"They're fighting over a hole?" Alarion asked, his voice positively dripping with skepticism.

Sierra snorted despite herself, but said nothing until the fiend's ongoing scrap carried them away from the tree line. "No, Alarion, they are fighting over whatever is in the hole."

"That makes more sense," The young man quickly conceded. He leaned up on the tips of his toes to get a better view, but to no avail. "Can you see what's inside?"

"No," Sierra admitted, "But I can guess. You see the larger fiend?"

"Yes."

"Does it look starved to you?"

Alarion tilted his head. The answer was so obvious that the question felt like a trick. "No. Which means it has been eating something. But nothing lives on the island other than fiends. They don't…"

"No," Sierra said again, her disgust quite emphatic. "Fiends are rancid and poisonous, even to themselves. They don't reclaim their own dead, and they don't consume anything. Fiends feed off ambient magical energy, which is why boils always form around Places of Power. The fiends consume the magic and range abroad to find life to feed to the boil. In doing so, they reinforce the original Place of Power through sacrifice and allow the boil to produce more fiends. Eventually, the magic around the boil is not enough to sustain them all, so the stronger fiends force the weaker ones out in search of more life and new Places of Power to infect."

"They eat magic," Alarion said with a hint of excitement. "So the hole?"

"Has something inside with enough radiant energy to feed a fiend like that," she agreed. "It probably is not much, but we should take a look."

"So we wait for them to kill each other?"

Sierra shook her head and began a careful descent from her perch. "Power struggles like this are merely for dominance. Neither side is going to kill the other. At best, they will deplete a bit of stamina and HP. You'll have to do the rest."

Alarion turned his attention back to the ongoing battle in the clearing. The larger of the three fiends had kept its advantage, battering away its lesser kin time and again, but never straying too far from the source of the conflict. Despite its size, the mature fiend was stronger and faster by a considerable margin. It would be a hard fight with that one alone.

"I will draw off the other two," Sierra said, reading his mind, or at least his expression, as she joined him at ground level. "You have the icon?"

Alarion nodded, then tapped the small silver rod strapped to his belt for emphasis.

"And you know how to use it?"

"Snap it in half and survive for five seconds," he replied, leaving unspoken that the next steps were 'be teleported back to a keyed location in the manor' and 'instantly fail your quests and have all your progress stripped.'

That wasn't happening.

"Then happy hunting," the girl said with a surprisingly genuine smile as she read his face again. He was stubborn, yes, but there was a certain charm to it that was hard to deny. "Wait until you see the small ones turn to face me, then put a dagger in the back of the big one. That should separate them."

Alarion nodded again, then presented his forearm. Palm in, wrist rigid, just as she'd shown him.

The girl chuckled and tapped her wrist to his, almost as an afterthought, before slipping behind a tree and vanishing out of sight.

Then the waiting began.

The clearing was a large oval, nearly two hundred yards at its longest point. Even with the supernatural powers provided by her [Shadowdance] skill, Sierra still needed to be cautious about navigating the woods to avoid alerting the battling monsters. This left Alarion with several minutes to prepare himself, though he was already itching to fight after only one.

It would be his first real challenge. ZEKE and Sierra were too powerful for him to eke out a meaningful win; the dragon hadn't been real, and the fiends he'd fought were too weak individually for them to count in his mind. This was one opponent, a dangerous foe against which he could truly measure his potential.

As soon as Sierra finally got into position.

He toyed with a throwing dagger as he watched the brute in action. It was as clumsy as any of its lesser kin, its attacks ruthless and self-sacrificing. Yet there was a glimmer of something there. Not intelligence, but cunning, perhaps? The ones he'd fought had been predictable to an almost comical degree. They would attack-attack-attack with endless pressure. This one was not making careful feints or being clever with its positioning, but it was taking care not to throw itself off balance in the service of striking an offered opening.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"I am ready," Sierra interrupted his thoughts.

"On your time," Alarion replied as he stood from his crouch and prepared to rush the clearing.

The fiends noticed her before he did. One moment, they were fighting amongst themselves, and the next, the cacophony had stopped. All three had snapped to rigid attention, searching the tree line. One of the smaller ones noticed her first and set off at a dash toward her. Its battle-brother joined a moment later, and Alarion rushed the field, throwing the slim dagger in his hand for everything it was worth.

The silver sliver struck the brute's back, not with the usual wet sound of metal defeating flesh but with a dull thock more akin to a knife burying into the side of a wooden board. Or hard muscle. Despite the distressing feedback, the thrown weapon had its intended effect. The fiend swiveled on thick legs, turning its whole body to search for this new threat.

Then it saw him and charged.

Logically, Alarion was prepared. Half a hundred battles in the [Void Arena] had given him a keen sense of how to fight a larger opponent. But this time was different. This time was life or death. And this opponent was not the cunning dragon that fought at the edge of its reach, but a bloodthirsty fiend all too happy to trample him to death with its sheer weight.

For just a moment, Alarion's heart fluttered. His will faltered. The trees were behind him, the icon on his hip. He could fall back. He could flee.

He could fight.

Vitrian steel met vile flesh, and the larger fiend instantly proved that, for all its size and strength, it was still made of meat. It could be cut. It could be harmed.

Alarion's horizontal slash had carved a deep gouge in the back of the brute's thigh as it passed him. Its headlong charge had been intimidating, but ineffective as a tactic. Anything that big had too much momentum to change directions amidst the loose grass and soil of a forest clearing. So, rather than stand and meet it head-on, Alarion had simply moved.

It had been harder than that, of course. Move too early, and the brute could adjust. Move too late, and well…

The massive fiend fell forward in the wake of Alarion's attack, though not because of the comparatively shallow wound. Its attempt to follow his movements sent the creature head over heels in a catastrophic roll that would have provided Alarion half a dozen vulnerabilities had he been ready to exploit it. But the fiend was still quick for its size, its sickening pink skin covered in dirt and debris as it recovered from its roll and advanced on Alarion less haphazardly.

It struck at him then. Left arm, then right. These were not the punches it had shared with its lesser kin, but open-handed swipes with its taloned fingertips. Each drove Alarion back before the creature's advance, and each came closer than the young man felt comfortable. Monstrous fingers tore furrows in the dirt where they missed him, sometimes by mere inches, and pressed ever onward into the next attack.

It was faster than him, by no small measure.

Sierra had warned him as much. It wasn't fighting seriously with its kin, so why had he expected it would have used its full speed but not its full power? Only the difference in training allowed Alarion to remain in the fight against a stronger, faster opponent. Knowing how to dodge and when to strike gave him a slim edge, keeping him on nearly equal footing with the giant.

His weapon of choice would be a problem, however.

The weakness was obvious as the initial bouts segued into a steady rhythm. The fiend was fast enough and relentless enough that it did not provide an opening. Or, to be more accurate, it did not provide an opening that Alarion could exploit. He could see weakness after weakness, a vulnerability in its hands as it threw them, a weakness in its stance that he could punish with a quick stab. But nothing about fighting with an Imperial Greatsword was quick.

The lesser fiends had been swift, but they lacked the same reach. His arms were nearly as long as theirs, so he could separate and strike, or push the issue and punish them with the blunt of the blade or his fists if necessary. This one had all the same flaws in its fighting style, but it had the strength, the speed, and the reach to make up for it.

He couldn't wait for an opening. Nor could he wait for the fiend to gas itself out attacking. It was using more stamina, surely, but it probably had more to begin with. If it ran out first, Alarion would have the advantage. If Alarion ran out first, it would be an immediate loss. No, he'd have to make an opening. But the options there were slim.

"One. Two." Alarion murmured to himself as he backpedaled from another pair of near misses. Despite the difference in strength, it was still a fiend. He could still provoke it into attacking and reasonably expect the nature of those attacks when provoked. Left, then right, left, then right.

"One. Two!" Alarion shouted as the predictable right vectored in. He planted his feet and swung upward, meeting the downward talons with hardened steel in a violent clash that sent his hands vibrating and his ears ringing.

It wasn't enough. He'd parried similar attacks from the dragon, but the dragon was self-interested. It feared pain and flinched away. The brute did not. Even with the edge of Alarion's greatsword jammed halfway up to its wrist, it merely redoubled its efforts and slammed the wounded limb down onto Alarion with punishing force.

The simple weight of the attack drove Alarion to a knee and forced him to brace his left hand further up the blade for leverage. He pushed back, hoping to dislodge the creature, but the difference in strength was too much. The only reason it hadn't crushed him outright was the risk that it could cleave off half of its hand and thus free him in the process.

It would have to finish him in some other way.

"No!" Alarion said in sudden realization, a moment before his fear materialized in the form of the creature's left hand. It struck him hard from the side, one claw piercing through his shoulder before it sent him flying a solid ten yards distant.

Alarion came up in a scramble, a potion flask already in hand as he avoided a downward strike meant to pulverize what remained of him. His notifications flashed with damage alerts and a new bleeding condition, but he downed the potion without even looking at it.

No. His eyes were locked on the now-shattered remains of a greatsword sticking out of the fiend's half-bisected hand.

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