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I arrive just in time to see a spray of blood erupt from Spike’s jugular.

“No!” I shout, blindly lunging forwards, my hands outstretched. I touch his quills and trigger a Lay-on-hands, only to have to snatch my hand away and roll a moment later as teeth snap for my throat.

I swing my spear, jabbing it at the creature which has just attacked me. It dodges with frustrating agility and another set of teeth set themselves in my unprotected legs. I use my other leg to kick away my unseen attacker and hurriedly push myself to my feet.

I’m surrounded – the ones which had been attacking Spike deviating to attack me instead. Spike’s still alive – I see his jaws shifting open and closed. He’s in a bad way, though. A very bad way. I need to get to him. Hold on, buddy, I think desperately at him even as I stab at the creatures around me.

They look like a T-Rex, only a lot smaller, their heads only reaching about three feet off the ground when they stand upright. Their teeth look no less dangerous, though, a mouth full of needles to crunch and tear. I‘ve already felt the bite of those once, and am not keen to experience it again. I feel blood running down my leg, but dare not cast a Lay-on-hands: what if I do that and then don’t have enough mana to heal Spike when I get to him?

I’m gratified to see that several bear wounds from teeth or claws; some even have quills still sticking out of their faces or paws. He didn’t go down without a fight. That’s not enough to quell the rage that rises in me. Spike is mine – how dare these animals try to take him away from me?! Yanking my mace free off my belt, I leap into the fray with both hands filled, desperately trying to get through the obstacles stopping me from healing my Bound.

They are frustratingly difficult to pass, though. As soon as I get through one, another moves into my way, or one attacks the back of my legs in a way I can’t ignore: if I’m hamstrung, I’ll be the one in need of healing, let alone Spike. It’s like they know I’m running out of time and are determined to make me run the clock.

It’s only by suddenly leaping in the opposite direction from what they were expecting, dealing a number of blows which kill two mini-rexes, that I get a moment’s respite. I throw myself down next to Spike, not even casting the healing spell; just immediately dumping a whole third of my mana pool in a quicker channelling than I’ve ever done before.

The mana enters Spike, then rebounds, most of it returning to me. My eyes are on the mini-rexes which are already circling again, though more reticent to attack than before they lost two of their number. Come on, I think, trying again. The same thing happens. I dare to glance down for a moment, and what I see makes my stomach drop.

His eyes are glassy and he isn’t breathing. The blood is still coming out of him, but it’s trickling rather than spurting as it was. Combined with the failure of my healing magic, I know what the problem is. Spike’s dead. Even my healing magic can’t do anything about that.

I lift my eyes slowly to stare at the mini-rexes. For a moment, the grief threatens to overpower me, but then rage twice as strong rises in its place. I bare my teeth and bellow wordlessly at them, the power of my cry actually making them take a step back and mill uncertainly. For a moment, I wonder whether they might even turn tail and run. I’m not going to let them.

Throwing myself forwards, I swing with my mace, each contact breaking bones. In between swings, I stab with my spear. Between the two, my mace is the more effective, my fury badly affecting my accuracy with the spear point.

I get two more mini-rexes in the next few seconds, beating in their heads with angry swings of my upgraded mace. That’s the end of my freebies, though. The mini-rexes rally and start displaying the teamwork which must have taken Spike down. They start circling me, darting in as if to bite and then shying away the moment I start swinging at them. At the same time as one of the mini-rexes in front of me feints an attack, one of the others behind me actually does.

My spear proves its worth here, knocking away mini-rexes behind me with the butt end when they thought they’d snuck up without me knowing. Still, my fury only carries me so long, and it doesn’t take me long to realise I’ve got myself in a bad situation here. I take several slashes to the backs of my legs, only avoiding having a tendon severed by last-minute dodges. My rage being replaced by the cold sense of fear, I wonder if I’ve bitten off a bit more than I can chew. A moment after that thought occurs, I push it away: the moment I think I’ve lost is the moment I actually do. I can win this – I just need a bit of strategy.

My first step is to break away sideways and put a large boulder at my back. OK, that helps – the mini-rexes still try to attack me in my blind spots, but having something solid behind me is already lessening the pressure. See: using my Intelligence will get me through this, I tell myself.

Now, I need to actually hit the things or this will just turn into a battle of attrition which I’m likely to lose: a pack can rotate members in and out to rest while keeping up a constant barrage of attacks on me. Of course, that’s assuming the mini-rexes have the intelligence to do that, but I’m not going to make the mistake of underestimating them.

They’re wary of my mace, already having seen what it did to three of their pack-mates. As soon as I swing it towards them, they jump away, then close back in as soon as it’s gone past. It’s a stalemate: if they get too close, I swing my mace, they jump away out of range. I don’t hit anything, and they can’t get close enough to attack. But if I move towards them, I’ll be opening my back up to attacks again. My spear has a slightly longer range of attack, but due to its need for accuracy, the target just needs to shift a little and it’s rendered useless.

I need some other method of attack. There are five more mini-rexes to kill and so far I haven’t managed to land any more hits since taking down the two at the start and then the two after recommencing battle. My thoughts go towards my bow, but I dismiss the idea after a moment: it takes two hands to operate which means I would open myself up to attacks while drawing it. Not to mention the fact that I’m a rubbish shot, and would risk hitting myself rather than my attackers, if I hit anything at all.

Still, the thought of my bow has sparked another idea: why not return to the goldie oldie which I used to such good effect in previous battles? I have to access my Inventory, which does open me up to a couple of attacks, but by clumsily flailing my mace around me even while I focus on taking the items out of my storage space, I manage to keep off most of the opportunistic mini-rexes.

A few moments later, I have a pile of hard and rough projectiles sitting in front of me, otherwise known as rocks. Making a mental note that I’m running low on good throwing rocks, I lean down to grab one of them, quickly switching my mace to my off-hand. It’s much clumsier like that, but that’s OK – I only need it as a sort of shield. I’d already dropped my spear to the ground in order to have a hand free for my Inventory.

Throwing the rocks, the mini-rexes aren’t prepared for the battleground to suddenly change from melee to ranged. Their confusion costs them: in the first ten seconds, I manage to throw four rocks, hitting with three of them. One mini-rex is killed outright with a lucky blow to its head; the other two are crippled as one rock caves in ribs and the other breaks a leg. My eleven in Strength isn’t just for show, after all.

After that, the survivors seem a lot more wary, milling around further away. They’re not such easy targets since they keep moving, but I keep throwing rocks anyway. Probably two in three rocks hit, and though none of them are immediate killing blows, they certainly do damage. I almost wince at the sound of breaking bones that cracks through the air every time a rock strikes, but a glance at Spike’s corpse soon sends my anger up high enough that I don’t care at hurting his killers.

For a while it seems like the mini-rexes don’t know how to adapt to a human who’s capable of different attack styles, but then their strategy comes into play. The first I know about it is when I feel an impact to my back and then blinding pain as teeth set themselves into my right shoulder, managing to grab an area of flesh not protected by my chitin backplate.

It turns out that the crushing power of a mini-rex’s jaws is not to be scoffed up, and I feel my bones starting to creak under the pressure. Screaming, I slam myself against the rock, trying desperately to kill them or at least knock them unconscious so they let go. Like the proverbial bulldog, they just hold on tighter. Worsening the situation, the other mini-rexes take advantage of the situation and crowd around to snap at my front, reaching up as high as they can to tear at my torso.

I go beserk. Flailing around myself with my mace and a rock in my hand, I batter mini-rexes with every swing. At the same time, I keep throwing myself back against the boulder, as crazy as a fox caught in a trap.

The fight hangs on a knife’s edge. I’m making progress against the attackers in front, and the one behind has loosened its grip ever so slightly. But it comes at a cost: my stamina is down by three quarters and I can feel tiredness seeping into my limbs. I can’t keep this up for much longer. Not to mention that every time I swing my mace with my dominant arm, I can feel the teeth set in my shoulder doing more damage.

My health is doing OK, since I’ve been casting Lay-on-hands at regular intervals, the use of the Skill having become somewhat automatic by now. I’m still covered in wounds, and despite my use of my healing Skill, my health ticks down steadily, in large part because of the gaping wounds in my shoulder which I can’t close since there are teeth stuck in them.

I need to use my brain. My anger is great for fueling my strength, but it’s rubbish for conserving stamina. Much as I hate the idea, I decide to focus on the mini-rexes at my front and leave the one attached to my back. It’s not shifting at the moment, and trying to deal with it will make me vulnerable to the ones in front which are doing their best to rip out my guts. Sure, having teeth in my shoulder is making it harder to move but fortunately the adrenaline is doing a good job at masking the pain for now. If it shifts to attack something different, I’ll get an opportunity to knock it off while it’s repositioning.

Decision made, another idea occurs and I can’t help a savage grin from creeping across my face. Running into the middle of the clearing, I gain momentary respite from attacks. It’s enough to access my Inventory and pull something out to drop in front of me.

“Eat this, Jurassic Park rejects!” I yell as I start swinging something around me with both hands. It’s the corpse of the - now toothless - crocodile and I’m holding it by the tail, the rest of the body being pulled out straight with centrifugal motion. The weight is no joke; only by leaning back and holding on with both hands do I manage to control my make-shift flail. The three mini-rexes have no chance of reacting in time. They’d been rushing towards me to attack, and didn’t have the time to both register the new threat flying towards them and also react.

The weight of the crocodile’s body, plus its momentum, knocks the mini-rexes over completely, stunning them. I let go of my ‘weapon’, letting the corpse fly into a tree as I rush forward to take advantage of the situation. I knew that the strategy wasn’t likely to kill them, so I’d been mentally prepared to rush forwards and kill as many as I could while they were disorientated.

In the end, I get two of the three in the first five seconds. I flail with my mace to crush one of their heads, and stab another, slitting its throat and letting it bleed out. The last one by this point has started regaining its bearings and I miss my strike as it shifts away at the last moment. I’m not letting it get away, though, and lunge forward to tackle it.

The grounded mini-rex isn’t taking my attack lying down – well, technically it is lying down, but whatever – and it snaps at my throat. It actually manages to catch a flap of my skin, even as I jerk back instinctively. I feel blood trickle down from the wound and desperately grab at its head. I manage to get my hand around its jaws – unlike the crocodile, I can tell that I’m not going to be able to hold its mouth shut. It gives me an opening, though, and I stab at its artery.

Hitting it on my second attempt, I sag for a moment as blood spurts out. The continued agony in my back penetrates my mind soon, though, and I push myself to my feet. Completely done with this whole fight, I just use my mace to batter at the one attached to my shoulder-blade until I start hearing soft sounds indicating I’ve given it some kind of serious blow.

It’s a tenacious bugger, and stays gripping on to the very end. Even once it’s died, its jaws stay locked. It’s so ridiculous I have to wonder whether it’s some sort of evolutionary feature – that the mini-rexes are able to lock their jaws so that even in death they stay secure.

I have to literally break the jaw joints to get the creature off, not easy to do when I can barely get a grip with one hand, let alone two. By the time I succeed, I’ve managed to heal the rest of my wounds and my stamina has recouped a bit. Sighing in relief as I pull the final mini-rex’s teeth out with a nasty squelching sound, I cast a channeled Lay-on-hands, running the spell until my wounds are completely closed.

Feeling pretty depressed now the anger has burnt away and ashes of regret and guilt are all that remain, I stare around at the mess we’ve made of this small clearing. My eyes rest upon one of the mini-rexes’ bodies. Maybe I should have Dominated one of them. It would have made logical sense. But there was never a good opportunity for one and for another...emotionally, I don’t think I could have dealt with Bonding Spike’s killer. I’d probably have crushed its resistance and then hated myself afterwards.

Well, they’re all dead now. No other option but to deal with reality. I force myself to trudge forwards and clean up the detritus of my battle.