I jumped back, bringing Kelser with me. The massive hand dragged through the earth, uprooting small trees and bushes, as it retreated into the darkness. I shot a fireball in the direction of the hand, but the fire hit a wall of fur and fizzled out.

A loud roar. I pushed Kelser away and prepared more spells. Kelser gathered his wits and prepared a spell too. Neither of us attacked. We couldn’t see the monster in the densely packed foliage. But the monster was massive. How could it sneak up to us without making any noise? I frowned as realization set in. It didn’t sneak up to us. We were the ones who had invaded its territory!

But the signs and markings had led us here. It was likely the hunting party had stumbled into this monster’s territory too. Still, I signaled Kelser to start inching backwards. I took a step back too, eyes flitting about, searching the darkness for movement. I strained my ears listening for broken twigs or moving leaves.

Wind rustled leaves. Small critters moved about. Snap. A twig. No, louder. A branch! I jumped to the side. Kelser followed. Another massive hand broke through the darkness and landed beside us. This time, I shot multiple fireballs over the hand. They traveled the length of a large, hairy arm, and lit up the monster’s body up till the bulbous, muscular shoulder that sat beneath a hairy jawline and a menacingly highlighted face. The fireball lit up the face the way kids light up their faces with a torch before telling spooky stories.

Dark fur, immense proportions, and powerful musculature. I only caught a glimpse of the monster as my fireballs fizzled out against its fur, but what I had seen was enough. There was no way the hunting party could have taken this thing on. The only way they would’ve survived was if they’d turned tail and ran. Judging by how this monster wasn’t really trying to chase us down or anything, I was hopeful the party could have made it out alive.

And then the monster roared. And the darkness itself seemed to shake with the trees and the leaves. And the monster’s face lit up, without any fireballs leaving my hands, and its face with its heavyset features reappeared, floating in the darkness. Illuminated by three burning red jewels in the shape of a star, emblazoned on the monster’s forehead.

The monster was intimidating, yes, and with three stars it would be a real pain to deal with. But it’s real advantage was the environment. The forest was an impregnable fortress of darkness, where no moonlight could penetrate. And the monster’s fur blended in it perfectly. Even during the day, I doubted the monster would be very visible inside the forest, despite its massive size.

But by revealing its three glowing stars, it had made a massive mistake. I shouted towards Kelser. Earth, I yelled.

Kelser fired earth magic towards the monster. Pellets of rock and dirt hit the monster’s skin, but failed to penetrate its thick hide. But the monster cried out in pain and extended its arm towards Kelser. I used the distraction to get in closer, sliding under the monster’s outstretched arm, along the ground using balance magic, until I was right under its main body.

From this distance, the monster’s domineering size presented a new challenge. Where should I aim? I lit up the monster’s chest with a burst of fire, but the flames seemed only to tickle the monster. In fact, the monster didn’t even react to the fire, continuing to try to grab Kelser who was pelting it with large rocks and clumps of dirt. A cloud of dust hit the monster’s face, causing it to cough and snort, and completely enraging the huge beast.

So it was completely fireproof? Still, shouldn’t it care a little bit about the tiny thing blasting fire at it from under its nose? The monster’s attitude made me suspicious. It was almost like it thought I wouldn’t be a threat since I’d only used fire magic against it. A bunch of thoughts floating around my mind. This monster had fought magic users before. It knew the least talented would stick to fire magic, while earth, especially earth magic propelled by motion magic like some of Kelser’s attack, would be used by advanced users.

I dug deep into the ground, preparing a slingshot with magic hands. I gathered a sharp, pointy rock, one that was larger than my head, and put it into the slingshot. With a burst of air and motion magic, I positioned the slingshot at the monster’s face and prepared to fire.

The monster, somehow sensing my attack, turned its head down. I thanked it for making itself an easier target and released my slingshot. But the monster opened its mouth and a glob of black goo spurted forth. The black goo slammed against the rock with immense pressure, but my strengthened slingshot was too powerful. The rock exploded against the black goo at such speed that a boom echoed throughout the forest.

Shards of goo covered rock scattered in all directions. The burst of goo was pushed back into the monster’s surprised face, pressing especially hard into its panicked, beady black eyes. The monster cried out in pain as it fell on its back. It began thrashing about, snapping tree trucks and throwing up a cloud of dislodged earth.

I jumped clear of the thrashing monster and saw Kelser retreating as well. A new clearing was made in the middle of the forest, washing the scene of the battle in silver moonlight. The cloud of dust hid the monster, but its body was so massive I could see bits of it appearing from within the cloud, betraying the monster’s agony alongside the frightening cries and wails it was releasing.

I didn’t want to let the monster recover, so I prepared another slingshot with motion magic. Kelser prepared one too. I gave him the signal and we launched our attack at the same time. Two large rocks zoomed through the air and crashed into the cloud of dust, causing the monster to cry out even louder than before.

We didn’t relent. We bombarded the beast with magic over and over again, sometimes switching to streams of pressurized water or dropping rocks from a great height over its head. The monster continued to thrash about and even began throwing its black goo out of the cloud of dust, aiming in the general direction of where we were shooting, which made us start running around the newly made clearing as we pelted the monster with our spells.

Soon, the monster’s cries became weaker and weaker, and the sounds of its body thumping and thwacking the earth gave way to the sound of earth moving about at a snail’s pace. We continued firing for a while afterwards, just to make sure. Eventually, I stopped and Kelser followed.

I was breathing heavily, having expended a ridiculous amount of magic to get here in the first place. Sweat plastered my body and there was a subtle pain in my head which I adamantly ignored. I summoned some more energy and made a small gust of wind, which blew away the slowly settling dust, and revealed the great monster’s figure in its entirety.

The monster had a thick, heavyset head, with thick eyebrows and a massive forehead and chin. It had two large arms and two short legs, and judging by the wear and tear on its knuckles, I had a feeling it liked walking along them. In fact, now that I could take a proper look at it, the monster looked a lot like a gorilla. A gorilla with long, powerful arms and three glowing red star shaped stones on its forehead, and which could spew out a strange black goo that seemed to kill the plants it touched within minutes.

I stepped closer to the monster’s corpse and frowned. There were clearly some signs on its body that had not been made by us. Scratches and cuts that looked too clean to have come from other monsters. Bruises on its legs that were too shallow to have come from the sort of advanced slingshots Kelser and I used, and other small marks that betrayed the fact this monster had probably fought the hunting party before.

At first, I’d thought the hunter’s would’ve been fine if they’d stumbled into its territory. By running away carefully, they may have had a few casualties, but most of them would’ve been fine. But after seeing the way the monster had reacted to my fire magic compared to Kelser’s earth magic, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. The monster was too used to fighting against magic. Almost as if it had had a prolonged battle, one that had given it enough time to get used to the power of different spells and how to deal with them.

We searched the surrounding forest for the monster’s den. Sure enough, we found a large cave hidden within the trees, large enough to fit the monster’s gigantic frame. Piled up near the entrance was an assortment of copper and flint weapons and tools. Next to them, pieces of torn up hide and leather. And as we stepped into the cave and endured the putrid stench, we stepped on brittle human bones, many of which had been chewed on many, many times.