I turned around. All thoughts left my mind but killing harpies. They were in front of me. I didn’t care that I didn’t have a weapon, or that I was wearing sweats, or that I was barefoot. I ran straight for them, screaming what I’m sure was a rather pathetic war-cry. The ground shook in time with my steps, thundering with the weight of the other ogres running alongside me. All of us heard the command, and all of us moved to obey.

The harpies in the air shrieked and dived down on us. One latched onto the face of the ogre right in front of me and started tearing into it with teeth and claws. The ogre groaned and grabbed the harpy in a meaty fist bigger than it was, squeezing until blood and organs squirted out. It seemed like the ogre had the upper hand, but then three more harpies descended from the sky to replace the dead one. They landed on its face and back, drawing blood with the claws they had on the end of their wings. It was too much. The ogre shook the ground as it collapsed on its belly.

As soon as the ogre collapsed, I saw my opportunity. The harpies were still attached and clawing at the giant creature as it fell, which brought them low enough for me. Kill harpies. They were within my reach; I knew what I had to do. I ran around and charged at the harpy digging into the ogre’s face. It had its back turned, more occupied with its current meal. This was my chance. This was my chance to kill a harpy. It was all I wanted to do, all I could even think of. I spotted a rock lying on the ground. As soon as I saw it I realized it would make a good weapon for killing harpies. I grabbed the rock and chucked it at the harpy’s head for all I was worth. I missed.

Look, just because I was under a compulsion at the time didn’t suddenly make me a star athlete. My rock missed; it hit the ogre the harpy was feeding on instead, only succeeding in getting the creature’s attention. What I saw then was truly terrifying. Nothing in my life had prepared me for that moment. As the harpy turned its body it exposed a gaping hole in the ogre’s face. The skin around one eye socket was completely stripped off, revealing bones that looked all too human. I say “eye socket” because the actual eyeball was dangling from the harpy’s mouth in pieces. All down the creature’s neck was just dripping with blood. Worst of all, I could see the ogre’s other eye look at me with… I’m not really sure. It’s hard to express emotion when all you have is an eye, but I imagine it was probably feeling some combination of fear and pain. I snapped. Something snapped inside me. In that moment I didn’t give a shit about “killing harpies” I just didn’t want to get my face eaten off while I was still alive.

This presented me with a bit of a conundrum; you see I was still standing in front of this bloodied creature, arms raised high. How was it to know it had just terrified me into shaking off some kind of mental compulsion? It wasn’t. Though, now that I think about it, those harpies weren’t very smart. It probably just saw me as competition for food. Either way, it responded by opening a mouth full of more teeth than I could count and screeching the way I imagine a crow would if you let it use a megaphone. It left my ears ringing.

Here I was, just a sickly kid in way over my head armed with nothing more than a video game controller. I didn’t even have a plan for how I was going to hurt this thing! The harpy I was facing down hopped forward awkwardly on its crooked legs, claws reaching for me.

The still-alive-but-very-much-dying ogre saved me by giving one last gasp of resistance against the creatures it’d been ordered to kill. It sort of wiggled its head a little bit as it reached around to grab at the harpies feeding on its back, which was just enough to cause the one still propped on its face to stumble forward. I used that opening to shove my controller in its mouth. It bit down, trying to chew and swallow bits of injection-molded plastic and silicone. The confusion the beast had at its prey not tasting nearly as meaty as the ogre eye it’d just been eating gave me an opening to punch it in the throat. If I’d still been under that compulsion, I probably would have taken that opportunity to finish the harpy off, but I was done with all that. All I wanted was to escape this hellscape of a battle with my life. As soon as I was sure the creature wasn’t going to follow me I turned and ran.

All around me more ogres and harpies were killing each other. My little singular struggle was beneath their notice. I had to dodge between massive ogre feet to get away. Three of my “allies” had already gone down, the rest were busy catching, crushing, and stomping every harpy that got within reach. The biggest of them had even pulled up what looked like an entire tree and was using it to swat them out of the sky.

It was chaos. Pure chaos. I just wanted to wake up from the drug-induced seizure I was sure I must be having. How I longed for my comfortable reclining chair! Only my miniscule size saved me from attracting more attention as freakish monsters battled all around me. Closer to the edge of the forest I saw the tall guy that had summoned me here directing a trio of ogres to knock over a particularly large tree. They heaved at it and sent it crashing to the ground. As soon as it collapsed I heard him shout something about a “nest”, then noticed a cluster of sticks and mud had been attached to the top of the tree. Ogres started stomping on the nest. I saw golden eggs the size of basketballs break open. That sent the harpies into a frenzy. They abandoned the shrinking herd of ogres they were fighting and swarmed the trio killing their babies.

Look, I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong. These harpies? They might have been vicious little shits, but their actions made sense once I realized they were just defending themselves. I ran up to the guy that seemed to be commanding them. “Hey!” I said. “What are you doing? If we just leave their nest alone the harpies will probably stop attacking.”

The dark man frowned at me. “Why would I want them to leave me alone?” he asked. “I have a contract to exterminate this nest. And why aren’t you helping? I ordered you to attack!”

“Are you kidding me? How? I don’t have a weapon!” This whole situation was beyond ridiculous. I started to seriously consider that this might be what a stroke felt like. How was I to know? I’d never had one before. It had to have been set off by the meds I’d been haphazardly swallowing on an empty stomach. Nothing else explained this. I certainly couldn’t understand why the guy that had brought me here expected me to throw myself into the middle of this battle. “How am I supposed to kill these things?” I asked. “Punch them?”

“You’re the ogre,” the tall man said. “Get creative. It’s not my job to fight for you. Go. Go kill harpies.” He waved at me dismissively.

I felt the compulsion come at me. Kill harpies, kill harpies, kill—I shook it off. “No way!” I said. “Eat a dick, man. I’m not killing myself so you can… what? Complete a contract? Are you kidding? Do you realize I was at home? Comfortable? Where do you get off—”

The screeching of more harpies interrupted my rant. The bulk of the harpy flock was in the process of absolutely shredding the three ogres that had been trying to destroy their nest. The rest of the ogres were running in to defend, but three harpies broke off from the main flock before they could intervene. They noticed me and the other guy nearby and I guess decided we made for easier targets.

“Great,” the tall man said, “look what your talking did.” He whipped the massive sword off his back with a scowl on his face. It was like he resented having to lift a finger to help the very conflict he’d started. The first harpy to reach us went for me—probably singled me out as the weaker one, which… okay, fair enough. I dived out of the way. The tall man swung wildly with his sword, missing the thing entirely. I’m not going to lie, that was disappointing. For a guy that could command a small army of ogres to do his bidding, was decked out in a rather impressive suit of scale mail armor, and had an absolute masterwork of a sword in his hands, I’d expected better from him. After the first harpy jumped back to avoid him, he ran after the second one, sword swinging with a complete lack of coordination. That left me to face down the third and final one alone. It landed next to me, claws dripping with blood. I took a step back. It hopped after me.

“Don’t you have more threatening targets you can attack?” I asked the harpy. “I don’t even care about your nest. I’m the voice of reason here, I didn’t even—”

The harpy lunged forward, completely apathetic to my attempts to calmly explain we didn’t need to resort to violence. I didn’t have a lot of options at hand, so while I continued to back away as fast as I could without tripping over myself I pulled my headset from around my neck. I rolled my finger on the volume control, causing the headset to make increasingly louder beeps. It was by no means a loud sound over the din of battle behind us, but the creature appeared to have sensitive ears. It actually took a step back and cocked its head at me. “Yeah, you better stay back,” I warned it. “I can make it beep like this all day.” After a few more beeps, the harpy took a tentative step forward. I was forced to retreat, my bluff thoroughly called. Yes, I was making a strange sound, but no, the sound wasn’t dangerous. As I continued to walk backwards I looked over the harpy’s shoulder to where the tall man was locked in a battle of his own. By some miracle he’d actually managed to cut one of the harpies with what I could only assume had been luck, but he was still facing off with the last one. Nobody was coming to save me.

The harpy gave the same scream the last one had given as it tried to pounce on me. I turned my attention back just in time to see it lunging. I gave a wild swing with my earphones, wincing as they were destroyed in the process. I’d barely had them for a week! The harpy didn’t give a damn about things like “dynamic range” or “bass response”, but it did feel the walnut earcup housings crack against its skull. It stumbled back, screeching in pain. I used the opening to dig desperately into the pocket of my sweatpants for the only other thing I had one me: my phone. I turned the screen so it caught the sun and reflected it into the creature’s eyes. That at least stopped it from immediately pouncing on me while I tried to think of my next move.

I was starting to see the pattern now: every time one of these creatures saw something new, their instincts kicked in and told them to be cautious. Only when they were sure the new thing wasn’t a threat did they attack. I cranked up the “new” factor to eleven by turning on my phone’s screen. The harpy shrieked at me and bared its fangs, but didn’t take a step closer. I quickly flipped open the camera app and snapped a picture. The picture caused a delayed flash as it saved a blurry picture of the monster before me. At the very least I figured I’d have some proof now to bring home when all this insanity was over. The harpy took a hesitant step back when the flash went off, so I took another picture. The second flash didn’t get nearly the same reaction.

“Right,” I said. “I’m just teaching you that these flashes aren’t going to hurt you.” I tried something else; something I thought stood a chance of actually getting this creature to leave me alone for more than a few seconds. I switched to the front view camera, then turned the screen towards the harpy. “Yeah, see that?” I asked the harpy. “You had no idea I was actually a fellow shit-bird this whole time, did you?”

I’d been hoping seeing a moving picture of itself would at least make the damn thing second guess attacking me. Instead it sent it into a rage. It shrieked louder than before and flapped its wings to sail forward at me. I ducked back, but it snatched the phone out of my hand with a clawed foot. I had to watch helplessly as the harpy started slamming its feet down on my phone repeatedly, like the phone had personally offended it or something. I tried to remember if my mom had paid for the insurance plan. Yes, I decided, she had. And all my data was backed up on the cloud, so a lost phone wasn’t the end of the world. If the damn thing was so angry at the little box with its own face on it, it could damn well have it. I turned around and ran away. That was the strategy I was having the most consistent luck with.

I located the tall gray man and ran straight for him. He seemed like the only thing that might be willing to expend the slightest effort in saving me. As I approached he was pulling his sword out of the stomach of the second harpy he’d been facing off against. It seemed you didn’t actually have to be all that talented in this world if you just used nice equipment. “Help!” I screeched. I knew I wasn’t running very fast. For one thing, I was barefoot, for the other I was terribly out of shape. The man looked up as I heard the angry screeches of the harpy behind me growing closer. An angry scowl marred the sunken eyes of his face. He shouted something. I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my own panicked breathing. I stopped. “What?” I asked.

“I said duck, you idiot!” the gray man hollered at me. He held up a hand and a ball of fire appeared in it. I dived to the ground, then looked back to see the screeching harpy I’d tricked with my phone flapping its wings as it chased after me. I thought for sure one of those things was finally going to get me, when a sudden fireball splashed into its chest. Flames engulfed the creature. It immediately stopped chasing me and turned all its efforts into flailing its wings randomly as it burned alive. Apparently nobody had ever taught these creatures the old “stop drop, and roll” adage.

“Looks like that was the last one,” the tall man said, looking around. Most of the ogres that were still alive were groaning in pain as the life slowly bled from them. The tall man didn’t spare them a thought. He walked up to me and held out a hand to help me up. “I don’t know how you survived, tiny ogre. Did you kill many harpies?”

“Did I… ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?” I slapped his hand away and stood up on my own. “No, I didn’t kill any damn harpies! I’m lucky they didn’t kill me!”

The gray man held his hands up, palms out to ward me away. “Woah, okay. I can see something has clearly made you upset.”

“Ya think? What am I even doing here and how were you controlling my mind?”

“Controlling your mind? Phhff!” The other man blew out a dismissive breath. “I don’t have that kind of Skill. I just summon ogres, and they usually do what I say…” He gave me a sideways look under lidded eyes. “Usually,” he amended.

“Yeah, well, that’s not working on me again,” I warned, “so don’t even try.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Now as interesting as all this has been, I broke my controller, my phone, and a brand new headset. I’d like to go back home now.”

“Okay, okay,” the man said, “I won’t try to give you any commands again… but I’m not sending you back home.”

“Why the hell not?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “What part of ‘I only summon ogres’ did you not understand? I can’t send you home.”