I stood before our king, Vasilias, as Symvoulos pleaded with him to defend our home, but to no avail. We would have to do it ourselves, yes indeed.

And ourselves we did! The blood rose died by Symvoulos’s hand, yes indeed.

But that was not enough. He ordered us to bring the corpse outside the village and trap it, yes indeed.

But Symvoulos got scared and ran off. Muttered something about a betrayal, yes indeed.

So we waited for the human to transform, and it did! Yes, indeed.

A scolopendra, yes indeed.

We fought it, yes indeed.

And it fought back, yes indeed.

And then it was my turn, yes indeed.

* * *

My hooves pounded against the desert sand as I passed through the forest of sky-high cacti. A feline monster, needle-covered, twenty foot long, with green and orange stripes is a few steps behind and closing.

I gather mana into my antlers, turning them clear as my alignment alters their makeup, and drag them into the sand in front of me. The monster closes the distance and attempts to crush me beneath its paw.

I quickly solidify the sand, superheating it as I heave it upwards, then run up its surface before kicking off and backflipping over the monster. With far too much momentum to stop its charge, the monster crashes into the glass, spreading a web of cracks across its surface.

Trapped between me and the wall, I aim my antlers towards its rear while it’s turned and reeling from the crash, mold them to points, and charge. The monster reacts without turning, shooting its needles out in all directions. I make a pane of glass in the air between us. The hastily constructed barrier shatters from the spines, but blocks the brunt of their force, leaving only a few minor scrapes across my porcelain fur.

The monster runs parallel to the wall, passing by and taking a bite from one of the nearby cacti to regrow its thorns before turning to face me once more. I run. It chases, but more hesitantly than it had before. Its hesitance is its downfall.

The fight goes on for a few minutes more as I build a network of glass walls all the while. The monster tries its best to navigate, but as with all my opponents, those that can’t fly or reliably shatter the reinforced glass inevitably find themselves trapped in a maze they cannot see. The once-bold tiger soon turns as timid as a house cat, crashing into wall after wall before it realizes it cannot catch me. The monster finally gives up its chase, turning tail and running… Straight into another wall.

It fires off its thorns again as a reaction, expecting me to already be mid-charge. But little does it know, it’s already cornered, trapped between three walls of glass as I close the fourth and final wall around it, simultaneously turning the four walls to a dome.

The monster drags its claw across the edge of the dome, searching for any gaps to squeeze out of or footholds to climb up, but finds none. It turns back to me and growls a challenge, sitting and waiting to conserve its energy in preparation for the moment I lower the barrier to kill it.

But I have no need to dirty my own hooves.

I build layer after layer around the glass prison as the second sun rises above the horizon, turning the sky from pale blue to blinding white, and the dome from cage to oven.

The heat builds in the dome, and the monster realizes its mistake. It thrashes against the wall opposite me again and again, but I repair the cracks faster than its efforts. A few minutes later, the monster passes out from the heat, and cooks thoroughly. I lower the glass barrier, letting the heat out before I approach and consume the predator-turned-prey.

The meat is foul, but I’m not foolish enough to waste free mana, nor refuse a chance to sate the voice. It never goes away, but for a moment the voice was quieter, a pleasant hum of satisfaction rather than a cacophonous scream urging me to hunt that which I can’t even properly digest.

I don’t dawdle in the area for any longer than it takes to fill my stomach. It’s best not to remain in this part of the desert during double-morning, and the scavengers are surely already on their way.

I leave the cacti forest, and trot towards shelter in the distance. Ruined towers that the two-legs left behind before their passing. Or, at least I thought they’d all passed. But in the distance I hear… words? Nothing else makes noise in quite the same way as the two-legs, and I haven’t seen or heard anything resembling them since my metamorphosis. The two-legs are all dead. The dragons made sure of that.

A shift in the sand behind me prompts me to dodge out of the way before a ball of purple mana whizzes by. What was that? A spell? The two-legs don’t even have magic.

The spell curves sharply as it passes, instantly redirecting towards me. I block the spell with a pane of glass this time, then look back towards the two-legs. They’re approaching.

No need to get involved with them, whoever they are. My trot speeds to a gallop towards shelter, and I spare no expense throwing my mana into the sand to create wall after wall to block their spells.

I quickly leave them in the dust as the ruin I’m running towards gets further and further away… Wait.

A chorus of screeches and clusters of images assaults my mind in waves. With the last vestige of thought afforded to me, I shift the sand into a sphere around me and solidify it. Sure enough, the glass blocks the mental assault, and I see the two-legs have shortened the distance to a few dozen paces. From this distance, I get a much better look at them. Foot tall, gray, leathery, what appear to be wings in the place of arms. Nothing like the two-legs I’ve seen before. Suddenly, the voice changes again. It urges me to follow my instinct and run. It never does that.

I throw myself against the glass sphere to get it rolling away, then use my mana to accelerate the ball.

The ground beneath me rumbles, and I extend my senses into the sand beneath me. A worm? This large? It shouldn’t be coming to the surface this early in double-morning, so why… They’re aggravating it with their mind-magic, aren’t they?

Sure enough, the worm is heading straight towards me. I crystallize and extend the sand in front of me into a long, tall ramp and roll off it, jumping into the air just as the worm breaches the surface. The worm just barely reaches, crushing the edge of my glass sphere in its jaws, and shattering the rest of it.

I morph my antlers into a sphere around my head. But even with my head cover blocking direct assaults, the two-legs’ spells can still reach my exposed body. They launch an assortment of spells originating from beneath and beside me as I fall. I make a pane of glass in the air, then jump off it right before the spells shatter into the unreinforced glass. The spells sharply turn again. I craft a lens above me, concentrating the sunlight to a point they all cross and destabilizing them. But the two-legs just make more. I make another platform to dodge out of the way again and again, but I can’t dodge or break them. Eventually, one of the spells hits me directly.

The next thing I know, I’m somewhere else entirely. Restrained and surrounded by hundreds of my kind, thousands of other monsters, and a single two-leg overlooking us all. It utters a word, and we all begin to melt. I scream out in anger. I yell out in fear. Then forever still, I suffer in silence.