RUN

I spent several hours sitting in the forest meditating, waiting for the demon, trying to revert my form… 'No dice.' At some point I gave up and just started playing with my manna, fascinated by how much more freely I could move it, and how much more I could move at once. It almost felt like I could freeze everything around me for a whole mile in a sheet of ice… Although I wouldn't put money on it being quite that potent. Fritz had gotten tired and decided to take a nap, resting her head on my lap, and after awhile longer I started to feel as board as she was and leaned over onto her as well, taking a short nap of my own.

Falling into a deep sleep, I began seeing the abyss all around me. It wasn't like before though. I heard the whispers that followed Rafi, but she seemed far away, incredibly distant. There was no cathedral or tattered stone, not even the moon. Just a cold black void. After a while, she started to feel closer, but I couldn't even tell which one was calling out to me, much less what she was saying.

In a sudden flash, she appeared right in front of me. "You need to wake up now Siya."

I gasped for air and shot straight up, fully in my body again. It felt like lightning was shooting through me as it struck the ground not far away in the pouring rain. Fritz was standing in front of me looking like a giant wet dog, growling, kicking up the ground that had turned to mud just as the sky had turned to dark.

My breath was shaky, and I didn't know what to expect… Or really what was happening, but I had an eerie feeling that something was coming. Picking myself up out of the mud I quickly turned around and placed a hand on my sword, stepping back towards Fritz. 'It's coming… Isn't it…'

A portal opened up like a black hole, distorting my eyes as I tried to look inside, and out stepped a giant man with purple skin, horse-like legs, and demonic horns that twisted and spiraled as broad as his stone-scaled shoulders. On each hand were two massive fingers with giant talons and his nose was as large as that of a bull. Even with my new body, he towered above me, larger than Airsidh, maybe even larger than my father. When his giant hooves hit the ground they sank into the mud with a slap and water splashed far and wide as the cold air came out of his nose like smoke from a pipe.

He growled as he looked around, his voice deeper than even Zu's when he spoke something in his native tongue, and his eyes bright yellow. On his shoulder he carried a massive pillar of petrified wood, and from his waist hung a black cloth, stained with demon's blood, that still showed through as red in various parts. Tusks were draped from his belt, swung around his waist as he moved and his long hair swayed like pine needles in the cold wind.

After glancing around the area, his eyes locked onto mine, the intensity of his presence alone filling me with an overwhelming sense of dread. "I am Drolroth… And you are my next opponent."

'Come on… Pull yourself together…' I steadied my legs underneath and scanned him with my eyes.

[Drolroth.]

[18 feet tall]

Strength

500

Agility

220

Endurance

115

Constitution

390

Intelligence

85

Wisdom

38

Total / Level

1348

Instantly my legs started to shake again. 'F-five hundred?' I felt chills cover my skin as my body temperature rose rapidly in reaction to danger, and I felt a spark start going off in my stomach to ready my fire breath. All of my senses heightened… But that was hardly going to be enough… 'And he's faster than me too.' I instinctively took a step back before freezing time. 'No… I can't run… He's faster than me… Oh, but I have Fritz here… Run? Can I really not fight? Why do I want to fight it… My legs feel like they're shaking even with time stopped… Is it because I've never run from a fight before? Or because I've never lost? No… I've never had the option of running…'

I let my mind go blank until I finally calmed my thoughts. 'This body may be larger, but I'm actually even faster than I was when I was small. When you run low on endurance your stats go down by roughly 20% so he'd have 176 agility, or something like that. Let me think… Good thing I checked this just recently…

[Siya: big]

[Height. 7'4 / 140 cm]

[Weight 240 lbs/109 Kg]

[Age ***]

Strength

135

Agility

150

Endurance

150

Constitution

200

Intelligence

150

Wisdom

200

Total / Level

985

Faith

–

Divinity

***

Magic

80

Ok… So if I enhance myself with magic. I'm actually faster than he is… But even with the tough body of a dragon, I doubt I could take more than one hit… Even if the first hit didn't kill me… It would hurt me badly enough that I wouldn't be faster than him anymore… Which is basically the same thing… His constitution is even tougher than mine too… So hurting him will be more than a little hard without dark magic… But if I was in my other form I wouldn't survive long enough to hit him… So… Ugh… Why am I even thinking about this… It's no question…'

I unfroze time and left my sword in its sheath, grabbing hold of Fritz's mane. She took off running before I even finished jumping on and before long we had completely left him in the dust. A sudden piercing headache shot through my skull and my mind started to feel foggier. 'No… This one is a real demon… It's just like ghoul… Much stronger… Ugh…' My headache didn't let up until I finally made it back to the town, even then it only slightly subsided. The farther away I got the better it became, but the more tired I became in turn, when I finally made it back to the tower it was like something snapped, a fish hook being ripped out as I pulled too far away from the rod. My whole body went limp and I fell off of Fritz. Although, she did manage to catch me, grabbing me by my shirt and dragging me to the door, even opening it up and pulling me inside.

"Fritz stop…" I muttered, struggling to breathe from my shirt compressing my chest as she drugged me.

She let go, gently laying me on the ground before laying next to me. "Good girl…" 'This should be far enough… My mind has already cleared up, does that mean the demon failed to attach to my mind? No doubt because of my dragon soul… Another benefit I guess… But then why is my body so heavy… No… This feels like normal magic… Did he cast a spell? I was right to run… Maybe… Just a quick nap… Then I'll be ready to go back to my room and change… A hot bath sounds unreasonably good right now…' My mouth opened naturally and a small steady flame came out, shooting just a couple of inches into the air and warming up my insides from head to toe, instantly relaxing me and putting me to sleep almost just as fast. There was no pain, just a strange euphoric feeling, like putting your bare feet on a sun-warmed stone after swimming in cool water, or laying on the beach with the sun gently warming your skin, only more intense. It was hard to describe, but when my eyes closed, they didn't want to open again.