I am running through the forest, wondering just how things got to this point. Who knows for how many hours I’ve been running now, but I keep on going, ignoring the shouting behind us. I’m lucky Ayrah’s tough, since she’s breaking all the branches that are on the way, making things easier for the other people. I crane my head to the side, looking over at Spots as he somewhat manages to keep up. We gave him Alek, since that’s the lightest load, but it does seem like whatever blood he’s been losing has done a number on his stamina.
How much longer? Who knows. I don’t even know where I’m running, but stopping now feels like it will kill me. Seeing mother fall down and then get attacked by two nightmarish bipedal horned horse giants was terrifying enough. Being attacked from behind by the one armed knight that somehow followed us through, while we were all distracted? That got my blood pumping with pure fear, because we aren’t safe anywhere. He put a gash on Ayrah and threw a broken sword at me, but she crushed his head, so I thought that was that, but then the bastard just had to drop some kind of explosive smoke signal, because people came rushing. We’ve been running since and I don’t know how much longer we can handle that.
There’s a movement up ahead and I brace myself for some spooked wildlife, instead I see a man walk out of some bushes, then turn white as a ghost while pointing a shaky spear my way. I dig my claws in the ground, kicking up dirt, dust and grass while slowing down. My siblings do the same, abruptly stopping in place. My heart beats quicker, Ayrah squirms on my back, mana pulses through my body, whispers fill my ears…
There’s a spear moving towards my face. It is weak, held by even weaker arms, but behind that terrified expression is a desire to kill. To end me. To kill all of us. A rational part of me will empathize with him later, but my current self can only be angry. They invade, kill a defenseless woman, attack barely one year old children, bring mother… mom… down to the ground with wicked weaponry and terrifying monsters… It may not be the fault of this man, not fully, but I am in pain, my brother is bleeding out, mother is nowhere to be seen and I can’t let another second tick by, so I grab the spear with my hands.
He can’t move. He struggles but even tiny as they are, my hands are stronger. I use a front paw to break the tip away, leaving the man with only a stick. He doesn’t run, instead grasping for a knife at his belt. I let go of any restraints I still had and jump on him, biting through his skull. It’s easier than killing the rabbit. After all, it isn’t the first time I end a man, face to face. That thought leaves a bad taste in my mind, but I take off running. I have to. Can’t lose any more time. I need to make it… somewhere, anywhere other than here.
Where am I going? I don’t know, but I know that it will be safe if I just reach this random place I am going towards. Or is it even random? My ears are flooded by mana trying its best to be useful and yet failing to even make itself understood. All I know is danger. All I know is fear.
Fear. Why fear? I’m supposed to be some great monster, a dragon, the big bad at the end of the dungeon, not some whelp fleeing from men with sticks… Another blocks my path, but he falls quickly after I spin around, slashing off his legs with the sword, then stab his chest before taking off again. I am supposed to be a killing machine, but a whole army showed up instead of a single party. Isn’t this too big of a difficulty spike?
I roar in anger, my mind trying so very hard to help me retreat from this insane reality, but all it does is make me more sluggish and even stagger, tripping over my own feet. At least that turns out to be a blessing in disguise. A giant rock flies right in front of me, ruining a tree. My head snaps to the side and I see a man wearing jewels and trinkets, who begins chanting something. I can see the mana in his body, it shines bright as it is about to become a part of reality, at least it did before Spots roared and forced it to collapse, activating inside the man’s elbow and causing his arm to fly off as an explosive rock replaced it. Spots is staggering, he won’t make it much further… but we aren’t safe yet. I am out of usable mana, so I can’t even magic my way out of this…
I stop, and so does everyone else. I need a moment to just think. Granny’s not looking good. She’s repeatedly used her magic on everyone, fixing cuts, torn muscles and other magical wounds. Whenever she did anything to a dragon though, I could see her becoming weaker, sicker. She even spat out blood after trying to fix the wounds left behind by those arrows made of black metal. She can’t help him and he has also lost too much blood running like this, he’s barely holding up because of adrenaline.
I shake Ayrah off of me, then start scavenging around, as quickly as I could. Big sticks, vines, branches that bend just enough, even leaves and chunks of moss. I gather everything that I can and Ayrah picks up on my intent, helping. Granny also comes, using whatever bit of mana she can still drain from herself to strengthen the improvised sled and make it stick together, begging magic to help her. At least I figured out how chants work for her. She’s begging for help and hoping she gets what she wants.
I shake my head and nudge Spots to sit down on it just as an arrow flies at us. I try to swipe at it, but I miss and instead find it piercing into my wing. I can’t afford to use mana for defense against things like this, so I just endure it and bite a vine, starting to drag Spots along. Ayrah got down, instead putting Alek on my back, and took another vine to help me along. Crown has the rear, using water to protect Spots from another arrow that was coming down, aimed at him, while RT takes the front, setting fire to our sides to slow down our pursuers. Mother’s roars are distant and weak, whatever magic she has won’t be able to reach us here. It’s all on us to survive and continue running, stamina be damned.
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I open my eyes and I find myself on soft grass, surrounded by overgrown vegetation. We made it close, but I collapsed. Spots is barely breathing, Ayrah is a panting ball of sweat and grimy fur. I think she became a bit more animalistic at some point. RT isn’t here, he’s somewhere nearby killing mutated beasts, or humans, or some other nightmarish monster that was sent after us. Crown’s head is constantly spinning, taking note of each and every little thing. Yvonne’s hugging a tree, kneeling down. I can see it in the way they tremble, they gave out. Alek and Edith are holding each other like siblings, crying about the horrible situation they were thrown into.
I am hungry. There’s multiple corpses nearby, but my nose catches the scent of a useful one. It’s charred, missing its face, but it looks like someone dragged it here, to be close. RT, no doubt. By now everyone knows my habit, but everyone else looks too tired or too scared to do something so gruesome. Focus on the body, me, focus on the body. Male, old but not over 50, dead for a while, has little mana left in his body, but is wearing trinkets and it’s overwhelmingly air mana, so it will be decently useful no matter what. I dig in, ignoring the little part of me that thinks this is wrong. Honestly, I am not really feeling the revulsion I should, but the look the humans, minus Ayrah, give me is enough to substitute.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
As I finish eating the core, the jewelry and even a bit of meat, RT rushes in and shouts that the flame is dying out, or in human terms, that we’re running out of time and way too many enemies are approaching. The whistling of an arrow agrees with him as it rushes towards me, only for a bit of wind to make it embed itself into a tree instead. It explodes into lingering lightning and I am right back to dragging the sled. Granny and Alek are on it with Spots, while everyone else pulls it along as fast as we can, but it’s too little and too late.
I hear the gurgle of choking on blood behind me. An arrow hit Yvonne through the throat. She’s gasping for air, her mana is flailing wildly, doing something to her throat, but she can’t speak out a chant so I don’t know how much that can accomplish. I run faster. Edith is falling behind so she jumps on Crown’s back, squeezing out whatever flame’s left in her to attack the men coming after us. Yvonne isn’t choking anymore but I am too afraid to look back.
We are so close… ten minutes… no, five minutes and we’d be there, we’d be safe. We don’t even get another second as something large lands next to us, ripping through trees, sending us to the ground. I blink, feeling my third eyelid protecting me from the dust and debris caused by the large draconic being in front of me. Looks like a wyvern, and my instincts fight against classifying it as a dragon, so maybe some kind of lesser thing. I don’t see intelligence in its eyes, and while it has more mana than anything I’ve seen before aside from my parents… scratch that, one of the people on its back has more than it.
The sled is ruined, Spots isn’t moving, Yvonne is somehow alive, but has an arrow still in her throat, and people are catching up.
“There it was. To think I’d find my family’s sword clutched by the vile things that abominable monster spat out. Maybe seeing her weep over these corpses would make this whole horrendous campaign feel worth it. If only that sack of bones would have…” One man, 40’s, well built, with an actual aura of fire mana. So many rings and bracelets, gold is even inlaid in the cloth and metal armor he wears. He has no helmet, revealing inhuman, flaming hair. No, the man himself looks barely human, at least to his sharper senses. had he been a human still, he wouldn’t have noticed the way his skin had no depth or the way his eyes had fire within. This man was death, and the only option left for him now was to turn around and run.
“Why… Why are you doing this… what did we do to deserve this!?” Edith found her voice and rage, finally. She ran out of tears, and I wish I knew what expression she has, but my eyes instead only focus on granny and Spots. Spots is breathing. But he’s not moving. I am going to abandon my brother…
“I have no need for a dragon’s toy.” Thinking time has ended. I need to run before the flame that dances on his gems takes proper form. I need to abandon… but would that even matter? That wyvern… there’s no running from such a monster. Is this it? Safety was so close… but at this rate… The powerful man, the actual rider, the monster, any of them could be our death, and they would have been if only Yvonne hadn’t made a choice for herself in the face of all this.
She is old. She has a lot of mana, not nearly enough to compare to the flaming inhuman man, but enough to do something big if she wanted to. And yet even using just a tiny fragment of her magic, for long enough, brings her to the brink of death. By the look of her eyes, she has just decided that her death was an acceptable price. And I decided that I can’t save Spots, something my instincts agree on.
The woman hobbles forward. We scatter. Well, no, my siblings scatter and run off every which way, while Ayrah carries Alek and Edith clings to my tails, ignoring the hits she takes as I don’t have the time to fix her position. Half a second after we all began running, a bloodcurdling scream preludes something between groaning wood and an implosion which echoes behind us. I have only a moment to look back and gaze upon the trees bending inward, holding down the flying beast, grounding it. That is also the only moment I get to see the human shaped bush with a hole running through its chest that is Yvonne's corpse.
This isn’t enough to properly deal with the enemies, but it might let us make it to the safe place. I ignore all the danger behind us and just lead the way. An arrow misses me, so I give in and use a dumbed down version of the flying rune to make us faster, using wind instead of electricity. It’s a sprint now, no more need for energy conservation.
Flame lashes out and follows us, setting warped trees and exotic flora aflame. We run. More people seem to appear from nowhere. We run. Things are flying above, We run.
An obelisk painted off-rainbow, shaped like everything and nothing, exuding chaos and everything else is the only thing in our path now that we reach the center of the clearing. This is it. This is that safe place. This is the spot that my entire being was calling our salvation. The place where I learned proper magic.
My face falls. Ayrah collapses to her knees, breathing heavily, as does Alek. Edith was already splayed out, battered and bruised by having to hang on to my tails… and it was all for nothing. We are exposed and defenseless. And yet, when the first man reaches the edge of the clearing and steps inside, he instantly falls down and pukes.
A circle forms around the edge of the clearing, people struggling to even exist there. An archer attempts a shot, but his string breaks in such a way that he loses an eye. Someone throws a javelin, and it accelerates mid fight, hitting someone on the opposite side. One man screams as his hand seems to warp, mana suddenly being very attracted to it. Something is very wrong, the pillar feels more alive than it has ever been. It’s like it was sleeping before, even as it whispered to me, but now it is awake.
The common men finally decide to take some distance, but in their stead I see the flaming man and the wyvern rider, as well as some mage-looking people. A moment later another wyvern shows up, dropping down the priests that attacked us, but not even stepping a foot closer to the pillar. Even that monster thinks something is wrong, it seems.
There’s a standoff. Ayrah, Alek and Edith are recovering, despite the pain they’re clearly feeling, I am recovering mana, and the invaders seem to make a plan as more and more of the magic capable ones come. Why are they all so focused on me, I don’t know, at least until I hear the inhuman man shout.
“Fine! Do your ritual. But after that I will take my sword, whether this dragon means something for your goddesses or not.”
I can only blink as the words wash over me. Suddenly, I am reminded of that disembodied laughing voice, before I found myself reborn. My heart feels cold as dread washes over me. There is no world in which gods looking for me is a good thing. Especially not when I am a lone, cornered rat.