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But there were no bodies. There was no blood, and there were no dead men. There was only the forest and the clearing around him. A vision — but he’d never gotten one before he’d made an item. Something was off. Arwin’s hands tightened and he instinctively called for Verdant Inferno.

The hammer didn’t respond. His palms found nothing but his fingers. There was no sign of his armor or equipment either. Arwin stood alone, clad in only plain clothes. He turned in a circle and scanned his surroundings. There was nothing. The back of his neck prickled.

Something was different. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just the sickly colors of the light. This was different from previous visions he’d had. Arwin glanced over his shoulder. He backed up until he was pressed against a tree, peeled his ears in search of a presence that his eyes had failed to see.

Before, his visions had immediately tested his strength. They’d fought to break him. To find a way to force him to give in with relentless, mindless power. It had been a straight forward challenge of will. But now, the forest simply waited.

“What are you hiding from?” Arwin asked, his voice carving through the rustling wind like an executioner’s blade.

The wind ground to a halt. The sounds of the forest vanished in a split instant. It was so quiet that Arwin could hear the beat of his heart and the rush of blood in his ears. His fists tightened at his sides. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, preparing to burst into motion the moment —

A tree shattered. Fragments of wood spun through the air and a heavy step slammed into the dirt behind him. Arwin flung himself into a dive. He hit the ground in a roll and shot to his feet, spinning just in time to see massive claws wrap around the thick trunk. Wood crunched and splintered around them.

With a groan, the tree creaked and pitched forward. It slammed down in the center of the clearing with a resounding crash, its leaves fluttering through the air behind it like green tears. Two burning red eyes lit in the darkness of the forest behind the tree and a second, huge paw crashed down in the clearing.

Sickly green scales, chipped and marred by weeping black ooze, covered a heavily muscled arm easily twice as thick as Arwin’s body. Thick yellowed claws, scarred and rotted, extended from it and dug furrows into the dirt floor of the forest.

A second paw slammed down beside the first. Arwin took a step back as a draconic head snaked into the clearing. The blood drained from his face. It was a monster that he recognized well. One that he really should have been expecting to find — but not like this.

It was Wyrm.

Or, at least, it had been.

The monster’s eyes were bloodied and blackened. Trails of dried blood dripped down the sides of its face, which were cracked and ripped to shreds. Portions of bleached bone shone through still-weeping wounds covering the Wyrm’s body. The monster’s cracked lips parted and a tongue flicked out to taste the air, rotted and missing large chunks of flesh.

A lot had changed since the last time Arwin had seen the Wyrm. He was nowhere near as weak as he had been the last time they’d fought — but he didn’t have any of his equipment. And without his equipment, Arwin was missing easily half of his strength if not more.

“This hardly seems fair, does it?” Arwin asked, taking another step back. He shifted from foot to foot and his eyes darted around the clearing in search of anything he could use to turn the fight to his advantage.

The Wyrm hissed. It advanced into the clearing with slow, shuddering steps. The monsters tail flicked, shattering the base of a tree and sending its top pitching to land with a loud crash that shook the ground beneath Arwin’s feet.

It couldn’t speak, but that was as clear of a statement as any set of words ever could have been. The Wyrm wanted a rematch.

Arwin lifted a foot to take another step back.

Then his eyes narrowed. His foot lowered back to the ground where it had been. He locked eyes with the Wyrm as it approached with slow, measured steps, not moving again until the two stood face-to-face in the center of the clearing. His lips pulled back to bare his teeth.

A vision was a battle of wills. It always had been, and it always would be.

“Come on,” Arwin growled. “You want to fight? Then we’ll fight. I’ll be damned if I’m scared of a goddamn scale. Show me what you’ve—”

The Wyrm’s tail whipped forward and slammed into the side of Arwin’s chest. It stole the rest of his sentence and lifted him off the ground. He hurtled through the air and slammed back-first into a tree with enough force to shatter it.

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The breath exploded from his chest in a strangled grunt. He dropped to the ground and the tree creaked, pitching forward. Arwin dove to the side. It crashed down where he’d been standing and the ground bucked once more.

As Arwin drew in a breath, a spike of pain drove into his chest. A rib was broken. Maybe two. His teeth gritted. The Wyrm let out a hissing laugh and stepped forward. Black liquid dripped from its ravaged body and sizzled as it hit the dirt.

“You’re going to need a whole lot more than that to break me.” Arwin spat blood onto the ground and rolled his shoulders, pushing the pain into the back of his mind. His body hadn’t truly been broken. It was just pain in his mind — and if it was imagined, then it would not stop him.

The Wyrm’s tail whipped for his head like a striking snake. Arwin ducked out of the way. Wind rushed over his hair. He charged before the Wyrm had even finished its attack, closed the distance between them with three powerful steps. Arwin reared back and let out a roar as he swung his fist with all the strength he could muster and unleashed a punch into the monster’s side.

Scale cracked beneath his knuckles. It carved into his knuckles. A vibration traveled down his arm, followed by pain. He’d done damage, but it was like punching a wall. Arwin staggered back, a mixture of his and the Wyrm’s blood dripping from his fist.

I need my equipment. I can’t fight like —

A claw swept through the air. Arwin was forced to fling himself to safety once more. [Scourge] was beyond his reach. None of his abilities worked. His titles were blocked. It was nothing but him versus the Wyrm, and he was at every single disadvantage.

The claw crashed into the ground right behind him. Arwin rose, but the Wyrm didn’t let him recover. It lurched forward and its jaws yawned open. For a brief instant, they locked eyes. Then its mouth snapped shut around him.

There was no time to dodge. Arwin thrust his hands out with a roar. Fangs drove into his palms. His blood sizzled as it contacted the Wyrm’s saliva. Tremors shook his arms as he fought desperately to keep the monster’s jaws from closing on his body. His teeth clenched so tightly that he could taste blood in his mouth and the back of his throat.

I need my equipment. I can’t win the fight like this — but I’ll be damned if I give up.

Arwin reared back and drove his foot into the Wyrm’s tongue. The monster let out a surprised hiss. The pressure on him relented for an instant. He flung himself back, ripping his arms free of the teeth impaling them. The Wyrm’s mouth slammed closed on nothing but air.

Blood splattered across the ground and he landed on his back with a pained grunt. He rolled to the side. One of the monster’s huge paws slammed into the ground where he’d been. The other crashed down before he could move, driving him into the dirt and knocking free what little breath remained in his lungs.

Its claws closed around him like a cage. Arwin grabbed at them, his blood smearing across their surface and making his grip slick. He strained, letting out a roar of defiance, but the Wyrm didn’t budge. It was too heavy — too strong.

The Wyrm’s head lowered. Its lips pulled back in a sneer. Arwin could still see red on the monster’s teeth from where it had bit him just moments before. That wasn’t going to work a second time. His muscles just didn’t have the strength.

He couldn’t win like this. There had to be more. Arwin wasn’t a warrior anymore. He was a smith. His power was his equipment and his allies, but here, he had neither. Verdant Blaze wouldn’t answer to his call. His armor was silent, and nobody could enter the vision to save him.

A final, hissing laugh slipped from the Wyrm’s scarred throat. It lifted its claw. Its head shot down. He lifted his arms before him, left with no option but to attempt to block once more as he desperately called out to his equipment.

And, in the instant that the Wyrm’s jaws started to shut, a faint response tickled the back of Arwin’s mind. It was distant. Foreign. But it was something, and he drew on it with the strength of a drowning man clutching onto a thrown rope.

Something blurred before him. A weight affixed itself to his left arm. The monster’s hot, rancid breath washed over him and its mouth snapped shut.

Its teeth never found their mark.

A loud clang echoed through the clearing. The Wyrm screamed in pain, one of its fangs cracked straight down the middle. Blood poured from its lips like saliva. It staggered back, whipping its head in pain and fury, sending blood splattering in every direction.

Arwin stared down in surprise. Attached to his arm was a deep blue tower shield easily as tall as he was. It was rectangular, with two extended flaps on its sides that stretched past his sides when he positioned it directly before himself.

The shield’s surface was completely plain and without design. But, affixed directly in its center was a single, brilliant green Wyrm scale. A dim link to the shield hummed in the back of Arwin’s mind. It felt like an extension of his body, but there was more.

Curiosity flowed down their connection. Not from him, but from the shield. A slow smile crossed over Arwin’s features. A test. The shield — or perhaps the scale itself — wanted to see what he was capable of. What he could do without it, and what he could do with it.

“So that’s how it is?” Arwin asked, driving the shield down into the ground and pulling himself to his feet.

The Wyrm hissed at him, uncertainty and anger playing through its dead eyes. It recognized the scale — knew where it had come from. Despite the monster’s anger, it made no move forward. It was scared.

Arwin shifted from foot to foot as he adjusted to the weight of the shield. He’d never used anything quite this large, but it had quite a satisfying heft to it. It felt right, which was quite odd. The item didn’t even exist. He hadn’t made it yet.

But, as Arwin stood across from the Wyrm, understanding slowly settled in. This was a vision. All that mattered here was will.

His will. The Wyrm’s will — and the will of the Cursed item that he was forging. They were all testing each other. What existed in the real world didn’t matter. Here, all that mattered was what had been and what could be.

“You want to see what I can do with you, do you?” Arwin asked the shield.

A faint tremor of affirmation ran down their connection.

The Wyrm snarled. It took a step forward, but Arwin didn’t so much as budge. His lips pulled back in a smile and he cracked his neck. The pain tearing into his body and the blood dripping from his hands was nothing but an irritating buzz at the back of his mind.

“That’s just fine with me,” Arwin said. He lowered his stance, baring his teeth to mirror the Wyrm’s expression. “Let’s try this again.”

The Wyrm roared in challenge, and Arwin matched it.

Then, monster and man charged as one.