I am running full force into—Sadie?

  She lets out a muffled bleat as I body check her into the rock behind her. I’m pressed against the satyr, our horns clonking against each other.

  I step back, making sure I didn’t break anything.

  “Got you,” Jes reassures me, crouched behind the next boulder over. She’s holding her axe ready, and her cestus looks like a brass cactus.

  So that’s what teleportation feels like. Like I licked a 9-volt battery.

  “Ow,” Sadie complains, rubbing the back of her head. “I’ll be fine. You’re not light.”

  The minotaur howls in frustration. We each freeze, my hands on Sadie’s shoulders, pushing her down out of sight with me behind our boulder.

  “Plans?” Sadie whispers, brushing her toga off like I have cooties or something. Now that I’m not crushing her, I see a sky blue crossed out triangle on her forehead, like someone got her with a magic marker.

  “It’s Jes’ glyph,” Sadie says.

  “I leant her a one time teleport,” Jes says, starting to stand a little taller to keep spying on the enemy from her cover. “Glyph of Teleportation.”

  Can I gift people skills for one time use? How do you even learn that? Jes didn’t have a teacher or guide.

  “Anyone have eyes on Baco?”

  “Not since he went supersonic,” Jes says, peering past me. “The minotaur’s retreating.”

  “No,” I deny. “He might be moving away, but I don’t believe for one second that retreat is in that brute’s vocabulary.”

  “I’m spent,” Jes says. “Can’t meditate and hostile vibes screw up my power regeneration.”

  I nod.

  “Shit,” Jes spits, ducking behind her boulder.

  “What now?” I ask.

  She jerks her axe in front of her. “He’s got a Godzilla-sized one of these.”

  Goodbye frying pan, hello fire.

  “I can’t give you any defense spells,” Jes explains. “Can you jump into Sadie? She’s got my glyph.”

  “I just ran into her full speed,” I respond without thinking.

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  “She means translocate,” Sadie explains.

  I knew that.

  Then, we hear a new sound. The sound of an eight-foot long axe being dragged along the floor behind a towering minotaur. It’s a bad tactical posture. The only reason he’s doing it is to be unnerving. I’m not going to say he’s failing.

  “No,” I counter. “We spread out. Confuse him, divide his attention.”

  “I have no spells,” Jes repeats. “Dom, you have no defense skills. Strength in numbers. Stay tight. He didn’t care about Baco. He’s after you. You hide in Sadie. She has my glyph.”

  Sadie grabs my shoulder. “She’s right. Get in.”

  They’re outvoting me. It’s some sort of parallel universe I was teleported to.

  “Dom!” Jes snaps. “Now.”

  She’s right. At least about the decision. I can’t say we have votes and then disagree the first time a vote goes against me.

  ”Sorry,” I say to Sadie. She gives a quick nod and I’m looking through her eyes.

  “Still disturbing.” Jes shoulders her axe and switches to her bow. “I’ll stay in cover and do what I can to keep him busy.”

  “I bet he gets confused looking for me,” I say. Sadie says. I say through Sadie’s mouth. “Dom. Not Sadie.”

  “We keep him off balance until we find an opening or weakness,” Jes says. She stands and lets an arrow fly. “I have enough in me for one last invisible if things get hairy.”

  “He’s hairy enough already. That was Dom saying that not me.”

  We turn and jump. Even without burning vitality, Sadie’s legs are insanely strong. We sprint out, and I’m watching each time the minotaur flinches from an arrow hitting. None of them are piercing his skin. It’s natural armor.

  Hoof maneuverability is amazing. We loop directly behind the monster. The minotaur’s axe swings low and wide as he spins to try and face us. Jes is nailing the back of his neck. He’s making angry barking noises and flailing with his free hand, trying to swat the arrows away.

  He’s trying to turn, we’re running and jumping, staying behind him. Somehow, it doesn’t make us dizzy.

  He huffs, eyes getting deeper red. We skid to a stop because he’s standing still and we don’t want to end up back in front of him. Sadie’s hooves dig in and we come to an abrupt halt that a human simply can’t do.

  The minotaur’s gums are bleeding. He lets out this fog horn moo and his body rumbles. Against the very law of physics, he and his gear get larger.

  Now we’re only thigh high to him. He’s gone massive. His hoof is like a giant car crushing weight at a recycling plant, rising above us.

  I notice a giant wall that was a bunch of stalactites a few centuries ago, but have merged. Cavers on TV exploration shows call it a curtain wall. There’s a gap in the pattern, a space about shoulder wide. “See it?”

  “Same eyes, Dom,” Sadie says as we start pounding the ground in incredible leaping strides toward the crevice, which is way too small for musclehead to fit into, even before he went jumbo-sized.

  My perception skill is tied to my persona, not my physical form. I know this because my physical form is gone and the slow motion kicks in. My attention turns our neck to a rhythmic rushing of air, not slowing the sprint.

  Super minotaur has hurled his axe, which defying all logic and physics has grown proportionately with him, and it is now spinning like a helicopter blade right at us.

  We leap low, turning into Superman, arms extended, reaching for the crevice in front of us. The huge strides we were taking means we kicked off on one foot, and instead of moving like a missile, the torque has us spinning like a drill bit.

  Back to the floor, facing the ceiling maybe two feet off the ground, the yellow metal axe whirls less than a foot over us. I see Sadie’s horizontal pupils wide in the reflection of the blade before it whips past us.

  We slide on our back, the world returning to full speed now that we aren’t about to be beheaded. We stand and cover the last twelve feet to the crevice in a single bound.