I stand bolt steady with the sabre raised, my right leg slightly in front of my left, a lowered somewhat posture with the tip of the sword pointed straight to the beast's chest.

In retrospect, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I had seen a fair few sparing sessions and practice fights by those who used weapons of similar design to this. Still, I had never wielded one myself up until this very moment in time, and yet here I was, standing my ground with such an ornate and beautiful blade, expecting myself to stand firm against something with far, far more experience than I.

The Zhivaq warrior shuffled forward a few more inches, spear still locked onto me while the beast hissed and growled. A deep recess of my mind felt a certain degree of regret and sorrow for this thing; I'm sure in its mind it came to the same conclusion I had about standing and fighting here. To it, I probably wasn't some lost stranger but rather a profiteer stealing things from the dead, a grave insult to the deceased that lay strewn around us.

My breathing slowed, and my pulse slowed as I tried to steel myself as best as possible; I would have to place my faith in composure, calm and hope if I wanted to win this fight.

The warrior swung its shield aside as it lunged forth, bellowing something in its claxon chittering, leading into a vicious stab with the glass spear. Thankfully, due to the sheer size of the brute, I was able to clumsily dodge the thrust, the hewing head passing by my left shoulder by a matter of an inch or so.

Unfortunately, this thing was much faster than its size would suggest, a lesson I learnt the hard way when, shortly after successfully dodging the spear, I catch an umber blur rushing towards me. By the time I realised that it was the warriors' shield, it had already contacted my chest.

The sheer force of the bash sent me reeling back a couple of feet. It didn't feel like it broke anything, but it bloody hurt all the same.

Whilst I was still reeling from the rough bludgeoning, I glace up at the spear and witness it winding up an especially brutal hew.

I watch in absolute horror as the glass head of its spear cleave into the hedge, rending a path of broken branches and lacerated leaves, while the blade arcs down towards me.

I barely had time to react, I tried my best to step back, but between the staggering strike from the shield and the speed of the hew, I could not avoid it altogether.

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth tightly as the blade reached me. A hefty dull thump echoed out from the strike while I was pushed back further still, followed quickly thereafter by the sound of fabric being cloven asunder and a sharp jolt of pain stretching out from the impact. There was no denying that I had just taken a nasty hit.

I reopened my eyes, pain wracking my mind. I quickly glance down to inspect the impact, expecting to see a deep, profusely bleeding ravine cloven into my body, judging by the ferocity of the attack alone.

To my amazement, it appeared that the coat managed to absorb the hit, barely; the Zhivaq warrior had cut a deep gash into the coat. I knew there would be one hell of a bruise later, but I couldn't inspect the wound right now. All that mattered was that I survived.

However, much to my dismay, the warrior wasn't entirely done quite yet with its viciously vigorous barrage of attacks. By the time I caught my breath and recovered from the staggering strike, the warrior was already revving up for another attack. This time, the thing was aiming to run me through with its spear.

Unfortunately for the beast, I wasn't overly keen on being stabbed to death today, and thanks to his previous hit sending me reeling back, I had just enough room to react.

In an act of desperation and an intense fear of picking up a scar, I throw myself into a wide sidestep and swat at the spear shaft. It certainly wasn't an accurate swing, but it was accurate enough to knock the spear down, the glass head scraping against the stone pavement with an awful screeching sound not dissimilar to nails being drag across a chalkboard.

I tried to take advantage of the situation; I drew the blade back and was about to swing for its exposed arm, but I just wasn't quick enough. By the time I was ready to strike, the beast had raised its shield and was throwing another vicious shield bash my way.

I hastily stepped back, and the umber bulwark missed my head by a couple of inches, a mightly blow which could have knocked me out cold there and then, avoided by the most minute of margins.

Not deterred by the narrow failure to finish the fight in an instance, it pulled back and crouched its spear, lunging into an almighty thrust, its entire body weight is thrown into the wild stab.

In a sudden act of either immeasurable fear, or a perilous gambit, I swung the blade down to catch the spear before it could reach me.

Whether the swing was guided by the gods of this alien universe or by sheer random chance, my shashka connected with the knobbly wooden spear shaft and forced its hewing head back down to the pavement slabs below with a reverberating clang.

Not wanting to squander this opportunity, I step into the swing and stomp on the spear shaft just above the hewing head. A loud crunch cried out from the wood as the rushed stomp snapped the head clear from the now broken spearshaft.

But I wasn't finished just yet; in a final act of what I could only look back on and assume was blind madness, I pressed towards the thing and threw my sword up in a barbaric uppercut. I don't know what I was hoping to achieve; the warrior was far too well protected for such an attack to do anything.

The warrior scurried back, broken spear shaft in hand while trying to raise its shield to block my swing, but it was not quite fast enough. The shashka sliced into the left side of its ceramic helmet with a deafening crunch.

The Zhivaqs head rocked with the strike. Chunks of ceramic exploded out from the impact, sending a cobweb of cracks and fissures twisting and radiating out. It reeled back, foot after foot, presumably in utter shock that a completely inept fighter such as myself came within a few centimetres of fired clay from claiming its head.

Taking umbrage to just how close it came to a lethal wound, the warrior threw its broken spear to the floor with a furious, guttural growl, and I could see the thing visibly shaking from rage. It rose its shield once more and reached for something behind it, only to unsheath something akin to a glass machete with a single jagged, knapped edge.

I lower the blade into what could be described charitably as a low guard while backing away from the behemoth of pure, undiluted rage. I knew that this was getting out of hand. I need to finish this quickly.

Again, the warrior charges forth, screaming defiance and contempt at the resistance I was putting up, or rather the resistance the sword was permitting me. With its jagged machete, it threw itself into an all-or-nothing hack towards my neck.

There was no way I could stop this swing without the force twisting my blade and potentially shattering my wrist. Although I might have been able to parry this in retrospect, I certainly didn't have the skill to perform such a manoeuvre at this time. Instead, I resorted to lowering my guard and trying to step around the swing.

While this saved my neck, it didn't save the right side of my chest. I could swear blind when the blade connected, and the air was filled with the sound of my coat being obliterated once more that I felt something break. Perhaps an anomaly caused by weapons like the one the Zhivaq wielded, maybe my mind trying to cope with the situation. All I knew was that I was somehow still alive, much to the Zhivaqs anger, I would assume.

I didn't have time to investigate it; my luck with avoiding major injuries was going to run out soon.

Since the warrior was out of position and overstretched, I retaliated with a vicious cleave of my own while stepping away. The warrior must have had the same idea to step back and try to bring the machete up into a backswing. Unfortunately for it, I was just a slight bit faster.

The very top third of my shashka came crashing down into its chest with a loud crunch, and the handle jolted my hand from the impact. Its right chest plate shattered entirely, chunks of umber ceramic slouched off its body and smashed into dozens of sherds open the ground. The obliteration of its chest plate was followed by a scratchy ripping sound not dissimilar to the tearing of my coat and the blade digging into its plant matter gambeson with ease.

The warrior grunted sharply and pulled itself back, and it appeared to almost collapse on one of its withdrawing steps. It shook its head and knocked its helmet with the shield, had I wounded it?

I glanced along the edge of my blade and saw rough streaks of blood across the top few inches of the sword; a brief look at its chest showed bloodstains spreading quickly from the incision in its gambeson. Much to my amazement, I succeeded in wounding the Zhivaq, and if the puncture depth was anything to go by, then the wound was severe indeed, but not enough to slay it.

After reeling back, the beast manages to fight through the pain it was probably in and hurled the glass machete at me. Either through luck or the warrior not throwing it correctly, it felt like either the handle or the unsharpened back of the blade hit me. It still felt like I'd been kicked by a mule, though.

It snarled and hissed in response to the deflection of the machete and reached to its hip for the curved sheath, only to quickly unsheath a much shorter, slightly curved glass dagger. This one appeared to be intended for stabbing due to how thin it was compared to the machete.

Seeing this thing reeling back from the wound I had inflicted and not wanting to lose momentum, I raised the shashka and stepped into an overhead swing. The warrior reacted by lifting its shield, but the blade wasn't going to be denied.

With a horrific crack, the edge slammed into its shield and clove several inches into the material, cracks radiating out from the trench dug into it, umber clay dust drifted free from the wicker frame around the impact.

The Zhivaq twisted the shield and tried to yank the sword from my grasp in response to this. I held on tightly and pulled back on the handle as best as possible, allowing me to uproot it from the shield.

After this brief exchange, I pulled back, panting heavily from exertion and pain while I felt sweat beading from my forehead and my back.

But much more significant problems were on their way, for I heard something in the distance behind me. I couldn't tell what it was, but there was definitely something approaching us from behind, and it was moving relatively slowly in this direction.

Time was running out, and quickly for that matter.

With another tribalistic scream of defiance, the warrior tilts into a maddened dash towards me, but without the shield covering its advance, it was vulnerable.

Noticing this, I check over my shoulder to make sure I wouldn't trip over and start to back up as fast as possible while maintaining a rough guard towards the thing. Around this point, I noticed pain ebbing out from my chest and my shoulder, which I couldn't blissfully ignore for long.

While the beast charged, I spotted an opening in its defence, a space just large enough to permit a quick thrust from the shashka. Without a moment of delay, I stop retreating and step forward into a thrust, a thrust the beast must not have expected.

The warrior, unable to react in time to my lunge, continued its charge directly onto the tip of my sword. A vile squelching and cracking sound called out within seconds, and I saw blood pouring down the length of my blade; the Zhivaq had stabbed itself with my sword from the sheer momentum behind its charge.

In an impressive display of resilience, the warrior proceeded to fling its shoulder forward, running the blade deeper through its chest and swung its right fist down with considerable force. The same hand which was firmly wrapped around the dagger...

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I hardly saw what happened afterwards, but I most definitely felt every second of it. The warrior's hand came to an abrupt halt with its clenched fist pressed firmly against my left shoulder. The pain was beyond comprehension.

I felt my knees buckle under the force behind the stab and the excruciating pain which washed over my body like a tidal wave. I felt my shirt slowly grow wetter by the moment as blood tricked from the wound.

"Fucking bastard!" I shout through gritted teeth. I sharply twist the handle with the sword still embedded in its body, which extracted a somewhat concerned snarl from the beast, which shuddered from the act.

"You like that?!" I growled, grasping the handle of the shashka with my other hand and pulled the blade back with all the might I could muster. Blood was now freely flowing from its chest, and I could hear its breathing was getting heavier and faster; whatever I had hit inside its chest, it must have been relatively significant.

With the blade free from its chest, I see the warriors left arm twitch violently, dropping its shield unceremoniously. Unfortunately, the pain hadn't deterred the beast, who, now realising that its left hand was free, clenched its fist and swung for my face.

With its right hand still firmly grasping the dagger still embedded in my shoulder, all I caught a glimpse of was the considerably blurred outline of a fist heading for my face. The first I knew of the incoming punch was when I heard what sounded like wood buckling and snapping within my face for the briefest of moments.

Everything went quiet for a few seconds while a high pitched ringing dominated the airwaves; not a sound could be heard over the ringing static.

My vision blinked to pure blackness for a moment, only to return with a shoal of stars floating around my view.

I could feel something pouring down my face that started around my nose; from the force of the hit, my nose was probably shattered instantaneously.

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Pain rolled across my head while an especially horrific migraine started to set in, an entirely natural and expected side effect of taking such a blow.

My body was beginning to shut down in reaction to the injuries it had sustained, but I couldn't pass out, not yet!

I felt something moving up my back and hopping off, which caused a loud growl to sound over the now lessening ringing. While my vision returned to normal, I saw Kliviero had climbed atop the brutes helmet and plunged something through one of its eye slits, much to the chagrin of the warrior who thrashed at her with reckless abandon, somehow missing her in the exchange.

It took me longer to react to it during this dazed state, but I realised that her attack had prompted the beast to relinquish its grasp of the dagger.

Shaking my head and gritting my teeth so tightly that I risked cracking them, I slash at the things thighs as heavily as my body would allow me.

The thing grunted sharply while I felt the blade come to a halt mid-swing. When pulling the sword back, I saw that the blade had cloven through its padded trousers and cut deeply into its right thigh.

I yanked the sword free, but the act of tearing the blade back knocked me off balance due to my injuries, causing me to trip backwards, taking a hard thump to my back.

Seeing me lying on my back and visibly disorientated, the warrior unleashes a deafening roar and surges towards me. Blood was dripping from the eye slit Kliviero had stabbed into, and the left side of its gambeson was slowly turning a crimson hue.

Withing pain wracking my body and my vision laced with stars, I grasped the handle of the shashka with both hands and waited for it to get within striking range. At the last possible second, I thrust the blade fourth with all the might I could muster, my eyes closing involuntarily from fright.

I felt a considerable shock running down the blade, and the energy was so great that its handle almost jolted from my hands. The impact was quickly followed by an ear-piercing hiss, though this time, the tone was not of bestial rage or anger, rather of pain, maybe even fear. Louder, more panicked grunts followed these hisses while what sounded like Kliviero fluttered nearby, sounds of swatting hands and something being cut or stabbed repeatedly.

In this critical moment, the weapon tugged on my grasp, I tried to hold onto it, but it was no use this time. The handle of the blade jumped from my clutch as heavy, disorganised footsteps and more hissing erupted before me.

I opened my eyes, fear wracking my mind; I had no idea what had just happened, but since the warrior wasn't the first thing I saw, then it clearly couldn't be too bad, right?

To my left, I heard a heavy thump and the sound of pottery shattering, an all too familiar sound during this encounter. With dread creeping in, I slowly sat up and looked over.

There, only a few feet from where I was, laid the body of the warrior. Its ornamental helmet shattered into dozens of fragments, blood pouring from its chest. The shashka, once I noticed it still lodged in the beast's chest, had embedded itself from tip to hilt. Even from where I sat, I could see the tip of the blade protruding from the back of the beast.

Kliviero stood next to its head, breathing heavily, entirely fixated on the beast, her hands and arms soaked in blood. I saw a line of punctures running around the thing's neck, small enough that she was the only thing around that could make such efficient wounds.

Somehow, against all odds, I had beaten the Zhivaq warrior in battle.

No, what am I saying; I didn't; the sword did.

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Now that I had a brief moment to inspect my wounds and the cost of the battle, I climbed to my feet. My legs were unsteady, and my chest ached. I couldn't smell anything through my broken nose other than traces of iron and blood as the blood flowed freely down my face and neck. My hearing still rang, albeit much quieter than before, and my head throbbed.

My partial loss of hearing was a touch concerning, especially since I remember hearing something distant approaching us, but I had lost track of the footsteps with partially impaired hearing. Still, I had much more pressing matters at hand.

I felt my body tremble and shake, though pain or anxiety I couldn't tell; whatever was causing it was far too intense for me to stop it. The world felt cold, and I could swear blind that icy crystals could precipitate from my very skin. It all felt so glacial and forlorn. The only thing I knew for a fact was that my very continued existence and survival in this nightmarish place was nothing more than a product of luck.

I glanced over the cuts in my coat, inspecting them for any wounds. Thankfully the coat had done precisely what I wanted it to; each one of the vicious strikes made by the Zhivaq had been caught and defused by it entirely. While the fight had severely damaged the coat and the areas where the beast had connected throbbed with pain, it had served its purpose and prevented me from picking up any significant cuts.

Unfortunately, just as I had expected earlier in the fight, my luck with the coat absorbing blows eventually came to a crashing halt, a painful reminder that armour, no matter how effective, ultimately fails in the face of battle. Wedged firmly in my left shoulder was the handle of the glass dagger.

I could feel the blade still lodged inside me, blood slowly seeping around it and slowly spreading out from the wound; the pain was staggering. I tried to grasp the handle and pull the dagger out, but I reconsidered when merely touching the handle caused the pain to double, no triple, in a heartbeat.

I shake my head violently and stagger to my feet, shaking my head again to try and work through the agony. While I came around, I saw Kliviero looking over her shoulder at me, her eyes wide open; they appeared to look through me rather than at me.

"I-I-I think i-its dead." She nervously stammered out, her hands and legs visibly shuddering while she stood by its motionless corpse. Her wings were pulled close to her, perhaps to try and shield them, but they were also splattered with blood.

"I wouldn't worry about it anymore, Kliviero," I murmur, still gritting my teeth and clutching my chest. "It's gone now. It's over." I limped over to her side and knelt beside the exsanguinating body. "A pity, but we didn't have a choice." I reasoned while using my coat sleeve to soak up the blood dripping from my broken nose, each gentle dab shooting off a screaming wall of pain.

"Y-you're right." She whimpered, her voice lowering. "Even if w-we could, it wouldn't have backed down; it's j-just how they are..." As much as I wanted to believe that there were members of the Zhivaq race who weren't as violent as my recent experiences with them would imply, I knew that I was fighting an uphill battle.

I crawled around to the other side of the fallen warrior and hesitated for a minute when thinking about whether or not I should retrieve the sword from its body. I felt terrible doing it, but I couldn't leave such a thing here among the dead, especially after it practically saved my life. With some delay and with a bit of hesitation, I reached for the handle and pulled the blade from the warriors' corpse, its mystical cadmium green Damascus blade now sodden from tip to the pommel with blood.

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Kliviero suddenly turns around and looks behind us; she shimmied on her feet nervously and appeared surprised by something. Prompted by her reaction and due to my lack of hearing, I turn about to see what she's looking at; thankfully, there was nothing there, but she most certainly heard something.

"What is it?" I ask quietly; the ringing was still fading away, but I couldn't hear anything coming from behind us, even though I knew that I did hear something that way earlier.

"We need to move, right now!" Kliviero fluttered up to my right shoulder and carefully sat down. "Something is coming, and we've got to get moving." She whispered and pointed towards the elbow bend.

I didn't take the time to ask her; I knew she was right, I knew we were on a timer, and I knew that timer would run out at any second now.

Lumbering towards the elbow bend, I limped around the corner and entered another long corridor. This one stretched for quite some distance and was only interrupted by a short arch about a dozen feet away. It was far too long to run down, although this assumed I was in any fit state to run, let alone walk at an average pace.

"Through that arch, quick!" Kliviero whispered while pointing towards the archway; she briefly looked behind us then snapped back to the arch. "Quickly, they're coming!"

"Who's coming?" I ask while limping as fast as my pain gripped body would let me. I was only able to stagger a few feet before I had to stop, coughing heavily and dabbing up more blood from my nose. "Jesus, that hurts!"

"Oh, it's going to get so much worse if we don't hide soon, believe me," Kliviero looked behind us again. "That patrol is back. I think they heard the fight and came to investigate, and they don't sound happy."

"That's not good..." I mumble between coughs, trying the best I can to cover my mouth and silence the cough; I knew they must be on to us by now, but the less noise I make, the less chance of them zeroing in on us.

"No, it's really not." Kliviero nervously laughed while giving me a gentle kick with the back of her foot, I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt me, but the kick landed squarely above one of the cloven gashes in my coat, where presumably a large bruise was forming. "I-I'm sorry!" She snapped back hastily, realising what she had done.

"It's okay," I grunted, my jaw locked shut while my chest twitched with aftershocks from the kick. "I've had worse." I lied in an attempt to reassure her between heavy breaths and delayed steps.

My hearing began to return to normal, so I could finally hear something further away than a few meters, which was fantastic news since I could monitor the noise myself rather than relying on Kliviero. Unfortunately, I found myself wishing that my hearing had not returned when I heard what she was hearing; the all too familiar sound of distant boots was not quite so distant anymore. I guessed that they must be just about to enter the corridor with the dead Zhivaq, a literal matter of seconds away.

Covering my mouth and nose to control the bleeding as much as possible, I managed to speed up from a gradual limp to a fast walk.

I reach the archway and quickly duck inside, and not a moment too soon, I could hear the boots getting closer still and the sound of shouting. They must have noticed the new body and the splatters of blood, right?

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Once we were through the arch, I noticed that we had entered a small nook of sorts, the room was not exceptionally spacious, but it was tall enough to stand upright as much as I wanted to lay down and rest.

The nook had stone block walls on every side, except the hedge wall behind me and the archway. I couldn't tell what kind of stone it was other than it was pale and light, though there wasn't a hope in hell in my pain addled state that I could identify it.

I approached the wall to my left and sat down, slumping against it while breathing slowly and heavily. I glance over at the glass dagger embedded in my shoulder. By all that is holy, it hurt, not as bad as it did, but it thought I was getting used to it rather than the pain going away.

"O-okay," Kliviero hops from my shoulder and floats over to the daggers' handle. "How do we fix this?" So flutters close to the handle, trying to piece together how exactly she could remove it, presumably without me bleeding out on the pavement shortly thereafter.

"You want me just to rip the knife out and let you work your magic on the wound?" I asked reluctantly; I knew this would bloody hurt, and I knew that I couldn't make much noise with that patrol coming around here soon. But removing it now in one quick move might hurt less, right?

"I don't think we have a choice," Kliviero rolled her eyes and turned away. "Just remember to pull it out in one move; otherwise, it's going to get a lot more painful, trust me."

I reach my right hand up to the handle and hesitate for a minute. I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, grasped the handle and yanked the blade out from my shoulder.

The searing pain was so great that I relinquished my grasp on the dagger within moments of its extraction. The very fingers on my hand twitched apart, dropping the glassy dagger with an unceremonious clang. Fresh, bright red blood began to pour out of the now open and unpacked wound, and I could feel it flow down my chest, soaking into my shirt and coat.

"L-let's see what I can do," Kliviero climbed to the wound, her left arm shifting and reconfiguring into what looked like a large singular needle. Her right hand pulled at the frayed edge of my torn coat, collecting a bundle of threads which she loaded into a grove at the back of her needle arm.

"I've not done this in a very, very long time so that I might be a bit rusty." She nodded once she finished loading the threads, only to climb up a bit more, grasp my coat firmly, then attempt to start stitching up my shoulder. Coincidentally, the needle itself wasn't that painful, but what most definitely made up the pain was the sensation of my skin being pulled back together.

I could barely keep it together while the sound of boots grew even closer, I tried to hold my breath and muffle any noises as best as I could, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't entirely mute myself. Pained grunts and sharp breaths occasionally slipped out while the incision tightened and the bleeding slowed down. Everywhere around me, I smelt strongly of iron, and blood from my broken nose had worked its way down my throat, so all I could taste was blood.

Stitch after stitch, step after step, pulse after pulse, the very passing of time itself was excruciating. My heart slowed further still when I heard a set of boots get closer to the archway, and my pulse stopped entirely when I could see the vague brown shape of leather boots appearing behind the hedgerow.

The boots grew closer to the archway, slowing down on its approach. It was coming in, and surely it was coming in the alcove with me; there's no other explanation, right?

With its boots getting closer to the entrance, Kliviero rushed to finish the stitches; she could tell that things were about to get ugly with the figure approaching the alcove.

With the boots no more than two steps away, I felt something moving behind me, something behind the wall? Before I could react, I see Kliviero suddenly jolt; amber flames erupted from her eyes and mouth, only for her to go limp, flopping off of my chest and crumpling in a heap by the hedge, lifeless and motionless.

I reached out to Kliviero to try and discern what happened to her, only for a large hand to shoot past my shoulder, easily the size of my face, and grasps over my mouth and most of my face, pulling me back against the wall while something that sounded like a muffled "sush". I tried my best to look behind me at the wall, only to see the stonework of the wall melting into thousands of strings that coiled around my body, partially sucking me into the wall.

While I was being dragged into the wall, I shuffled my legs in an attempt to resist whatever it was that was doing this to me, but to my increasing despair, the very stonework floor began coiling ropes of stone to obscure my legs.

I watched in terror as my body started to turn translucent around the ropes, how they appeared to also fade into obscurity, and not a moment too soon.

The figure who owned the boots was now at the archway and leaned in to investigate, and I felt a degree of terror I had not experienced in a very, very long time.

The first thing I saw leaning around the corner was the pale, bleached mask the figure wore. Like the mask worn by the visitor and the sculptures, it was entirely devoid of features other than a pair of eye slits. A crease down the middle from chin to forehead, probably a structural element to permit the mask curving around the face, and a set amethyst gemstone about the brow ridge between the eyes, its eyes were jet black with only a blindingly white pupil at their centre.

Around its head was a burgundy hood. The hood was woven so that it didn't hang over its mask by much more than half an inch all around. It was seamlessly attached to the figures' robes, which I couldn't see much of at this time but appeared to be the same material as the hood. I noticed a slight shimmer at the hood base; something which looked like a bronze ringmail shirt was worn beneath the figures robes, though it was hard to tell how complete the ringmail was, though I saw the same glimmer around the figure's wrists.

As the figure stepped around the arch to investigate the alcove I was in, I noticed that golden cuneiform and texts heavily embellished the figures robes from shoulders to wrist cuffs. I remembered from my previous conversations with Kliviero about the usage of embellishments and wardings scribed upon the robes; I believed that this figure might have been a Quire, a lower-ranking member of the Amethyite order.

In its right hand, it held a seax-staff, not dissimilar to those held by the sculptures, and golden cuneiform was chiselled into the metal head, the text shrinking in scale as it got closer to the tip. However, it appeared to have a shorter blade than the depictions, perhaps a lighter version of the weapon for novices?

The figure stepped entirely into the alcove and looked around, holding its seax-staff tightly, hands firmly grasped around the weapon as it unsteadily swept the cavity for any hidden enemies. Somehow, its piercing eyes failed to see me, even after it cast its gaze over my position several times. I could swear blind that it could hear my raging pulse, perhaps my breathing too, but it couldn't quite figure out where the sound originated other than within this seemingly empty alcove.

The figure stepped sharply and looked outside the alcove; it barked something down the corridor then leaned back in. The figure sighs, curses under its breath and shakes its head dismissively. I pondered about just how frustrated these guys must be at this point, running around searching for things and the remains of battles, yet they can't quite find anything.

The rest of his comrades must have been equally disappointed; a series of responses spoke back to the figure at the archway, but none of the voices was quite as angry as the final voice to reply. It sounded like the voice of the Archivist Kliviero spotted earlier, but whatever it was, it was furious.

After another vicious string of incomprehensible vocalisations, presumably directed towards the poor sod standing by the archway, the figure leaned back in, scanned the alcove again, then stepped out and responded.

The louder voice paused for a moment, then calmed down; it responded with what sounded like a question, perhaps rhetorical, before approaching the alcove. I saw a much larger set of boots in the corner of my eye, this pair with ceramic or metallic plates moulded to the structure created a grating squeal when they came into contact with the stone pavement. A few small granules of stone were kicked up on each step.

The figure and the larger figure speak for a few moments, only for the larger figure to turn about and shout something at the rest of the group. After a few seconds, it walks paster the figure by the arch and walks quickly down the corridor away from me. The rest of the patrol walked by the arch, continuing their search with nought to show for it other than a new corpse and a disappearing weapon.

I faintly heard the sound of the boots marching at pace down the corridor, getting further and further away by the moment. I let out a sigh of relief, only to remember the predicament I was now in the weird invisibility stone.

Suddenly I am launched from the wall, causing me to roll across the pavement slabs and slump against the wall on the opposite side. I was no longer transparent, but everything felt numb and dry. My skin felt cracked, and the air smelt of smoke or steam, but when I breathed in, it felt like I was inhaling barbed wire, how my throat felt as if it was being cut and torn on every breath.

I try to raise my head to look at the wall that pushed me away and discern exactly what happened. I looked up and saw what had caused this to happen, but I think on some level, I most definitely regretted checking.

I see something coming through the wall, like a semi-fluid material slowly working its way through the stonework. It appeared to be a greyish material that produced a considerable volume of steam and vapour, and it smelt like ash and smoke.

As if it were something out of a horror movie, the greyish material started to form a rough shape, only to solidify into a much more refined and precise object, a head. The head snapped up to look at me, and my heart sank.

Staring back at me from the wall was the head of The Statue, its eyes fixated upon me entirely unmoving in their observation of my wounded state, oddly though they weren't swirling but rather remained pure, uniform blue. My pulse continued to rise, and my mind raced, was it this thing that saved me from the Quire patrol, and if so, why?

Suddenly, the ropes and strings of what was once stone brickwork break free from the wall, forming The Statues neck, shoulders and arms. Hands began close to the wall and appeared to push against it as more strings break away and rush for her neck and shoulders, its body fashioned from masonry as she moved.

Shortly, a leg came through, landing in a kneeling position so that her considerable height could fit within the tight confines of the alcove. Another leg followed not long afterwards, my panic built at an incalculable rate, terror gripping my mind; it was past the alcove archway now, there was no escape from this thing.

It remained still, crouched before me. It cocked its head to the side and watched me intently. Its eyes panned over my wound, then back to my eyes. It reached an arm out slowly, its hand covered with a web of cracks and scuffs, coming to a halt short of my face.

The thing stops bolt still and stares at me, this thing being entirely motionless, somehow managed to be more horrifying than when it was in motion, its hand less than an inch from my face. Slowly its jaw opened, and it starts to hiss out a word.

"Human..."

Its eyes ignite and begin their orbital abyssal spiralling pattern, just like the last time I was close to her. I could feel my very soul being torn from my body. The very skin was flensed from my arms, floating from my body, fragmenting into ash and being sucked towards the thing while I'm helpless to fight back.

My vision faded to nothing but blackness, not a shred of light lingering other than those warping, twisting, cyclonic eyes...