It’s dark under the canopy of the thick forest.

  There’s a pit.

  Ulfgar screams.

  A wyrm, dragonkin, slithers at the bottom, wrapping his torso, claws digging into his flesh.

  A giant, brick-and-mortar creature is in the air, blocking out the little bit of sunlight.

  I’d only seen its back and shoulders before. In the pitch black. Now, here’s its face.

  No mouth. No nose. No ears.

  Two eyes glare at me, glowing hot white. No pupils or irises, just a brightness emanating from within the golem itself.

  Bow in hand, my fingers glide across the fletching of an arrow, but where to shoot it? The iron arrowhead wouldn’t penetrate the dried clay or mortar.

  The golem’s head shifts from looking at me to the bottom of the pit as it falls. Two of its massive arms rise above its head like two cocked battering rams.

  The brick fists slam into the top of the wyrm's skull with a sickening crunch. Blue blood seeps out from its nostrils, eyes, ear holes. A high-pitched screech pierces my ears as the dragonkin roars in the face of its new opponent, droplets of its blue blood spraying out of its throat onto the clay bricks, the sides of the pit, and Ulfgar.

  Tossing Ulfgar to the side, the wyrm wraps its serpentine body around one of the golem’s arms and wraps its teeth around the head. The golem reaches with its other arm to rip the beast off its face, but the jaws are too strong. The jagged canines dig into the clay, and ground powder falls in small puffs from the indentations and scrapes.

  Ulfgar tries climbing out, but his hands just cause fistfuls of dirt to crumble out from the pit’s wall. His impossibly heavy axe lies on the ground near my feet at the pit’s edge, so I kick it over the edge and jump down into the fray.

  “Here,” I say. “Kill it.”

  Ulfgar darts over and picks up his weapon. “Which one?”

  “The one that tried to kill you!”

  The wyrm contorts, wriggles violently left and right, and then the stone arm it was wrapped around crumbles into pieces. It then snakes over to the golem’s other arm and wraps that up as well.

  Ulfgar’s waving his axe back and forth through the air, but the small dragon is too quick for him to land a blow with such a bulky weapon. I dash around to the back and start climbing, using the small grooves between the bricks for hand- and footholds.

  But as soon as my finger tips touch the rough surface, I can sense it.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Magic.

  Obviously, the animated brick monster is magic, but this is the fusion kind. The same with anyone else. Any other person.

  I don’t like to find out the manner of a fusion spell in the chaos of combat, but this situation is getting worse in a hurry.

  Vashar.

  The air in my lungs escapes in a gust, like I’m squeezed. My body glows white, and I sink into the back of the golem. My body is gone, and I can see through the bright eyes of the creature. The wyrm's jaws wrap around the entirety of its vision, with only small gaps between the teeth to see around.

  But in the place of the missing arm, a new one grows. One of steel. This one ends in a long, sharp point instead of a fist. I drive it through the skull of the wyrm above me. It lashes one last time. Its hot blood pours down all over the golem's body. It wriggles a few more times before slumping to the ground. Still.

  “Zane?” Ulfgar asks. He sounds like he’s far away and muted, like I’m underwater. “Are you in there?”

  There’s no way to speak. I nod. Neckless, it’s awkward. It has to move its torso with the movement.

  “Uh, come out. This is weird.”

  I end the spell, reemerging on the golem’s back, like a butterfly made of light out of a cocoon.

  The golem’s steel arm is gone. It looks much less intimidating now, with only one arm, the remains of the second scattered on the pit floor.

  After picking up one of the bricks, I say, “Sorry thing. The only people that can fix you are the ones that want you dead.”

  It nods.

  “What do we do with it?” Ulfgar asks.

  “I can’t destroy it now. Can you?” I ask.

  Ulfgar shakes his head.

  “We’ll bring back this chunk.” I hold up the brick. “They’ll believe us. The rest was dragged down further into the wyrm’s den.” I point to the small cavern at the bottom of the pit, hardly noticeable in the fight.

  “Do we just let it go?”

  “I have an idea.”

  We climb out of the pit and spend the rest of the day heading through the forest back to the coast. Rather than back to Yon’Kor, we detour back to the fishing village. The Captain and the sailors are still toiling to repair their ship.

  “Captain Patches,” I say.

  “Again. Not my name.”

  All of the sailors stop working. The presence of the giant golem has got their attention.

  “I’d like to introduce you to your newest crewmate,” I say.

  “That? The vrek is it?”

  “It’s a golem. They are normally mindless, but this one is different.”

  “Its name is Brick!” Ulfgar says.

  I didn’t realize we were naming it.

  Brick shrugs. Sounds like it has stuck.

  “Sure, Brick, go help them move some of those supplies off the pirate ship.”

  The massive creature’s feet sink nearly a foot into the ground as it bounds towards its directive. It jumps nearly halfway up the grounded ship and grabs the deck with its one hand before pulling itself up the rest of the way.

  “That’s terrifying,” Patches says.

  It is. Strong. Fast. I can see why the wizards wanted it back. But did it eat someone, as they said? It didn’t seem to have that disposition at all.

  I take the segment from its broken arm out of my backpack. And the strangest thing is…

  I can feel its magic again already.

  The Guild is growing.

  Rating.