The serpent snapped at Claude's flailing legs, but it was an awkward attempt at best. The crafty creature was too far to the monster's right to catch him in its toothy maw. It bent its head down the left, hoping gravity would pull the man to his digestive doom, but the master of the lake underestimated the fighting instincts of its meal.

The tiny creature had a strange claw for defense, but it was nothing that would save him surely. The iron scraped across his scaly stone hide with a flurry of sparks that did little more than massage the hard muscle below. With every strike of the man's blade, it snapped back with the same determination, the same mounting frustration. It was the man, however, that eventually broke the standstill.

An ear-piercing howl split the quiet air of the lake and the forest as blood began to squirt from its eye socket. Like a punctured grape, the vitreous gel of its large eyes began to spit from the wound and run down the side of the great serpent's convulsing head.