The fiend didn’t charge us.

The party had gathered to watch the fight. Lord Chowwick hadn’t been discreet. I wondered if that was something he even had the capacity for. The man’s declarations soon had every member of the expedition gathering behind me to watch the fight—from the nervous, unfamiliar merchantmen traveling with us to the city knights, as experienced in the ways of fiends as any mortal man could be.

As I stood there, an island alone in front of the gathered crowd, my HEARING still picked out the words of the men below. The comments of the merchantmen meant little to me; they would have been terrified by a bearwolf. A Griidlord now, a bearwolf shouldn’t worry me much. It was the words of the knights that gave me pause.

I heard one passing comment, in a low tone, to the knight beside him. “By the Oracle, but that’s a big one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one half as big in all my days. Better the suit have at him than me.”

His companion responded, “The lad’s being brash. He’s a rookie. Even he’ll be no match. Maybe we’ll be lucky, and the thing will put an end to him. Then young Lord Lance can take the suit, and the city will finally be in good hands.”

I glanced over my shoulder toward Chowwick. He stood by the others, arms crossed, totally silent for once. He was watching me. Despite the worry the knights' words inspired, Chowwick’s confidence seemed absolute. He had said he was my SHIELD, and my safety was a matter of honor to him. I turned my head back up the rise and decided I needed to be able to trust some of them, and if not my SHIELD, then who?

There, at the top of the rise, down the narrow corridor that had been carved through the trees, the beast awaited me. It was not as terrifyingly huge as the thing that had emerged in the arena. But it was still big. The size of the two biggest bulls I had ever seen put together. The creature had gigantic forearms, so large they diminished the size of its rear legs. It paced above me uncertainly. As it moved, it alternated between walking on four legs and rearing up to totter awkwardly on two. The thing looked not altogether unlike a boar. Its maw was full of protruding tusks, but the teeth I could see—even from here with my SIGHT—were rows of sharp, shark-like teeth.

I continued walking toward it. As I separated myself more and more from the small army behind me, the thing seemed to pay increasing attention to me alone. I could sense a charge was coming.

Voice? I thought.

There was nothing.

Voice? I tried to summon it again, but again there was no response. Maybe Morningstar had been right. Maybe the being wasn’t omnipresent. Maybe, right now, it was haunting the Sword of Indianapolis. Maybe it was off playing out plans or ploys elsewhere.

The fiend’s head snapped fiendishly, rotating and tilting this way and that, as though frantically trying to decide which eye it should view me through. But there was no panic in the thing.

Only rage.

I took one more step, and that seemed to satisfy the strange calculus the demon was performing. Some were said to be as dumb as beasts, others as cunning as men. Had this one decided it could not escape and that it was time to fight? Could it simply not resist the sight of a solitary man, an easy victim?

It charged. Those huge forearms pounded into the ground, sending a spray of pine needles and loam into the sky. It ran as though it hated the ground, wounding the soil with horrendous gashes as it came toward me. It was too fast for something so big. Every human instinct in me screamed to run. The primal need to survive begged me. My nerves told me that a man couldn’t fight such a thing.

But I was no longer a man. Now I was a Griidlord.

When it was thirty or so yards away, one arm lashed out and seized a still-standing tree from the edge of the corridor. It cast the tree toward me.

I can’t deny I had been nervous as I approached it. That shamed me. I had thought I was past that, ready to test myself.

There was no time for nerves now.

My visor blazed with POWER for a moment. The tree, which had been hurtling impossibly fast toward me, almost seemed to pause as I pushed my speed. I ducked under the projectile easily.

The fiend was coming almost as fast as the tree it had thrown, and it was there to meet me.

A clawed hand swept in from the right. POWER gave me the speed and time to move back outside the arc of the blow. I swung with CUT and pulsed SHIELD at once. I hacked at the forearm as I moved toward it. The CUT opened a gash, but against the size of this demon, it was nothing but a flesh wound. My SHIELD was more interesting. I body-checked the passing forearm under the protection of SHIELD, and the resulting kinetics were educational.

The recoil sent the creature’s forearm rocketing back toward its body. This was good—the weight and sudden movement unbalanced it, and it staggered forward and to the side. The recoil also launched my whole body into the air. I hurtled back down the slope, a projectile myself now. There was certainly some panic in me then, but I can look back and say I was gaining confidence in my abilities as well. I twisted in the air and watched the ground coming. Under POWER, it seemed to approach too slowly, but I understood this was a distortion of my perceptions. I was hurtling toward the earth very quickly indeed.

I twisted to get my legs under me, pulsed SHIELD, and hit the ground like a cannonball. Soil erupted into the air, and my legs buried themselves in the earth. I turned to look back up the slope toward the fiend, hoping to see how it was recovering from the blow. Maybe this would be my chance to race back and put it down swiftly and safely.

It was already only ten feet away.

I wanted to rest my POWER. I had no sense of its depletion, but there was no time.

I rolled backward as the creature launched itself at me. It missed me with those huge claws, but suddenly I was under it, pinned by the weight of its chest, its maw gnashing and slobbering at me.

A surge of momentary elation hit me as I realized why it wasn’t closing those jaws on me: I was holding it at bay with one hand, pushing against its neck, near the jaw. Even in that frantic moment, I could feel my eyes widen. Against the size of this thing, the strength of my arm was enough to affect it.

But my elbow quivered under the pressure. I wouldn’t be able to hold it for long, and I was burning through POWER.

The creature’s head snapped up, suddenly attentive to something else. It growled savagely at something behind me.

There was no room to swing my sword. I tilted the blade up, pointing it into the side of the thing’s face, and unleashed the full force of my BEAM. Holding the blade out from my body like that, with only one hand, the recoil nearly sent my weapon spinning from my grasp. But the impulse knocked the twisted head of the demon hard. It reared up, and I rolled free.

Finding my feet, sword in a two-handed grip now, I spared a tiny moment to glance behind me.

It was Chowwick. He had come closer when I seemed to be in greatest danger. He hadn’t intervened, but I gained confidence, believing he was close to doing so.

Chowwick said, "Sorry lad, didn’t mean to upset things. I was just checking on you."

He said it so casually, like Harold might when he feared I was sleeping in.

I was learning lessons. The SHIELD could be used as a weapon, but carefully. The strength in my arm was so much greater now. CUT did little to a fiend unless it severed something vital.

And another lesson: don’t take your eyes off a frenzied creature that’s tens of times your own mass.

The impact caught me unawares. My SHIELD flared to spare me from greater harm, but once again I was airborne.

It’s strange how quickly one can grow used to even the strangest of sensations.

I repeated the same maneuver—get my legs down, pulsing SHIELD. This time I stumbled, the momentum of my flight through the air carrying me rolling down the slope, tearing the ground to shreds.

For a moment, I was dazed, lying on my back, staring at the blueness of the sky. Then an old bearded face filled my vision. I had rolled all the way back to the gathered men.

Jacob seemed unconcerned by my position or possible injury. He said, speaking in that odd manner of his, "I do believe I was mistaken. I would be at odds to call that anything but a Class 4 Fiend. Tell me, does it have prominent sacs in its armpits? Do you hear me? Large fleshy protuberances?"

I didn’t answer. I sat up and looked up the hill.

The beast was clashing with Chowwick now. The veteran Griidlord had dozens of levels on me. He was comfortably parrying the blows of those huge claws with his own monstrous shield. My mind's eye could see how quickly he might decide to bludgeon it and end the fight.

I would have thought I’d be relieved by such an outcome.

Instead, I heard my own voice roaring, amplified by the suit, "CHOWWICK! NO! THE BEAST IS MINE!"