Where is it? The slumbering beast's rigid scaly mouth was clean, with no blood or remnants of brown fur. He couldn't see the short-faced bear or at least its remains anywhere he looked. It doesn't matter, he thought.

  There was a doline about one respectable stone's throw away. Or...maybe two good stone throws away, he thought while lowering his head awkwardly and getting a better look. It was perfect. Just enough overall light to suit his needs, just enough light to see the spot where he must strike with precision his architecturally-inclined kindred speak of when designing immane structures of the future.

  His ability to see was exceptional but even he couldn't see in absolute darkness. This is why daylight was paramount.

  Max already identified the dead-on spot on the Wraith's body he will need to stab through. The neck was not an option since it gave the giant lizard ample time to tear him apart before it bled to death. The stab had to be quick like the sweetest dream. Practical. Brutal. Resolute.

  No...

  Something was on his lower back, just under his silken shirt, moving upward. A crawler. It was a reddish-brown insect about fist and a half big, with tiny evil-looking red eyes, that attaches to you and sucks several times its body weight in blood. A white-hot needle was piercing through the center of his back as the creepy-crawly tried and failed to penetrate Max's skin.

  He didn't panic. There was nothing he could do in his current position but accept the pain. It was infuriating. A pain you can't react to, an itch you can't scratch.

  Prick, prick, prick. Scrape, scrape, scrape. The little bastard refused to give up trying to break his skin.

  Max inhaled. Alldora-deep and moths-wings-silent breath. The pain was a part of him now. After I'm...finished with the bck-eyes...I will pulverize you. Goddess is my witness, he thought to himself.

  He calmed himself further. ''Keep pushing until something good happens,'' as Maeve once told him. ''Life will not give you what you deserve. Only what you can take.'' It's strange where one's mind will go in moments of great stress. Her words were a column Max could lean on, the sound of her voice: a shield. Max spent a good part of a month waiting for this exact moment. A stupid bug is not stopping him now.

  He feather-twist-gently uncsped the wicked-sleek and yet bulky broadsword from his back, grabbing it firmly in his right hand. The familiar weight of it was a handshake from an old friend.

  And Max did just that—he took—as he unched himself from his rocky purchase. The ''flight'' down drenched his mind with feelings of exhiration and strangely a sensation of unalloyed bliss. Max was ecstatic. It took him considerable effort not to scream from excitement. Cutting the air, Max's body was an arrow, a thrown spear shaft with the hepatizon sword being the primed tip. Before this hunt even began he experienced jumping off different elevations over eighty times in total to stab a rge pumpkin or a watermelon pced at ground level; such was the extension of his preparations. Max knew how to position his body in such a way that it delivered an adult-archerfish-precise hit. The far-out deep-blue comet shrouded in purple and trailed by a pale yellow streak felt its flight was short and Void-long all at the same time.

  The sharp tip of the cold bde pierced the Wraith's skull at the top with a sickening crunch, quickly followed by a muffled spttering sound. The force of impact nearly threw him across the cave floor.

  Even as it opened them, the beast's big bck eyes were already abandoned with the light of life. Gaining that empty hollow look all those who just met the Void had.

  It twitched a little—swaying his entire body like a twig in the wind, Max's grip on the sword the only thing keeping him from being thrown to the side—and then the creature died.

  How disappointing, he thought. A small part of him hoped for an epic fight however a much bigger part was relieved at not turning into aforementioned crystal dust.

  Next, he stabbed the broadsword into the ground and threw himself—back first—onto the knee-high rock nearby; again and again, with the fervor of a drone bee during the nuptial flight. ''Die you piece of shit.'' A crunching sound could be heard together with his violent thuds. His back was bruised and oozing with a disgusting cold feeling.