Grand Game 322: Harbinger of Doom (Patreon)

At the spirit wolf’s cry my head jerked upwards. The fog bank had all but dissipated, laying bare the purple sky above.

And the shape hurtling down.

Closing my fingers fast around the seed in my left hand, I threw myself out of the way.

You have evaded the attack of an unknown hostile.

Behind me rock shattered and stones flew, the ground itself shuddering as my mysterious attacker dove headlong into it. Rolling to my feet, I raced away in the opposite direction, not looking back.

I’d only a split-second to study the incoming hostile, but I’d seen enough to recognize the smokey outline of a stygian, and if the earth’s shaking was anything to go by, it was one that had more physical form than most of the nether’s creatures.

And that was bad.

Only the most powerful stygians had true physical mass outside the void. Tugging at the shadows around me, I attempted to conceal myself.

You have failed to hide.

I grimaced and ran harder. If hiding was not an option that only left fleeing.

An ethereal shape rushed up to my side. It was Ghost, with her mind shield up again. In a willful streak, that I had more than a little reason to be grateful for, she had lowered her defenses earlier to give voice to her warning.

I waved her forward. “Go!” I shouted. “Run ahead. I’ll teleport to you.” Lowering her head in wordless acknowledgement, Ghost dashed away.

A roar split the air behind me. I was tempted to look over my shoulder but didn’t. For now, all that mattered was putting a safe distance between me and the stygian at my rear.

“Coward? You flee? Face me!”

Startled, I stumbled and almost fell but caught myself in time. The stygian behind me was talking. Talking! Since when can they speak? I wondered inanely.

A gust of wind at my back. The half-caught flap of a wing.

My foe had gone airborne again, leaving me only seconds to spare. Damn, and damn again. My gaze darted to Ghost. She was twenty yards ahead, and quite cleverly hugging the right cliff sidewall. The shadows there would make concealing myself easier, but I’d hope for greater separation from my pursuer before trying to hide again. Still, it would have to be enough.

I dropped my mind shield.

An enormous mindglow appeared at my rear. It was closing fast and looked ready to swallow me whole. The size of my foe’s mindglow reinforced my fear. Whatever it was, it was powerful, and I was not about to attempt my mind tricks on it until I’d gained a better handle on the situation. Focusing on the spirit wolf and spun psi.

The whisper of a fast-moving shape cutting through the air.

It’s diving. Ignoring my foe as best I could—a task all on its own—I rushed through my casting and completed it with only heartbeats to spare. Stepping through the aether, I shadow blinked away.

You have teleported 25 yards to Ghost.

You have evaded the attack of an unknown hostile.

The stygian hit the ground nearly as hard the second time as it had the first. Knowing it would recover soon, I wrenched myself to a screeching halt and sank into the shadows.

A hostile entity has failed to detect you! You are hidden.

That was too close, I thought, exhaling carefully. My heart was pounding, and my pulse still raced. Nor could I relax just yet. If I stayed where I was, my pursuer was sure to find me again. Dropping into a crouch, I padded away at the fastest pace I could manage while still maintaining my stealth.

Ghost appeared beside me, her lips pulled back in a silent snarl as she glared at the stygian. I placed a hand on her ethereal head, and she looked at me.

“Thank you,” I mouthed. Glancing down at the seed I still held, I hesitated, then added, “Lower your shield.”

The spirit wolf reappeared in my mindsight.

“Good work, Ghost,” I said, speaking rapidly. “Find me somewhere safer to hide. I’ll wait here.”

“Yes, Prime,” she replied and, spinning around, dashed away. I watched her go. As troublesome as Ghost could be at times, she’d never given cause to question her loyalty and willingness.

“Do you think to hide, wolfling?” the stygian shouted, the words reverberating off the surrounding cliffs.

I flinched. It was not the volume of my foe’s cry that startled me. It was its chosen epithet that did. Wolfling? It could not be a word the stygian had used by happenstance. What is this bloody thing?

“Oh yes, I know what you are.” Feet pounded against the ground, heading unerringly in my direction. “And I know where you are.”

A hostile entity has detected you. You are no longer hidden!

My face paled as the shadows concealing me were unceremoniously yanked away. How had the nether creature found me—and so quickly? Head whipping around, I looked directly at my foe for the first time.

The stygian was unlike any of its kind I’d faced before. It had the head of a crow, the body of a hyena, and the tail of a crocodile. An unholy chimera, if ever there was one.

The creature was huge too. Not as massive as the stone golems, but large enough to give even those colossal elites pause. With its midnight black wings unfurled and its beady eyes glaring balefully at me, the stygian horror rushed across the distance separated us.

Unbidden, the wolf in me rose to the fore, and a snarl broke through my clenched teeth. Only midway through, it transformed into a whine. My predatory self recognized what I had not yet: this was not a foe I could face and live.

Flight was the only option.

But despite the instinctive terror gnawing at me, I held my nerve. I could not flee blindly. I had to know what I faced. Reaching out with my will I inspected the onrushing monster.

The target is a stygian harbinger of indeterminant level.

Well, that clinches it. My foe was at least level three hundred. The stygian charging me was on par with a minor Power. There’s no running from this. Better to—

I reigned in my burgeoning panic and drew psi. I had to change tactics. “Ghost, turn around and get behind that thing!”

I had just enough time to see the spirit wolf heed my words before my attention was snapped up by the approaching horror. The charging harbinger was less than ten yards away, its wickedly pointed beak leading the way. It means to run me through, I realized, eliminating me in a single disdainful strike.

I kept weaving psi. My spell would not complete in time but if I delayed the harbinger a touch…

The stygian closed the gap to five yards. I stood my ground, eyes fixed on the point of its beak.

Two yards.

Let’s see how you deal with this. Dripping my mind into the ring, mage’s surprise, I activated the casting waiting within spellhold.

You have trigger-cast cold sphere.

A stygian harbinger has failed a magical resistance check! 1 of 1 targets have been chilled.

The nether creature’s beak hit the rim of the ice field, and in an eye blink its movement slowed. My gaze never leaving my foe, I waited.

The psi spell I had been preparing was completed, but I didn’t release it just yet. Every heartbeat longer I kept the harbinger trapped in the cold sphere, was a second more that I bought for Ghost to move into position.

The stygian’s deadly beak swept closer.

I didn’t bother attacking either. A foe of the order of magnitude of a minor Power would have strong defenses, and no mere sword strike from me was going to kill it. Rather than triggering whatever nasty defenses the stygian hid, I watched and waited.

Fury burned in the harbinger’s eyes. It knew I’d gotten the better of it, if temporarily. But anger aside, the stygian’s gaze harbored no doubt or fear. It was eyeing me the way a predator did a prey that had performed an unexpected trick. Its confidence in the hunt’s outcome was unshaken.

I smiled mockingly in response, the only bit of defiance I could muster under the circumstances. My foe had every reason to be confident. I was outmatched, and I knew it just as well as it did.

Ghost’s glowing shape rushed by.

Still, I did not act. I waited and waited, until the harbinger’s beak was only mere inches from my face. Then, I met my foe’s gaze. “Bye,” I mouthed and released the casting in my mind.

You have cast windborne.

I set down the windslide, not in the direction Ghost had fled, but in the opposite one, angling upward and around the harbinger.

Borne away the currents of air, I zipped past the chilled stygian, taking the cold sphere with me and sadly freeing the nether creature from the bubble’s frigid touch.

“You will not escape me that easily!” the harbinger screamed, the moment its lungs were free to give vent to its rage. Beating its wings, the stygian flung itself aloft.

Paying my foe no mind, I sailed off the end of the windslide and dropped back to the ground. Landing lightly, I ran, feet pounding against the ground as I tried to open the distance between me and my foe. At the same time, I kept my mindsight fixed on Ghost’s receding form and wove psi. The gap between us was widening fast. Thirty yards.

The harbinger started its dive.

Forty yards.

The stygian opened its beak, giving vent to its anger and something else too. Thick plumes of an evil cloud rushed out and surged towards me. Whatever the cloud was, I knew I didn’t want to feel its touch.

Forty-five yards.

Releasing the spell I held, I slipped out of the real...

You have teleported to Ghost.

… and back into it, behind the stygian.

The harbinger screeched in thwarted anger as my fleeing form disappeared from sight and flapped its wings hard to break out of its dive. Nearly fifty yards away, I rolled silently into the shadows.

You are hidden.

Nestled in the darkness, I stilled, gasping and short of breath. I could not stay where I was, though. The harbinger had found me once and might do so again.

Rising into a crouch, I crept stealthily along the cliff.