A shapeshifter?

There was no time to react, and before I could think, the replica was upon me with its fangs outstretched and aiming at my neck with astonishing ferocity.

Never did I dream I would be fighting a creature like this, and by the time I got over my shock and leapt out of the way, I couldn't fully evade its attack.

The scales of my underbelly suddenly revealed several gashes where its stingers had touched.

And its continuous strikes weren't giving me any room to breathe. Much like me, the replica was similarly dextrous.

Unperturbed by its speed, it already had enough control to stop its advance in time, flexibly manoeuvring around to counterattack from my blind spot.

Yet, it wasn't as fast as me.

I twisted away from it, staying far back to size up the hissing creature.

Not including the creature's many eyes and limbs, it had replicated every spike on my scales, my wings, all four horns and even my metallic sheen.

It moved its body in a sidewinding motion and curled itself to appear twice as large, and its arched tail made an ominous rattle as it prepared to strike.

How interesting – it even had that sound effect.

This just kept getting better and better.

It seemed to have copied every one of my features down to the littlest details, and I was excited because this fight could actually be fun.

Overhead I heard the sounds of battle followed by bright flashes of light as Sylrin faced off against two monsters at once. A ferocious creature on four legs with a huge head that resembled a hound and an armoured crustacean.

I was worried about him, but when I saw the crustacean sail through the air after being knocked away, and the aggressive hound get blasted at close range by his purple flame, my concerns were laid to rest.

Sylrin was doing fine so I focused on my own monster, somewhat intrigued by the idea of fighting myself.

After giving it the run around, the replica's speed had not improved, so I let it come, watching it barrel its way across the stone ground to strike me. But just when it came close enough to smell its foul breath, I increased my own speed to taunt it.

Soon its speed was barely a fraction of what it was before. But instead of attacking it, I threw myself off the alcove's edge.

I didn't need much of a strategy, because it had already dug its own grave.

How good could a copy be against the original?

I floated through the dark mist and the creature followed in pursuit, its wings flapping unevenly in the air to keep pace with me. It even did so for a while until its extra appendages screwed up its balance and it began to drop. After being worn out on the ground, it couldn't expect to fly again.

I doubled back to strike it in the air and the creature who was so focused on pursuit couldn't think of a means to protect itself. Its reaction was too slow and by the time it raised its spikes, but my fangs already found their way to its neck.

My bite force was enough for cracks to start spreading across its scales.

The creature hissed in anger, twisting around to strike but its wings and scales already collided with the chasm wall where I pushed it, and it scraped along its side in a long line of bloody flesh.

Several of its limbs were scraped off by the harsh stone and it let out an enraged hiss as my poison flowed through its body.

The creature tried to resist by twisting around to try and constrict me, but I didn't care much about it.

When it reared its fangs earlier I noticed its bite was dry. Without any real ability or poison – the most it could do was copy my physical appearance.

With my poison bite already inflicted, I happily let it go, watching its figure drop below the chasm in a spiralling freefall. Then I turned around to return to the alcove, only to see the situation had turned around.

During my short absence, more creatures had crawled up from below, and although Sylrin was fighting well, his lack of seriousness had pushed him into a disadvantage.

He'd spent too much time bullying his opponents and in that time more creatures had reached the alcove from below.

The initial two opponents were badly wounded, but still present and in addition to the countless others that joined later, he was quickly getting swarmed by a teeming horde composed of both flying and crawling creatures that attacked him in a frenzy.

The sheer amount of the creatures surprised me, and I quickly rushed down to assist him.

However in my periphery, I noticed an odd shape rushing towards me.

I veered around to evade and saw the battered body of the shapeshifter that was attempting to knock me out of the air. Most of its skin was gone and there was wet glistening muscle where scales should have been, and the flesh in its left wing scraped to tatters to expose bones and ligaments.

It was badly battered and could barely remain afloat in the air and kept tethering unevenly.

Yet it refused to let me go and kept trying to attack me.

Since it refused to perish, I tackled it to the alcove while concealed in shadows, forcing it to fall in the midst of the ravenous beasts. With it bleeding so heavily, it was soon torn to shreds by the other creatures, and I glimpsed the moment its body regained its original form, before that too was instantly destroyed.

It was a shame.

I would have liked to keep its body, but the distraction of a bleeding corpse was enough to take the attention from Sylrin, and I spotted him not far away, completely surrounded and heavily battered.

He'd been fighting constantly since we got here, and while he had [Regeneration], the constant stress from attacks had affected his strength.

These creatures were really getting on my nerves!

I rushed towards him when a winged bird creature with hooked talons jumped on me from nowhere and when I looked up, three ferocious looking monsters were blocking my way.

What the heck? I was fully cloaked right now.

Or so I thought.

When I looked at my body, the shadows surrounding me had shrivelled to no more than a thin mist. I was running out of magic at a time like this.

The creatures all attacked me, but while they were not strong individually, their combined efforts made it so that I was unable to get to Sylrin. Whenever I tried to fly, the winged creature would attack from the air, clawing me to the ground where the other three were waiting.

At first I thought they were simply attracted to the light…but were they actually working together?

They shouldn't have been this coordinated.

Their typical goal should have been to eat us, but after suffering wave after wave of attacks from the three coordinating monsters, I became convinced their main focus was to keep me and Sylrin separated. Just like that shapeshifter earlier.

But to what end?

There was nothing to motivate this group of monsters to work together, even if they killed us both there wasn't enough meat to go around. It didn't make sense to trap us like this.

I'd already poisoned the three monsters, but they showed no sign of slowing down and when I looked up, the bird monster was waiting to swoop down in case I flew. Just trying to get to Sylrin left me covered in scrapes before I realised.

Nothing else mattered anymore. We were better off getting out of the valley because something didn't feel right.

My magic was low but after firing several shots of poison blades in a row that killed several creatures on the ground, it seemed much of it had recovered. The problem only occurred when it came to creating shadows.

I tried to use its cloaking abilities to get to Sylrin, but what formed was a thin black mist that was mostly ineffective in hiding me, rather than the usual dense shadows.

It was like they refused to obey me, and when they formed properly, I only needed to fight a monster for most of it to fade away.

The creatures here were seemingly immune. They trod through my shadows easily like they had no real senses and completely relied on instinct.

Now that I looked closely, most of them were badly burnt, their bodies incredibly difficult to look at. Some were missing their eyes; others had severed limbs and plenty of missing flesh. Rightfully they should not have been moving, yet they were, and in a mad frenzy no less.

The only thing these creatures had in common was the ferocity at which they attacked, with no regard for their health or limb, and only a will to eat. I was sure that even if my shadows were working, there would be no senses left to obscure.

Where was the need for them when they were totally immune to feeling or pain?

The only way this would end was if they were totally destroyed, and so I hissed out a command to Sylrin over the noise, hoping he would hear me.

I instructed him to stop holding back and simply burn them all to ash.