The world of my soul comes to life in sharp streaks of bursting color. The Reveler’s maze is swallowed by darkness, then lit by a bleeding black sun. The sky paints itself in browns and grays, and a bleak mountain rises like a spear thrusting into the heavens.

Beneath and below, tumor-trees pulsate and a forest of animalistic vegetation sprouts to life, the details hidden by a thick, clinging mist. The painting completes itself with a worn path winding its way up the mountainside, and a sharp-crowned castle at the highest point on that path.

I find myself standing atop the frontmost rampart of the castle within my soul, overlooking the entrance archway, hands clutching at stone parapets. Before me and below me, where the far end of the winding path vanishes into mist, stands the hunter that wants so badly to make me bleed.

She is, I note, in the process of aiming her crossbow.

Mahiri pulls the trigger and a bolt shoots toward me faster than my reflexes can catch up to, still disoriented by the shift in scenery. For a frozen instant it seems the projectile will strike me true, but then Clavicus–one of the skeletal servants I shaped and named on my prior visit to this realm–pushes me out of the way just in time.

The bolt strikes the skeleton’s skull and passes right through, shattering it. I stumble away from the servant and fall back, landing hard on my ass, head ducked low to stay behind the safety of the parapet wall. I stare dumbly at my creation as he collapses into a lifeless pile of bones.

The part of my brain that holds all my coping mechanisms tries to crack a joke. “I thought skeletons were supposed to be resistant to piercing damage,” I attempt, but my words come out so wavering and breathless that the sentence is completely unintelligible.

What if that were me? I can’t stop envisioning it: the bolt hitting my skull, the cracking, the bleeding, the cerebral fluid spilling. Would it pierce through my forehead, or would it lodge in my eye? Would I die in seconds, or in minutes? How badly would it hurt?

“Alice!” shouts Cheshire. She’s standing over me, shaking my shoulders, her expression urgent and intense. “You need your figments. You had a plan, remember?”

I blink a few times and shake my head to clear it. “Right. The plan. Yes. Uh, should I manifest you first?”

“You don’t need to, not in here.” Cheshire places her hand on Bonehilda, my other skeletal servant, who I only just notice has been standing with us the entire time. “Let me borrow this one, and I’ll slow that reaver down.” Cheshire melts into wisps of black fog that curl around the skeleton and pour into its skull. The skeleton forms muscle, fat, skin, hair, and clothing, and then Cheshire is standing in its place.

The newly-reformed catgirl stretches the limbs of her new body, then shifts into a white-feathered raven and takes off.

We should give her some support now, since gathering our figments might take a while. I crack my knuckles and start casting. “[Carrion Swarm], [Carrion Swarm], [Carrion Swarm]: an unkindness of white ravens to distract and dismay.” Pale corvids coalesce from shadow and circle above me. I give them their marching orders: “Strike in ones and twos at the hunter down below. Tear at her flesh and interfere with her vision, but move in scattered fashion and evade when you can. Go.”

They fly off as a flock, and I have to trust that they’ll be enough. Now for the hard part.

I take a few deep breathes and try to steady my shaking hands. I’m anxious about this battle, downright terrified if I stop and think about it, but I can’t let that get in my way. I have to do this. I have to succeed.

I retreat deep into the recesses of my soul, searching for that click I felt when I reshaped this world the first time. The sights and sounds fade around me, until I am alone in the dark with only my thoughts for company. I reach inward and keep reaching until I find that sense of malleability, that connection between my will and my throne world.

When I learned from Cheshire that I could populate my throne world with figments, it took me time to get it right. My sense of time’s passing isn’t the best, but there was at least a half-hour’s gap between the inception of the idea and finishing the process. I don’t have the luxury of that kind of time now that Mahiri is here, hunting me inside my own soul.

So instead of creating new figments, I reach for the ones that are already here. The skeletons were good for a laugh, but they weren’t what I spent the bulk of my time on; that went to the creation of the hungering beasts that now wander the forest of flesh at the base of the mountain.

I grab hold of as many as I can, and then I speak to them. I hear my voice, echoing dimly, like heard from the far end of an incredibly long hall. “Beasts of my soul, of shadowbound bone, rise from your forest and protect me. Be…”

Thoughts of my conversation with Cheshire interrupt my speech. I remember the concern I had when she emphasized the importance of framing: I’d be like a wounded animal hiding within the herd. I can’t allow that. I need every possible advantage.

“Be… be my packmates. Be my hunting hounds. Where my enemy… where my would-be hunter sees a wounded animal, vulnerable like prey, let that instead be the bait that draws her into our trap. Pounce, my creatures of night, and feast on this paltry interloper.”

I can sense them responding to my call. They bound across the forest floor and sink bony claws into the side of the mountain, and they climb it with supernatural speed and agility. Distance is conceptual, I remember. In one sense they could be miles away from me, but in another sense they are exactly as close as they need to be.

I let go of the beasts and return to my body. My physical senses rush back to me, once more disorienting me with a flood of visual stimuli. I hear the flapping of winds, and a noise like howling wind but sharper and layered with growling.

I start to rise from the floor to try and get a look at what’s happening, but I stop myself before actually poking my head over the parapet. I am frozen by the memory of bolt shattering bone.

We need protection. We still have that reaver’s shield, right? It should be here, somewhere. That raises an interesting question: can I conjure objects from my throne world while inside that same space?

I concentrate on my mental impression of what that shield looked like, the part of the castle that I sent it to, and how it felt for the brief moments that I held it. I will it to appear in my hands, like I have for other items. It does appear, but instead of simply popping into existence like normal, it forms from shadowy mist the same way that Cheshire appears and vanishes when acting as a geist. It’s an interesting difference, but I don’t have time to examine the implications.

I grip the shield tightly and stand up, ready to raise that shield and duck down the second I see Mahiri’s crossbow aimed my way, but thankfully my caution proves unnecessary; when I survey the field, I find the reaver engaged in pitched battle with all of the creatures that I have called.

My ravens circle the hunter and divebomb her at random intervals, but Mahiri barely seems to notice them; she draws a few lazy swings of her sword through ravens that didn’t move away fast enough, but otherwise she seems completely focused on the growing ranks of skeletal wolf-monsters.

My monstrous servants are as I designed them: they have skeletal frames like stretched-out wolves, and they are skinless and fleshless but dense shadow stretches between bone like spider-silk webbing, forming the emaciated suggestion of mass. They are claw and fang and baleful red eyes, and they are mine. I feel the strangest sense of pride, witnessing my handiwork.

The beasts arrive in twos and threes, drawn by my call across strange, conceptual distances. Their trickling arrival gives Mahiri time to react to each new pack of foes. When a group climbs over the cliffside, she responds with a burning bolt that explodes into wild green flame and makes that whole side of the path treacherous for my minions–and I witness one shadow-beast take the bolt directly to the chest and be knocked off the side of the cliff by the explosion.

When a beast gets through, the reaver holds her crossbow at her side and draws that dreadful artifact blade with her free hand. She blurs out of the way of the monster’s assault and carves into it. The creature’s body doesn’t fade and melt like the bodies of my summons, but Mahiri’s blade cuts through bone like the softest of butter. The first slash takes a claw, the second its head, and the third opens its shadowed ribcage for good measure.

Still, they are demanding her focus, especially as more join the fray. Though the fire keeps many at bay–the flames shift and writhe, alive in their hunger for any beast that draws near–each creature that gets through and reaches Mahiri stops her from spreading the flames. The beasts that reach her still die, and rather quickly, but those moments where she is forced to use her sword to carve open beasts and bat away birds are moments where she is not shooting at the new arrivals, and the horde of beasts doesn’t stop growing.

I don’t know how, but I can tell which of the white-feathered ravens is actually Cheshire in her shifted form. She hangs back from the divebombing, watching and waiting for the right moment to strike, and when two shadowbound beasts break through the barrier of flames, Cheshire seizes the opportunity. Two summoned ravens dive at Mahiri, and Cheshire shadows them, keeping their bodies between her and the hunter.

The summons peck at Mahiri’s arms, which is barely an inconvenience to the hunter, so she keeps her focus on the gathering beasts. Cheshire slips past the other birds and alights on Mahiri’s belt, using her beak to tear open the bottom of one specific pouch. Something gleaming and golden falls from the pouch and Cheshire dives for it, catching it before it can hit the ground.

Immediately, Mahiri realizes what’s gone wrong and whirls from her fight with the shadowbound beasts to turn her full attention on the pilfering raven. Mahiri blurs into motion to strike the thief out of the air, but Cheshire just barely doges the first strike with a harsh swerve. The raven loses a few feathers and her form waves, but she keeps moving, forcing Mahiri to push herself to move even faster. The second strike catches Cheshire and cuts her in half, form melting away.

The shining piece of gold falls and Mahiri lunges for it, dropping her crossbow to free up a hand, but a beast’s frenzied assault forces her to blur out of the way instead. The gold hits the ground, and with more beasts closing in I see a narrow window where we might just be able to claim our prize.

“Grab the bauble!” I shout at all my gathered minions. “Grab it and bring it to me!”

The ravens dive from above and the shadowbound beasts leap through the flames to get at that glimmering chunk of gold. Mahiri cuts down the beast she was engaged with and darts for the bauble, but a raven reaches it first and snatches it up, immediately taking off and flying toward me. The rest of the monsters converge, every one of them ready to seize the gold and keep it moving if Mahiri cuts the holder down.

“[Wheel of Life and Death]!”

The reaver shouts a spell, panic seeping into her voice, and the space around her erupts with green-gold light. The light swirls around Mahiri like the petals of a curled flower, forming a pristine bulb for a single instant before exploding outward in the shape of thorny vines and jagged branches. Limbs of green-gold light sweep across the battlefield and impale every creature that isn’t Mahiri; every raven is caught by vines and crushed into smoke, and every shadow-beast is stabbed through with branches that sprout green-gold flowers and crush bone into shards.

In seconds, my entire army is destroyed. When the light fades, the vegetation withers, and it leaves behind only fragments of bone and a golden bauble that falls to the dirt halfway between me and the reaver.

Mahiri stands there, breathing heavily, and I see the faintest bit of blood on her leg where one of the shadow-beasts must have nicked her. She slouches, head lowered, seeming overcome by exertion. Whatever the hell that spell was, it seems to have taken a toll on her. Maybe I still have a chance.

I let the shield slip from my fingers and curl them back, claw-like, as I begin casting spells. With luck, a bit of framing might do something to counteract the cost of not casting out loud, and my silence will grant me an edge of surprise. I cast [Carrion Swarm] thrice, keeping the prior configuration, and a new unkindness comes to life around me–fewer of them, but hopefully still enough.

I murmur to them, “Get the rock,” and they take flight.

The ravens I summoned all fly for the bauble, and I see another raven soar out of the castle gates: Cheshire, returned to the fight in a new body. Mahiri sees all this and shakes off her weariness. She grits her teeth and blurs forward, determined to reach the object first.

The flock converges on the shiny piece of gold just a second before Mahiri reaches it, but the reaver moves faster than I’ve ever seen her move before and sweeps her blade through the swarm of birds, the sword catching fire mid-swing and parting the flock like so many grains of wheat before the thresher–all except a single raven, Cheshire, who swerved away from the prize and instead maneuvered behind Mahiri.

The changeling shifts into a bear and takes a swipe at the reaver that Mahiri has to contort to avoid, but for once the hunter’s not quick enough and she takes a nasty-looking slash to the arm holding her sword. It’s not brutal enough to make her drop the sword, but she cries out in pain and stumbles, finally thrown off-balance.

“[Exsanguinate]!” I shout as soon as I see that glistening red. Her arm ruptures and hot crimson paints the dirt, but she pushes through the pain and dives for the gold.

The bear becomes a wolf and leaps at Mahiri to try and stop her, but the reaver’s fingers curl around the bauble, and with burning blade she slices the wolf in half midair. When Cheshire’s smoke fades, Mahiri stands triumphant, wounds sealed with gold, amid a field of my failures.

She takes a moment to straighten out her posture and rise to her full height, and then she raises her sword and points it at me with a smirk. She calls out, “Is that all you’ve got? I would say I was expecting better, but that would be a lie.”

I hate the smug look on her face. I hate the way she drips with confidence, like this was inevitable, even after all the pain I put her through. I bare my teeth and clench my fists, but what can I say to her? My plan didn’t work, and nothing I have left will even scratch her. Literally!

Mahiri’s smirk only intensifies when I don’t immediately respond. “What, no pithy retort? No begging for me to spare your miserable life? Have you finally run out of words, just like you’ve run out of fodder?”

I lean forward, hands clutching at the castle stonework. “This isn’t over! Don’t think you’ve won yet. This was just a warmup.”

Mahiri laughs at me. “You’re out of bigger, stronger monsters to hide behind, little demon girl. I’ve reduced your protective herd to shards of bone, and your shapeshifting geist knows she can’t beat me in a straight fight. You’re cornered, prey. All that’s left is the killing blow.”

“I won’t stop fighting. I won’t give you an easy victory. I won’t give you the satisfaction of making me feel small.”

“Oh? That’s funny, because that’s really not the impression you gave all those times you folded like a paper crane at the slightest promise of pain. No, I think you’ll make very entertaining noises when I’m cutting you open. Prey animals like you make the most adorable squeaks when they’re in mortal danger.”

The reaver chuckles to herself and turns her back on me, leisurely strolling toward where she left her crossbow after Cheshire first stole that piece of gold. My grip on the stonework tightens as I watch her move with such arrogance and disregard, and then I stumble and nearly fall as the stone crumbles beneath my hands.

I take a cautious step back and stare at the damaged parapet with wide eyes. I’m not strong enough to break stone. I sweep my gaze around and see more cracks appearing all over the stonework of the castle ramparts. It’s all eroding right in front of me.

Cheshire appears next to me, forming from black mist. “You need to answer her,” she urges me. “Your foundation is crumbling. You have to tell her why she’s wrong.”

“But she isn’t!” I hiss at Cheshire. “I threw everything I had at her, and I failed. I hid behind all my minions, and she tore right through them. My clever plots were for nothing.” More cracks spread through stone, spiderwebbing. “I’m just… I’m just too fucking weak.”

In the distance, Mahiri picks up her crossbow and starts loading it.

Cheshire stares at me, intense and intent. “Then what are you going to do?”

The fear is rising. The panic, the dread, the loathing. I failed, and I’m going to die, exactly like I feared would happen from the moment I first realized this world had consequences. I am staring down at the woman who is going to kill me, and it’s all my own damn fault.

“What are you going to do?” Cheshire asks me again, fear creeping into her voice as she grabs at my hand. “Come on, you have to do something. If you don’t want to merge with me, then what else do you want to try? What are you going to do?”

Mahiri starts walking back toward us, crossbow in one hand and sword in the other, grinning. What do I do? What can I do? If I try to summon more minions, she’ll cut them down. If she doesn’t bleed, I can’t trade blows with her. And if I let Cheshire possess my body, it might mean the only thing as terrifying as death of the body: death of the mind.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die unless I do something, but there’s nothing that I can do.

So I run. I sprint for the nearest entrance that leads inside the castle, reasoning that maybe I can use that extra-dimensional interior to hide within some kind of maze. Maybe I can wear Mahiri out, fight a war of attrition.

Instead, before I can even reach the door, the entire castle collapses and the mountainside crumbles with it. I fall, stone falling around me, the distant ground coming closer, closer, closer–

–and I’m lying on slick earth, surrounded by stony rubble and meat-moss trees. I’m afraid to move, paralyzed by dread and uncertainty, but I shake my limbs and find them all functional. I’m alone in the dark, mist shrouding me from the light of the red-limned eclipse.

Weakness. Failure. Just as inadequate as ever.

Ah, of course. Never truly alone. I clamber to my feet and start moving away from the rubble, mindful of the reaver likely still hunting me. I have to get away. Have to put distance between myself and where I was. If I just run far enough, she won’t follow me, and maybe I can slip back to the Labyrinth and get out of the maze.

You’re going to die here. You’re going to die here and it’s all your fault.

I can hear whispers through the trees. Voices, all my own. Reminders of failure, weakness, inadequacy. My own loathing, so familiar, but now echoing through my soul.

Every choice you made was the wrong one. You’re a fool. An idiot. A crying child.

I cover my ears and keep moving, keeping forward, just have to run far enough and I’ll survive. I have to survive.

You turned down your only way out, and now it’s time to crash and burn.

The forest catches fire.

The fire comes from everywhere, all at once. It’s red in some areas and green in others, gold and orange and blue and black. It’s a rainbow of flame, and it burns the world. Mist gives way to smoke, and meat blackens to bark-like husks.

I run through the burning forest, and behind me I hear the reaver’s mocking laughter. A crossbow bolt tears a hole in my cape and I run faster, pushing my body to its limits and past them. I need to get away. I can’t die here.

The forest around me continues to blacken, and overhead the flames form a twisted Aurora Borealis effect. The smoke burns my eyes and lungs, but I fight through it. The ground beneath me is ash and dead leaves and bloodsoaked mud.

My foot snags on a blackened root and I trip, no time to correct my movement. I land amid more roots, big and small, bursting from a tree larger than the rest. I am covered in ash and mud, and I scrabble to get up but keep slipping and falling, the mud almost seeming to drag me down, to grasp at me.

Mahiri steps into view and I immediately call my pilfered shield back to my hands, the object forming from shadow just in time to take a bolt that still pierces nearly the whole way through. Mahiri strides toward me, calmly, leisurely, and I back up against the tree as best im able, still unable to find my footing in the ash and mud.

What do I do? How do I get away. I need to run. I need to run. Damn it, why can’t I run? I shout “[Carrion Swarm]!” and raise the shield to protect myself, but Mahiri easily carves through the summoned ravens and then brings the sword down on my shield, cutting clean through and severing it in two.

The two halves of the shield fall from my hands, and I stare up at the woman who is about to kill me. She points the sword at my chest and grins. “Any last words? You know, before the screaming.”

“I don’t want to die,” I whisper, and then the blade is moving and I fall backward through the roots of the blackened tree, swallowed by darkness.

I fall through dim fog past burning roots, through a world of fire and shadow. I fall until I slam hard against the ground, against flooring, against… carpet? Above, distant, I still see root and fire, but beneath me is oddly-familiar brown carpet, and around me are beige walls that stretch upward into darkness. I see the impressions of a book pile, and a closet, and two closed doors.

On shaking legs I rise and look around. Where am I? What is this? I see indistinct figures, shadows cast against the walls, but they’re like giants looming over me, looking down at me. They’re all watching me, but they’re clustered around the edges of this vast chamber to leave space for me in the center.

Me, and one other: in the heart of this dark hollow there is a great bed, and upon that bed lies a woman. Her face is blurry, giving the impression of detail but no discernable specifics. Her body is sickly, and she is dying. A single emaciated hand trails off the side of the bed, palm open, fingers outstretched like she’s reaching for me, but she lacks the strength to move her hand any closer.

I know this scene. I know why those shadows all look like giants, and why I can’t see her face, and why this room is so familiar: because this was what my parents’ room looked like on the night that my mother died. They look big because I was small; when it happened, I was only four years old.

I feel tired, and terrified, and weak. I stumble forward and collapse by the side of the bed, reaching out for that withered hand, but it turns to ash the moment I touch it. The body of my mother fades away, now ashes that I have long since scattered, and the room seems to get smaller, down to its real size.

I lean my back against the bedside and close my eyes, still feeling the ashes on my fingertips and the mud on my legs. I laugh, the sound piteous and broken. “Ironic, isn’t it?” I ask the ghosts. “Not cancer like took her, or age that’s taking him, but the inevitable consequences of my own desperate attempts to stave off the end.”

The ghosts don’t respond, of course. I am, as I have always been, alone.

I feel wetness growing in my eyes, and I hate it. Can’t I die with some dignity? Do I have to relive this stupid fucking moment? All the pain and the hate that I’ve never really outgrown? The loss, the regret, and all the masks to cover it up.

“Why did you leave me?” I ask the ashes. “Why didn’t you stay?”

I hear footfalls, soft against the carpet. I open my eyes, expecting to see my executioner, but instead it’s Cheshire. Cheshire, who says she loves me. Cheshire, who says she can save me. Cheshire, who lies.

I laugh again, but it turns to a coughing fit almost immediately. “What?” I rasp. “Come for one last attempt to convince me? Well, go on; I’m vulnerable, and I’m afraid, so do what you do best.”

The girl with mismatched eyes looks at me with sorrow and care. I hate it. I hate her stupid face and all her stupid expressions. I hate when she pretends to feel empathy for me. I hate it all.

Cheshire murmurs, “This was the first memory of yours that Nyara showed me, when she made me your geist. She called it your animus: the ‘animating principle’ of your soul. She said that everything you are is built around this one moment. The very heart of you.”

“I wish I could burn it out.” I stare up at the flaming roots far above. “I guess I’m getting my wish.”

Cheshire kneels down in front of me and reaches out to cup my face in her hands. I don’t stop her. “I know you’re worried that I’ll betray you or abandon you like they did. I know you have just as many logical reasons as emotional reasons to distrust me. But I won’t betray you. I won’t abandon you. Please, Alice. Please, let me help you. Let me in.”

Logic says that Cheshire has kept me alive. Logic says that Cheshire has put me in danger. Logic says that I lack sufficient evidence to put my trust in Cheshire’s claims. Logic says I don’t have a choice.

But human beings don’t make their decisions based on logic. We are irrational, emotional, impulsive creatures, and I’m a better example of that than anyone. So none of my logic is why I’m hesitating.

The real reason, the emotional reason, is the room we’re sitting in and everything it represents. This is the heart of me. This is my animus.

I whisper to Cheshire, “I’m scared.”

Her expression softens, and her eyes seem so full and warm, and I hate that I want to believe her. “Hey. Do you want to know a secret? I’m scared too.”

I believe her. It may damn me, but I believe her. “Okay. You have my consent. Do the merge.”

Cheshire fades into black mist that pours down my throat and fills my lungs. I breathe it in, and it’s like I’ve been cold all my life and finally found warmth. It spreads from my chest down my limbs to the tips of my fingers and toes, pleasant and relaxing like a full-body high.

I feel… strength and surety, a sense of coiled power waiting patiently to be unleashed, like I felt after eating that reaver. I raise a hand in front of my face, take off my gloves, and flex my fingers, feeling skin and flesh and bone with a greater awareness than I have before. There’s more than just strength hiding inside this body; it feels like… potential. Malleability.

There’s another set of feelings in the back of my mind, not mine but not entirely separate and getting less separate by the second. I feel Cheshire’s joy at having a real body again. I feel her hunger to test our new capabilities against the arrogant hunter that dared to challenge us. I feel her gratitude that I put my trust in her.

There’s a sense of light pressure against my raised arm, questioning, asking permission. I grant it, and my arm moves by Cheshire’s will, outstretched finger drawing a circle in the air in front of me. The circle becomes a disk of reflective glass suspended, a mirror fixed in place, and I see myself. I see us.

Our hair is mostly black, but streaked with white, and the bun has come undone to let my hair fall loose. Skin just as pale, fangs just as pointy, lips and nails still dark red. But while one of my eyes is still red, the other is now blue, and both pupils have turned golden.

“Interesting,” we speak with my voice.

May I shift? Cheshire asks inside my head.

You may. You promised me a werewolf, and I want to see it with my own eyes. Our own eyes. Blue and red, gleaming.

Your wish is my command.

The skin on my hand sprouts white fur, and my nails harden and lengthen into claws. Then fur becomes feathers, then scales, then fleshless bone, and then fur once more.

The white fur travels up my arm, and where it reaches clothing that clothing turns to black mist and fades away. It spreads across my torso, my other arm, down to my legs, and I feel my bones crack and reshape themselves as my whole body gets bigger. Muscle forms where before my limbs were twig-like in their delicacy, my limbs stretch longer, and my clawed nails blacken.

When it reaches my head, the changes are dramatic. My face reshapes to be more wolf-like, jaw jutting forward and filling with sharp teeth fit for piercing and tearing. My pointed ears broaden as they become furry, and my eyes glow bright as the irises swallow the sclera.

I expect it to stop there, but Cheshire adds one final detail to my new form: a pair of curling black ram’s horns that burst from my skull. I feel her amusement, and she whispers to me, I promised a demon wolf, did I not?

“It’s perfect,” I say aloud, my voice now deeper and perpetually growling. “Now let’s use it, and make her pay.”

I reach with my will for the burning roots far above, and then we leap. The roots that were far away are now right in front of me, and we sink our claws into them and climb up past the flames. We emerge into the forest, the fires gone out, the trees all blackened husks.

There, wandering between the trees with sword in one hand and a crossbow in the others, is our target: Mahiri.

“Come out, come out, little prey,” she calls, not having spotted us yet. “You can’t hide forever.”

I have an idea, Cheshire tells me.

Do it, I tell her without hesitation.

Above, the black sun swallows the sky, the red halo vanishing, and the forest is plunged into darkness. My eyes can still see clearly, though color turns grayscale, but I see Mahiri immediately swear and set her sword aflame to produce light.

“I don’t know how you broke my [Hunter’s Mark],” she shouts, “but it was a cute trick! It still won’t save you.”

We laugh, the sound cruel and echoing. “Oh, we don’t need saving.”

The hunter whirls and fires a bolt at where the noise came from, but we’re already moving, sprinting across the forest floor on all fours. We dash past her, raking a claw along her leg before she can retaliate, and then we’re safe behind a tree husk. Mahiri cries out, but that damnable invocation keeps her from bleeding.

“Do you know the difference,” we growl, “between a hunter and a predator?”

Mahiri fires a bolt in our direction that explodes into green flame, but it hits the tree and we leap to another point of cover before the flames can reach us. She makes a noise of agitation and demands, “Stop hiding, you little wretch! None of your tricks are enough to beat me.”

“Ah, but that’s just it.” We dart from one tree to another, then leap out and score another slash on the hunter from behind. She whirls with her flaming sword and nicks us, but it’s a shallow wound and the flames don’t cling as we rush behind another tree, slipping from shadow to shadow. “A hunter uses tricks and tools to make up for weakness and limitation, like you with your kit. But a predator is a thing of pure killing ability.”

“Weakness?” she scoffs. “I beat you on the bridge, and outside your castle, and now I’m going to beat you here. [Wyldfire Shot].” She fires her crossbow, the bolt once again exploding into flame, but the tree doesn’t burn; it actually starts to regrow, dark leaves sprouting from seemingly-dead wood–wood that was once flesh, but no longer. “It’s not weakness to use the right tool for the job.”

“You bargained for those toys because you knew you couldn’t kill me without them. You knew you didn’t have the strength to overcome me, even in my fledgling state.” We keep moving as we growl, evading every shot and watching the forest grow back stronger and thicker. “Because you are just a human, and I am a demon.”

Mahiri grits her teeth, drops her crossbow, and wields the flaming sword with both hands. “I’ll bleed that arrogance from you, drop by drop.”

We laugh. “Is it truly arrogance if we really are better than you? I am more than you will ever–could ever–be in your sad, sorry life. You are just the first rung of the ladder I’m climbing. You’re a footnote in my story.”

The reaver puts her back to a tree and looks around warily, trying to track our movements and voice. “I’m more driven than you. I’m more capable than you. I’m worthier than you.”

“Then why weren’t you chosen?”

We cease being a wolf and turn into a dragonfly, and in that small-but-speedy form we zip to the newly-grown branches of the tree she has her back to. We shift back to wolf form, and in that instant we pounce.

Mahiri blurs to raise her blade against us the moment she realizes where we are, but even with super-speed she’s too late. We slam into her and knock her to the forest floor, claws digging into her flesh. She manages one final cut with the blade, scoring us along our side, but then we bite at her wrist with crushing force and break her bones.

She screams, and the second we release her wrist the wounds fill with gold, but the damage is done; though she struggles with all her might, she cannot move that hand. She tries to push us off with her unbroken arm and with her legs, but we are so much stronger than her now.

We bite at her again, and again, and again, each time taking a chunk of flesh that seals with gold, until finally one bite does not seal, and her blood flows. [Exsanguinate] to seal our wounds, and then we stop toying with her and start eating her.

We taste her flesh and her blood, and as we tear into her, ripping apart to get at bone and organs, we begin to taste something more: her very soul. It tastes like spite and springtime and wounded ego, and like a hundred arrows carved by hand. It tastes like promises made and hatred sworn, and it tastes of pumping blood in a human heart.

It tastes like power, and I swallow it whole.