Mercedes jerked her sword from her scabbard, whispering a prayer for strength and bravery to the Goddess and stepped out of the smithy, head swivelling to locate the threat.

  The smith himself reached out and snagged her cloak.

  “Sister, don’t go out there!” he hissed. “You’ll get seen!”

  She gave him a frustrated, irritated glance- how else was she supposed to confront whatever that was?- but the raw panic on his face made her draw up.

  He gave her a frown. “I left everything at my house- my spear, my bow-” He cut himself off. “It’s best to sneak, at least that way we can get the first attack in-”

  Whatever he was saying was interrupted by a roar that dwarfed the earlier one in intensity; it seemed to split the air. Mercedes, with her more sensitive hearing, was knocked sprawling, her ears ringing.

  As she lay in the smithy yard, at first she thought she was trembling- she was trembling- her whole body was vibrating like a plucked string- but she could feel the mammoth footsteps of whatever it was that had roared.

  Her heart was slamming against her chest as if frantic to escape, her head was fuzzy and hot with adrenaline, her muscles felt both tense and knotted and hot and loose.

  She struggled to her feet awkwardly; a detached part of her mind noted the hand that held her sword was cramped and didn’t want to move right.

  She staggered on her feet; her body wanted to flee in terror, but it couldn’t seem to make up its mind as to where.

  An atonal impact- more felt than heard- shook the ground.

  Part of her wanted to flee. Part of her- the part of her that was duty, responsibility, obligation- wanted to confront the threat. Overriding everything, however, was a complete loss as to what to do.

  She had no idea what was going on. There was nothing, no experience that she could draw on for a sense of familiarity or equivalence.

  She turned towards the smith and discovered he was gone. Just vanished.

  Overhead, the leaden clouds began drizzling rain. Mercedes moved under the overhanging roof of the smithy; thin streams of rainwater dripped from the thatch as the rain fell harder.

  Over the hiss of the rain, she could hear it. Feel it. Something mammoth, something deadly was approaching. It felt like a strange knot of indiscriminate malice and ancient, terrible violence that seemed to pulse out from somewhere out there in the town. The tension drew her trembling muscles into knots.

  She slipped into the smithy itself; her horse eyed her, rolling its eyes in fright. She took a moment to soothe the beast; the Church bred the finest warhorses, able to carry an armored warrior into combat and not shy away from the hottest fights. For it to be just as terrified as Mercedes- she shook her head, she was not terrified!

  She peeked outside; the rain was coming down hard enough to obscure visibility, everything seemed draped in a mysterious, dreamlike haze.

  Think.

  There weren’t many buildings in this hamlet, just a few homes and the smithy? Where was the smith? For that matter, where were the rest of the villagers? Surely they’d heard that deafening roar.

  Her thoughts broke off as one of the shadows in the rainy gloom moved. She reflexively raised her sword, but her mind blanked as she struggled to take in what she was seeing.

  Her mind rejected what she was seeing, and she backpedaled into the smithy once more, struggling to unscramble her wits.

  What she saw was impossible. Every part of her, every fiber of her being seized on the idea, pounced on it, embraced it. She hadn’t seen it, it hadn’t been there, it was a trick of light and shadow and rain.

  Despite holding her sword in a textbook two-handed grip, despite her sword being forged by the most skilled elven swordsmiths in all of Degan, despite the skill and efforts and powers of the crafters, Despite all of this, she couldn’t help but want a weapon in her hands- a big, strong, powerful weapon- because she wasn’t sure her sword was up to the task.

  A crash of snapping wooden beams jolted her from her daze; over and above the hissing roar of the rain she could hear a wet and heavy breathing; and then an enormous beast’s snout appeared, great puffs of air washing in and out of its nostrils, blowing rank, fetid air everywhere.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  Mercedes had never seen such a beast in her life.

  It defied size, it didn’t so much take up space as it imposed itself, its gargantuan bulk disappearing beyond her sightline.

  What she didn't see earlier was plainly visible, a massive beast’s paw with great curving claws that tore into the ground.

  The maw that she could see- great yellowed teeth large enough to crush a man, a mouth large enough to swallow one whole- each of these things glimpsed in parts let her know that whatever beast she faced, it was megalithic, titanic, enormous beyond superlatives.

  Even as the muzzle of the beast pushed into the smithy, arrowing straight for her horse, she lunged forward, and brought her sword down in a textbook-perfect slash that cut deep into the beast’s nose.

  The roar Mercedes had heard earlier was nothing compared to hearing it point-blank. Her horse screamed once, brilliantly, shrilly, then collapsed in its stall, even as Mercedes was physically lifted from her feet and tossed backwards into the smithy.

  She hit something hard; her armor absorbed the impact, but it was still enough to daze her. She bounced to her feet and fled deeper into the smithy, dashing down a hall in the opposite direction of the beast.

  The smithy itself wasn’t that large; a few rooms stocked with tools and supplies, there was the rear of the smithy where the villagers would have their horses shoed, or saddles or harnesses made and picked up, and there was the front itself that faced the street.

  Mercedes burst out onto the raised walk, hit the waist-high railing, and catapulted over it to land in the mud, some dim part of her mind reminding her to tuck in at the shoulder so that she controlled her fall.

  “Sister!” A voice shouted, and she spotted the erstwhile blacksmith with a hunter’s longbow, a stack of arrows in front of him.

  She turned back towards the smithy as the beast rose up on its hind legs and swatted at the roof of the building, casually, almost playfully. The snap of wooden timbers reached her ears even as the smith loosed an arrow.

  Part of her wanted the arrow to do its job. All of her did. She’d never once encountered anything like this beast before. There were no ‘monsters’ in Degan, only the horrors that men could produce, and even then, war was something that wasn’t sought after easily.

  But she knew that thin piece of wood was about as useful as her sword against such a creature- a thing that, standing on its rear legs, towered over the smithy.

  It was covered in a thick and shaggy pelt, and when she’d cut its snout with her blade, the skin was thick and tough.

  What could an arrow do against such natural protections?

  Now she understood what the smith had told her earlier about the ‘wolf’ they’d fought: arrows aren’t enough.

  The smith never let up; he fired arrow after arrow at the thing, until it dropped out of sight.

  “What- what is that thing?” She heard herself ask.

  “A bear.” was the smith’s response. “Though none I’ve seen have that size.”

  “How do we kill it?” She asked.

  She received a short, bitter bark of a laugh in response, letting her know all she needed to know about the prospect.

  The bear reappeared, this time on all fours.

  Even on all fours, it seemed as large as a house. A shaggy mountain of brown fur and enormous bloodshot eyes, with fangs and claws that could kill with a touch. The slash she’d inflicted on its nose- a slash that would have killed a man- was a small cut that dribbled blood in a trickle.

  It padded forward, shifting its bulk as it did; she rushed forward to meet it. It was a suicidal, crazy move, but she didn’t have a spear, and a bow against the thing was laughable. What she wished for, what she truly needed was one of the larger siege ballista, capable of launching a spear so powerfully that it could impale three men on horseback.

  Of course, if she could wish for that, she might as well wish for other impossible things as well.

  Its neck snaked forward, head lunging; at the last possible moment she threw herself to the side, swinging her sword in a desperate arc that clove the air, even as the bear’s jaws snapped shut with a brutal click of teeth on teeth right behind her. She pushed herself to her feet and thrust with her blade, but the thing’s hide was as thick as she’d feared, and the thrust went awry.

  This close, right next to the enormous beast, she could feel the terrible heat radiating off of it, could smell its breath, the mustiness of its coat, solidifying its realness. If she wanted to inflict a telling blow on the bear, she'd have to do something a bit more drastic.

  The elves of Degan kept secrets from their human contemporaries. Elves had longer memories and kept detailed histories- things the humans forgot, or chose to forget, and things that they believed the humans weren't yet ready for.

  Things like magic. Magic in all its forms was a gift from the Goddess, but it took a disciplined mind to control and use properly. Humans were just discovering it existed, but to the elves, it was something that was known, and had been explored.

  Mercedes herself didn't have much in the way of aptitude for magic. She could sense its ebb and flow in a very general way, but she was hopeless with spells. While she couldn't use magic like her other elves, she could use the magic tool she'd been given by the Church- her sword.

  In the crossguard of her fine elven blade was a seemingly decorative gem. In reality, it collected ambient magical power and stored it for later use, and with the right trigger, it would unleash a lightning blast strong enough to kill a man. It was a devastating attack when used in the right circumstances, but... would it be enough to kill the bear? She wasn't sure, but an ordinary slash with a sword was barely enough to wound the bear at all.

  She dove under the snapping jaw of the bear and thrust up with her sword into the vulnerable soft spot under the jaw; the blade split the skin and blood trickled. She shoved harder and triggered the gem; she could feel the gem discharge its power.

  There was no flash, no thunderbolt, no outward display of lightning; the bear's reaction was enough; it howled and jerked away from her, knocking her sprawling.

  She cartwheeled through the air, hit the ground, rolled, and slammed into a tree trunk, knocking the air out of her lungs. She struggled to draw breath; she stupidly stared at the mud on her gauntlets with a strange sense of fixation as the world wavered around her.

  It occurred to her that she was in shock; there was never a point in her life when she'd been knocked flying like that.

  Where was the bear?

  She looked over her shoulder; the bear was shaking its head. She turned her head the other way; the smith was still launching arrows at it.

  Mercedes took a shaky breath, and the world seemed to steady around her. She forced herself to her feet and realized that she’d lost her sword; she glanced around for it and saw a glimmer in the mud nearby.

  The bear suddenly convulsed and let out a roar; a roar that differed from all the others she'd heard before; one of pain.