“Don’t fight me. I will hurt you and your friends. I have called hundreds of guards, and they wait for your friends above. Only if you submit, will I allow them to pass, unmolested.” Jabir ibn Hayyan’s small, sharp hands pulled at his lips.

A knot of pain started to burn in Alex’s mind, but the reaction was not one of crushing submission or even surrender. It was an urge to fight, to kill. Alex’s body flooded with adrenalin and natural steroids, and his frame felt like it hummed with a furious energy.

“You are not immortal.” Alex’s words hissed from between clamped teeth. “You are mortal, and you can die.”

“What is this?” Jabir ibn Hayyan’s tiny blackened brow furrowed, and his small claws now scrabbled at his flesh, trying to furiously tear his mouth open. “If I need to hurt you, break your body, then I will. Hurry now.”

The huge Eli being started to exert enormous pressure on Alex, and he felt the bones in his arms and shoulders begin to creak. A rib popped in his chest, stabbing him like a dagger. Then another. Finally the pain, frustration and fury became too much. Alex opened his mouth to scream his rage. He could chain the beast no longer, and it burst free like an animal in all its primal fury.

His own monster was now free, the Other One, and it wanted nothing but blood. Alex felt he could only watch as his body seemed to act of its own accord, not in his control anymore. It swung itself one way, and then the other, harder and faster, becoming ever more violent. The giant’s hands were rapidly losing their hold on him. Jabir ibn Hayyan squealed like a small animal and the creature in his mouth snapped back, as if on a spring. The tiny, withered alchemist threw himself from Eli’s arms, and crawled across the floor to one of the dark alcoves, looking back briefly to cast Alex a murderous glare.

“I’ll crush all of you down to pulp before you leave this building. You’re not free, and if I cannot have your body, then neither can you.” It looked to the huge Eli thing. “Pull him to pieces – we’ll use them again later.” It eased back into the shadowy alcove, until just its yellow eyes remained floating in the velvet darkness, before they too vanished.

Alex was lifted off his feet by the giant, rising into the air to stare in Eli’s broad face. It was a ripped patchwork of scars and different colored flesh. The eyes were dead, unfocused, and the scarification of ancient script still wept a clear fluid.