A wind whipped up around the two contestants standing in the Colosseum, disturbing a carpet of dust and grit from the ground beneath their feet. Then, in a brilliant flash of blue-white light, a triangular beam shot out of the front of his head. It lasted only for a moment, and then it was gone.

Ziph shook his head. What the hell had that been? Never mind. He rotated his shoulder as if to come at Millagua with a killing blow, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a sound.

It was a high-pitched sound, like a whistle from far away, way up in the cloudless blue sky, faint at first, but then getting louder, quickly, as whatever it was closed the distance.

Within seconds, the sound was so piercing and terrible that even the gods in the Colosseum stands were seen to be pressing their hands against their ears to block it out. They looked up to see what was coming down at such tremendous speed, many of them burning their eyes as they made direct eye contact with the brilliant sun.

And so it was that, amidst the chaos, most of the onlookers didn’t even see the thing as it landed down there, on the floor of the Colosseum, between Ziph and Millagua. Almost no one knew it was even there until the literal dust had settled.

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I did. I watched the terrible creature rocket down from the heavens like a black lightning bolt. I watched as the gods turned their faces away in fear. I saw everything. I couldn’t look away. This was all thanks to my brilliant invention; my blood, sweat, and tears; the invention that would bring me up in society.

The Tripunctum helm, which my master wore on his head.

When the air was still, there the creature was. Three meters tall, a man with a bat’s head and face and leather wings. Possessed of an Olympian’s physique, he reared his head back and shrieked again, and all the crowd covered their ears in dismay.

Only a few in the crowd kept watching intently. Isshakhu was one of them. I don’t think I even saw her blink one time. Siyn, Millagua’s son, was another. Neither did Ziph.

My master, I am ashamed to admit, turned his head away out of sheer terror. He cried, “Bagua, the were-bat, it is you, you are real,” and then he vomited on the ground.

Bagua was Millagua’s childhood bogeyman, a long-forgotten terror of his youth, and now the god of static time was frozen in fear, locked in a memory he hadn’t known he had.

“Bagua,” he said, and it was all he could say. “Bagua, Bagua, Bagua.”

Ziph lifted his silver staff above his head, intending to bludgeon Millagua with its grave ruby head.