The beast from below was a soft, smooth thing, a lizard with bulbous eyes and a lipless grin drawn over a head like a balloon. It had wet skin the color of flint, dark grey-brown riven with lines of caustic yellow. Skin that even a single blow would have cut open with ease. If that single strike could only get close.

The air swirled around the beast. Raw, untamed heat made the world dance and twist in a mirage-dream, making even seeing it uncertain. The earth burst into flame under its feet, and its very presence brought tongues of smoke rising up from the ground. By a hundred feet, anything that came close was covered in bright embers. At fifty feet, ignition, the embers sparking up and becoming violent blue flames. As it advanced, the goblin's homes dissolved into an inferno, the awnings of stretched snail-hide and the ropes of twisted leather becoming kindling as fire crackled and spat itself into existence. The earth was strewn with ash, the air thick with smoke, messy with screams that choked off and became coughs in the roiling smog.

Sweat poured down Bug-Eater's skin. His spear was uncertain in his hand, his grip slick with sweat. The world shivered in the heat of the blaze.

The beast was barely larger than a full-grown hyena. Its simple face seemed idiotic, unthreatening.

A drum beat as the warriors pounded their shields, calling the retreat. The goblins poured upwards towards the higher caverns. There was so much food going to waste, fruit and meat burning away to ash. The sacred tree stood some two hundred feet from the lizard's path.

They would lose everything.

Unless he could kill it.

Kneeling behind a snail-hide tarpaulin stretched out to dry, shielded from ignition for a moment by the tanning mix of piss and salt spread across the surface, he conjured his resolve. Tried to make himself feel big the way he did when the wardrums beat. Every breath tasted bitter with smoke and burned his lungs as he struck his chest.

Nothing was working. He coughed and spluttered as stray motes of cinder landed on his tongue.

The way sound acted was so strange now. Under the veil of twisted air, the world seemed to be drowning, to be underwater. The sounds of the goblin cave being consumed by flame were distant. The sound of the scream was very, very close.

He looked up and saw the two goblins crouched behind a broken wall, the air before them a bead of coals and fire-edged flakes of ash. Just for a moment he saw them, before the mirage twisted and they were obscured beyond the fire, the smoke.

The beast’s head swiveled and the time for fear simply passed. The terror didn’t end. No surge of bravery shone in his heart.

But his body moved itself, lifting him from his hiding place in a cold daze. His arm shivered as he lifted it up and let his spear fly with a thunderous shout that took all the air in his lungs.

The weapon burst into flames as it spun through the air, becoming a spiraling dart of blue fire. In the moments before it could touch the beast's skin the fire flared up white and the haft split with a crack - one that should have been barely a whisper, but sounded deafening to his ears.

Whatever cold replacement for courage he’d found shattered. His legs sank away beneath him, so quickly he was surprised when he felt his knees hit the floor.

The beast opened its mouth and a spiraling torrent of flame formed, building in intensity from blue to a searing, all-consuming white.

The earth rippled. Suddenly there was another goblin warrior growing up from the earth, made of vines and roots. It had Bug-Eater’s own face. The lizard’s head twisted and the beam swept towards the doppleganger, blasting it to a spray of cinders that slashed Bug-Eater’s skin, burned his hair.

His stupor broke and he scrambled onto his feet to run. An inhuman scream filled his ears, and the thing threw itself towards him, kicking its body along the ground in wild spasms as if it didn’t know how to move properly. It crashed through burning wreckage, writhed through soot, a flaming worm chasing him as his feet pounded across the cavern floor.

It was faster than him. That was a cold, true thing.

But he held out hope for a miracle.

It broke through the burnt skeleton of a tent, scattering the bone struts into a spray of flaming wreckage. It bore down on him, and he could feel his clothes start to flare and burn. His hair sputtered with embers, his eyes blind with smoke.

Its mouth yawned open and a fire began to form. The sound was the crackle and seethe of molten air.

The moments slowed. He felt death reach for him.

The violet-white blaze of lightning filled the cavern.

---

I could have screamed. In the moment before the beast was wiped out by the lightning spear, its head twisted aside and the lance of flame from its mouth struck the spear aside. Fire and lightning clashed and broke, the weapon flying aside to land in the dust. Thunder rolled and echoed in the cramped space of the caves. Fire-bitten dust filled the air.

Shine-Catch stood atop her gazelle, facing down the ridiculous beast. A slimy, wide-eyed salamander, half its body singed and broken by lightning.

Volcanic Salamander

[ Abyssal-Bronze ]

Kingdom Animalia

Age - 37 Years

Physique - Bronze

Arcana - Bronze

Psyche - Null

Diet - Manaphage

Biome - Deep Caverns

Cycle - Hibernation

One of an ancient race that dwells near the molten blood of the world, the salamander emits a constant radiating heat that ignites most material before it can cut the beast's sensitive skin. Capable of producing wonderous jewels in their stomachs, the salamanders were once hunted to near extinction, until the God of Forges adopted them as his holy animal.

In the years since his death they have retreated into the earth. This specimen has been corrupted and crippled, much of its power stripped away to lower it to Bronze rank.

Tainted by the Black Wolf.

Notable Features - Fire immunity, simple-minded, true regeneration.

A crippled, broken beast. Its soul and Mana-flame damaged until the barrier would no longer restrain it.

The enemy had such an easy time fighting this war with no morals to hold them back.

Across the cavern, my gazelles were rushing to guide the few goblins remaining out and to safety. In these tight quarters there were few other choices. Their toxic pollen would simply become kindling in the air, igniting in a blaze as soon as they released it. Even the panther, prowling at the edges as Shine-Catch stared the beast down, would have trouble approaching.

Everything that came near would burn.

The goblins were less than useless, the idiot chief and his warband retreating up to the high chambers alongside every one of them fit to fight. My best hope now was to either distract it long enough for Shine-Catch to retrieve the spear, or have her lead it on a wild chase until I could conjure something capable of countering its flaming skin.

But neither of those turned out to be necessary.

The creature shivered, tilting its head up to groan a loose, unhappy gurgle. Twisting back on itself, the salamander went crashing towards the cavern depths from which it had come.

It left behind the ruins of the goblin tribe. Shine-Catch standing, her hand covered with sweat, furious she’d missed. The boy sprawled under the leaves of my tree.