Old Snow Trip II

Kies quickly escaped through one of the holes that formed in the wall as the place was caving in. He didn't take a look ahead of him to see how high he was jumping from. All he knew was he would probably survive as long as he had the winds at his side. As for staying inside of that cave? Not so much.

Kies fell through the air, landing several hundred feet under him, diving into the deep snow. He survived the fall without any injuries thanks to his wind magic and the snow breaking his fall. After digging himself back up to the surface, he looked up at the peak and saw that there was an avalanche coming at him.

"What did I expect..." he said, shaking his head and sighing. What terrible luck. Why did things always have to be so hard for him?

Kies jumped on top of the snow. He used the wind to create a layer between him and the snow underneath so that he wouldn't sink into it and ran as fast as he could.

The avalanche behind him was still far away from him, but it was catching up very quickly. Even with his wind-enhanced speed, Kies wasn't faster than the falling snow. He needed to move faster or slow the snow down.

Kies reached the cliff of the rock he was standing on and stopped. Unlike the previous drop, this one was more than three times the height and would bring him all the way back down to the ground. Kies had no problem surviving it, but if he jumped, then he would have to spend all that time climbing back up again.

Muttering a curse, Kies turned around and faced the avalanche. It was almost on top of him now and he needed to act fast. "Winds, to me!" he shouted. The winds howled as they traveled to Kies and circled around him.

"This better work..." Kies held out his hand and concentrated the winds in front of him. If not, he will get buried underneath a mountain of snow and ice. Digging his way back up would be very annoying, assuming he could even do so after getting buried by that much snow.

The avalanche reached Kies, but he didn't fire off his magic yet. Instead, he let the first bit of ice and snow chunks hit him. He needed to aim the attack right or else he would end up causing another avalanche, which would result in him having to do this again. Kies got down to one knee, planting himself into the snow under him. He aimed his hand upward at the sky and let go of the winds.

Creating a sonic boom as they moved, the winds tore through the avalanche, creating a gap through the middle where Kies was clear of the tumbling snow and ice. He successfully split the avalanche in half and saved himself.

Now that that has been dealt with, it was time to deal with the thing that caused this mess. Kies looked at the peak of the mountain which was no more. Standing the center of where the peak stood before was a towering giant with white fur.

"..."

What a real headache. What he thought was a mossy pillar was actually a magical beast and an ancient one at that. The creature was huge, at well over a hundred meters. And worse of all? Kies felt the fragment emitting magic from the center of his forehead.

"Why does this keep happening to me..."

In order to obtain the fragment, he will have to slay the massive creature. From the looks of things, it certainly wasn't going to politely hand it over to him, especially since it was embedded inside of its head.

It also wasn't going to be an easy fight considering the thing's size. But on the bright side, it just woke up and hadn't spotted him yet. He could take it out by surprise while its mind was still foggy. Hopefully, he could inflict enough damage on the thing so that it wouldn't be able to put up a good fight.

Kies raised his arm and aimed at the giant. "Winds, take it out!" A small tornado the size of a large tree appeared around the giant's leg and shredded its flesh. The monster cried out in pain and lost balance, toppling over into its back.

The impact shook not only the mountain range itself but also the surrounding forest and hills, bringing down some of the nearby trees that were too close to the mountains. Kies managed to stay on his toes with his magic.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall..." Quite literally in this case, and not metaphoric. Now that the giant was crippled, Kies prepared his next attack on the giant but something unexpected happened.

The giant's leg started to regenerate at a rapid pace, healing back to its normal state in a matter of seconds. "This... Is this real?" Kies muttered in disbelief, shocked by what he had just witnessed. The massive beast got back on its feet and surveyed the area for the attacker.

Kies dove into the snow, evading the giant's eyes just in time as they passed him. Even though the mountains were huge and he was tiny, making it very hard for something that big to spot him, for some reason, he has a bad feeling about this.

Luckily for Kies, the giant still didn't know who or what it was that attacked it. Using this to his advantage, Kies peeked out of the snow and waved his hand, calling the winds to attack the giant.

A flurry of winds pierced the giant's shoulder, causing it to groan and stagger as blood poured out of the monster's chest. The monster was bleeding a river, as in an actual river! The amount of blood the thing had was probably more than enough to form a decently big lake.

However, just like before, the giant's wounds healed themselves almost instantly and Kies was back at square one.

"..."

Kies scratched his head, trying to devise a plan. His magic was powerful enough to get through the monster's tough skin but the regeneration ability was just ridiculous. He had no idea what its weaknesses were either.

"Wait a minute..." Did he really need to fight the thing? He just needed to retrieve the fragment that was embedded in its forehead. He didn't need to kill it... Unless taking out the fragment would kill it, which he really doubted was the case.

Comparing the size of the fragment to the size of the giant, it was the equivalent of removing a speck of dust that was stuck in a pore or something. it shouldn't even feel a thing if he removed it.

Kies ordered the winds to wrap around his body and make him invisible. He watched at the giant who was rubbing his eyes and yawning. Somehow, having its leg get torn off wasn't even to get its blood pumping.

Kies took this chance while it wasn't paying attention to hop onto its arm. He just barely made the jump, landing on the giant's body with his tippy toes.

Kies scaled up the giant's body until he reached the top of its head. He waited for the faint to lower its arm and then made his move.

The giant didn't know that Kies was on its head and was still searching around for him in the snow.

Kies waited patiently for it to tilt its head until it was at the perfect angle for him to strike. Grabbing onto one of its long hairs, Kies slid down the giant's face and almost got squashed by its massive hand.

Kies jumped out of the way and landed back on its head. The giant took its hand away and squinted at it to see if it caught anything.

"That was close..." Kies nearly got crushed like an insect. He needed to be more careful. It looked like the giant's face was particularly sensitive.

Taking that into account this time, Kies carefully leaned over the giant's head and located the fragment. It was quite far down and he needed to grab ahold of the hair there in order to reach it. This was going to be hard.

Kies slowly went down the giant's face, doing his best to be as slow as possible so that the giant didn't feel him crawling down his face. When he got close enough so that he could touch it, Kies took out his sword and took a deep breath.

No mistakes now. Kies very gently began carving the skin where the fragment was. At most, the giant would feel an itch and he just needed it to ignore the itch long enough for him to get the fragment out.

Luckily, the giant was far too distracted by searching for him in the snow to pay attention to anything else and Kies manages to extract the fragment easily.

Cutting away the final piece of the skin, Kies peeled the fragment off of the giant's forehead, or rather, he tried to. For some reason, the thing was stuck in its head and wouldn't budge. It was just like before.

"What?" Kies pulled harder on it but it held strong. What was going on? The fragment was stuck like it was a part of the giant's body.

"..."

It was risky, but he was going to try something dangerous. Kies readied his sword and then pushed it into the giant's head with as much fire as he could. The giant flinched and immediately reacted to the pain, reaching up with his arms.

However, it still wasn't aware of what was happening. Kies grabbed onto the fragment and using the sword too, tried to pull the fragment out but discovered something very shocking.

Kies stared at the cut he gave the giant and saw that the fragment was bigger than he thought. Its width was nothing impressive. It was just as small as the other fragments, but its length... Kies couldn't see how deep it went into the giant's forehead.

"So that's why..."

The giant felt something warm trickle down its nose and crossed its eyes, trying to see where the blood was coming from when it realized.

Letting out a thundering roar, the giant shook its head and flung Kies off, sending him flying into the side of a mountain.

The impact was softened by a layer of snow but it still left him dazed for a moment. The fall was so great that it rattled his core and interrupted his magic flow, causing him to be unresponsive for some time.

Kies quickly recovered and stood back up. His wind that had been hiding him was now gone and he was completely exposed to the giant who was glaring right at him with murderous eyes.

"You really have to make me work for the fragment, don't you?" Kies said in a tired voice. The black sword appeared back in his hand and Kies squeezed the hilt. He had slain enemies much bigger than him all the time, but this? He was less than an ant in the giant's eyes.

But that didn't scare Kies one bit. The giant had something belonging to him and he was going to take it back, even if it meant having to fight the giant.

---

Grammar errors, story errors, other errors, and advice, email flightless05@gmail.com

Thanks!