St. Cristabel plunged down with terrible speed.

SCLPTCH!

Her bearing sword drove deep into the titan’s only eye, splitting its pupil and bursting the orb beneath. A bloodcurdling scream shook the mountain, potent enough to grind crystal to dust. Warriors near the cyclops shrieked and fell to their knees, clasping their ears. The cavern trembled with the giant’s agony. Yet the saint remained steadfast: a Solidblade that did not shudder against tribulation.

Hsssss!

The Tears of Amitiyah blazed around her armoured form, eating deep through the cyclops’ eyeball. With a roar, she tore her blade free, releasing a fountain of crimson.

GROAAAAAAR!

The anguished bellow that followed rocked the cavern as the titan stumbled, his footfalls hammering the ground and kicking up clouds of sand.

Its club flew from shocked hands as it careened about, grasping for its wounded eye.

“Oooooh hells!” Merrick screamed. “Down!”

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The oak tree whirled toward them.

Wurhi chittered and dived among the seats.

BOOOOOOM! CRUNCH!

The cyclops’ club smote the stone, blasting out a hail of wood and rock.

Whish! Whish! Whish! Whish!

Shrapnel shot over the Zabyallan and exploded the surrounding seats to dust. Stone shards rained down upon her trembling form; she was glad she had reached cover in time. Were she a bit slower…

She shuddered. Another bellow drew her gaze back toward the battle. The one-eyed giant reached to grab Cristabel and pull her from his face, but the knight swung her bearing sword at its offending hand.

Scccchnk!

Another anguished roar split the arena.

Three enormous fingers parted from spurting stumps; each wound hissed as Amitiyah’s Tears ate into flesh. “Be still, wretched beast!” St. Cristabel drew her sword up.

SCHNK!

She plunged the blade through its eyelid - splitting it like glass – and puncturing its eye once more. This time, she twisted the blade with one gauntleted hand while drawing up the other high over her head.

Her fingers curled into a fist.

Bang!

She struck a mighty blow into the pommel of her weapon.

Bang!

She drew her fist back.

Bang!

She drew her fist back.

Bang!

Again and again she hammered her blade into the titan’s skull, each blow driving the point deeper until it burst into the creature’s brain. The monster stiffened and the knight seized the hilt in both hands. “I spurn you, beast: let burning wrath drive you back to the dark from whence you crawled!”

The Tears of Amitiyah flared along the blade.

Fwooosh!

Caustic vitriol flooded the monster’s skull. Grey matter dissolved into slurry that poured from its nostrils and ears. A shudder waved through its body, limbs convulsing in death throes. Like a siege tower consumed by flame, the creature swayed on its hooves and began to collapse.

Whoosh!

Its colossal body gathered speed, sending folk fleeing from its growing shadow. Cristabel ripped free her sword and grabbed hold of the cyclops’ horn, riding it down toward the earth.

BOOOM!

CRACK!

The ground bucked at the tremendous impact. It quaked and flexed.

CRRRRRRRK!

Stone cracked beneath the sand, threatening to give way but - slowly - the tremors settled. When the final shudder ceased, the only sounds that remained were hundreds of shaking breaths, the increasing roar of the river beneath the arena, and the sound of metal clanking triumphantly.

With a jaunty laugh, St. Cristabel leapt from the fallen body of the titan, with sword and shield in hand. Her eyes danced within her visor and the blazing nimbus about her seemed to roar. “Yes! That was glorious! I failed to find the dragon in Riyen, I failed to battle the mighty ogress in Garumna, but in this giant, I have at last found a worthy foe to sing of to my god!” She pointed her blade toward Lycundar’s horde. “You there! I have come for my companion, Wurhi of Zabyalla! Have you seen her? Bring her out, and I shall show some mercy-”

“Cristabel!” Kyembe called from above, rising from the stone where he had cast himself during the quake. “I have found her! She is there!” He cried excitedly. “She is there!”

The knight whirled toward the Zabyallan, her eyes lighting up. “Wurhi, you live!”

The thief pulled herself up from behind the back of a wrecked seat. Her heart sang in her chest. They were here! They were both here! Had she been in human form and not utterly exhausted, she might have leapt from sheer joy. In her state, the best she could manage was a feeble wave with her sword.

“What in all of Amitiyah’s wisdom!?” Cristabel drew back as though scalded. “These devils change not only into wolves but rats as well? Beast, why do you sully Wurhi’s blade? Tell us what you have done with her!”

Wurhi froze. ‘By all demons and gods…’ she realized. ‘I never told her I was a shapeshifter! Nono-’

“No! No Cristabel!” Kyembe gesticulated wildly. “That is Wurhi! The rat is Wurhi!”

A pause. The knight squinted.

“It is you! Glory of Amitiyah upon us-Why are you a rat?!” Cristabel suddenly screamed. “What have these evil blackguards done to you!? You are cursed by these vile wretches!”

The rat-woman squeaked and flailed her hands in protest. ‘No! No! You’re wrong!’ she screamed in her mind.

“I will destroy them for this!” The Solidblade Knight whirled once again on the horde. “No daylight will come to you, blackguards! Embrace the light of the moon while you can, for the next light you shall witness will be the blaze of my wrath!”

The little thief paused. She slowly dropped her arms and adopted a pose of greatest dejection, nodding along with Cristabel’s conclusion. ‘Yes! Yes! They cursed me!’ she thought. ‘So you should kill them quickly! No wait, slowly-’

“Enough!” Someone stomped the sand.

Silence fell.

Thm. Thm. Thm.

Footsteps pounded through the cluster of black robed cultists.

Milos of Crotonia stalked from their ranks, his teeth grinding. Primal hate burned in his eyes as hoarse breathing hissed through lips trembling in rage. “I am beyond finished with all of this!” His voice cracked. “The rat is not cursed! It is she that carries curses! She spreads them like her filthy vermin kin spread plague!”

He cast his arms over the arena. “Look at what you have wrought! Our brothers dead! Our lair scarred! My pets ruined and destroyed!” the Sacred Alpha shook, drawing his gaze up toward the statue of Lycundar. Rising over the arena from its new perch, it watched them all silently with a sinister presence that was more than stone.

“And all wrought beneath the gaze of our god! Never! Never in some hundred years of walking under Lycundar’s fearsome guidance have I endured such humiliation! But no more! No more will I-”

Vroooosh!

Kyembe fired at him mid-speech.

Milos leapt back with an expletive.

Thoom!

The hellfire beam ploughed into the arena floor, melting sand and stone into the river below. Steam belched up, and the cult leader recoiled with a cry.

Crk.

The floor cracked further.

The river grew louder.

“Kill him, you fools!” Milos roared.

The cult sprang toward the Sengezian. Wurhi gasped.

“Kyembe!” St. Cristabel cried as the cursing Spirit Killer disappeared in a tide of black robes and fur.

“Do not concern yourself with him, armoured one, for your own troubles will be greater,” the Sacred Alpha drew a breath. “You dare bring another god’s name into Lycundar’s sanctum…you dare desecrate the pack? Step away from us, children of Lycundar.”

He drew to his full height. “She is mine.”

Wurhi recoiled. Her primal fear upon first seeing him returned in full force. Animal instincts screamed at the coming of a predator - one both unnatural and at the apex of all around it.

She tried to scream a warning, but only a rat’s chitter emerged.

The change fell over Milos of Crotonia with the ease of rain. Human flesh washed away unmasking a tide of beastly thew and iron hide. Limbs lengthened effortlessly, and claws the length of daggers sprang from swelling fingers. His face extended into a lupine muzzle and lips parted to reveal row upon row of fangs.

The Zabyallan gaped: she had thought Berard to be the largest of the wolf-men.

She had been wrong.

The Sacred Alpha loomed the size of an ogre: rising twice Cristabel’s height, and the saint was tall even for a man. Silver-grey fur coated his body and golden eyes radiated a cold savagery so ancient, that it reached from a time before humanity had awoken to higher thought. His skin rippled. Something swam just beneath the surface.

Schrrrp!

“Amitiyah’s Tears!” Cristabel cried.

His hide tore open, splitting into a dozen human-like maws that erupted like pox across his skin. As he drew a breath through his muzzle, the many mouths hissed and swelled with their own unnatural inhalations.

They howled in unison.

Their voices blended, twisting into something more: something that stabbed Wurhi’s breast with unfathomed dread. Escapees cried out and fled from him, while acolytes collapsed in awe so profound that it rent their senses. Even his tiger, filled with hatred as it was, could only cringe beneath its own terror.

“Abomination!” St. Cristabel levelled her blade toward her foe. “What are you?”

“He who is cursed. He who is blessed,” hissed a dozen voices in chorus from the human-like lips. Milos’ muzzle growled in an undertone to his words. “I am flesh. And I am water.”

His right arm rippled and flexed.

Sccrrrp!

Red-drenched bone erupted from the skin and joined together into armoured plates. The flesh drew back from his digits while claws fused and lengthened. In heartbeats, his armoured forearm terminated in an immense, curving blade of aberrantly hardened bone.

His blood dripped from the edge.

“Come, interloper.” He ran a finger across the cleaver. A bead of red rose on his thumb, before being sucked back into the closing wound. “I will send you to your god.”

Bang!

The knight struck pommel to shield. “I have already met him, abomination, and the time I see him again shall be by his edict, not yours. Now, have at you!”

The saint and the beast let loose twin roars of challenge.

They charged across the sand: a wave of metal racing toward a wave of unnatural flesh.

Crash!

Bone-blade struck sapphire shield, sliding off the golden mammoth head. Cristabel drove her sword at Milos, sweeping to spit his belly open. The massive werewolf took one glance at her vitriol-coated blade and leapt back.

Whoosh!

It swept the air just before his torso.He gave ground and she followed; his bone-blade flashed at the closing knight with the speed of a whip.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Hsssssss!

He struck the knight’s shield again and again, but only slowed the smaller juggernaut. Amitiyah’s Tears clung to the edge of his cleaver, eating into the bone. “You bear a mighty blessing!” Milos snarled. “I see that your god doles out favours like a common trollop!”

“Vile hypocrisy for one who bears his god’s corrupt favour so thoroughly!”

Whoosh!

Her blade swept out but he slipped from its reach with supernatural celerity.

Crnch!

By act of will, he slammed part of his bone-sword to the sand, taking the vitriol with it. The blade shuddered as it regenerated itself, becoming whole in mere moments. Cristabel’s eyes narrowed.

Milos snorted. “I speak no hypocrisy: there is no true blessing under Lycundar. Only a curse made to bow to one’s strength of will!”

Swiiiiish!

The cleaver dipped low, sweeping up sand to spray into the saint’s eyes. As she raised her shield to block it, he shot forth.

His bone-brand slipped through her guard.

Wurhi screamed.

The point drove into the sapphire-hued chain covering her armpit.

Bang! Chnk!

Lupine eyes went wide.

It had struck with enough force to fell a horse. Yet, while it made Cristabel stumble, the Valkyrie-forged armour held with a strength far beyond that of steel.

Whoosh!

Her vermillion blade swept up.

Chok!

Thirteen mouths howled in unison.

Cristabel’s bearing sword split the bone cleaver in twain, sending half clattering to the sand. It hissed as Amitiyah’s Tears ate it away. Even from a distance, Wurhi could smell the stink of vitriol. Milos drew back, willing the rest of his weapon to shed the remains of caustic ether.

“Such low tactics cannot fell me.” The saint stalked after him. “And such paltry strength cannot break my armour. Yield. You are swift, beast, but I shall catch you and cast your broken body to the sand.”

Milos’ voices grunted. “In my youth, I faced a lion whose hide resisted every blade and spear. It too thought itself invincible.” His limbs swelled, rippling, as bone grew upon itself in layers. His arms expanded into hulking, armoured cudgels as large as battering rams. “Until we beat it to death.”

With a snarl, he rushed her.

Whoooooosh!

BANG!

A bone club struck the saint’s shield with force so terrific that she stumbled back.

Bang!

Another blow struck.

Bang!

And another.

Each bludgeoning blasted through her armour, jarring and shuddering her body to the bone. While his blows could not fell her, they shook her footing, and the devilishly swift werewolf struck so that she could not regain it. Suddenly, the invincible knight was on the defensive, retreating from his fury.

Wurhi’s heart froze. ‘Oh shit,’ she thought. ‘Shit! Shit!’

“Dammit, behind you!” Merrick cried.

Whoooosh!

Wurhi ducked Berard’s maul as it swept the air where her head had been. She rolled and sprang to her feet, snarling at the towering lycanthrope. Merrick rushed to join her.

Once again, the two thieves faced the black-coated beast.