Matthaeus ran through the halls with all he had, the tower slowly collapsing behind him. His heart raced in his chest, beating so hard he could hear it and feel every pulse through his body. It felt familiar, this panic, this fear. The way his vision narrowed down to a tunnel, and everything seemed to move so slowly.

The screams of the wyvern behind him sent him running into a side room, as the wyvern’s head burst through the hallway where he had just been. It bashed itself against the wall to the room, the mortar and stones crumbling but holding, and Matthaeus looked quickly for his next escape.

There, he thought, seeing a section of the floor that had caved in both above and below him. The rubble acted like a ramp, guiding him down towards the next floor.

As he started to descend, however, something tugged in his gut. Like a sixth sense that he couldn’t describe. He stopped in his tracks just as the wyvern's head appeared underneath him, snapping at the air where he would have been if he had kept running.

It turned up to look at him and hissed, those needle-like teeth glistening dangerously.

Matthaeus turned around and sprinted up the rubble, fleeing to the higher floor instead, using the caved-in section as a makeshift staircase. The floor under him began to shudder as the wyvern moved again, rattling the entire tower around him. With wide eyes he jumped from his place on the floor as it collapsed, landing on a single sturdy patch of ground as holes began to form in the floor around him. The wings of the wyvern blocked out the hole in the wall, the giant beast crawling across the outside of the tower again, and Matthaeus tried desperately to guess where the head was. That was the only way to predict where it would strike from next.

He saw it just in time. The shining of an orange eye, peeking in through a tiny hole in the wall. Matthaeus leapt from the platform he was on, dropping to the floor below as the wyvern’s bite destroyed the platform he’d been standing on.

He grunted in pain as he landed one story below, but started running again immediately. Debris began to rain down from above as the floor overhead started to collapse, and Matthaeus bit back a scream as a stone the size of his head landed on his shoulder.

Still, he ran. Back out into the hallway, running without plan or direction, just so long as it was away.

That is, until he came to a dead end. He turned a corner, expecting the hallway to continue, only it didn’t. It ended in a jagged, broken edge, the rain pelting Matthaeus’ chest once again as the toes of his boots poked off the ledge.

Below was a drop that went nearly six stories to the ground. The entire wall of the tower had collapsed, from top to bottom, and there was nowhere safe below to drop to. He wouldn’t be able to escape by dropping lower again, not this time.

He turned to run again, back the way he came, but came to an immediate halt. There, crawling through the hallway towards him, was the wyvern. Its wings were crumpled up, only barely able to fit into the building because it had destroyed most of the inner walls already.

“Hhhsssss.”

Matthaeus shuddered and took a step back, until his heel met the end of the floor. He spared a glance back over his shoulder. The drop looked just as far as it had a moment ago.

The wyvern slithered closer, jaws snapping open and shut in anticipation, and its eyes never leaving Matthaeus, who stood frozen. Internally, his body and mind screamed. His heart raced, every instinct in him told him to run, but yet he remained motionless. Watching in silence as the death reflected in the wyvern’s eyes grew closer.

Vaguely, he could hear someone yelling. It sounded so very far away.

The wyvern reached him, rearing its head back as Matthaeus watched it all in slow motion. The inside of its maw, the two rows of teeth that glistened in what little light existed. The merciless, wrathful glare in its eyes.

Then, the wyvern struck, and a weight pushed Matthaeus to the side. As he fell through the air, Matthaeus saw a glimpse of bronze hair and black armour, and then the jaws of the wyvern snapped shut and Matthaeus lost sight of it all.

Reyland ran as fast as his legs could carry him through the halls of the tower. He leapt over crumbled walls, over open pits of collapsed floor, under ceiling beams that had fallen down into tangled mazes. All of it was in his way, and he cursed every last bit of it that slowed him.

Hang in there, Matthaeus.

From above him he heard the collapsing of more stone, and he adjusted his course. He had to make it in time, he had to.

As he made it up to the next floor, he finally caught sight of what he’d been looking for. The Norlander boy was standing right on the edge of the tower, silhouetted against the night sky where thunder and lightning still cracked. And before him, the wyvern slithered ever closer.

“Matthaeus! Keep moving!”

The boy stayed stock still.

“Shit,” Reyland spat. He kept running, for that was all he could do.

He made it in the nick of time. The wyvern lunged, but Reyland lunged faster. His hands struck Matthaeus’ shoulder and he shoved with all he had, sending the boy flying away from the wyvern’s jaws.

Reyland planted his foot on the ground, stopping his momentum, then backstepped. The wyvern’s fangs snapped shut an inch in front of his face, cutting him off from Matthaeus.

Even as Reyland’s heart raced and the horrifying realisation that he was now face to face with a wyvern came over him, his training kicked in. He drew his shortsword in a draw cut across the wyvern’s eye, but its scaled eyelid snapped shut too quickly. His blade glanced off the armoured scales, but he was already backpedalling, dodging the wyvern’s attempt to crush him against the wall with its horns.

“Matthaeus! Get away from this thing! I’ll keep it busy!”

Then Reyland thrust his spear at the wyvern’s eye, forcing it to blink shut again. In the moment that bought him, he turned to run back the way he came.

He spotted Matthaeus sprinting the opposite direction, hopefully towards a set of stairs. The wyvern growled and turned towards the boy, but Reyland didn’t let it give chase. He threw the spear into the wyvern’s head, though it bounced off the scales once again. Still, it seemed to do the trick.

The wyvern turned its gaze on him, and with a shudder, Reyland tightened his grip on his sword.

“Leave the kid be, aye? Ya got me to deal with now.”

“Krruuuoaah!”

Reyland turned and ran for all he was worth as the tower began collapsing behind him.

Griff’s arms burned as he took another swing through the thick flesh of the bear. It roared at him, stomping the ground in an attempt to crush him, but he was no longer there. His blade slashed another bloody line through its foreleg, joining the countless others that marred the beast’s body. Griff himself was unharmed, though he took no comfort in the fact. There was no ‘harmed’ when fighting a beast of this size, there was only alive or dead.

A leg twice more than twice as thick around as him swiped through the air, and again he dodged by a hair’s breadth. Before it could strike again he dashed underneath it, raising his blade and widening the split in its belly, carving through the organs that dangled beneath.

The beast roared again in pain, and Griff knew he was close. It was slowing.

He cursed his inability to kill it decisively early on, when he had the chance. A proper strike to the spine, maybe… or through the eye to the brain.

Idly, he wondered how many had died tonight because he had failed to end this single beast soon enough.

He dodged another bite, taking the opportunity of its outstretched neck to stab into the thick fat around its neck. Even that seemed to do little to hurt it, only angering the beast further, turning its slowing movements more frantic and desperate.

Griff bided his time, dodging, and stacking up wound after wound on the bear. He knew it wouldn’t be long now. Even the stings of a bee could fell a bear, if there were enough of them. The Blighted may have been mightier than normal beasts, but they still bled.

“Grrroooaa…” The bear groaned, finally beginning to sway on its feet. Griff took advantage of its moment of distraction, slashing through the tendons at the back of its hind leg. It dropped to its knees, head lowering nearly to the ground as the bear staggered from blood loss.

It barely reacted as Griff leapt onto its back, running up its spine towards the head.

“Grraaaaaaa!” The bear roared as Griff thrust his spear sideways through its neck.

His greatsword was embedded through the back of its neck, the dull end pointing towards the ground and the sharp edge towards the sky. It poked in one side, went underneath the spine, and then out the other side of the neck where the tip poked through, dripping violet blood.

Underneath him the bear began to struggle again, but it was too weak now. It could do nothing more.

Griff planted his foot on the handle of his sword, grabbing the dull backside of the tip of his sword in hand. He glared down mercilessly at the beast, even as it shook and shuddered and tried to rise once more.

Then, pulling on the tip even as he stepped down on the handle, Griff used his sword like a pry bar, forcing the thick blade straight through the bear’s spinal cord.

A brilliant spray of glowing blood spewed into the air like a geyser, coating him head to toe as the beast went limp. It dropped to the ground unceremoniously, nearly shaking Griff loose in the process.

He pulled his greatsword from the beast’s corpse, letting its blood be rinsed off slowly by the pouring rain. He exhaled deeply, the long battle weighing on him, and not for the first time he questioned just how many more years his body would be able to hold out on him.

Griff examined the battlefield before him, no longer forced to keep most of his attention on the bear, and he found himself surprised for the first time that night.

The soldiers were winning. What few remained had gathered into a single group, a shield wall bolstered by long spears that were several rows deep. A few Ordained remained standing as well, firing crossbows or guarding flanks, some even directly within the ranks of the shield wall, carrying the weapons of fallen soldiers.

Slowly, one by one, the remaining Blighted seemed to be backing away. With the direwolf nowhere to be seen, and the corpse of the bear now in full view, the lesser beasts seemed directionless.

Interesting, Griff thought.

He walked back into the inner wall of the keep, holding his blade out to the side as he approached the horde. They noticed him before he reached them, some of their hideous ranks turning to face him with snarls and howls on their lips.

Griff held his blade towards them, watching their reaction. Even from a distance, something odd happened. A wolf that had been growling at him, on the brink of lunging, caught the scent of something in the air, and began to sniff. It turned its eyes towards his blade, and then behind him, to the corpse of the bear in the distance.

The wolf backed away, a snarling again, but this time, not aggressively. But defensively.

“So you’re smart enough to understand, then.”

Griff flicked his blade forwards, sending a splash of violet blood out in an arc into the crowd of Blighted. The scent fell over all of them, and they began backing away, barking and yipping and shrieking at each other.

They all looked at the corpse of the bear, and the blood that wept from Griff’s blade.

And then, just one by one at first, but then all together, the horde began to flee. They turned from the soldier’s shield wall, sprinting towards the gate and the walls, climbing or running their way towards the forest. The air was filled with their monstrous cries, until eventually, the courtyard was filled with only soldiers, and the dead.

The few people who had survived looked about with disbelieving eyes, the shield wall remaining in place long after the last Blighted had disappeared into the darkness beyond.

“We’re… we’re alive,” a man called out. His cry was soon joined by others.

“We’re alive!”

“We did it!”

“We-”

The cracking of stone cut them all off, as a massive chunk of the tower collapsed and fell to the ground. Soldiers dove out of the way as it nearly crushed them, the rubble sending waves of muddy water out across the courtyard, drenching many of the people still standing.

Griff and the rest of the crowd turned their attention upwards, to where the sight of black wings filled the sky.

“Krruuoooah!”

The wyvern flew headfirst into the tower, bursting through stone and mortar with ease. Dozens more stones fell to the ground, and soldiers shouted in panic as they tried to dodge the horse-sized boulders that fell upon them. Not all were successful.

Through a gap in the wall, Griff caught sight of a bronze haired man barely dodging the swiping talons of the wyvern. He growled deep in his throat, hefting his greatsword once again.

“Soldiers!” Griff yelled. “Man every working ballista! This night is not finished yet!”

As people scrambled to follow his order, Griff charged straight towards the base of the tower, aiming for the top where the wyvern now lay. He could only hope his apprentice would survive until he got there.