Dad came back today and he did not look good. One of his arms was missing and half his face had been severely burned. When he returned, he had an injured gold ranker over one shoulder. They had left as a team of twenty and returned with only five. All of Denver's national guard had been wiped out except one woman and two of the gold rankers had also died.

  It took a few hours to get anyone talking. Dad was livid. Talked about how the monsters were turning people into ghouls that they puppeted with their own blood. He had killed quite a few of them and met something quite terrifying. A creature that the interface had called Adikia had put out a bounty on my dad.

  Day 101, Owen Landers

  Silas didn’t know when exactly he’d decided that luring monsters to fight other monsters was a good idea or why he was the best bait for said creatures. He chose to blame the desperation caused by a hundred strong dragon adjacent army he was about to fight. This led him to his current situation, sprinting across jagged rocks while a bullet train sized centipede-snake tore the world apart behind him.

  It had to be over a hundred feet long, its body a blur of anaconda green scales and hundreds of insectile legs clattering against the stone like machine gun fire. It was insane, he could feel the ground shaking. Wasn’t that something only large dinosaurs were allowed to do?

  Silas dove behind a column of rock and swore under his breath and the serpent tore past him before circling back around the following formation. He’d a spy portal to find something big enough to cause trouble for the dragonkin something powerful enough to even the odds. Originally he had been fixated on finding a kaiju and yeah, sure, he found one it had been a giant crustaceanesque thing. It had also been nearly twenty miles away, far beyond his portal range. So he had scaled back on his expectations and seen this beast.

  He’d spotted it winding through the ravines, it reminded Silas of a time he saw a woman using a loom to weave. She was one of those local church grandmothers who would make itchy blankets for children on Christmas. Silas remembered how she would wind the string around a peg, then draw it across the loom to wrap around the opposite peg. What he saw was similar, though with formations as pegs and a giant bug snake as the string.

  In a moment of staggering overconfidence, Silas had opened a portal over its head and dropped through. He’d poked it in the eye to piss the beast off, then he’d run. Fast.

  “Brilliant,” he muttered, as he scrambled back to his feet, “Real tactical mastermind here, Silas.”

  He threw open another portal and jumped through just as the snake rounded the formation and struck. Silas stumbled out on top of one of the towering formations surrounding the dragonkin camp and almost slid off the edge. Mindful of the hundred foot murder noodle behind him, Silas dove to the side. He scrabbled at the stone as his lower body went over the edge. His fingers closed around a gap in the stone and he came to a halt. The second his boots caught on the cliff side, the centi-snake came tearing out of the portal behind him.

  It had more mass than a fully loaded semi and was thicker around than anything that long had a right to be. He barely ducked as its bulk whipped past, the rush of wind nearly tearing him off the side of the formation. Momentum carried the thing up and over the formation’s edge.

  Silas froze, chest heaving, as he watched it fall, “Huh. That worked.”

  BOOM!

  The chief’s home exploded in a cloud of shattered bones and stone shrapnel. Silas hauled himself up onto the formation and glared down at the dragonkin below, “I’m here! And I brought friends!”

  Then he turned only to lock eyes with a dragonkin standing on the opposite side of the formation. The creature stared at him, mouth open, and trembling a little. For a moment Silas thought the monster was afraid, but that theory was quickly dispelled when it roared a challenge. It pointed a finger at Silas then back at itself with a thumb, a clear challenge.

  “Yeah, no thanks,” Silas muttered, and opened another portal just off the side of the formation.

  He stepped through before the dragon could blink, emerging miles away to retrieve the second part of his plan. The centi-snake alone wouldn’t do enough damage. Maybe it could get a few kills, but the dragonkin had numbers and fire. Silas had also seen what lesser dragonkin fighters could do, and he was sure there were a fistful of higher grade members. There was also the chief to consider, Silas didn’t know exactly how Nimrod could empower a creature, but he would be willing to bet that it was boosted somehow.

  So Silas concluded that he needed something nastier.

  He paused for the few seconds it took to recharge a point of spirit then stepped through a portal onto the beholder’s formation. It had moved to a much thicker formation which happened to be much closer to the dragonkin camp. Two miles and some change.

  In a way, Lehka’s death had made getting this monster as an ally possible. He expected sadness or grief to fill him at the thought. Instead, he felt something he had bound up tight loosen. Anger. Not just over Lehka, but also at the beast before him. It had dragged him into this dimension, he derived some amount of pleasure in forcing one to be responsible for sending him home.

  “Alright, big guy,” he whispered, a savage grin spreading across his face, “Time to eat.”

  The moment he appeared, hundreds of small messages snapped into eyes each one focused on Silas. Tentacles uncoiled, grinding against the stone. It remembered him. Silas didn’t need to stab this one. He just needed to run.

  As a forest of tentacles flowed over the top of the formation, Silas poured everything he had into opening a portal back to the dragon camp. Stepping back he found himself on another formation an angry dragonkin yowled at him from across a dozen feet of empty space. Behind him, the beholder’s screech rattled the world, shutting the stupid lizard man up.

  The portal flared. A single tentacle punched through, followed by a few dozen more. Then the beholder pulled itself through, its body deforming as it squeezed through a space smaller than the diameter of its body. It was at this point that Silas realized he had made an error.

  A beholder was not a centi-snake. It would not just barrel off a cliff just because he opened a portal. The tentacles were good for more than just eating, they could also hold it to the formation. Not wanting to be on the same platform as the eldritch monster, Silas ran and jumped towards the next formation. A notification tried to block his view, he cursed and pushed it aside.

  The dragonkin’s eyes widened as it watched Silas sail and miss the edge of its formation. Then it backpedaled as the beholder immediately gave chase. Silas may have missed the edge, jumping a dozen feet loaded down with armor and weapons was a bit beyond him. However, he still hit the side of the formation, latching on for dear life.

  Attempting to give chase, the beholder started flowing down the side of the initial formation. Its massive body was too much for the formation to handle. Stone buckled under the stress and the beholder, formation, and all, toppled into the dragonkin camp.

  “Surprise,” Silas cackled madly as he climbed.

  The beholder roared, the sound warping the air. It was not just a loud noise, but an unsettling one as well due to how the roar from each maw harmonized, The nearest dragons didn’t even have time to scream before they were crushed by stone or devoured by a flood of teeth. If he had to compare a beholder to any animal, it would be the cinematic interpretation of piranhas. Unless it used its main mouth, it simply took hundreds of golf ball sized bites until nothing was left of its victims.

  He reached the top and peered over the edge. The cocky dragonkin was staring down at the mayhem occurring down below. It twitched, seemingly uncertain what it should do. Silas cleared up its uncertainty by grabbing its tail and hauling it over the edge. It squawked in surprise, managing to catch itself after falling a few body lengths farther than Silas.

  Hauling himself over the ledge, Silas immediately turned and drew a mantis blade. As soon as the dragonkin’s hand came over the edge, he slashed. It fell again, this time four fingers lighter. With a temporarily safe vantage point, he looked out at his handiwork.

  Silas thought he should’ve felt horror. Yes, he had butchered animals for food, but that was natural. He watched a human shaped creature get smeared by a multi-ton serpent, all that accompanied it was a sense of relief. His plan was working.

  Scanning the chaos below, Silas looked for the captives. The smoke kicked up by the collapsing formation did nothing to help. There was also very little wind in this world, keeping the dust static for longer than normal. Still, there was quite a bit of light below. Each dragonkin had started using all their flame powers making them easy to spot. In addition to that, there was the dark swirl of the portal and what appeared to be a bonfire.

  Backlit by the bonfire was a group of six people. The smoke obscured their features, but the lack of flames and tails identified them as his missing people. Good, they were away from the main conflict. Only, there should be seven. Silas gritted his teeth, who else had died?

  Then, a scream cut through the violence. It was childish and high pitched making it easily identifiable even if the words were lost in the noise of battle. Sammantha. He turned sharply, spotting her chained to the burnt semi truck. She was jerking at a chain that held her to the rig screaming, presumably for Bella.

  Silas’s jaw clenched he was a soldier, it was his job to protect his people. Lehka had died because he had underestimated these monsters. That would not again.

  He drew his bow.

  The dragon chief stood out as a towering figure wrapped in violet flame. The bastard radiated power. Silas knew better than to shoot him. It was smart, at least as smart as Silas was, but that wasn’t its only advantage. Its body stat had to be massively inflated the monster would see the arrow coming before it left the string and either catch or dodge it. However, there were plenty of other targets.

  He aimed a bit lower. If he could shoot the boss, then he would get rid of the more prominent minions.

  His first arrow sank into a dragonkin’s shoulder. It was one of the ones swarming over the centi-snake like a bunch of ants over a gummy bear. This one stood out due to its ability to stay standing on the writhing creature. It had skill, unfortunately, skill did not help with the unknown.

  Bone cracked as the arrow punched through the humerus and knocked it off balance. It snarled, dropped its weapon, then fell off the side of the centi-snake. Silas watched as the dragonkin got up, only to stagger to the side, half its face drooping as it did its best to get back into the fight.

  Just to be safe, Silas popped another piece of beholder into his mouth. That was some fast acting toxin. The next few shots weren’t as lucky. He hit arms and legs or less vital areas. When those didn’t immediately show symptoms of poisoning he assumed that he must have his an artery the first time. Poison meant he didn’t need clean kills. Just blood and he got plenty of that.

  For a few minutes, the battlefield became a blur of motion. Gouts of fire, the enraged shriek of the beholder, the writhing form of the dying centi-snake filled the camp. Silas kept moving, portaling between formations, firing and vanishing before any dragon could track him. Most of the arrows found a target and some of his initial hits started dropping.

  Then the purple fire moved.

  All Silas saw through the smoke was a streak of purple moving so fast that he would have mistaken it for a motorcyclist with purple LEDs before the apocalypse. The dragonkin jumped, clearing the dust cloud and smoke clinging to the ground. Their eyes met, and Silas saw excited fervor not the burning hate he expected. Silas tried to open a portal, the air shimmered, then the sigil failed.

  “What?” He tried again. Nothing.

  Panic flooded him, not dissimilar to when he had first arrived in this hell. The only things that could block his portals were spirits or other portals. He could see where he wanted to go, there were no creatures there to block him, so it had to be a portal. Silas’s eyes widened as he connected the dots, the dragonkin had drained a portal to grant their chief purple fire. The bastard was walking portal interference.

  “Of course the boss is immune,” Silas hissed.

  The dragonkin hit the side of the formation, causing the whole thing to shudder. Its shot up the side claws tearing through the rock like it was moving across flat ground. Silas fired an arrow into its chest, and while it sparked off the monster's natural armor, the chief was still vulnerable to gravity. The stone in its grip tore free sending it back to the ground.

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  He spun, opening another portal as soon as he felt his sigil activate. This time on the far side of the camp and on the ground. Here he was less of a target and he might be able to get everyone out. Sprinting to where he had last seen Samantha, he quickly made out the shape of the truck.

  “Go away, I can fight… Silas?” Samantha’s voice went from defiant to questioning.

  “The one and only,” He said as he looked over cuffs.

  Contrary to most movies, one could not just slice through chain links with a sword. Maybe one day, but at the moment that action would result in the chain being dragged to the ground along with the girl. That didn’t make the sword useless, Silas placed it between the pipe she was chained to and the body of the gasoline tank. Then he heaved.

  His mantis blade bent, then the pipe jerked free of the tank. Samantha staggered forward, catching herself on the side of the vehicle. Silas grabbed the other cuff and slid it over the end of the pipe.

  “Let's go..” Silas grabbed her arm, pulling the girl behind him.

  He pulled up short as a violet meteor landed between Silas and the others. Samantha screamed in surprise. The cloud of dust and smoke was pushed back in a large ring. Standing from a crouch the dragonkin chief glared down at Silas. Well, the option to grab his people and go was out.

  The panic threatened to rise once again. Silas growled, he wasn’t the same person he was three months ago. Tossing his bent weapon aside, he drew his second. If he was going to die he would do his best to put a foot of steel between the chief’s eyes.

  They both let loose battle cries and charged. Then the chief disappeared in an arc of smoke. Silas staggered at the sudden loss of a target.

  It took Silas a few moments to locate the dragonkin in the wall of smoke then a few more to understand. When the chief had lunged at Silas, the beholder had snatched the glowing purple beacon out of the air. This was exactly the kind of thing chaos was supposed to accomplish.

  Not passing up the opportunity, Silas hurried on with Samantha. The chief roared, its anger cutting through the clamor of battle. Silas looked back to make sure the purple glow was still airborne, just in time to see a violet supernova go off.

  A wave of heat and purple flames pushed the smoke away. Most of the structures collapsed and Silas was tossed a few feet forward. He shielded Samantha from the intense heat and the impact with the ground.

  The beholder’s screeches of rage turned into a synchronized chorus of fear as any part of its body within the fire was burned to ash. When the light faded, only the dragonkin chief remained alive, half of the beholder’s body slumped lifelessly behind it. Blood evaporated to vapor from a multitude of small wounds covering its body.

  The chief was breathing heavily and the purple flames vanished. A weight felt like it was lifted off him. He checked his portal sigil to find the limit on his power coming exclusively from the black portal. Were its powers gone?

  Silas remembered that Bella’s sigil had deactivated due to impurities. Presumably, the impure monsters also had a limit to their sigil use, which could only be a good thing. It didn’t matter why, it was unable, just that it was now vulnerable. He took advantage of the chief’s distraction and unslung his bow.

  “God,” Silas prayed, notching one last arrow. “If you have ever heard my prayers, let this venom be the end of our trials in Hell.”

  He fired.

  The arrow flew true, cutting through the smoke, straight to the dragon’s skull. For a heartbeat, he thought it would hit. Then the dragon tilted its head, just barely, and the arrow clipped its horn instead. The shaft warped as it hit the bone, which seemed to be harder than steel.

  Silas exhaled slowly. “Figures.”

  The dragon’s gaze burned hotter. Silas met it, defiant, though his confidence was wavering.

  “Come on then,” he said, putting on a savage grin. “Let’s finish it.”

  Silas tried to sound confident, he told himself he was ready. At least, in his head, he was. He’d done everything he could, poisoned his weapons, upgraded his armor, made two extra swords, built himself a bow, and even bought some other monsters. Within the time he’d been given, this was as ready as anyone could be.

  The dragonkin chief glared at him across the battlefield. It opened and closed its hand like it wanted nothing more than to strangle Silas. Which was probably accurate.

  Silas had hurt it. That alone was more than it had likely expected. If something like this had made it through the portal to Earth, he wasn’t sure humanity could’ve stopped it. Without advanced tech or heavy ordnance, the creature would’ve been unstoppable. Even now, stripped of its sigil’s power and bleeding from dozens of wounds, it still had claws, natural bone armor, and a body stat around ten or fifteen.

  While the deck was still stacked against him, Silas believed that winning was more than a pipe dream. He raised his jagged blade and leveled it at the creature. “You know,” he said, voice hoarse but steady, “your god told you to kill me. You’re not doing a great job of it. So either your god sucks or you do.”

  The sounds of battle around them were dying out. Screams and crunching of bone faded into silence. Most of the other dragonkin were gone Silas had shot thirty to forty of them and his monster guests had likely killed or wounded the others before succumbing to their injuries.. The dragonkin chief’s forces had fallen apart, many of them burned alive by their leader’s reckless final attack. The clearing was a graveyard of ash and twisted bodies.

  Silas grinned grimly. “So one on one, then?”

  The dragon tilted its head, studying him. Silas expected rage, grief, anything that a man who had lost everything would feel. Instead, he saw fanatic devotion in the unsteady eyes of a zealot certain his god was watching. Silas shuddered, these monsters took the worst parts of humanity and crammed them into a scaly body designed to deal death.

  When it finally made a move, it was to laugh. Silas grimaced, despite its condition, the dragonkin was not scared of him in the slightest. What was worse, Silas was certain it wasn’t underestimating him. It flexed its hands, long claws gleaming like black knives. They could cut through stone with ease.

  His armor might only buy him a second or two, dodging would need to be his priority. He tossed his spare sword toward Samantha, he had no time for his dual wielding fantasies. Regardless, he wouldn’t win in a contest of strength or speed, it would have to come down to skill.

  He drew a slow breath, raised his blade, and stepped forward. Then a white bottle of some kind passed through the space just in front of the dragonkin’s face. It had a chain wrapped around it, glowing so hot that it was hard to look at. Both Silas and the dragonkin had a moment to look at each other in confusion before the world went white.

  Kaboom. Silas was hearing far too many noises like that today.

  A blast threw both combatants backwards. Silas hit the dirt hard, ears ringing. When his vision cleared, he saw the dragonkin sprawled in the mud, smoke rising from its chest. Bella stood off to the side, arm still extended. She’d thrown a propane tank at the dragonkin.

  Silas let out a ragged laugh. “For a big bad dragonkin, your situational awareness is terrible.”

  The explosion had embedded shards of metal in the creature’s hide, its scales cracked and bleeding. It staggered upright, smoke curling from its jaw. Silas had escaped a similar fate due to not being the target and wearing armor that covered his entire body.

  Growling with anger this time, the dragonkin glanced at Silas before dismissing him. Then it turned towards Bella and the rage that filled it was extreme. It was to the point that Silas suspected Bella had done something to spite the creature earlier.

  “Damn it,” Silas hissed, breaking into a sprint, “Hey, it's me you want! Look at me.”

  His words fell on deaf ears. One moment the dragonkin stood twenty feet from Silas, the next it had covered the ground between itself and Bella in a blur. Its hand closed around Bella’s face, hitting her like a runaway truck. If her Greater Sturdy Gatherer and high body hadn’t made her so durable, the move would have likely torn her head off. The strike still flung her like a doll, sending her bouncing across the dirt until she came to rest at the base of a debris pile.

  “Mom!” Samantha screamed, running forward.

  “Stay back!” Silas shouted. “Stay out of the way!”

  He tried to grab her, but months of training had done wonders for her. She ignored him and sprinted for her mother.

  The dragon’s head turned, eyes narrowing on the girl. Silas saw the cunning calculation flicker across its face. It wasn’t stupid, though it had likely thought Silas would treat his people the same way it treated its subordinates. As disposable pawns or property to be retrieved. It looked at Silas with a mocking grin.

  “Don’t” Silas ordered. Again he was ignored.

  Again he was too slow, he cursed the fact that Flesh Lord did so little to improve his body. The creature lunged for Samantha. She raised her arms on instinct, the layer of bubble like armor forming around her. Instead of striking, the chief grabbed her by the arm and swung her up, then brought her back down to the ground. The first impact cracked it, but didn’t break it. The second did, something broke in Samantha’s arm, she screamed, which Silas took as a good sign for the moment.

  Then Batu charged in from the flank, roaring a battle cry. Using perfect form that would have made Sensei Landers proud, he brought a shin up into the dragonkin’s groin. Normally, that would have been the right move, unfortunately, monsters reproduced via other methods. The chief didn’t flinch, with a burst of speed it swung Samantha’s limp body like a club, sending Batu flying and releasing the girl into his chest.

  Rekha came next, shrieking like a banshee, hair wild and face streaked with blood where her own nails had scratched grooves into her cheeks. She climbed the dragonkin, digging in like a rabid insect. The dragonkin was not prepared for a human to crawl up it’s like some kind of suicidal insect to try and claw its eyes out.

  For once, the horns on the sides of its head proved to be a detriment as they stopped it from reaching over and plucking the woman off. It tried lashing her with its tail, but whatever state of madness filled Rekha also stopped any pain from registering. She got to its head and plunged one grimy finger into its eye.

  “Hold on!” Silas shouted, already closing the distance.

  The dragonkin howled in pain, seizing Rekha by the arm and hurling her to the dirt. The crack of bone was unmistakable. She hit hard but the madness in her eyes was not reduced. Lifting its foot the dragonkin stomped, crushing her rib cage. Despite the deadly blow she continued clawing futilely at the scales.

  Silas struck. His sword came down hard, he didn’t aim for any vitals, they were all covered in natural bone armor that was too tough to pierce. So he aimed for a vulnerable spot on the dragonkin’s tail. Its scales were hard, but not to the point that a razor sharp blade couldn’t cleave through.

  While the tail might have seemed like a frivolous target, Silas hoped that they were similar to lizards and cats. With their tails offering balance. A hope that turned out to be somewhat true. While it didn’t simply topple over, the dragonkin took an extra step or two to regain its balance.

  Silas ducked a wild backhand and chopped again aiming for an ankle this time. It shifted its stance, letting the mantis blade thud ineffectively against its armored shin. A claw swipe came next, normally it would have been a problem, but the lack of balance forced it to telegraph its movement.

  Leaning back Silas let the fist blast past. The force and speed behind it was staggering. Silas would compare it to equipment designed to break concrete.

  He brought his weapon down on the dragonkin’s shoulder. Silas’s lack of experience in combat made itself apparent. In a single motion, the chief whipped its arm back, simultaneously deflecting the blade with its shoulder plate while driving a sweeping back fist into Silas’s gut.

  The dragonkin followed the rotational force of its swipe with a full body uppercut. It applied every part of its body, from its legs to its back and finally its arm, uncoiling like a compressed spring. Sila’s helmet deformed under the force. His teeth snapped together together and stars burst across his vision. He staggered, spat out a fragment of tooth, and fumbled for a piece of beholder meat.

  When his vision cleared, he realized that he had dropped his sword. Looking around frantically, he finally found it when it struck him in the chest. His armor dented, the impact driving the air from his lungs. He stumbled but stayed upright. Fortunately, swords were not designed to work on armor, the dragonkin’s claws were sharper anyway, so he wasn’t entirely sure why it had picked up the mantis blade in the first place.

  It struck him again, this time the blade glanced off his shoulder guard. With whatever brain trauma the dragonkin had inflicted now healed, Silas ripped a poisoned arrow from his belt and lunged, stabbing it at the beast aiming for the gap between the upper and forearm plates. The dragonkin caught his wrist mid-swing and tried to slice at him with the stolen sword. It was a bad angle causing the blade to barely scratch the armor. Oddly, the chief threw a look of disgust at Batu before tossing the weapon aside.

  Silas wasn’t sure what that was about, but he still had a free hand, so he drove his spiked gauntlet into its nose. Evidently, dragonkin also had cartilage noses.. The dragonkin roared releasing Silas. He tried to disengage to go get his sword, but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid a kick to the chest.

  Armor bent, but took the blow. The chief did not give him any time to recollect himself. With blood running down its face it raised both fists above its head and brought them down on his shoulders. Silas caught the blow on crossed arms his armor groaned and his forearms screamed under the pressure. He was driven to his knees, regretting his choice to block instead of dodging.

  A scaled knee rose to meet his face, the visor of his helmet saved him from a broken nose, but he was still thrown to his back. The visor bent to the point of obstructing his vision.

  He used some spirit to weaken the face plate. Silas tore it off just in time to see the dragonkin’s raised foot. It stomped and Silas rolled, the impact slamming into his armored side.

  The plate held and Silas, mid roll, latched onto the foot jerking it along with him. Without its tail to balance, the creature’s foot slipped and it fell forward, crashing down. Silas was on it in an instant. He climbed its chest, straddling it while hammering its face with both fists. The spiked gauntlets shredded flesh and scale.

  While this position was advantageous for Silas, the dragonkin chief took the beating like a champ. Normal people couldn’t take a single punch to the face while this thing took a dozen from Silas. The dragonkin roared, grabbed him around the torso, and squeezed. Agony exploded through him as the claws pierced armor and into flesh.

  Silas vomited blood and bile on the dragonkin’s face when his stomach was crushed. The pain was horrible, but a cold feeling had taken its place. His body was in shock pushing all controls onto his fight or flight reflexes. Another notification. Silas roared at the stupid interface’s constant interruptions and punched harder.

  He hit until his hands went numb, until bones in his fingers cracked beneath the gauntlets. Sometimes he would miss and the point of a horn would scrape along an arm. All the while the dragonkin chief grinned. It was like an adult watching a child rage, more amusing than dangerous. Then dragonkin got bored. It bit down, catching his hand between its jaws. Armor splintered. He screamed as teeth crushed through steel and flesh.

  When it finally wrenched its head aside, it tore his gauntlet clean off, hand and all. Silas was tossed to the side like an abandoned chew toy. Rolling to his knees, Silas saw the chief stand. He watched in horror as the dragonkin removed his hand from the gauntlet before shoving it in its mouth. Not breaking eye contact, the monster chewed. The sound was wet and far too similar to chewing on ice cubes. Despite everything Silas had seen in hell, this still made his stomach turn.

  Then Batu was there again, limping forward with a face full of rage. He held Silas’s sword in one hand the mantis blade nearly too heavy for the man to hold in his severely injured state. Glancing back at the man, the chief scoffed making a swiping motion with its rear.

  Then it remembered, Silas had chopped the limb off. Batu didn’t hesitate. He drove the blade into the dragon’s tail stump and into his pelvis.

  The dragonkin shrieked, a sound too high for its size. It whipped around and grabbed Batu by the arm, snapping it like a twig. Picking him up, he slammed the man into the dirt. Bones crunched and Batu's back was bent at a very wrong angle. With a rumbling growl, the chief drew the blade from his rear and pinned Batu to the ground through his sternum.

  “No!” Silas yelled as he forced himself up, blood pouring from his side. He reached for his satchel, where were his beholder rations. Looking around for the absent bag, his eyes landed on one of the dragonkin’s bone spears. If he couldn’t get his health back, he would just have to take the dragonkin’s.

  The dragonkin looked up, grinning. It knew it had won. Silas’s armor was cracked, his body mangled, and his left hand was digesting in its stomach. He could barely breathe. While it was covered in blood, it was moving just fine, Silas would even bet that its tail could regrow. The only lasting damage had been done by Rekha to its eye, and even that was iffy as the monster would get a reward from its god.

  The monster took a step forward and faltered. It blinked. Confusion flickered in its one remaining eye. Blood dripped from its mouth in thick, black ropes. It staggered again. Silas frowned. It wasn’t blood loss. There wasn’t enough, despite the piece of steel Batu had shoved into it.

  Silas was past the point of caring. He had a weapon and intended to at least stab out the beast’s other eye. Slowly, with wheezing breaths, Silas marched towards the unsteady dragonkin. It growled and marched in a wobbly line towards Silas. They met in the center of the ruined clearing, both barely standing. The final exchange wasn’t a clash of titans it was two dying creatures, too stubborn to fall.

  Silas stabbed, his aim atrocious with one hand. With a pointless thunk, the spear bounced off his enemy’s natural armor. The dragonkin tried to counter, but hit nothing but air like it was seeing double. This spectacle continued for what was likely an embarrassingly long time, neither making any headway.

  Everything came to an end when the dragonkin sagged to its knees. Silas staggered back almost falling back himself. The dragonkin was breathing heavily, glaring unsteadily at Silas.

  Taking another step back, Silas wondered what was going on. It was acting drunk, like it had consumed something it shouldn’t have. He blinked, glancing down at his missing hand. Maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth. A smile crossed his face, “You have to be kidding me.”

  Silas looked down at his poisoned foe. A part of him wanted to let the poison kill it. The dragonkin was a warrior, so dying to poison had to be an dishonor. Then his rational brain took over. They were in hell, honor was for earth. With that, he stabbed the dragonkin in the neck. When it didn’t die, Silas stabbed it again and again. Its resistance weakened until finally, it fell.

  This was not the glorious victory he wanted. Looking up at the sky he sighed, “If you have heard any of my prayers, let this venom end our trial in Hell. God you really do work in mysterious ways,” His gaze drifted toward Bella, still breathing. Samantha, bloodied but conscious. He smiled faintly, “Even if it cost a hand, I’d say it was worth it, so thank you.”