The Harpy-Fiend was a Tier 4 monster.
Kaelen knew its profile better than his own new face. He'd killed thousands of them, after all.
In the Imperial ranking system, Tier 0 and 1 were simple pests, while Tier 2 and 3 required Initiate Practitioners (Ranks 1–9) or groups of soldiers. Tier 4 and 5, like this fiend, could challenge a full Practitioner or Knight (Ranks 10–19) and sometimes needed siege weaponry to defeat.
The Harpy-Fiend was fast, armored by obsidian feathers, and had talons that could rip apart reinforced steel.
The creature's sulphurous eyes were locked onto him, drawn by the residual warmth of the Draconic Blood Magic breakthrough. It was a vicious hunter, a flying weapon, and Kaelen was nothing but a crippled prince in a thin shirt, trapped in a stone cage.
He was completely out of power. The single thread of Draconic Blood Magic in his right arm was currently dormant, requiring hours of recovery. He had no choice but to rely on physics and psychology.
"A Tier 4 predator," Kaelen muttered, pushing himself off the wall. The cold air felt like needles against his damp skin, but the fear was absent. He moved with a focused calm, every decision a calculation of angles and mass.
He had exactly two seconds before the Harpy-Fiend launched its attack.
The fractured window frame was its entry point. The wooden planks he had wedged into the opening were brittle and worthless against its impact.
Kaelen ignored the window. He dropped to the floor and began dragging one of the thick, jagged stones that had fallen from the ceiling earlier. It weighed at least fifty pounds. It was too heavy for Alaric's thin frame to lift, but Kaelen didn't need to lift it.
The Harpy-Fiend shrieked, a sound like grinding metal that momentarily drowned out the wind. It launched itself from the cornice.
Second One: The massive shape darkened the window opening. Kaelen planted his feet and used a rolling motion, leveraging his body weight against the heavy stone. He nudged it violently across the floor toward the only remaining intact section of the wall.
Second Two: The creature smashed through the rotten planks, sending shards of wood and glass scattering like shrapnel. It hit the floor in a flurry of black feathers and lethal, four-inch talons, its landing jarring the entire stone tower.
Its primary goal was simple: kill and feed. It focused on the heat signature it had detected.
Kaelen was already behind the stone, using the last of his frantic motion to wedge the sharp edge of the rock against the base of the solid wall. This created a single, narrow defensive barrier between himself and the monster.
The Harpy-Fiend lunged.
Kaelen flattened himself against the cold wall. The monster's talons scraped across the top of the defensive stone, a shower of black, chipped flint spraying over Kaelen's head. The creature was powerful, but its natural arrogance caused it to overestimate the prince's ability to defend himself. It had not calculated for the improvised shield.
The stone was not a barrier; it was a distraction.
Kaelen knew the Harpy-Fiend's flight muscles were anchored high in its chest, and its wings required a massive amount of stone clearance for its primary attack. In this cramped, uneven chamber, it was already slightly off-balance.
As the monster struggled to regain purchase on the uneven stone floor, Kaelen struck. He lunged forward, not toward its face or talons, but low, aiming for its closest wing joint. He wrapped both his arms around its massive, obsidian-feathered forearm, using his entire body as a counterweight.
The Harpy-Fiend roared in confusion, expecting easy prey. It tried to pull away, but Kaelen held fast, using the weight of the enormous bird against itself. He dug the heels of his hands deep into the creature's elbow joint.
"You like ruins?" Kaelen gritted out, his voice a strained whisper. "Then die in one."
He forced his body to rotate, driving the monster backward toward the shattered window opening. The Harpy-Fiend fought desperately, its free talons slicing the air inches from Kaelen's face.
The creature's heavy body slammed into the jagged stone of the window frame. The impact forced the Harpy-Fiend to try and open its wings for balance, but the broken frame prevented the full span.
Kaelen delivered the final, decisive blow. He pushed with all his remaining strength, driving his shoulder into the Harpy-Fiend's center of gravity, leveraging its struggle against the window's jagged edge.
The creature let out a high-pitched, agonizing cry as its wing snapped on a sharp protrusion of granite. The massive body tumbled backward out of the tower.
There was a series of sickening, loud crashes as the Tier 4 monster plummeted, breaking wooden scaffolding and scattering stones on its descent before hitting the frozen courtyard below.
Kaelen collapsed immediately, sucking in ragged breaths, his lungs burning. His arms were bruised and trembling, but he was alive. He crawled to the shattered window, peering down.
The Harpy-Fiend lay twisted on the ground, a growing pool of dark blood staining the ice. It twitched once, a massive, broken shape, and then was still.
Kaelen rested his forehead on the cold, jagged edge of the stone. He had won the fight, but he had lost his energy. He used the last flicker of his will to drag himself back toward the interior wall, where a small iron brazier sat unused.
The victory had confirmed the Empress's cruel intent. They had dumped a magically crippled prince at a derelict fortress, expecting the northern environment and its powerful fauna to solve their political problem. They had not accounted for the strategic mind of an Arch-Mage who saw the world as a weapon.
He closed his eyes and returned his focus inward, desperately trying to touch the nascent thread of Draconic Blood Magic again. The single Rank 1 channel was completely exhausted. He could only wait. The cold was returning, settling over him like a shroud.
I am a cripple without magic, he thought, the truth stinging like the northern wind. But I am Kaelen.
He would recover. He would grow stronger.
And he would ensure that every single political enemy who mistook his exiled vessel for a weak boy would eventually face the Arch-Mage's cold, calculated vengeance.