The silverbright moon appeared over the battlefield, bringing with it freezing mists that swirled through the air, slowing everything they touched. The boards of the floating pavilion groaned as the moon’s gravity pressed down.

Even so- the dhampir was fast.

It had long, metal claws that extended from its fingers like scissor-blades, and it lunged for Lou’s face in a single flickering step that closed the distance between them. Lou frantically deflected, striking the claws aside with a ring of metal against metal as his halberd scraped against them and kicked sparks into the air.

The dhampir’s other hand slipped out of its sleeve and cut him across the belly.

Lou staggered back, winded and bleeding. At first the cuts didn’t hurt at all, didn’t even show, and then red blossoms started to grow across his shirt.

He adjusted his stance. Pushed more aura into the moon, increasing its weight.

Tried to keep his calm.

The dhampir rushed at him again, the sleeves of its robes resembling a bat’s dark wings as it shot towards him.

This time he reacted in time. His halberd scythed the air between them, forcing it to take a step back. He followed through with a jab, already knowing the beast would parry it aside, then move into his broken guard for the kill.

It did-

And Lou slammed his forehead down into its skull. The back end of his halberd twisted up and smashed into its guts. His vision was blurred and full of bright white burns of pain, but he saw the creature staggering, and he swept his halberd in furious, wild strikes to force it further back.

With every moment, he was building up momentum. A golden light whispered around his weapon. At the same time, the numbing frost was eating into the dhampir’s bones, slowing it further, tilting the battle…

He just had to hang on…

Let his advantages build…

For the first time, the dhampir stepped back. He had caught the edges of its robes, and now Lou saw what was beneath.

Its entire chest had been hollowed out to make room for an oblong box of brass. Dozens of holes pierced the surface, and from each one protruded a slim, finger-length needle of bone.

One burst out and stung Lou in the neck. Another shot into his leg. With a sound like a hiss of a serpent, a rain of needles began.

Lou had one last thought, hitting him in the clarity of the adrenaline rush gripping his mind. The moon shrank, becoming smaller and smaller, joining with his halberd’s point as he lifted it high. The entire power of his Shards joined into a single point as the axe smashed down-

He already knew the blow wouldn’t land. The dhampir’s hand raised up, lazily swatting it aside. But the illusionary moon continued down, shrinking ever-smaller, compressing its power like a bullet-

Until it slammed into the boards under the bastard’s feet.

With barely enough time for a look of shock to cross its face, the dhampir was pulled under as the floating platform shattered and a great wave of water rushed up.

Lou grinned…

But only half his face responded. The other half was cold and numb and tight. He reached up with numb fingers and found a needle sticking out of his throat.

“O-oh…”

He slumped down to one knee, feeling his breath in his chest. It was like an iron band was constricting his lungs, growing tighter and tighter.

He watched the waters, watched the ripples recede as they carried splinters sloshing back and forth.

If he was really, really lucky, the creature couldn’t swim…

Otherwise, any second, a bladed hand was going to thrust out of those waters…

And then it would be over.

He wanted to wait, to meet death with open eyes. But blackness was working in from the edges of his vision. It crawled inwards, the tiny window of light he could see within the dark growing further and further away, until it was only a pinhole of color in a sea of night…

And Lou slipped unconscious, still waiting to know if he’d won.

---

Elisa was working on the edge of the woods. She had the parts for a generator, a chainsaw with no belt, and part of an industrial lathe. It was a good morning; she was apart from the bustle of the city with her sleeves rolled up, digging into the machinery.

The Shard that filled her head with dreams was whispering good tonight. It was sending clear, bright flashes of knowledge, instead of muddy half-dreams.

She looked at the machinery and she found another way to put it together. One that didn’t make any conventional sense; it was closer to poetry than science. It was making runes with the motion within the metal, the electricity within the circuits-

It was mad science.

And she was in the thick of it now. Oil coated her forearms like a murderer elbow-deep in gore as she pried the generator’s innards apart, hunting for…

For…

For something she’d know when she saw it.

It was a savage inspiration, a relentless need to create. It rode through her like a drug trip. The machine was already there, in her mind, an engine complete and godly in its complexity. She just needed to twist and bend and hack at the mess of parts in front of her, until they resembled that perfect whole.

Scarecrow stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. She found its presence irritating.

The golem did nothing but stare with empty, hollow eyes. It had a human face, and that made things worse; she would try to talk to her golem and run into dead silence.

Its neck creaked as it looked out over the lake.

Its mouth opened and let out a raking, metallic hiss.

She was on the verge of a breakthrough, and the sound grated against her last nerve. Her head snapped up. “Would you-”

And then she saw.

Shakes was running full-tilt along the edge of the lake. Chasing behind him was a man in dark robes, and the man was faster. Not a little faster - a lot. But every time it caught up - every time it was about to grab hold of him - a shadow appeared between them. The shade that Shakes could summon. It grabbed hold of the man, holding him back for a split instant before it was torn apart.

And Shakes turned, drawing an arrow to his bow.

She knew first-hand that the boy didn’t miss. But this time-

The arrow was struck out of the sky by a shining silver sword before it could reach the mark. The blade appeared in the man’s hand and vanished again, blurring into invisibility.

Elisa stopped hesitating and ran. “Scarecrow! Follow!”

They raced alongside the water. They could see Shakes’ face as he pushed himself to the limit, running like the blood in his veins was all cold fire; they could see the man behind him, blue-skinned and feral, his black robes fluttering around his slender frame.

“Just run!” Shakes shouted, and she could see he’d learned the hard way. A thick slash crossed his waist, bleeding red down his legs in a great veil. He was stumbling, on his last dregs of fuel, trying to push through the pain just to keep moving…

But Elisa didn’t listen. She lifted her hand, throwing out a device in the shape of a pocket watch.

Something she’d been holding in reserve.

It shattered apart, quartz-oscillators and minute springs unfolding through the air. Threads of silver light stretched between them like a web.

It tangled around the black-robed assassin, but the sword whipped left and right, flickering in and out of view as it sawed away the threads. The man was free in moments.

“Scarecrow! Kill!” There was a metallic, ratcheting snap as a scythe-blade swung out of the rickety golem’s forearm on a switchblade-hinge, unfolding over its arm. It stepped forward and ember-spun steam vented from the engine cylinders emerging like strange organs from the robot’s exposed ribcage, sparks pouring from its joints as they screamed in protest.

The blade carved through the air.

The dhampir parried, and with a graceful, two-handed blow cutting from shoulder to hip, sliced Scarecrow in two.

Elisa fell back. Shakes was already well behind her. He turned, firing off another arrow. “You can’t stop it! Just- RUN!”

But it was too late for that.

She was three steps away from the dhampir. Three steps. Close enough that if she turned and ran, its blade would be in her back before she made it three steps further.

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. Her mind was a black swirl of curses and recrimination. You see a problem and think you’ve got the magic key to solve it. Always. Stupid.

Too late to run.

She reached down to her belt and pulled out a long metal baton. Strapped to the end was a battery, and the grip was wrapped to provide insulation. She smashed her palm into a button at the base and an electric crackle surged down to the copper wire wrapped around the head.

Behind the dhampir, Scarecrow was starting to rebuild itself. Creeping wires like black serpents thrashed between its two halves, grabbing hold of each other and dragging the severed parts back together.

If she could just hold the monster off for a few seconds…

Maybe-

The dhampir stepped forward and all hope fled her mind. The sword was so fast, only becoming visible for a second at the apex of each swing. It cut towards her throat, and somehow, her body moving on dumb instinct and vague memories of playing baseball, she swatted it aside.

Sparks exploded from her makeshift club. Half of it went flying off to land in the dirt.

Her entire arm felt numb with the impact.

The next blow came before she was ready. It arrived with a speed that didn’t even feel fair. The dhampir’s arm blurred and the sword reappeared like a cruel magic trick, already piercing through her guts, already slicing into the meat and the fat and the sinew of her body.

It had impaled her through the midsection, through one side and out the other. She felt the sword twist inside her as it was ripped back out, fading back into invisibility as the blood rained away from the blade.

She reeled back. Her whole body wanted to fall, to collapse in around the sudden, painful weakness where her muscles had been breached and torn apart.

She stayed on her feet anyway, on the instinct of pure spite.

The dhampir stepped forward again-

An arrow stabbed it through the side of the neck, making it stumble.

For a moment, Elisa thought it must have been Shakes.

For a moment, Elisa thought they’d won.

But the arrow was from the wrong angle, coming from off to the side, out in the woods, instead of from behind her.

And the dhampir only seemed… irritated…

The blow had jerked its head aside, but now it stood up straight, her hopes dissolving like a poorly-spun dream. Its sharp, rattish teeth showed in a wild snarl as it grabbed ahold of the arrow sticking out of its throat and pulled.

The arrow stuck fast.

As it was pulled against, threads began to show, burrowing under the man’s blue skin. They bulged up as he pulled on the arrow’s shaft, before sinking back down, still moving, still alive. Threads of green vine wove between his knuckles.

Another arrow came flying out of the woods and stabbed the dhampir through the waist.

For the first time, a flash of panic showed in the dhampir’s face.

And Elisa saw the solution.

“Shakes! HELP ME HOLD HIM!” She shouted, voice raw with fear and pain and pulsing excitement. She flung her body around the dhampir’s, wrapping her arms under his shoulder in a final, desperate play.

He raised up his sword- too long to easily maneuver in such tight quarters- and awkwardly tried to cut at her back. The shade appeared behind him, Shakes’ face reflected in the strange rippling shadow-creature’s visage. It grabbed his arm in one hand and wrapped the other fully around the throat, holding on for all it was worth. Wherever it touched a crackling layer of ice sprung up, spreading across the blue skin like frost across a windowpane.

The man let out a full-throated scream of rage and pushed his bare fingers into Elisa’s wound. The world went silent and dark and dull and then exploded into a red sea of pain. She felt, distantly, as if her body was a foreign country, her legs started to buckle. She let them, hanging all her weight against her grip around its shoulders- letting her body be dead weight to drag it into the grave.

Scarecrow reared up behind them and closed the trio in a massive, crushing squeeze of a bearhug.

The dhampir was trapped. It thrashed, trying to twist free, trying to wriggle out like an eel, but there was no escape from the crush of bodies- no escape from the thorned tendrils growing beneath its own flesh.

Elisa faded in and out of consciousness, feeling briars brush and snag against her skin. Seeing the vines crawl over her own arms.

When she looked up she didn’t see a face. She saw a knot of wooden fingers crushing down against something that thrashed and screamed pitifully.

She faded…

And when she came to, sprawled on the earth, Shakes looking over her…

All that remained was a twisting, gnarled tree, its frozen pose conveying the horror of being consumed alive in the warped bend of its black timber.

She turned her gaze towards the woods, and through failing, bleary eyes, saw a hunched and lonely shadow slink away deeper into the comforting dark of the trees…