The glass faun and the fungal lion arrived just as the last of the eight hounds joined in the melee, Adamant struggling to hold them at bay and shield the wounded Arachne. Again and again their stony jaws ripped pieces of him away, but he waded through them, striking left and right with a metal-clad arm and doing terrible damage.

Leaping to his aid, the other two golems swept the stone-hounds back. The elementals retreated as a group, spreading out, encircling the four. In moments they had picked their opponents. It would be two against one.

It was the Arachne that was in the worst position.

His two opponents wove and circled, forcing him to constantly turn on his crippled legs. Blood oozed from the damage already done. Newborn, the spider had no fighting instincts, and could only clumsily apply his strength in great sweeping blows. For every strike that landed, scattering one of the hounds to rubble, the remaining beast was able to rip at his injured legs, until one of them was torn away entirely and another hung as limp as a broken puppet.

Maybe there was something I could do.

As the stone-hounds reformed, they swept up roots and stems from the gray flowers trampled under their clumsy bodies. I took that and made it my weapon. Pouring my Mana into the odds and ends, I made them live again.

No sooner had the hound created its new body then its stony flesh began to crack and come apart. Wriggling tendrils of green forced their way out of its skin. In moments it had dissolved back into a pile of loose stone, and I wove the mass of greenery over it like a net, keeping its component parts from gathering again.

Which left the remaining one suddenly alone against a bigger, stronger opponent.

Catching the hound in one hand, the Arachne plunged his bladed fingertips into its side, again and again, ripping out chunks of earth and stone in a bloodless disembowelment. Finally the beast sagged and collapsed, not coming back this time. Its store of Mana had finally been exhausted.

With no opponents left standing, the Arachne was free to aid the faun.

The delicate glass fighter moved beautifully, weaving between its two opponents and jabbing out countless times with its spear. Only, none of its elegant strikes did much real harm. It lacked the brute strength to actually wound its opponents.

For once, the agile and lethal faun wasn’t the deadliest thing on the battlefield.

A hound lunged at him, and the faun slammed his spear through the top of its head and pinned it to the earth, using the anchored shaft to perform a vaulting kick that slammed both his hooves into the second assailant. The faun hound was sent flying, bouncing and rolling across the ground.

The showoff.

It was a flashy move, but it still didn’t have the raw power to kill. Behind him, the pinned elemental simply reshaped its body to free itself, and now he was in the middle of two opponents with no weapon.

Luckily, the Arachne was there, sweeping one of them aside with a charging swing of his arm. The faun seized its spear again and now they were back to back, the glass golem guarding the Arachne’s wounded flank.

They fought their way towards the remaining two, each locked in their own battles.

The lion was fierce, but the hounds were experienced in fighting together. It had one of them pinned to the floor, mauling the elemental with its claws, but the other clung on to its hindquarters and took a pound of mushroom-flesh for every pound of stone. It was bloodless and yet brutal fight, taking blow for blow.

Adamant turned his entire body to steel, repelling both of the hounds on him with a sudden surge of strength. He caught one of them with his extended arm across its throat in a brutal clothesline as he rushed forward, running full tilt at the elemental ripping at the lion’s heels. He didn’t stop. He simply crashed through the hound, scattering it into a burst of dust and rubble. This time it didn’t get back up.

Unhindered now, the lion forced its prey down and tore the hound to shreds. It reformed of course, and then the two Adamant had left behind caught up, but two to three was better odds than we’d had a moment ago.

Slowly, Adamant turned back into a man of earth, his trick too exhausting to keep up for more than a split second.

Three hounds on one side. Two on the other. The two groups met in a circle, four against five. Reaching out, I evened the odds by making roots and vines tear open another one of the hounds.

It was looking up when the earth began to shake again.

This time, the rupture split one of the islands in two, flowers and clods of earth raining down as the twin halves drifted apart with a vast sound of grinding stone.

My art! My beautiful creations! All my work, my once-in-a-lifetime inspiration, gone in seconds. I watched a tree come unearthed from the ground and tumble down the crevice. I wish I had hands so I could personally strangle the life out of whoever was responsible - or barring that, whoever was nearest.

I may have had seconds thoughts when the invader came threw the new-formed rift. It was huge. Roughly a lizard in form, it was a small hills’ worth of stone, hauling itself up from the crevasse with limbs as thick as tree-trunks. Bladed talons scraped the ground.

Huge tusks of flint emerged from the edges of its mouth, drawing the lips apart to show multiple rows of teeth in concentric rings. The hounds were retreating, scampering back, and it let out a huge, huffing cloud of yellowish vapor, covering the island it stood on.

I froze. As I watched, silent, without a plan, it leaned down and scraped its tusk against the earth, over and over in sharp, flicking motions. I was just wondering what I was seeing when a spark leapt up-

And the cloud of yellow vapor exploded into a sea of flames.

I really had no response to that but to silently, continuously, scream.

The guard watching Trivelin had left to go see what the fuss was, drawn irresistibly away from his post by the smell of beer and the roar of a good, riled-up crowd. Trivelin beamed as he stripped off his clothes and hid them under the bed. Oh he was proud of this scheme. Proud as a peach.

And when the next shift came in, chewing a wad of tobacco as the sun gleamed on the brim of his shiny helmet, what did he see?

Why, he saw the guard he was supposed to replace, not at their post but in the cell, clutching the bars, naked as the day was bright. He turned away, groaning. “What in gods’ sight is going on, Kaspar?”

“He got me, oh he got me. That clever fucking bastard!” Trivelin wailed, fighting to hold back the stupid, audicious smirk that oh so wanted to plaster itself across his face. Or rather, across Kaspar’s face. “He tricked me into the cage and he got me right on the head with a club and took my clothes. My damn clothes! He went right out the door!”

“Kaspar, Kaspar you fucking idiot.” Covering his eyes with a hand to spare himself the sight of Kaspar’s danglies, the guard slid his key into the lock. The door - the door that had foiled Trivelin’s best attempts at lockpicking for days - popped open, as easy as that.

“Alright, let’s get you dressed and then we’ll go right to the Madam and report this. I’m sorry, but you’re out of luck on this one, I can’t cover for you now.”

“About that…” And then Trivelin gave the unlucky fool a quick tap on the head. He’d taken the hard, tough bread they’d given him, melted it to a paste in water, and formed it into a dense little breadclub. It made a pretty little conk against that shiny helmet.

The man grunted, and crumpled to his knees. Trivelin hit him again and he went all the way to the floor.

Trivelin, that grin finally surfacing, helped himself to the guard’s clothes and face. Dwarves were a little trickier than humans, made him feel as if he was sucking in his gut the whole time, but dwarves he could do. Horrible beasties who could rip prison bars in two, or tiny white rats who could slip right through, not so much. It seemed ‘human-ish’ was his limit.

“Your turn, matie.” He swung the door closed and locked it. Good luck explaining this to the next fellow to come along.

With a whistle on his lips, Trivelin sauntered right on up the steps of the prison and out into daylight.

He walked right into an oncoming platoon of guards, led by a pompous looking young dwarf with jewels on the hilt of his sword and a shine to his armor like it had never been used.

“You!” He jabbed a finger at Trivelin. “Join up. We’re going to the Tower!” The whole battalion lifted their swords to the sky and shouted, a hoo-rah! burst of noisy bravado. Trivelin, mentally frozen, silently stepped to the back of the formation.

“Tower?” He asked the nearest dwarf.

“Fucking thing just popped up. Don’t ask me. Now we’re going to go climb it. All these nobles, they’re bonkers, I’m telling you.” The man whispered back, shaking his head so the wooden tokens woven into his beard clacked together.

“Bonkers, oh yes.” Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Trivelin had no choice but to join the steady march towards the distant tower, cursing himself silently all the way.