The man let loose a string of unfamiliar syllables and pulled out a strange-looking knife. The moonlight gleamed off the roughly hewn blade and the man sliced himself across his chest. Blood poured. He ripped the entire bunch of spheres off his staff and smashed them on the ground.

Dark wavy lines formed upon the bridge boards and coalesced into snakes. Hundreds of snakes.

Not again.

“I can command snakes, too,” Roman yelled. “This won’t help you.”

“We’ll see!” the man yelled back.

The snakes slithered to us.

“Imenem Chernoboga!” Roman thrust his staff into the boards and planted his legs, gripping the staff directly in front of him with both hands. The bridge quaked. The staff opened its beak and screeched. Wind spun around Roman, stirring his robe. The snakes halted, unsure.

The other wizard shook his staff. The snakes attempted their best to slither forward, but hit an invisible wall of Roman’s magic.

The black volhv clenched his teeth. The muscles of his face shook from the strain. Sweat broke out at his hairline.

The snakes reversed their course but made it only a few feet before slamming into the other wizard’s magic. The reptiles began piling onto each other. Heads reared, and the snakes bit each other in a frenzy.

I had five arrows left.

Four.

The swarm built on itself. The injured snakes split in half, growing extra heads and tails and multiplying with shocking speed.

Roman shoved the three-foot-tall knot of snakes back at the other wizard.

The wizard ripped the wound on his chest and flung his blood at the swarm, pushing it back.

Two arrows.

“You will not pass!” Roman thundered.

Great. Now he had decided he was Gandalf.

The five-foot snake swarm teetered toward the wizard. They just kept shoving the snakes back and forth with their magic, and meanwhile the swarm was growing bigger and bigger. It was a tower now, a boiling, slithering tower of reptile flesh.

“I’ll eat your guts!” the wizard yelled. The snake tower careened back toward Roman.

Last arrow. I had to make it count.

“If I tell you that yours is bigger, will you kill him?” I snarled.

“I’m trying,” Roman squeezed the words out through clenched teeth. Blood poured from his nose.

I spun to the heap of dripping snakes, ran to the side of the bridge, and leaped onto the wooden rail, balancing on my toes. The snake tower rocked this way and that and through the gap I glimpsed the wizard’s strained face.

I fired.

The arrow punched through the left half of his chest. He gasped, clamping his fingers to the arrow’s shaft.

Roman groaned and the snake tower spilled over, burying the wizard.

I turned around. There were seven people on the bridge and they had stopped advancing, gaping at the writhing knot of reptilian bodies.