Felix sprinted through the dense trees, surrounded by a darkness his feline eyes had no trouble piercing. His new tail trailed behind him, occasionally wrapping around a tree to help him turn a corner with lightning quickness.

From every direction, dozens of screeching monstrous spider monkeys swung through the trees and began dropping down on him, trying to cut off his retreat and draw him into a fight. They grew increasingly louder and bolder as they pursued him in greater numbers.

Felix felt his feline agility kick into high gear as he jumped, dodged, ducked, rolled, and even climbed trees to avoid his persistent pursuers. His new prehensile tail proved invaluable, allowing him to perform impossible acrobatic maneuvers. Still, he did not go without injury.

His back was covered in scratches, and his arms were in ribbons. If not for his venom-suppressing constitution, he would have succumbed quickly. Even a glancing blow from the monsters’ multitudinous serrated claws and mandibles carried a dose of poison. Consuming pieces of monster flesh accelerated his healing, and managed to restore a trickle of mana, but it wasn’t enough.

Three monster spider monkeys suddenly sprung on him from all sides, a veritable wall of arms boxing him in. Felix blink teleported once more, this time behind the largest of his attackers, where he succeeded in separating the creature from its throat with a clawed fist. He tossed the dripping black meat into his mouth, then kicked off the back of the dying monster, and continued his mad dash.

How many times have we blinked so far in the last couple minutes? Three, four times?

He had no illusions that he could win in a straight-up fight with a single one of the arachnid apes. Not without his ability to instantly teleport behind them and deal a killing blow.

Felix was at his limit. He thought he might have enough mana for one more jump, maybe two, if he could hold out for another thirty seconds. But, he ran the risk of succumbing to mana drain and losing consciousness.

On the bright side that might be a painless way to go. Better than being awake to the exquisite sensation of being torn limb from limb.

Despite things looking dire, he wasn’t about to give up. That might have been something he would do in his past life. Not this one. All things lived, then died eventually. When his time came, it would be on his own terms. He wouldn’t bite the dust gripped by the throes of fear and regret. No, he would die with his mouth full, his enemies throats gripped between his teeth.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A wave of sound tore through the air like a thousand lamenting souls crying out in pain. The very trees stirred, as if trembling at a passing ghost of wind.

Voices filled the cambion’s ears. “Help me, save me, kill me!” they seemed to say. And yet, despite their pleas for succor, he was certain that whatever made them cry would not hesitate to drag him and anything in its path down to hell with them.

Felix was startled by the sudden noise, but his reaction was less immediate than the creatures around him.

The monstrous spider monkeys immediately turned tail and scattered, abandoning their prey. Some who had been startled mid-leap, tried adjusting their trajectory prematurely, causing them to crash into trees, the ground, or each other. They clawed each other’s flesh in their mad scramble to escape the source of that terrible sound.

The sudden absence of pressure from attacks was a welcome reprieve. One the cambion wouldn’t get to enjoy, as the source of the haunting screech became clear.

Floating ten meters from the ground and heading steadily toward him, was Father Sandra’s wispy light source that Felix thought resembled a will-of-the-wisp. Except that now in the epicenter of the globe of light was a green skull surrounded with purple gaseous flames.

Its ghostly shining eyes locked with the cambion’s and it opened its spectral jaw, releasing another ear piercing screech along with a much brighter blast of sinister purple light from its eyes. It shone like a spotlight on the cambion and seemed to steal his will to flee, spreading like a numbness that seeped from the surface of his skin into his core.

SCREEEEEEE!

Warning, you have been paralyzed!

If Status’ message hadn’t been enough, the appearance of Father Sandra and four of his hooded minions confirmed his suspicions that he had been tracked down and was now under the effects of a magical attack. The skeletal will-of-the-wisp was more than just a light source. It was another weapon in the priest’s arsenal.

If Felix couldn’t break free from its hold on him, he would be recaptured. Given the state his body was in, that was the most likely outcome now.

Father Sandra broke through the line of trees. He spotted the cambion after following the skeletal will-of-the-wisp’s spotlight to where he stood rooted in place, and a vicious smile spread across his lips.

“I see you!” said the priest in an unsettling sing-song, before shouting more words of power. “Vateveri tora!”

The shambling minions to either side of the priest, invigorated by the priest’s spell, sprinted forward with a speed that belied their size and awkward gait.

Felix struggled to break free from his paralysis. His numbness seeped into his diaphragm, and wouldn’t let him breathe. He could do no more than stand there and brush his awareness against the blanket of magic that enveloped him, watching the stampeding horrors that were almost upon him.

Just as the first of the hooded giants stretched a pale hand from within his cloak to grab him, a thought occurred to him and he blink teleported.

His idea worked. Despite being unable to sense his body, his affinity for spatial magic had been unaffected. At the last minute, he folded space around him, teleporting away, and in the instant of space between two moments, the blanket of paralyzing light could not touch him.

If it had been a gradual recovery of his senses, he might not have been able to pull off the stunt he had in mind. Thankfully, the instant he disappeared, the effects of the paralyzing light were gone as the skeletal will-of-the-wisp was pointing its evil spotlight at a space he no longer occupied.

Felix reappeared above the skull and arched his back, arm cocked over his head to muster as much momentum as he could. He brought his hand down, fingers splayed, and spiked the skeletal wisp like a volleyball.

At the last second, he wondered what would happen if the skull had no substance. What if it was just an apparition, an illusion of gas and smoke, a veritable ghost?

He felt his hand connect and felt savage joy as the skull-of-the-wisp sailed through the air in the direction it had been facing, and crashed into the trunk of a nearby cypress, where it exploded in a flash. Flames spread from the blast, igniting the bark, nearby branches, and most importantly, several of Father Sandra’s minions. The purple luminescence was replaced by the light of ordinary flames. Despite being on fire, if the hooded beings felt something, they gave no sign.

Felix had no time to celebrate as he fell through the air. He tucked his legs and executed the last blink teleport he could muster.

He appeared just over where Father Sandra had been, before stumbling backward in surprise at the sudden explosion of his skeletal wisp. Instead of landing on the priest’s back as Felix had intended, the cambion fell gently on the grass just in front of him.

Father Sandra’s eyes went wide as he tracked the movement, but Felix didn’t hesitate once his feet touched the ground.

He leaped nimbly over the priest, kicking his feet overhead and twisting, in an acrobatic maneuver that would not have been possible without the weight and balance of his new tail. He adjusted his trajectory, bringing his taloned feet down and claws out. After executing a perfect backflip and twist, he should have landed on Father Sandra’s back, granting him ample room to repeat his favorite de-throating technique, or at least the freedom to attack the jugular, eyes, back of the head, or any of a number of sensitive areas that might have crippled the priest.

Instead, however, Felix’s feet and then his swinging right claw crunched against an invisible barrier that shimmered briefly as he struck it. There were the sounds of several sickening snaps as his hand hit the barrier at an awkward angle and three of his fingers snapped.

Searing pain shot through his hand and up his arm as he got pushed back, repelled by the now, once more, invisible barrier. He managed to keep his feet, though he hunched protectively over his crippled right hand.

“What have you done?!” Father Sandra bellowed. Given that the precaution of setting up a barrier had just saved his life, he seemed less interested in gloating than angry at having lost his skull-of-the-wisp.

Felix felt the backlash of overextending his magic reserves as the headache and nausea set in.

“What’s that Sandy, is daddy mad I killed his... pet floating skull-lamp?” Felix said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. Blackness was already trying to encroach the corners of his vision. He forced himself to keep talking. To stay awake. He knew any minute the hooded minions would bear down on him and should keep moving, but it was all he could do to keep standing. “ You know that thing is... creepy as… creepy as hell, right? Not something a supposed man-of-God should have lying around, is it? Just get a normal lamp. Maybe a flashlight.”

“Ungrateful fool!” the priest spat over his shoulder, scanning his eyes over the darkness around them. It said something about the threat he believed his would-be prisoner posed, when he had his back turned. “You think it’s funny, do you? I don’t have another soul lamp here. Do you have any idea how much longer it’s going to take for us to get back to the cave now?”

It suddenly dawned on the cambion that the burning minions were taking their sweet time coming over to grab him.

He pried his eyes open with force of will alone as he realized the four hooded figures, three of them still engulfed in flames, were presently occupied fighting a swarm of spider monkeys.

With the purple light and the original source of the screeching soul scream gone, there was a palpable groan from the forest, as all the wildlife, nature and monsters in the area were relieved of its oppressive force. Some of the residents of this forest took offense to intruders. Apparently, more with some than others. Even if they had attacked the cambion earlier, at the moment they seemed more interested in the hooded monstrosities.

Felix chuckled at the realization that he had destroyed the toy that kept the monsters away.

He wondered vaguely what had happened to Muzio and the other four minions. Were they already back at this cave the priest mentioned, or had they somehow been under the protection of the soul lamp and were now being attacked thanks to him.

“This sounds like a you problem,” the cambion said, willing one foot in front of the other as he stubbornly tried to make his body carry him into the forest and away from the priest and the impending swarm of monsters. “I think I’ll get out of here before things get hairy.”

Felix could do nothing but watch as Father Sandra leveled his wand at him and uttered words of power. “Rufu anokutuka anonon!”

Green light gathered at the tip of the wand before spewing forth to strike him in the side. Silhouetted as Father Sandra was by the flames burning behind him, and illuminated by the sickly green light of his wand, Felix had a final thought before his entire world devolved to pain.

Dude, who do you think you are, Voldemort?