Christ, that’s one big monster, Octavius cursed as he sprinted toward the battle. He watched a crescent of air, a Windblade spell, fly toward the massive monster. It sliced into its well-defined chest before dissipating. He looked on in disbelief as a trickle of green blood dripped from the minuscule cut on its chest.

It's level 35, he thought, I bet we can take it if we work together, even if it is a fire mage. If we can't, the rest of the defenders might break or even be wiped out.

Looking at the beast, another thought occurred to him, I bet that will be worth a ton of experience points. It probably will boost my ranking in the Emergence as well; the message did say that there were rewards.

Tearing his eyes from the intimidating sight of the gargantuan monster, he scanned the battlefield for a break to pass through. It wasn’t as if his party could just run through the army of beasts to engage the Lord of Beasts.

The ball of black and red energy that was forming in front of the serpentine monster seemed to pulse and grow. A cold grin spread across the monster’s eerily humanoid features, and a forked tongue darted out to lick its lips. The sphere almost flowed forward at a slow but inexorable pace until it hung over the clashing beasts and human defenders.

At that moment, it seemed to collapse in on itself in slow motion. It fell towards a single point in the air, and the world seemed to go silent. Octavius watched in fascinated horror as the energy exploded from a single point, raining red flames across defenders and beasts alike. Wherever the licks of flame touched the ground, spikes of rock erupted. They pierced the flesh of any still-living creature within the zone of carnage.

Octavius dug his heels into the ground and stared at the no man’s land that the epicenter of the battle had become. The fighting seemed to freeze momentarily as every man and woman on the battlefield gazed incredulously at the shattered hellscape. Red flames flickered over the charred, burning corpses, and spikes of scorched rock as tall as a man pierced the sky in random directions.

The lull in the battle that came from the Lord of Beasts instantly annihilating over a hundred defenders with a single powerful spell was broken by the scraping sound of its snake tail slithering over the packed earth towards the fresh gap in the Sanctuary’s defensive line.

Octavius turned to his party. “Shit! We've got to kill that thing now! We can’t let it get any more spells like that off. Go invisible and follow me through the gap. Caster, focus all your spells on the human part of it,” he shouted, “It’s a mage, which means that we might be able to take it in close range. Remember, if things go bad, retreat. Don’t get caught out there alone. Anyone have any ideas to bring that thing down?"

The silence he got in reply was not something he wanted to hear. He had to figure out how his team was going to bring it down. The monster was tremendous in size and seemed to have a ton of health. It also had physical strength and spells. So it doesn’t have an obvious weakness, he accepted, but it will definitely have some less obvious ones. For one, it doesn’t care about its subordinates, and it seems to be rather reckless. With a few more spells like that first one, it could wipe us out. It charged into the middle of the fray, though. Perhaps it is trying to toy with us?

Octavius didn’t know the answer to that, but he still hadn’t found an exploitable weakness. My spear is physically too small to deal much damage unless I only attack fatal areas. Its upper body looks human, so the neck, spine, and organs might be good targets.

He looked up at the monster. It was trying to get past the stone spikes it had created by battering them down with its arms. His team had very little time to practice strategies to deal with powerful beasts that morning, and none of them were aimed towards even partially humanoid creatures. The best he could do with seconds to prepare was give basic instructions and let them interpret it as they did.

"Ok, distract it by attacking its arms," he said, "I'll sneak up behind it and see what I can do. Remember to watch out for other beasts and retreat if my attack fails. We'll regroup and come up with something else."

With that, he reached his hand into his pocket for a moment to mask the fact that he already wore the ring. Closing his eyes, he allowed the flow of mana down his arm to resume, and he vanished. Looking where his party members had just stood, there was nothing to mark their presence except a series of slight distortions in the air.

As he turned towards the massive gap in their lines, he glanced at the statuses of his party members at the side of his vision. Caster appeared to be the only one not burning through his mana despite the shimmers of air overhead that confirmed his constant spell casting. The person that would run out of mana first appeared to be Jean, who would barely last five minutes. Octavius hoped that they wouldn’t need much longer than that to take out the monster.

His boots pounded into the ground as he ran over the charred ground to meet the Lord of Beasts and its legions of subordinates. The only sign of his passing was the fine ash that he kicked up with each step.

The colossal monster quickly reached the gap in the defenders’ lines. It appeared to be unbothered by the flames burning on the ground, licking at its scales. Beasts streamed around it to slam into the exposed flanks of the nearby defenders. Behind Octavius, human reinforcements rushed to fill the gap and stem the tide of beasts.

Sprinting, Octavius ran past three large beasts, not even trying to attack them. They didn’t notice him, nor his companions, as they bounded towards the defenders that were visible. He didn’t know the exact locations of the melee fighters of his team, so he would have to trust that they were still making their way toward the monster.

Octavius closed within twenty feet of it when it swung its massive tail at one of the burning logs. The log was sent flying and crashed into the defenders. It crushed a half dozen guards under it but created a barrier right in front of the beast army.

It is either not very smart, Octavius decided, Or it just doesn’t care about the beasts that follow it.

The Lord of Beast raised its hand up for the third time to swipe through the stone spikes that it had called from the ground. Its bulk was too large to pass through unimpeded, and Octavius planned to take advantage of that.

This time, when it swung down at the stone spike in its way, it met unexpected resistance. Its fingers, which were each as far around as Octavius’s arms, jerked back when it seemed the air itself sliced into them. Green blood dripped from a deep cut on two of its fingers as it growled menacingly.

Octavius glanced up to its face to see what it would do. Instead of looking at the ground for invisible enemies, its eyes were focused on the back of the human army. It must think it was attacked by a spell, he concluded as he spun between two beasts and pulled his spear from the path of a third.

Traveling against the tide of beasts while avoiding touching any of them made his speed slow to a crawl. The only reason he could do so at all was the wide berth that most of the rabid beasts gave their lord.

It took Octavius another dozen long seconds to get behind it. He gripped its tail with one hand and heaved himself on top of it. The monster didn’t even notice his weight as it was distributed across the surface of its back by its scales. He looked up at the intimidating back of Mikrós.

Its broad human shoulders were still well over a dozen feet above his head. He moved to stay close to its body so that any tail swings wouldn’t throw him off. If he started to climb its back, it would surely notice. His problem was that he couldn’t deal a fatal blow from his low vantage point.

The monster’s whole body seemed to vibrate with rage, and it slithered forward. Octavius peered around its side and saw it going straight for a rapidly fleeing distortion in the air. Ah, fuck it, he thought and jumped.

He put every ounce of strength he had into propelling himself off the serpentine tail and into the air. Raising his spear high above his head, he activated instant thrust. The distortion that marked the presence of the spear flashed forward as it pierced into the half-man-half-snake’s lower back.

The spear sunk two feet into the torso, and Octavius immediately knew that he’d hit something important. The monster arched its back violently, and an uncanny hissing scream of pain and rage echoed through the Sanctuary.

Octavius fell back onto the monster’s tail, wrenching the spear out with him. He stumbled on the rounded surface and quickly caught his balance, only to see the green scales of the approaching tail flying at him. Without even thinking, he leapt away from it.

Even so, the powerful tail swatted him out of the air with violent force. With the air knocked out of him, Octavius was hurled twenty feet before his boots hit the ground. The moment his boots hit the ground, he tried to roll with his momentum. Instead of rolling a few times and returning to his feet like he had planned, he barely had the time to start tucking his body into a ball before he was slammed face-first into the ground.

His chest spasmed as he tried to suck in mouthfuls of air. He felt warm, coppery blood on his tongue as he rolled onto his back. After a moment, air flooded his lungs, and he greedily inhaled more.

He sat up slowly and looked at Mikrós. The monster was clutching its side and glaring hatefully at the ground around it. It swung its clawed arms back and forth, trying to catch more of its hidden foes.

Octavius spat out a mouthful of blood and gently reached up to his face. He prodded at his nose, and tears automatically filled his eyes, and he flinched. Blinking away the tears, he considered using a health potion. His broken nose would definitely affect his ability to fight, but the battle was still fresh. I’ll save it, he decided, better to use it to save my life.

Standing, he shook his head slightly. He stumbled for two steps but was quickly able to regain his balance. It was sheer dumb luck that he’d landed where he had. He was standing at the very edge of the no man’s land that Mikrós’s spell had created. The fierce combat between man and beast raged on only feet from where he landed. More and more defenders ran past his invisible form to stem the tide of beasts.

Once he got his bearings, he scanned the ground for his spear. He had dropped it from his hand when he decided to try to break his landing with a roll. After all, rolling on top of a spear was a rather poor idea.

It caught his eye from beside the smoldering corpse of a guard. Stumbling over to the silver shaft, he lifted it and watched it disappear as the illusion snapped into place over its surface.

His head was already clearing as he turned to the monster just in time to see four separate Windblades cleave into it. They cut shallow lacerations into its upper body, and more blood flowed freely. This time, it misinterpreted the source of its wounds in the opposite way. It swung around it wildly, trying to catch whatever invisible attackers had hurt it again.

Octavius couldn’t find his party across the battlefield, but their statuses at the corner of his vision eased his worries. All of them were at least above two-thirds health. As he saw another volley of Windblade spells impact the enraged Lord of Beasts, he started towards it. He’d try for one more attack before he fell back to regroup with his party.

His walk turned into a jog, which turned into a run. After a dozen steps, he was sprinting at it. He reached the front lines just as the monster decided that it would attack the enemies that were visible to it.

It swiped its long tail at the clashing armies, crushing beast and man alike. Screams erupted from behind Octavius as some of the beasts sent flying by their leader’s blow recovered behind their lines.

Octavius moved to fill the gap the strike had created, ready to rush forward and attack the injured monster once more. It raised its arms, and he felt a pressure all around him. He looked around wildly to see where its inevitable attack was coming from so that he could avoid it.

He gulped when a wall of fire grew from just in front of the monster and rapidly advanced on the human lines. The various rabid animals that it passed through were set ablaze but didn’t appear to feel pain. Instead, the flaming creatures charged the frontlines just behind the wall of fire.

Octavius watched the fire disappear around the outline of a human for an instant and saw Finn’s health decrease drastically out of the corner of his vision. He cursed and ran towards his party member. His jaw set as the wall of flame reached him.

His hands spun at incredible speed as he activated Whirlwind. The invisible spear rotated, trailing streams of flames as he punched through the wall of fire. A shaky breath was sucked into his lungs as he felt his fingers burn and the skin melt. The hair across his body was singed, and minor burns covered his exposed flesh, but he ignored it.

Hoping that none of the beasts took note of his crossing of the wall of flame, he sprinted for his fallen teammate. He had ordered them to charge the monster, to distract it. Now, Finn was paying the price for Octavius’s own lack of strength. If his spear had caught the monster somewhere vital, it might already have been dead. The hauntingly familiar image of a bloody smile flashed through his vision, and he snarled. He would NOT let another person under his command die. Not if he could stop it.

The burning, screaming form of Finn was being pawed at by a two-foot-tall beast of some type. Octavius didn’t even pause to use identify on it before he ran it through with his spear. He crouched over the younger man’s form that was only visible due to the flames flickering up from his burning clothes.

He didn’t even feel the pain in his severely burned fingers as he fumbled on his belt for a health potion. They finally clasped the glass vial, and he pulled it out. He was about to open it when the world seemed to go dark around him.

He dove forward, leaving his spear behind as the massive tail crashed down onto Finn’s body. A sickening crunch reached his ears as the scaled appendage crushed the younger man’s entire lower body.

The health bar with Finn’s name above it in the corner of Octavius’s vision plummeted. He scrambled forward as the red bar fell lower and lower. Praying for an extra few seconds before the gargantuan beasts next attack, he fell to his knees beside his fatally injured teammate.

He roughly tore the vial open and poured its contents down the dying man's throat. A sigh of relief escaped him as Finn’s health bar started to fill slowly. Clenching his jaw, he lifted the smoldering young man onto his back. His strength stat was high enough that he was able to move quickly back toward the defensive lines.

Scooping up his spear, he ran as fast as he could with the unconscious two hundred pound man on his back. His movements were instinctual as he ran with the attacking beasts towards the safety of the guards. As the beast in front of him was cut down, he charged into the human lines, battering a guard out of the way.

He didn’t have the concentration to deactivate his ring, so he slipped it off physically. While he didn’t know if Robert had ordered his men to attack the distortions left by the illusion rings, he wasn’t going to risk it.

The battle around him was so chaotic that none of the guards even seemed to notice him appearing. He pushed through the ranks of guards until he was in the open air once more. Walking forward, he reached the base of the platform that his party had been on when the attack started.

He laid Finn down and removed the young man’s ring. Looking up, he saw a wide-eyed Caster. Quickly, the rest of the members of his team approached as well. A sign of relief escaped him when he saw that Finn was the only one who hadn’t already fallen back.

Jean was the first to rush over. Her stone-faced demeanor completely shattered as she dropped to her knees beside Finn. “My God! Finn!” she cried out.

The unconscious man remained silent, and Octavius opened his mouth to speak but ended up spitting out blood once more. He looked down at his nearly crippled fingers and quickly downed a health potion.

As soon as he felt his nose snap back into place, he wiped at the blood that covered his lower face. The motion did less to clean the blood than he hoped and merely smear it across his jaw. Grunting, he looked over each member of his team individually. Every single one of them was haggard and demoralized.

“Ok,” he said briefly, “We hurt that fucker. Look at it; it’s slowed down significantly, and that firewall spell wasn’t nearly as powerful as its first blast. I’m going to go put it six feet under. Who’s coming with?”

Jean looked up at him with hard eyes, “I’m in.”

One by one, the members of his team looked at the unconscious Finn, and then at the enraged Lord of Beasts that was covered in its green blood, then nodded.

“Ok,” Octavius said, a cold smile forming on his face, “Here’s the plan this time.”