Putting his plan in action, he stopped abruptly, using a gluestick spell to aid him. A moment too late, he wondered what would happen if the beast, unable to stop, trampled right over him. He gulped down his fear and hoped for the best.
Unfortunately for him, the beast was good at stopping, too. It slammed all four of its feet into the ground and managed to stop as well, not one foot behind Gallian’s scared, crouched form.
Alright, that’s it! That’s the last time I forget to pray to Ekim, the God of Luck. Something bad always happens to me when I forget. Nothing as bad as this, yet, but still, it can get pretty bad. He was trying to bring humor to the situation and failing badly.
I’m just glad that Esmerelda is so merciful about the whole thing. I forget to pray to her a lot, but she always shows mercy to me. Well, until now, that is.
Gallian could feel the heat of the beast’s breath fall upon him, making him swelter and start to swoon under the weight of its powerful puffs.
Well, it certainly looks like I’m gonna die here, he thought bleakly, and only a mere one hundred eighty paces from Sanctuary, too. That’s a real bummer.
Just then, he realized for the first time that the beast had never moved to attack. It had followed him, yes, scaring the living daylights out of him in the process, and presumably killed his friend, but it had never attacked him.
His face contorted into a confused grimace, unsure of how to take advantage of this situation, for it probably wouldn’t last much longer.
Well, first things first, I always say. Let’s have a look at my opponent. I doubt it’s actually an invisible beast. Probably just a cloaking spell.
As quietly as he could, Gallian whispered a few ancient words of power and twiddled his thumbs, casting a havealooksy spell on himself so he could see through any invisibility spells or abilities. Then, he craned his head ever so slightly to look at the beast. When that yielded no information, he did a full turn to look at the beast, and regretted it for the rest of his life.
What Gallian saw in those few seconds he was turned around was an unspeakable horror that was too awful for the worst of his nightmares. It was a large mass of hair and muscles that towered over him. The creature was twice his height. The massive, eleven-foot-tall monster was big enough that Gallian had been forced to strain his neck to just to take a look at the face, his second mistake. That brief glimpse was enough to make him want to cringe in fear and throw up on the floor, but somehow, he was able to resist the urge.
Its head looked something like a dog’s, or maybe more stout like a bear’s, but very misshapen to create a ‘scaring’ effect. It had a nose like a boar’s and small black horns that jutted out from the top of its skull. But the eyes were the worst. Just the staring eyes that looked down at him was enough to send a pack of dire wolves running for their lives. They were a deep, glowing black, seemingly created from an endless pool of tar, or some similar substance, creating an unnatural effect that made Gallian want to scream. Those eyes were obviously not human, and Gallian was fairly sure they could see much farther and in much worse light than even his augmented vision could.
If that weren’t enough, the beast’s mouth was just as scary. It was a large, gaping black hole that went right down into the belly of the monster. It looked big enough to fit a human the size of Gallian’s head in its maw in one bite, which was not a nice prospect at the moment. The breath emanating from it was emitting was extremely hot. So hot, in fact, it made him wonder if his blood was going to boil. The heat could be guarded against with a chillframe spell, if he had learned how to cast one, but nothing could mask the stench. It smelt as if the beast had eaten all sorts of refuse and decay, and it probably had. Then there were the teeth. Very large and strong, each long, glistening fang could easily tear through Gallian’s body in a second, and contend with those of the Great Dragon himself.
Gallian quickly took in the rest of the body – the head alone not being enough to identify the creature – although it gave him ideas. Inwardly, he hoped those ideas were wrong. Its chest was easily twice the width of Gallian’s, making him not only twice as tall, but twice as wide as well. He could already tell this was some spawn of Fhyrr that he didn’t want to fight, given the chance. The chest had the same coating of hair as the face, and it was very muscular as well. It looked as if this thing could bench-press at least ten humans, twenty if they were lean like Gallian, and if it wore a bra, it would probably have a size somewhere in the thousands.
The arms were equally hairy and muscular, easily strong enough to beat any human, alive or dead, and probably even big enough to win an arm-wrestling match with Zhaknon, the God of Strength. At this point, Gallian’s mind was racing, trying to figure out some way of destroying the creature without even the semblance of a fight. He still couldn’t be sure what it was, though, and that knowledge was important, so he looked to the feet. The feet themselves were gigantic hooves,
