Demon Lord, Awaken!

"I wish I could fly." Yvanna murmured as she massaged her tiny feet. She has been walking for an entire day. It was already evening when the company decided to stop and set up camp.

Yvanna sat by a small campfire, resting her tired little body. She never liked traveling. It would always make her very tired.

It was her parents' occupation that required them to move around. Being their only child and having no living relatives left, she was required to go with them.

She hunched forward and rested her chin on her hand as she watched her parents and their companions. They were gathered around another campfire having their nightly 'meetings'.

As a child, no, as the only remaining child in the company, Yvanna is not allowed to join in.

'They've been having quite a lot of them recently.' Yvanna thought as she took a bite from her dinner, roasted fish.

Today, they were having alcohol. They always drunk alcohol to remember their dead comrades. They've been doing it more often nowadays.

Yvanna couldn't hear them but she was sure. Today, they were drinking for Sir Uncle Frank and his son, Dion.

Sir Uncle Frank taught her how to fight. He never hated the nickname she gave him despite her parents calling it lame. He was really strong. She has never seen him lose in battle.

Until today.

Dion was the only other child in the group. He was her friend, on the rare occasions when he stops saying mean things to her. He was always beside her by the small campfire.

Until today.

"I wish I could fly." She whispered again as she recalled seeing their bodies swallowed by the fog as they fell off the cliff.

Every time she closed her eyes, it was all that she could see.

"Stop," clutching her head as she tried to suppress the memories. Then, she felt the familiar sharp twinge in her chest. It has never been this painful before.

Yvanna knew that no matter how much she tried to recall it, Sir Uncle Frank and Dion will never come back.

"Please." She begged for the memory to stop.

"I-I can't-" The tiny painful feeling grew rapidly until it towered over her. Her face crumpled and tears streamed down her face.

Yvanna gasped for air. Her heart was beating wildly. Her breathing sped up until she began to feel suffocated.

Thud!

She collapsed on the ground. She could feel her consciousness fading.

"Yvanna!" She could hear the alarm on her mother's voice.

'Mother!' Yvanna tried to reach out for mother but her consciousness fade and everything went dark.

* * * * * * *

Yvanna woke with a jolt causing her to hit her head against something.

"Ow!" She lifted a hand in order to massage her forehead, but it ran into something solid and cold. She gasped for air. She opened her but saw nothing but darkness. Alarms resounded in her head. She tried to move her body but she could barely do so. It was getting hard to breathe.

'Yvanna, calm down. You can do it.' She repeated in her mind as she forced herself to calm down. Once again, she tried moving her body. She felt at her sides, in front, at the top, and at the bottom and found that they are all sealed.

'Oh great, I'm trapped in what feels like a stone coffin.' She thought as she tried to formulate an escape plan. She pushed against the sides with all her might but it did not even budge. She repeated it a few more times but nothing happened.

Yvanna gritted her teeth and began wildly hitting the sides of the container. She even moved her body down a little so she could kick the bottom part of her coffin.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

"Argh!" She screamed she vented her frustrations on the walls of the coffin.

After relentlessly attacking for several minutes, Yvanna gave up. It was getting hard for her to breathe. She closed her eyes and focused on calming herself. Her back felt cold. She felt like she was lying on the ice.

'Oh, great. I'm getting literal shivers down my spine. I'm probably in an ice coffin.'

Yvanna chuckled at her random thought. Then she frowned as she remembered bits of her dream. There was a campfire. Her parents. Their companions. Uncle Frank. Dion.

It was an old memory from the time the war has just begun. It is one of the sources of her frequent nightmares. Uncle Frank taught her a lot of things, and Dion competed against her a lot. She sighed deeply when she caught herself getting sentimental.

'Now's not the time, Van.' She mentally scolded and focused back on the current situation.

'Where on earth am I?' Yvanna racked her brain trying to recall what happened.

She remembered leading troops to battle. She had experienced many victories and faced defeats. The war was almost over. They managed to take most of the demons' territory. They finally got to the castle. The demon king's army is about to collapse, and then...

Then...

Everything after that was a blank. She tried to remember but her head began to throb. She stabilized her breathing, then she focused again remembering again. She and her friends were fighting. They looked battered and exhausted.

Yvanna gasped. Her head felt like it was about to be split in half.

'I have to get out of here! They are in danger. They need me!' Yvanna began attacking the sides of her tiny prison once again.

"Argh-" She let out another scream of frustration then burst into a coughing fit. Her throat felt dry and itchy.

'Just how long was I out?' A sliver of powerlessness crept in her heart.

'I can't just-There has to be another way. I will get out of here.' She reassured herself. She took a deep breath.

'I will get out of-Oh, damn,' She chuckled. 'How could I miss this?'

Yvanna immediately felt around her tiny prison. Years of experience taught Yvanna to pay attention to her surroundings. When she has finally calmed herself, she was easily able to come up with an intelligent guess.

'The air hasn't thinned despite me struggling for about an hour. This might not be a totally sealed place.'

She wriggled around a bit as she felt for holes or unevenness on all the surfaces inside her tiny prison. There wasn't any hole.

'No holes, huh? There must a space on one the edges.'

She closed her eyes and concentrated her stored mana.

'I have enough.'

The essence of the world, mana, can be absorbed and stored easily by most of the gods' creations. It fuels the spells that enable them to temporary bend the laws of nature to their will.

[Wind. Blade.]

Yvanna thought as she released a small amount of mana through her pointer finger. She never had to speak the Divine words to cast a spell. This unique ability set her apart from normal soldiers. It helped her rise above the others. It was also this ability that forced the 13-year-old her to grow up.

A finger-length wind blade formed at her fingertip. Using the miniature wind blade, she forcefully inserted it along the upper-left edge of the coffin.

'Just a little more.' She pushed it deeper into the edge.

Crackle! Her little wind blade immediately dispersed when it touched something.

'A mana barrier!'

Yvanna huffed. That's why she cannot budge the walls no matter how hard she tried. She is sealed within a mana barrier.

'I wonder how I ended up here? Who could have done this?'

Yvanna shook her head and repressed such thoughts. She decided to focus on getting out before finding answers.

[Wind. Blade.]

She cast as she released an amount of mana denser that the amount present on the barrier through the same finger. It is common knowledge that in order to break through a mana barrier, one must use a spell with greater mana than the barrier.

Once again, Yvanna pushed the blade through the edge of her tiny prison.

Crackle!

She felt the barrier's slight resistance before the wind blade completely pierced through the barrier. Very slowly, she traced her finger along the upper edge of the coffin. It took a lot of stretching, contorting, and wriggling before she was able to trace around the upper edges.

'That was hard.' She exhaled forcefully and did a tiny victory dance.

"Yes..."

She froze when she heard someone speaking. The barrier must have been a noise-canceling one.

'That is simply evil. It's impressive, though.' Yvanna frowned. It's not easy to make a barrier like this.

The development encouraged Yvanna to proceed with her plan.

[Wind. Blade.]

She cast once again with the same mana density as the previous one and inserted it through the edge. Then, she condensed the mana on her finger and extended it through the barrier like a thread.

[Move.]

The wind blade left her fingertip and moved along the line of mana she made.

Crackle! Crackle! In a matter of seconds, the barrier was broken.

"Yes, we waited for years." She heard a person say.

"Stop!" She heard someone scream.

'What's happening?' Yvanna knit her brows in confusion, then she sighed.

'Oh well. It does not involve me. I got to get out of here now.'

She released a dense amount of mana on the surface of her palm, then she touched the surface in front of her.

'Wait for me, my friends, I'm coming to help you.'

[Burst.]

"Oh great demon lord, awaken!"

Crash!