Day 115

Breathing heavily, Kai trembled as he turned his attention towards the artifact in his hand. Sensing his companion's shift in focus, Caleb looked up at Kai, their gazes meeting momentarily before returning to the artifact.

Still looking at the artifact, Caleb whispered, "What on earth just happened?"

Kai slowly shook his head as he whispered in reply, "No idea."

Caleb pulled away from the the artifact and looked at Kai's face as he asked, "Was this in the legends?"

"No. Most definitely not." Kai replied.

"Well, the monster is dead." Caleb said as he pointed with his ax to the carcass at their feet.

Kai snorted, shed a tear and nodded while saying, "Yes, yes it is. You know it was crazy to try and kill the monster right?"

It was Caleb's turn to laugh and cry, "Oh yeah, I totally underestimated what we would be up against; thank the gods for your magic artifact!"

Day 114

Kai ducked and rolled away from the vicious attack, drawing his sword from the scabbard and then took advantage of the beast's loss of balance due to the missed strike by slashing at his foe defensively, hoping to gain some space to maneuver. The creature evaded the strike easily, stopping to assess it's attackers.

Caleb and Kai held their ground, trapping the hideous monster between themselves and the cave. For a moment, hunter and hunted stood immobile, quietly assessing each other.

Before them stood a truly fearsome foe; a four-legged fiend with bulging muscles rippling beneath bright orange scaled skin. Dirty black bone spikes jutted out down it's spine, leading to a thick, short tail, whipping viciously back and forth. It tilted it's head to one side, two eyes on each side of it's head blinking as it regarded them.

Caleb let out a primal scream and launched himself at the monster, ax held above his head. Caught of guard, obviously unused to being attacked, the beast almost allowed himself to get hit. It's astonishing flexibility and agility allowed it to twist to the left of the attack, the massive ax blade smashing into, and glancing off, one of the spikes on the beast's back. As it twisted, it's powerful tail smashed into Caleb's side, denting his armor and causing him to fly several paces away.

Kai ran into the fray, slashing and lunging repeatedly at the creature, trying to keep it from following up on it's previous strike. The distraction gave Caleb just enough time to get up and return to battle before the creature overpowered Kai.

As he watched Caleb fight the monster, Kai was hit with the sudden realization that they could never defeat this foe, it was much to powerful. In the very instant before despair triumphed, Kai was overcome by an urge to reach into his satchel and pull out the artifact.

A light as bright as the sun emerged in Kai's hands, temporarily stunning the three combatants. Almost instantly, the beast turned towards Kai and lunged once more, straight at him. Instinctively, Kai held out the artifact between himself and his attacker; what happened surprised them all.

A beam of the white light shot out towards the oncoming behemoth, causing it to let out an unholy bellow of raw pain and anguish; black smoke poured out from where it's eyes used to be, and it fell to the ground in mid leap, scraping along the jungle floor towards Kai.

The white light faded, leaving Caleb and Kai staring dumbfounded at the corpse of the dreaded forest monster; now clearly dead at their feet.

Day 113

They rushed down the small hill as quickly as silence would allow, although the beast was clearly already more than alerted to their presence. They positioned themselves so that the beast couldn't possibly attack them both at the same time, allowing whichever one wasn't attacked to ambush the monster from behind.

Had they thought it through fully, they would have realised it was quite obvious that the beast would attack Kai, the bearer of the artifact. And so it was, as they stood there waiting in the jungle heat, sweat pouring down their backs and face; that the creature leaped out from the blackness, straight towards Kai.

The sudden attack almost ended him right there and then, but Kai managed to dodge the lunge at the very last possible moment, ducking beneath the lashing claws streaking towards his face.

Day 112

"Oh gods! Is that the...Oh no..." babbled Kai.

Caleb quickly slapped Kai with the back of his right hand and quietly stared into his eyes for a few moments before whispering, "Are we ok now?"

Kai took a deep breath then replied, "Thank you, yes, I'm fine." He was shaking, and sweat was now beading on his forehead, but he did seem to have things under control.

Caleb nodded, then said, "Ok, so he's in the cave, and he's angry. He must have sensed the artifact."

Kai said through trembling lips, "What do we do?"

Caleb unhooked his axe from it's harness, cracked his neck and turned to Kai before replying, "We wait for it to come out, and when it does; we kill it."