Titania

"Titania, that's enough. Let them go." Christa spoke to the giant snake in a gentle tone as she slowly walked closer.

The monstrous snake turned its eyes on the girl approaching her. Puzzled, the snake continues to gaze at the girl who seemed to know her name. Without realizing it, the snake made an opening for the people to escape, but they are so scared to anger the snake that all they could do was stand idle watching the creature and the girl trying to converse with one another.

"Do you remember me, Titania?" Christa continues to move forward. "It's me, Christa! It's been a while since I last saw you."

Christa stopped taking a step as the head of the giant snake came face to face with her. The giant hissed. "It's been a while, Christa." An articulate female voice came from the snake and spoke to Christa, in which surprised everyone on the background.

"The snake suddenly spoke!"

"Seriously?!"

Christa with a big smile pats the snake's gigantic head. "Yes. It's been a while."

The one in command of the wood cutters stares at the girl and the snake, embracing each other on their reunion after being seperated for more than a month.

"H-hey! Is that snake your friend?" The man shouted at the two, which caught their attention. "Tell that giant m-monster to leave! That thing's ruining our work, damn it!"

The other wood cutters were getting anxious with their leader blurting rashful words to a girl with a giant snake beside her. They knew one mistake and they're all gonna be the snake's meal. But it was too late to tell their leader about what he did. With those words, they knew for sure that the monster were enraged, and will surely kill them on the spot.

However, instead of attacking them, the girl with the crimson eyes spoke. "Leave. This forest is not for wood cutters, these are the home of the animals and other creatures living here together." She continued. "You already cut down some of them and there's no way to bring them back to normal. So just take what you got and leave."

The man's eye twitch in exasperation. "Leave, you say? Hey, Kid! No one owns this forest, and you alone won't stop us from doing our job!" The man shouted. "If you tamed that ugly slithering monster, then go tell that thing to go somewhere else!"

"What?" Christa's eyes bugged out, hearing such rashful words on someone who are given the chance to just go and take what they already got.

The man continued blurting words that makes Christa's anger grow brighter. With that, a dark, menacing aura began to engulf her. Her anger spreads like a wind, that which the man and the others, even the giant snake felt and made them concious.

"No one owns this forest, you say?" The man flinched as Christa continues to speak. "Haven't you realized why the beasts are attacking you before? This forest, everything in here belongs to the animals and other creatures living together peacefully. I'm giving you the chance to live, yet you're being a moron and even insulted Titania."

With her malicious, fearful glare, the wood cutters were left speechless in fear. The terror of the girl's anger rendered them not just to speak, but to even move. Some froze idle and their mouth fell open, others fell on their knees as they witness something far more scarier than encountering a gigantic boa.

"I'll give you one more chance to leave. If you don't, I'll have Titania have her way on you people." As Christa spoke gravelly, the giant snake started making a low, husky growl. As if Titania was already preparing to leap and feast on them. "What? Why aren't you speaking? Do you really want to be eaten by a snake?"

His mouth is moving and shaking intensly, but his voice aren't coming out.

"Christa, I think you scared them too much." Titania spoke as she looks at Christa.

"Ah, my bad. I lost my cool there for a second." She apologized while stroking the back of her head.

With Christa's menacing aura had subsided, the wood cutters finally regained their ability to speak and move. Some are performing a quick breaths while others coughing as if they got strangled by a rope around their neck.

With that, the leader of the wood cutters began to speak ill of Christa.

"A demon... A demon! You're a demon!"

Christa and Titania looked at each other before they let out a despondent sigh at the same time. The man watch Christa turning towards him, and when he fluttered his eyes, the girl he's looking at from a distance suddenly blinked onto him. With her wooden sword almost touching his neck.

Her dash generated a strong wind that blew the trees, grass and even the fallen and dried leaves away.

"The next time I swing my sword, I'll make sure to send you away." The man flinched before the girl and her threatening words.

He slowly took a step back one by one away from Christa. He then screamed in terror as if he was being chased by a ghost. The others followed suit and they all drifted away. After they all disappeared, the giant snake gave a murderous look behind Christa. The moment she puts her sword down, the giant snake went to strike her wide open back. But instead of tackling her off with her head, her tackle was blocked by Christa's wall of fire.

"Oh, wanna go at it, Titania?" Christa asked her with a mischievous smirk on her face.

Titania moved back and declined the girl's request. "Your guard is always on when it comes to me. Sorry, I'm gonna have to pass."

"Well, aside from Angelika, you're the strongest among the creatures I ever fought in this forest." Christa blurted out a playful laugh. "Anyway, It's been a while since I last saw you. You got really big."

"I'm still far from the size of an adult boa." The giant snake responded.

"Oh, that's right! You're as young as my age. I remember the first time I met you, you're still only as big as a regular sized trees." Christa began reminiscing the time when she met Titania.

It was a simple yet weird encounter between her and Titania. When she was in the middle of fighting the wolves, goblins and other small creatures in the forest. She doesn't even care about wrecking the forest down back then, she keeps slaying monsters one by one despite her young age and tiny body.

At the time, Christa was only using a long knife that is fit for her size. She was able to swing and thrust it with ease. She kept slaying the monsters while also exploring the whole huge forest. Of course, Angelika was following her behind. In the middle of her recklessly swinging her knife on the monsters and other things on her way, she didn't realize that she got deeper in the forest.

There, a boa was wrapping its body around a tree, seemingly taking its time sleeping comfortably. But because of the ruckus Christa made around the forest, it awoke the snake from its peaceful slumber. Angered, the snake went on the source of the noises and wreckage through out the forest. And the young girl and the baby boa met with each other.

Since then, the two have been fighting against each other. But not long ago, they became friends, and the scar near the giant snake's eye is the proof of their countless confrontation with one another, and is also a mark of the start of their friendship.

"Anyway, let me ride on your back, Titania!" Christa playfully taps Titania while asking. And the two wandered around the forest with Christa riding on Titania's back. She and Titania explored every corner of the forest, and they're doing it at a fast pace.

"Hey, you're moving quite fast between these trees despite your size." Christa spoke while casually sitting on Titania's head.

"I've been going around the forest since then, that's why I know which part I can go throughout the forest." Titania responded.

"Ah, so you've memorized your own path... Your own road." Christa stared in front of them before she got what she wanted to ask. "By the way, have you seen where the house me and Angelika was living went? It kinda vanished completely when I tried to go back there."

Christa hits Titania with a question. However, she answered and told Christa that she doesn't really know Exactly what happened.

What Titania knows was that the day Christa and Angelika left the forest, she decided to protect the house they left while also strolling around the entire land of giant trees. But in that early morning, the place where the house was supposedly standing, Titania found only but a tree, there was nothing even a single trace of the house being demolished or something. It just vanished as if it was just a ghost that appears and disappears.

Soon after their talk, the two arrived at the place they were talking about not.

"Nothing... Nothing but a tree." Christa said with an undertone voice.

"I've also tried to look around if ever it got really destroyed but, there's really nothing. Sorry."

Christa tried to comfort her giant friend and told that it was okay. She then began to wonder what could have caused the mysterious disappearance of her home, but there was nothing that comes to mind. Then, Titania broke the silence after noticing a bag full of swords sitting beside the tree.

"There's something lying beside the tree, Christa." the giant snake pointed in front of them.

The girl walked towards the tree and saw the bag she's carrying earlier. It was then, she remembered what she's supposed to do for the day.

"Crap! I'm supposed to deliver this to the nearby village!" Christa shockingly spoke.

"You're working?!" Titania responded in shock.

Christa flaunted her emerald dog tag and boasts her being an Adventurer to Titania. The giant snake thought that her friend finally came back to their home, but Christa was only visiting the forest she spend her ten years in. Even though she won't stay long, Titania felt relieved that her friend since her younger self is doing well in the city far from her.

"You said you're going to deliver this to a nearby village, it's Eisvel Village, right?" Titania asked the girl.

Christa responded with a resounding yes while also asking why Titania mentioned her quest. With her gigantic head lied still on the ground, she asked whether Christa wanted Titania to ride her on the way to the village. Christa worryingly told the giant snake that the people might see her and will probably get frightened. Having said that, Titania showed something that Christa didn't know she could do.

Titania vanished into thin air, but even so Christa could still hear her as she asked the girl. "Can you see me, Christa?"

Christa could hear her, but she's nowhere to be seen, Christa couldn't even sense her presence at all. After a few seconds, the giant snake casually reappeared at the same spot it vanished. The snake spoke with a smug tone. "I developed this ability just to perform my perfect assassination against you."

"Seriously? I couldn't sense you at all. It's a complete invisibility ability. Amazing." Christa responded and was amazed, amazed at an ability her friend developed against her.

With a useful ability to hide her monstrous and gigantic body, the two finally decided to go to the Village.