Danivra spoke urgently in my mind. “Sania should come down here, or at least move away,” Danivra said urgently. “She doesn’t have the Constitution or the potential for recovery that you do, Lord Clive.”

I looked over to my Soul Mate. “She’s right, Sania. Get out of here while I try to talk to him.”

“I won’t leave you,” she said firmly.

“You’re not leaving me. But even if I’m killed, I can come back now, even if it takes a year. I have over 200 Constitution, too. Please, this is the right thing."

“I will move back, that is all.” Her tone made it clear she was done discussing the matter, and we didn’t have time anymore as Stada emerged from the shadows, two hundred feet of angry looking polar bear with elongate lower canines.

His eyes were light yellow streaked through with red. He was looking at my friends grouped in our camp. Danivra was still in her spider form, but looked almost insignificant as Stada loomed around three times bigger than her on all fours.

“The Isthalings! You have killed so many,” his rough voice boomed, though his mouth didn’t move. “Why? Why would you kill so many?”

“They attacked us!” I shouted back, and Stada turned his gaze on me, which made me feel both relieved that he wasn’t looking at my friends anymore but terrified as to what my immediate future held.

“You invade their homes. Their land.”

“We were camping, man. We weren’t causing any trouble and they just swarmed us and wouldn’t stop. I promise you we didn’t do anything to warrant this,” I said, gesturing at the carnage below.

“I am not man, I am Stada the Gran!” he roared at me, but I could already see that from his now visible identifier.

Stada the Gran: Level 208, Protector of the North, Nanook (Nystiobek III).

I was worried about the whole Protector of the North situation. That didn’t bode well for all of the deaths of the Isthalings who lived in the north.

“Sorry, Stada. We only came here to speak with you. To see if you could help us? One of your descendants is here with us, Grastad. He thought you might listen to our plea.”

He was staring at the bodies below as I spoke. I got the sense that he wasn’t really listening anymore as he’d fallen completely silent, contemplating something. Then his huge paw flashed out toward me, so fast and so big that I had no chance to dodge. All I could do was hit it with the cleaver, which made no difference to the result.

I was smashed like a tennis ball at Wimbledon and sent hurtling through the air a couple of miles away before I managed to bring myself for a halt and head back in. I assured Sania and my followers that I wasn’t hurt at all from the blow, my Constitution easily standing up to the swipe.

I hurtled back as fast as I could, but when I saw Stada raise up on his back legs, taller than the surrounding mountains, ready to drop onto my friends, I knew we were all doomed.

“You must all pay for this intrusion with your lives,” Stada boomed.

His projected voice easy to hear from this distance. I assumed he knew Grastad was there, and he still didn’t care. He was going to pound them all to mush, and I wasn’t going to make it back in time. Even if I did, there was no way I could stop his blow from falling. So I came to a halt and began building a Spicy Ball. I hated myself at that moment for calling them Spicy Balls. I thought it was funny at the time and now… yeah. Fucking stupid.

I’d learned the hard way that cooking them was a sure way to miss, but that was unlikely with the size of Stada, so I pushed on. As I reached the end of what my core would supply, I readied to hurl it towards the giant Nanook when a faint link to the other power I held appeared. The Ethereal storage. I found I was able to pull from it and add it to the Spicy Ball in my hand.

It grew wider despite my efforts to contain its size, and the color suddenly changed, the original gold now mixing with both white and black energies. This was the power of a stage one, wanna-be god. And Stada was gonna have to eat it.

I sent the ball of power at him, and he sensed it coming, turning away from my friends to face me. As I suspected, he didn’t move out of the way. Though his eyes widened as the realization of how much power I’d just thrown at him dawned.

It hit him square in the chest, bringing an earth trembling roar of pain. The whole sky illuminated like daylight from the blast as he slowly toppled from his standing position to crash into the jagged mountains around him.

I hadn’t expected to have killed Stada, so I wasn’t surprised when no notification came and he roared again, twisting back onto his feet, crushing mountains in his wake as I tried to make it over to my friends.

He had a wide, bare patch on his chest, blackened and smoldering fur around the borders of the red blistered flesh on show. Though, it was healing by the second.

“There’s plenty more where that came from, Stada. But I didn’t come here to fight. I came to talk, so please, can we?”

Stada growled. “You think I am a fool? You are empty of the power you just used. I can sense it.”

My mind raced frantically for options seeing as blagging the big bastard wasn’t going to fly. Yet as he healed, I felt my Ethereal storage filling again. I focused briefly on the storage and my core, and found that the bonds to my followers were glowing and pulsating. A quick look to my friends below showed the truth. They were only fucking praying to me to fill the tank. It wasn’t going to be enough, but I appreciated the gesture.

“I’m not that empty,” I replied to Stada.

“Your level is pathetic. How is it that you hold the power of Creation?” he rumbled, taking a step toward me threateningly.

“That’s part of what I wanted to talk with you about. If you’d just fucking listen for a minute and give me a chance to explain.”

“No. I don’t know why you have powers belonging to Creation, but you should not. No one should other than Creation, and for that alone, you should be destroyed.” He took another menacing step forward and I moved back.

“Don’t do it, Stada. Please, for fuck’s sake.”

There was distant roar off to the south, and Stada’s black eyes swiveled to look behind me. I didn’t dare turn.

“It’s Cushec,” Danivra said urgently across the bond.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I groaned as Stada sniffed the air.

“What is the meaning of this? Did you bring the dragon to try and defeat me?”

“No! I wanted you to help me defeat Natom Hilgresh.”

Stada’s eyes refocused on me. “Why would you want Natom dead?”

“Because he is trying to steal the power of Creation. Why do you think!”

“He cannot be allowed to become even more powerful,” Stada growled.

“Then you’ll help me?” I asked with a surge of hope.

“No. I will remove the real threat here,” he said and lunged at me with a surge of speed.

This time, I’d been expecting the move, and as fast as it was, my sudden upward trajectory carried me safely out of the way… only to be knocked spiraling out of control momentarily by the grasping claw of an enormous golden dragon. Despite my ungracious flight, I considered myself lucky not to have been caught in its claws or sent toward the Nanook intent on my death.

As I brought myself under control, Stada continued his focus on me rather than Cushec, and took a mighty leap toward me, snarling and snapping and covering the distance far faster than he had previously.

I fired off a Spicy Ball into his nose, which bounced harmlessly away, causing no discernible damage at all, but it gave me a momentary distraction to move away.

The banking dragon screeched, coming back towards us. “I knew of him first!” Its voice was a high-pitched, rasping sound, at odds with its incredible size which including its immense wingspan, rivalled Stada’s in scale. “The power is mine!”

“No, Cushec. It’s not and never will be. That power should have died with Creation, and it will die here today.”

Cushec sent out a jet of roaring flames at Stada, who batted them away with a paw that glowed gray like the Woltars’ Claws of Rending Salvation. Then he charged the dragon. It was my first opportunity to take in Cushec’s identifier.

Cushec: Level 192, Sovereign of the Skies, Dragon (Drake III).

He lifted back into the air to avoid the massive polar bear, but Stada jumped unbelievably high and scored a wicked slash on the dragon's underbelly with his glowing paw.

Cushec lost altitude for a moment, and it seemed as if he was going to fall, but he caught the wind again and veered away from the ground and Stada’s follow up attack. His new direction brought him dangerously close to me, but his attention was thankfully elsewhere, and I remained unmolested for a moment longer.

Despite the abject terror I felt at being the centerpiece of this titanic battle, my rage built quickly as I saw a certain Grobbler witch riding on the back of the dragon. Her eyes were already on me, and she sent a ball of reddish-brown energy at me.

I avoided it easily enough and began trying to create some distance when Saina’s voice yelled in my mind.

“Clive! You need to get away from there.” The panic was clear to hear and feel through our connection.

“I know and I will,” I said, continuing my backwards flight away from the fight and my friends.

“Clive! You’re going the wrong way. Can you not sense my direction?”

“I can, Sania. You guys need to head south now. Go as quickly as you can, and I’ll catch up as soon as it’s possible.”

“I won’t leave you!”

“You’ll have to or you’ll all die. Only Danivra stands a chance of surviving this. And from what I can see, not much of one. I’d rather she stayed with you all and offered protection. We know I can survive this, one way or another. That said, I don’t intend to let my body die here today if I can help it. Now go.”

“Clive is right, Sania. You must all flee from here. I’m not up to the task of fighting these two. Should one fall, I can return to support Clive in an instant, but right now, let’s keep everyone alive.”

I couldn’t continue the conversation any longer as a gout of flames came at me. I shot upwards, but my legs were engulfed in the fires of Cushec’s breath. My trousers burnt away, but my demon legs were completely unaffected by the flames, and I was able to keep moving. I didn’t have time to rue the loss of the items in my void pockets other than to heave a sigh of relief that I still held my cleaver.

Cushec roared at lack of effect on me and followed my path of escape through the air. He was so quick that he soon caught me. I rose above his snapping his jaws, only narrowly avoiding them, to be caught by an attack from Laga. As I completed my evasive maneuver and sought to get my bearings, she hit me in the face with a ball of power. I fell from the air to the sounds of her now distant cackling, completely blinded and my face an utter mess.

In a stroke of luck, we had moved back over the open snow-covered plane rather than the mountains. I landed in the deep snow, sinking a good few feet and becoming completely enveloped.

As I lay there, it took every inch of will power I had not to freak out over the damage I’d taken and instead focus on flooding the area with healing. My face began to instantly knit back together, and my vision came back quickly.

For a moment, I lay there and felt a modicum of safety, cocooned in the deep, soft snow. Part of me considered staying there to take a much-needed breather. That was, of course, stupid as both Cushec and Stada could clearly sense me. If I stayed here much longer, there was every chance a glowing bear paw was going to plunge down and finish me off.

Just as I had that realization, a familiar voice spoke from above.

“You can't hide in there. Silly Clive.”

Danivra spoke in my mind approximately around the same time as I put a name to the voice. That was promptly followed by a very angry Stada and a slightly fearful Cushec repeating the same name. Natom.