I didn’t remember feeling it back on Earth. That feeling. That sense like my mind had left my head and descended into my chest, into my nerves, into every bone and fiber, diffused. Like an acrobat, I imagined, who can’t think too hard about each step or else he would fall, and so he pulls himself down into his limbic system, becoming something more automatic - like a machine, I thought with an interior chuckle, or an NPC, if you prefer. While it was happening, everything was different. My body moved as if on its own, unconscious, and yet at the same time more conscious. Primal. Instinctive. In those moments the voices left me alone, and I didn’t worry about who I was, didn’t doubt myself, didn’t remind myself that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t have that something that separated great, real people from those of us who just looked like people. In that moment I knew who I was, though I couldn’t have answered if you had asked me.

I held my hand before me like a weapon, though there was nothing in it. Instead, I only made the shape of a gun with my fingers, index finger pointed straight like the barrel, thumb pointed skyward like the cocked hammer, the bottom two fingers wrapped around an invisible grip, the middle finger held ready on the trigger.

I was pointing, feet planted firmly in the grass, an unfamiliar yet now almost nostalgic sun warming my sun-starved skin. A faint wind blew past.

I was pointing at a monster. A basurd, as Cadoc had informed me, all that time before. A mass of white fur, bigger than any pig I’d ever seen and muscular enough that, back on Earth, I’d have accused it of taking steroids. It had two long tusks, uncurling lances, flanking either side of its foaming mouth.

I watched and aimed as it charged me. Me, of course. Not the others, who were all at various stages of arming themselves. It seemed to have not even noticed them. Unlike them, I was hated by the very fabric of reality, no matter which dimension I was in.

Time had slowed such that I could have counted the seconds between each heartbeat. Internally, with a sense that felt somewhere between mental and spiritual, I waded through that pool of power beneath my skin. It was larger, now, and different. Before it was like a burning lake - now, that lake was made of quicksilver, or else something living, something ready to lash out in a burst of hatred. I intended to let it.

I sent the mana forward, thrusting it into the fingernail of my right index finger. I almost hesitated - the last time I’d used my magic on nails still connected to my body, I’d left myself with some nasty burns. The new power should do something different, but still I worried that it might simply rip the nails right off of my skin.

I cleared the thought away. I could do nothing then but try. Nothing but shoot.

“This is revenge for last time,” I muttered, although of course this wasn’t the same Basurd. That one had been turned into a pincushion by Cho’l arrows. But I was being racist. Animalist? Monsterist?

I sent the mana into my fingertip, focusing on the word “shoot.” Magic seemed to respond to words and ideas just as much as to the movements of mana.

“Bang.”

With a strange, though thankfully numb feeling, I felt the nail start to leave. As the nail slid off, a new one slipped in behind it - which I hadn’t been expecting - and though it felt unnatural and uncomfortable, it wasn’t painful.

But it wasn’t effective, either. The fingernail sluiced off, and simply fell to the ground.

I frowned. This could be a problem.

The basurd didn’t stop to give me time to figure it out, but it was luckily still some distance away. It ran on in slow-motion, and I could see my companions scrambling in my peripheral vision.

Cadoc was running at the basurd now, his half-steel Yoskonian blade gripped in both hands. I still didn’t know what the hell “Yoskonian” meant, but the word had stuck, for whatever reason.

There were still lots of things I didn’t know. I didn’t really know much about Cadoc, in fact, though he was at that time my oldest companion in that dimension. His eyes always burned like green fire, whether he was happy or angry, and he could switch between the two in a moment. He was probably happy at that moment, the maniac.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I couldn’t see Amaia - she had been behind me somewhere, holding Naomi. But I could imagine her standing there, conflicted, a blank look on her scarred face. Naomi, on the other hand, was probably asleep.

Lot had drawn a weapon as well - a knife. He stood between the basurd and the three women he’d saved from the dungeon - not that they seemed particularly grateful, shying away from his rat-like face.

I forced more mana into my fingertip, and it felt like trying to piss after holding it in for too long. That’s an awful image, but these things are hard to describe to anyone who’s never felt them personally.

When I’d first started using magic, I could feel the loss of mana whenever I lit a nail. It was small, but noticeable. And when I’d used Naomi’s staff, I could feel it all burnt up in an instant. At that moment, though, I couldn’t feel anything. Is that because I’m in the second Ring, and my mana pool is larger? Or because this spell is shit, and uses basically no mana?

No matter how much mana flowed through my finger, the nails wouldn’t shoot out like I’d hoped. Instead, another nail simply slid off and fell to the ground, replaced by a new, fresh nail. Which then also fell to the ground. As did the next one.

Rather than gaining any sort of forward momentum, the nails instead began sliding off faster. Soon it was a stream of them, nails falling like drops of water.

I brought both hands before me, palms down, and tried the other fingers. It was the same for all of them. Streams of nails flowed from each digit, and it reminded me of how I’d sometimes watched the water flow down my fingers in the shower, and how, when I was a kid, I’d pretended I could control water, and shoot it from my fingers.

Like water, I thought. Maybe that could work.

I braced myself. I figured it probably wouldn’t kill the thing, so I’d have to be ready to jump out of the way. If I could keep it up long enough, it might work. Or else, I could jump towards Naomi - but that was a last resort.

I’d given up on the gun shape - now I held both hands before me, fingers spread, as if I was about to karate chop someone. Which was not a dissimilar motion from what I was thinking.

Cadoc was still running towards the basurd, and the basurd was still running at me. Cadoc wouldn’t reach the monster in time to change anything. Either I’d win, or I’d die.

I shook my head. I had things to do, first. An old friend to punch in the face.

I also had debts to pay, and a dream of a happy future, but neither of those were on my mind at that exact moment. Just then, it was only hatred. I pictured Tom’s smiling face, and it got my blood boiling.

When I could make out the individual bubbles of spit frothing around the basurd’s lips, I flung my hands, one, then the other, then back, like I was shaking water off of them. Nails flew from them, and as they flew, I melted them.

That many targets, all at once, moving as fast as they were moving - I’m not sure I would have been able to do it, before. I’d done groups of nails in the past, but they were usually together - which made it easier - or stationary. But I had no problem. The second Ring really had its advantages.

I aimed for the eyes - those cold, animal eyes. It wasn’t the easiest thing to aim while flinging nails off your hands, but every flick of the wrist sent five shots flying, and so I was bound hit my target just from the sheer quantity. And I did. Drops of melted nail, hot like candle wax, landed in and around the eyes of the basurd, and I heard that sound again, one of the first sounds I’d heard in that dimension.

Squealing.

I lit the nails, and the sound rose to a pitch. The fire was larger than I had expected - not as large as it had been with the staff, but a vast improvement all the same. Flames burst from the nails where they had stuck to the basurd’s fur, and soon the animal’s entire snarling visage was ablaze.

Or so it looked in the instant before I dove to the right, hoping I hadn’t doomed myself to be impaled by waiting to see the agony on its face.

It didn’t turn to follow my dive, because it didn’t even know that I had moved. Its eyelids had been fused shut by the heat, cauterized.

My flames before had been painful and distracting. I wondered, as I dove, whether they were now lethal. Or could be, at least, on exposed skin. Or fur.

I landed awkwardly, trying but failing to roll. Luckily I didn’t break my neck - that would have been embarrassing. I scrambled back to my feet, vowing to practice my dodges.

I heard a crash, and turned around quickly.

The basurd had slammed into the side of the hill, beside the cave we’d just exited. It had ran straight into a wall of rock, and, somehow, had skewered it, the spear-like tusks now embedded into the stone. I shuddered. If I had jumped a second later, I’d be very dead.

For a moment the monster was dazed - it had probably just given itself a concussion. Amaia stood just beside it, Naomi in her expensive-looking dress still on Amaia’s surprisingly broad back. Amaia drew her new golden sword, and Cadoc was still running - probably hoping to be the one to finish it off.

“Wait!” I yelled, and they both turned to me with a look I took for confusion on their faces.

“I want to try something,” I said.

Amaia stared at me for awhile, then nodded, and resheathed her sword. Cadoc frowned, but nodded at me. He kept his sword out and ready. Probably for the best. Just in case.

I walked over to the basurd, which had begun to shake itself out of its daze. I guess it didn’t crack its skull open, I thought. Soon it was panting and squealing again, trying to free itself from the hillside but finding itself very stuck.

I came up beside the monster, worryingly calm. Worryingly because I probably should have been more cautious and scared, but I wasn’t particularly either. Adrenaline is a wild drug, and my body loved it, when it came.

Once I was just beside it, so close that I could have pulled it from the stone myself - if it was even possible, and if I had wanted to - I held one hand over its back, near its wide and muscular neck.

“Like I said,” I yelled over the basurd’s tumult. “Let’s have some bacon.”

I guided the mana into my fingers again, and let the nails begin to fall. As they did, I melted them in the air, so that a stream of liquid fell on the monster’s back. It squealed louder than ever, and it hurt my ears, but I didn’t stop. I let the hot nail wax spread and cover the basurd, let the melted nails flow until its entire backside was covered.

Then I took a few steps back and, smiling, lit the nails.

The basurd erupted into a ball of flame.