The gorilla, it seemed, did not take kindly to being burnt. With every surge of flame I showered it with, it roared and swung madly at me, using all kinds of stone weapons to attack. Its preferred weapon was a giant club, which it used to smash the ground in every direction around it. But I was too small and too quick for it to hit, especially with my newest upgrade. And with every swing that it missed, I returned a beam of brilliant orange flames that scorched its golden fur, leaving its skin pockmarked with blackened circles.
But still, it wasn’t enough. My flames irritated the beast – painfully so – but they weren’t enough to kill it. At least, they wouldn't anytime soon. I needed them to be hotter, stronger. Better.
I tried to push more and more of the Flux within me out every time I sent a wave of flames at the monster, and I was making progress. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. Every attack was hotter than the last, and by the half-hour mark (or what felt like the half-hour mark, since I had no way of actually marking the passing time), my flames were leagues better than they had been when I started.
Every crescent blade I sent left a flaming streak on the ground as it passed over it, the heat emanating from the dense fire enough to instantly ignite the vegetation on the ground. Every step of mine also left flames in its wake, so the clearing was already well on its way to becoming a pit straight from hell. The wetness of the plants provided some resistance, but under the unending onslaught of heat, they eventually gave in.
Fortunately for Ren, I’d picked him up halfway and dumped him off the edge of the clearing, hoping that no animal would decide to make a quick meal out of him while I was distracted.
With him out of the way, I was allowed to play with my flames as much as I wanted, and I held nothing back. I danced about in the rising flames as the gorilla raged, growing more desperate with every passing second. Although my flames hadn’t done much more than superficial damage by that point, the gorilla knew it was only a matter of time. The constantly rising temperature of the clearing would soon go beyond the realm of mere discomfort. And once that happened, it wouldn’t be long before the gorilla fell. And it knew that as well as I did.
Eventually, as the clearing got hotter and hotter, the gorilla finally fell to his final resort: a full-body suit of stone armour. The suit was terrifying, undoubtedly taking a lot out of the gorilla, but it helped it just as much. My flames, which had just gotten hot enough to scorch more than just the fur of the beast, were suddenly rendered almost useless, barely leaving blackened marks on the sandy stone surface of the armour.
With newfound confidence, the gorilla doubled its efforts as it tried to squash me. Fortunately for me, the suit of armour noticeably slowed its movements, but it also increased the force of its strikes. Every jab or swing of its spear or club ripped through the ground, leaving massive craters at my feet. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I got caught underneath a single strike of the animal, I would be flattened like a pancake.
I was dancing at the edge of my life, but at that moment, I felt more alive than I ever had on Earth. My shoulders felt loose, my every muscle relaxed and fluid. My body performed at its best, and it showed. I fought better than ever. Every movement was calculated, every slight adjustment just perfectly enough to accomplish what I needed, and nothing more. And all the while, I didn’t lag behind on my offence either. The Flux running through my veins pushed me faster and faster, my pool now so vast that I felt like I would never run out again. I thoughtlessly dumped as much Flux as I could into every burst of fire I sent at the gorilla, but it seemed like I couldn’t even make a dent in my reserves.
Of course, the bulk of the Flux I used to power my flames came from the area around me, but I had realized through my experimentation that the Flux within me was far more potent, and boosted the heat of my flames more. Unfortunately, after a point, stuffing more Flux into my flames felt like trying to fill up a bottle with more water than it could hold. In this case, the bottle was slightly elastic, which meant that if I was delicate enough, I could continually add more Flux to it, but more than once I’d gone overboard and had my own flames explode in my face.
It was a fickle and delicate process, one that was made all the more difficult to accomplish considering the pressure under which I was working, but I was making progress. Slowly but surely, my flames were getting hotter and hotter – but it still wasn’t enough.
The armour of the gorilla was too powerful, too solid for my flames to get through. The tables had turned, and now I stood at a disadvantage that only grew the longer the battle stretched on. The gorilla would eventually die from the heat of the flames that dominated the clearing, but I had no hope of surviving long enough for that. My body was at the best it had ever been at the moment, but I had no delusions of being able to keep the same level of speed up for long. I would slip up sooner or later, and that would mean instant death.
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I racked my brain as the fight continued, trying to come up with a way out of the losing battle. But nothing came to me. I was desperately improving upon my fire as best as I possibly could at the moment, but there was little else I could do. And if that weren’t enough to kill the thing before I slipped up, then that would mean I had lost, utterly and completely.
But I was okay with that. As I was at that moment, I could not possibly have been doing anything better. Which meant that if I did die, it would be with no regrets. This was the life I had chosen to walk, after all. Even if the current situation was a bit beyond the scope of my original plans, it was still, in essence, what I chose. And so, if I did die on this path, in this fight, I would die with a smile on my face.
Time passed as the two of us played at a stalemate, the gorilla getting closer and closer to landing a blow on me while my flames slowly improved. We were nearing the end, the both of us knew.
But neither of us could have guessed how that end would come about.
In the midst of our battle, just as the gorilla arced his club backward and prepared for another strike, a dark purple crescent blade suddenly burst out of the undergrowth behind me, trailing a lighter purple streak across the clearing as it crossed the space in the blink of an eye. The pure volume of Flux condensed into the blade made my instincts shudder with fear. The blade was, beyond a doubt, one of the strongest attacks I’d seen to date.
The attack made it to the gorilla unimpeded; the exposed chest plate of the gorilla took the brunt of it, and it did not fare well under the force. Chunks of rock exploded out as the blade dug through the armour, gouging a deep scar through the plate.
The gorilla roared in pain and anger as it was knocked off balance and crashed into the ground. A relieved grin spread over my face as Ren’s voice came behind me.
“How could you guys start the party without me?” Ren complained from where he stood, right outside the edge of the clearing, where the fire had yet to reach.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your beauty sleep,” I replied without turning back. "You really need it, y'know?"
“Wow,” Ren exclaimed in exaggerated hurt. I knew what his face would look like without even needing to turn around, just by his voice. “I just saved your life, you know. And this is how you thank me?”
I scoffed. “Pssh, I had it under control. He wasn’t going to hit me any time soon.”
“Oh, really?” he answered in obvious disbelief. “So you want me to sit this one out, then?”
“Ah-” I began before stopping again, realizing he had me in a corner. Finally, turning around, I faced down his smug grin through the flames and glared at him. “Talk about being shameless,” I said finally. “You slept through half the fight, and now you have the nerve to ask to sit out the rest?”
Ren's smug grin didn’t faze in the slightest. “So you do need me in the fight?” he asked instead of answering.
“Not at all,” I replied without missing a beat. “I just object to having to do all the work myself. Especially when I had to save you in your sleep while I was fighting.”
Ren opened his mouth to respond, but his eyes suddenly flicked upward, looking above my head. I knew instantly what he was looking at, and I was ready for it. In fact, I had been waiting for it.
The gorilla, realizing that I had naively turned my back on it, had put everything it had into its swing, moving incredibly fast for something its size. But unfortunately for it, I whipped around and leapt towards it before it could smash its club down where I stood.
As I leapt towards the gorilla’s chest, I reached out my right hand. It was glowing white with only the barest hints of orange around its edges – a testament to the obscene amount of Flux I’d jammed into the little flame around my hand. The gorilla immediately understood the danger my hand presented to it – I could tell by the fear in its eyes – but it was too late for it to do anything about it.
My hand slipped through the valley in the armour and contacted the thick skin of its chest. As soon as I felt the rough pelt touch my fingers, I let the raging Flux loose. Flames poured forth from my fingers and rippled across the animal's skin, trapped within the stone armour with nowhere to go. Within a fraction of a second, almost half of my newly upgraded Flux reservoir poured out of my hands. I ignited the Flux as it left my skin almost on instinct, feeling exactly what Leonard had told me about so long ago. The more I played with the flame, the faster my body got at converting the raw Flux into the blazing element. I had little to no idea how it worked, but the fact that it did was enough for me.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get to barbeque the gorilla for more than a second as it slapped its massive hands at me in its desperate frenzy. I jumped up just a second before it slapped itself in the chest, falling to the ground a few metres to the side.
The gorilla roared thunderously and stomped around as it slowly cooked inside its own suit, the pain of it all driving the animal mad. I watched with a grin that I was sure would look sadistic to anyone watching, but I didn’t care much at the moment. The euphoria of knowing that the fight was all but over now was sweeter than anything I’d ever tasted.
“Alright then,” I said with glee, cracking my knuckles. “Let’s wrap this thing up.”