun, who had fallen as quickly as he had been picked up, promptly vomited again. Cao Nyut looked away while the boy recovered. Then, when he was feeling better, Bun said, “what did you do to save me?”

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“I have cast a spell of binding upon it,” Cao Nyut said simply, as if it were not really a big deal at all.

“You saved my life,” said Bun.

“Indeed,” said Cao Nyut.

“I wouldn’t celebrate just yet,” came a voice from behind the veil of darkness.

“Who goes there?” Bun shouted, “show yourself.”

A cloaked figure emerged so that the lower half of his features were visible by the glow of the runes. His features were rugged, and masculine, with a knobby horn of a nose, and a square jawline, which was meaty, and bereft of fat.

Even by the runes’ monochrome hue, even under the shade of his cloak, Bun and Cao Nyut could see that the figure’s skin was a dark red color.

“I should be asking you the same,” said the figure, “for this is my domain, and that is my Murkhling which you have just bound by your rune magick.”