king, and tell him I withdraw my request. I’ll beg him to just give you the information you need.”
“We do this together, Fairuza—or not at all! Now think!”
He would really rather die trying to prevent me from facing my own fate. And he believed I could help. The least I could do was honor his belief.
My feverish thoughts suddenly slowed down, clarity taking over their processes.
Everything was made a certain way to help it survive where it was created. Ghouls had no eyes because they existed underground, and had sharp talons to dig their way to burial grounds. But they didn’t need to be sturdy, since the dead didn’t fight back. The earth giant drew its strength from the soil that had birthed it, but once it was cut off from it, it fell harder than anyone else. So that bull’s impenetrable hide had to be a defense mechanism developed to protect it from its natural predators. But if it had predators, then it could be killed. We just had to discover its weakness. To do so, we had to think if anything else shared its strengths.
I floated nearer to the raging stalemate and shouted, “Any other armored creatures you know of?”
“What?” The bull took advantage of Robin’s momentary distraction, bucked so hard, Robin’s whole body lashed up. He slammed back down, somehow still gripping the horns as he gasped, “You mean—like crabs?”
“Yes, crabs!” I cried excitedly. “How do you kill a crab?”
“I’m afraid—I’m out of giant crackers—right now!”
“Can we get it to crack itself against something?”
I regretted the question the moment it left my lips. That monster had demolished half the city without a crack on its hide.
Robin agreed as he yelled, “Unlikely!”
“Then how else do you get through a crab’s armor?”
“You’re the one who grew up eating that stuff regularly. You tell me!”
I opened my mouth to respond, and another idea burst into my mind. “Maybe it isn’t like a crab, but a clam.”
“What’s with the seafood tangent you’re on?” he grunted in pain as he flailed on the monster’s back.
“Just listen! A clam is softer on the inside than any other creature, because it relies on its shell for protection. But we don’t crush it to access the flesh, we open it with the tip of a sharp knife. At the right place.”
“You’re saying—this thing could have a very vulnerable interior?”
“I-I think so. Everything has a weakness. It stands to reason this is…”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” he cut me off as he heaved up to a stand on the bull’s back, before leaping into a backwards somersault.
He hit the ground in a crouch, gesturing me urgently towards Amabel, who’d been trying to join the struggle all along. Her bleeding had thankfully stopped, and she seemed raring to go.
I rushed to settle on her back, stretching my hand urgently to Robin.
He only shook his head. “I know how to kill it.”
“Did you find a chink in its armor?”
“No chinks, but it has cavities.” He readied another arrow in his bow. “I just need it to make it come at me again.”
“No! I thought you’d use my idea to do something while you were still on its back, as I feared it would only trample you if you jumped off. Now you did, we have to run away!”
The bull had finally noticed Robin was off its back, and it lost no time in charging back towards us.
Robin squared his stance, his bow drawn taut, arrow nocked and ready. “If anything goes wrong, you make sure you get that stubborn unicorn of yours to run away.”
He meant if he died while trying to kill this monster. “No, Robin—let’s run away—together. We’ll find another way, please!”
Without taking his gaze off the bull, he smirked. “This is the best way, right here. Just trust me.”
I did trust him. It was fate I had no faith in. And I couldn’t risk him, not to save my life. Especially not to save my life.
“Please…”
But it was too late. The bull was close enough for me to hear nothing but its hooves, see nothing but its mass about to trample Robin. Robin who was raining arrows on its snout, as ineffectively as ever.
They must have still hurt, because it opened its jaws, and an enraged bellow cracked through the square like a thunderclap.
The final arrows went right down its pink, fleshy gullet.
Both Robin and Amabel jumped out of the way as the bull crashed to the ground hard enough to shake it. It