(Yo! Some of you might think I died, but that didn't happen! I am alive and well, happy christmas btw. I know I am reeeeaaaaallllllyyyyy late with the chapter, it was finished weeks ago but it was missing something, it still does. Some of you might think Hyrion is a badly designed character, he will change his mind multiple times in this chapter alone, but that's what happens when five years of your life are spent as a puppet for torturing and other nasty things, won't go to deep there, still want to retain some of my readers.
Next chapter will be conclusion and then probably the one afterwards a mature chapter, you know what I mean? Bao Chicka Wao Wao!
Enjoy this chappy, I really hope you do as I am still unsatisfied but don't seem to get my mind around it!)
"Hoh... Here again it seems, what happened this time?", a deep voice drilled into my spinning mind.
The sweet release of death was making me wait, for once I somehow felt angry about not dying. My life was to tenacious it seems.
Although I felt that I was alive, the pain, the pressure, it was cursing over my body and enveloping me in a cocoon of agony. My body was fatigued and made it expressable by the weights that were seemingly clinging onto me like latching leeches. It was a pressure that compressed my organs and tissue, threatening to squish me into a bloody pulp of bones, flesh and blood.
"Not gonna answer?", the deep voice inquired. The mere soundwaves were enough to make my whole being stirr.
Should I open my eyes? Should I even continue on living? I thought the human would be a creature that strived for survival, kept itself living with any means possible, but right now, what I wanted was the simple and deep slumber of death.
Don't misunderstand me, I was not tired of living in itself, I felt myself cheating life. I died not once but twice and from the gist of the current situation I will continue living. It felt wrong. Maybe it was an instinctive emotion only those that died and were reborn again could feel, heck who could experience that?! I just thought it was wrong to keep living.
"Haaaah....", I sighed deeply. If life wants me so dearly to keep on in the realm of mortals who am I to argue?
"No, I can hear you. Hyat, why am I here again?", I questioned whilst openning my eyes. Standing a few meters in front of me was a gigantic beast, one that would haunt your dreams. Multiple pairs of arms crossed over a fleshless ribcage, their claws longer and thicker than whole oaks and covered in a dark red sheen, a sanguine heart was rabidly pumping what looked like black miasma through darkened veins, twelve wings folded on the spined back of the massive wyrm and a pair of horns adorned its skull, the crown of a death God. Hyat's enormous maw cracked into an insidious smile, his foul canines, rotten but deadly, preyed on my small body with palpable bloodlust.
His red eyes shooed over my body, my hair's stood on end.
"That's what I'd like to ask you. There is no trial here for you, there shouldn't be any connection between us anymore. I did my job...", his voice trailed off into a complaining tone, as though he was remonstrating over his job. A lithe smirk crossed my face as I imagined the mighty God of carnage as a post-office worker, contemplating the wrong decisions in his life over an ice cold beer at the bar next door.
"Ohy! Why are you smiling like stupid?!", the jocular angry dragon rebuked me.
"Nothing, nothing really. You asked what happened right? Well, I died, again...", this time it was me whose voice faded into an inaudible whisper. But of course the mighty God of Carnaged picked the sound up, be it as silent as it was.
"Again? Boy, what are you talking about?", Hyat asked. I hesitated but my mouth moved on its own. For the first time in this life, or rather the life I had before being skewered for a second time, I told someone about me being reincarnated into this godforsaken world. The chance never presented itself to do so before.
Beginning with my childhood, fluently I told him about the joys of the other world, how it worked and the incredible technological advancements, trains, busses, airplanes and even the development of the atomic bomb. For him it must have sounded like otherworldly mumbo-jumbo.
I told Hyat about my adult life, my family and friends, my worries and dreams, aspirations, what I did with the little time I had over there, even what food I loved the most, francesinha. Before I knew it my stuttering and chopped phrases turned into an unstopable stream of ranting.
Midway I broke down and cried, cried about my own death, the death of my friends that were burned to cinders or smashed by wooden pillars. I screamed and shouted at Hyat for God knows what reason. I told him how much I missed and still miss my family, how I repent watching my 'new' family vanish before my eyes because of my own fecklessness, how I hated the humans and monsters that caused all this chaos, but in the end it was all me... Broken and alone I pleaded to him like the God he was, muttered inaudible prayers under my breath and hoped for a speck of light in these darkest days of mine.
My eyes swelled and my vocie was raspy. With shivering limbs I crouched onto the deathly grey earth and found comfort under the branching trees, black and void of life. I hugged my body in my single arm, it felt feeble and weak; I realized just HOW weak I was. The sheer realization of your own powerlessness, the brisk recollection of all you did wrong, it agitated me, made my throat clench through unspoken curses and my veins red with caustic humour. I churned the earth with my fingers, dug my nails deep into the moist soil and ground the dirt into dust. My palm was red from blood, my nails hammered into my skin without resistance and infected it with the black soil.
In a fit of purgatorial madness and the eviction of a gutural, gut-wrenching scream I hit the earth with my bare knuckles, over and over again. Incoherent mutters mixed with my red fury, bloodshot I starred at the flattening earth. Countless times I raised my fist, drew lentous lines of red blood from my skin and repeated the beating for the hundredth of times. It made my hand ooze blood from tiny cuts and trickle the grey earth in a vivid red but the power could not be siphoned from my choleric mind. I couldn't stop myself, the raging madness that woke from its slumber. Killed, I was killed, I died, I lost my family, I lost my family again. What did I do to this world? Why, why was my fate so cruel? No, I did not ask these questions out loud, I let my fists speak. I smashed the earth, thought of it as the beast that lavished on the bodies of my family and friends, imagined its head turning into a red, black smoothie of gore through the continous sound of my fist pounding the earth.
What felt like hours passed by, my mind froze in the fire of madness, made it stop briskely, and only then did I notice the snot and tears that mixed themselves into the red blanket. I felt like a puppet that had its strings cut. The power seeped from my limbs into the voracious earth I keeled onto, supported my body on this weak arm of mine and watched the muddy puddle of red. I saw my teary eyed reflection in this crimson mirror, a broken boy in which eyes an even more broken man mirrors, 'laughable' I thought.
I hated myself the most.
For a while I just kneeled there, gazing at the inconspicuous red carpet. Others might have seen a boy in need of help in this pitiful image but I just wanted to kill myself for what I had become. This reflection, this whole self, I rejected it. 'How miserable I am.'. I regretted not telling Miril I loved her, but, what qualifications did I even have to tell her this in the first place?! I am a nobody, even death disregards my existence, so why should a vermin like myself even be allowed to enjoy the comforting warmth of another human being. Could I even count as humane?! The things I did, the things I lived through, I lost the right to call me human long ago.
When I reached the lowest point, when I was disgusted by my own existence, it was no other than Hyat that awoke me from my self inflicted trance of self-loathing. His nostrils puffed out hot gusts of air, so hot that it pricked my skin and made me close my blood-shot eyes to hide them from the heat. I cowered backwards and fell on my butt.
Hyat hemmed and I wiped the tears of my face. Some kind of odd curiousity swamped through my body, I wanted to ehar what he had to say. Resembling a lost child I looked at Hyat with upturned eyes, still red from crying, and a face that was greyed from the soil on my face-rubbing fingers.
"Boy, why do you hate yourself?", it was a simple question, really, but it had countless answers which all were right but at the same time missed the real essence of the problem. I was weak, feisty, impulsive, wrathful, loving, forgetful, dormant in peril, active in peace, I was many things and more. But those things were what I hated about myself. Change one and my life would have taken a turn for the better, *cough*, my lives.
"Everything.", I answered blatantly, there was nothing to add when I said everything, because I meant it.
"Then, why don't you change? Or are you afraid?"
'What?!', my mind stopped for a second."PAH! Don't come with this bullshit! Change? What do you think I have been doing all the time?! Afraid? Of what?! Just stop it with your philosophical fuck!", forgetting that it was Hyat that heard out my noisy pleas I angrily shouted at him.
"I think you misunderstand,", his red eyes shone dangerously. "When I say 'change' I mean it."
"Huh?", I was confused.
"You, you are from another world, a being that should not exist in this realm and all you do is live a normal life, or try to.", he chuckled, it remembered me that he was the God of Carnage and by that reasoning alone probably amused by my devastating story. "You try so hard to fit into this world, but for what reason? You are trying to be someone that you aren't. Damn, you could become a God and wreck everything you hate about this world! Just fucking tamper with whatever you want, fuck some whores, drink until you blackout and kill some kings! Is it that hard? No! You are simply afraid!", he inhaled deeply, the alley of trees leaned over.
"Boy, what do you want right now?"
What did I want right now? I honestly did not know. I wailed myself into such a miserable state that my mind wasn't functioning properly anymore. What did I want, what could I want? There were just to many things to count. I wanted my old life back, the life of old world Earth and the life of new world Elysium. I wanted to see my family, from both lives, drink and laugh with them, shaking hands in amiable brotherhood. I wanted to see what my parents, what those of the other world would say about this one and vice versa. I wanted to swim in a great ocean, I wanted to become a great magician, I wanted to show these people friendship and tolerance, I wanted to ride a dragon, I wanted to slay a dragon, I wanted to see elves, I wanted to see beastman, I wanted to fuck a princess or two, I wanted to ursupp a kingdom for these same princessess, I wanted to be king, I wanted to be a dotting father, I wanted to... I wanted to do so much, but was I allowed to?
I laughed laconic.
"I want so much..."
"Then... FUCKING GET IT! DAMMIT!", Hyat shouted and the earth trembled.
"It just won't get into your thick skull won't it?!", one of his giant claws clacked against his fleshless temple and I could swear a vein popped beneath his skull.
"You are a being that is freed from its fate. You could be anything, but you choose a mundane life!? A Demon Lord, a Hero, a Grandmaster, anything is at your disposal and yet you choose the life of normalcy?! You dissapoint me Hyrion... For the love of God, stop being a whiney bastard, listen to your damned heart and do whatever it tells you! You want wealth? STEAL IT! You want woman? TAKE THEM! You want to live? WORK FOR IT! But no you are a little piece of waste. Another world, otherworldly knowledge, innumerable choices but this piece of shit decides on fucking around as some child of a peasant....."
Hyat fumed and the slurs only fizzed from his fanged mouth, each and every kind of insult I could think of was thrown at my head. He ranted and ranted and somewhere inbetween I forgot all the sadness that washed over my heart, it was a cooling rinse but I knew that it was only temporary. The black scars, deep depression, would sprout from my heart like delicate saplings and grow into a thick brush of thorns. The time will come were I had to face my inner demons, for real.
Feeling refreshed by Hyat's spitt and bile fileld speech I gazed at him with a wide grin.
"Thank you, Hyat."
His insults stopped, he raised what I believed to be a brow and sighed. "You are way to young to thank me, kid.", he turned his head towards the black horizon. "Go scram. I will help you a bit with the problem 'outside', but don't expect much.... Fucking kids these day, only causing problems", the last part was the whipser of nothing more than an elderly man.
His hulking body turned into the same direction as his head and soon he began to march into the darkness. Few steps later he vanished, all trace from him gone, expect for the giant imprints on the ground.
"Thank you very much...", I whispered, and I knew Hyat would hear it.
Black fumes rose from the ground and coiled around my body, unlike last time I could feel my body being drawn into a dark abyss but I only smiled...
"Haaaaa.... That brat really makes some problems. But another world huh.... Should be better than this prison here. Maybe this is what Prometheus really looked for, a way to relieve his boredom, maybe he is experiencing the same as this brat does, who knows....", blood-red yet gentle eyes whispered into the darkness as they observed Hyrion's descending figure into the void. With a small laugh they too became one with the blackness around them, only a wall of shadows remained.
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It was this raven feeling, being suffocated beneath tons of damp, dark-brown earth that made me remember that I was alive once again. As the phoenix rebirths from the ashes so did I.
The fervor blazed through my veins, mixing with my blood and making my skin bubble up, made the darkness recede and an intoxicating feeling blossomed from my core. The shadows parted ways, cleaved atwain by an unsatiable avarice for the riches of life. Hyat's words were unrefined, bloody and barbaric, but they hold a simple truth in them.
Why did I try so hard, tried so hard to fit into this world, that was never meant to be! I forgot what I really wanted to do, enjoy this life of mine, it was subverted by upholded morals that kept me from going haywire. I am in a fantasy world goddammit and I wanted to live a 'normal' life. As the darkness parted ways from my incinerating vigor the first thing that came to my mind, the first thing I would do was to kill, and then kill some more. The pig, I would hunt him down like the animal he is. And then his family will pay, I really hope he has a beautiful daughter but I shouldn't get my hopes up.
Then I would find the beast that killed my family, and destroy, obliterate its very existence. I would erradicate it from the plane of being, disintegrate its soul. Yes, that sounded like a plan.
The black crystal I kept close to my heart, that poisoned my ego, the pain made it erode into my innerst feelings and only Hyat's words gave it the final kick. I tried to kept it bound to me, shackled it, but not today. Neither my instincts nor my morals, from today or from the past, will stand in my way of revenge, only insaity would be its final fuel.
Bitter-sweet revenge, my tongue could taste it in the air.
*GASP*
With a bang the darkness vanished and limitless blue stretched before my eyes. In the corner the sun seared down onto the lowly life forms that walked this planet. I was blinded by the sudden change but a distinct pain, a pain so excruciating, startled me awake. It springed from my chest and it dawned on me, I was still impaled.
There were still cheers around me, a chorus of voices cheering the name: 'ASH! ASH! ASH!', again and again. Maybe it was my somewhat enhanced hearing or just an idée fixe that originated from my hate meshed mind, I swear I could hear a feeble scream, so faint, soundless even, yet so loud that it drummed into my ears like thunderclaps. 'Hyrion! Nooo...! Y-you can't die! I love you, so please... please don't die! Please don't die... I won't fogive you...'. I knew this voice and pangs of guilt assaulted my heart like hungry wolves
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'I made my sweet Miril wait, didn't I?', what would be revenge without a woman to share it with?! 'A woman or two',I licked my chapped lips.
My hand moved autonomously, slid from the ground, from a weak twitching into a lightning fast blurring, onto my chest and gripped the protruding hilt of the silver bastard sword.
Because I felt over onto my back the sword lodged itself deep into the earth and kept me anchored to the ground, all the while blood ooozed from my porcupined chest. My hand wriggled around the hilt and began to pull. Pain surged like electrical discharges through my body, I grit my teeth and continued tensing up.
The sound of cheers began to transform, only a few people watched my limp body so it was those few that saw my 'resurrection'. Five, six peope at most changed from the cheering, into astonished and then disbelieving gasps. As their seat neighbors saw their partners changing expression they too followed their line of sights, and they too saw the impossible.
"No way...", it was enhanced hearing after all..., a spectator whispered, unwilling to accept what was happening on this curst grounds. Was God's reign overthrown?
I was not like those anti-heroes in novels, I would announce my return with pomp and circumstances, not with shadows in candlelight.
"HAAAAAH!", with a loud shout I made my own arm split gashes on its skin as the muscles exceeded their physical limits and pulsated through the red open skin. My bones blared and creaked, the intensity increased manyfold. Eyes bulged on the spectator seats and people leaned over with blustery shouts.
*SCHLICK*
A fountain of blood spew from my chest -What some people do with juice or coffee I do with my own blood, out of my ribcage- and painted the ground in a dangerous crimson. Some people keeled over from the enormous amount of blood and guts.
A highpitched shriek entered my ears, worried and relieved at the same time. "HYRION!", female and so mellow like the strings of a golden harp. I gave a sideway glance into the direction of my personal 'cheerleader', God it felt good to be alive again.
Her golden locks trembled in excitement and her nose twitched cutely in delight. She swayed her body left and right, up and down and waved with her arms like a madman. It was hilarious to watch and made me feel at ease on this battlefield. My guardian angel and nothing less.
After regaling my eyes on Miril's bouncing figure, and equally bouncing assets, I turned my attention towards the most urgent problem right now. The grievous wound on my chest, that pierced straight through my heart, healed quite a bit but the blood was still leaving my body at an alarming rate. To be honest my extreme display of unyieldingness cost me quite a bit of strength and was more detrimental, completely detrimental, to my health. It was worth it though. Before I could turn a sharp glare at the stumped Ash a distinct noise traveled into my ears.
*CRACK*
Just a slight breaking noise was all to take my focus away from the vile wound, why? It was extremely close, as if something on my body broke and it made me switch into full alert. I moved my eyes inconspicously around the area, a stumped Ash, stumped guards, everyone was stumped, who wouldn't be?!
*CRACK*
It was there again, this time louder. I focused all my attention on this slight crackling until I noticed it came right from below my head, on my neck to be more precise.
Dark fumes left the collar that entwined my neck like iron serpents, made breathing and eating hard and poisoned me on a daily basis. A curse so to speak.
And then, as though it was all a bad dream it fell off. It happened so quickly that my mind couldn't keep up, it was still whirled in turmoil by my emotional anguish. The collar simply fell on the ground, split apart by an unknown force. The iron shone from the ground and blinded me, yet it was not the light that blinded me in particular. It was the sight in itself. For years, years, I had this collar around my neck, never budging, chipping only slightly on the rarest occassions, and never letting me go. An abomination among metals. And now it laid there, powerless, it's literal shackles were cut from my body, and I was free... It happened in a split second, like nothing.
'What?', could I believe my eyes? Could it really be?
I queried my own sanity.
Without external force the collar suddenly silted, its structure turned brittle and fell apart, that easy. A small black snake, smokey and existing inbetween the realm of life and death formed from under the remnants of the collar.
"I said I will help you, didn't I?!", the snake whispered in an ethereal voice.
Heavy melancholy befell my heart, I was lugubrious about the time that this collar stole from me, I couldn't even break it with my own hands in the end. Without awaiting an answer the snake dissapered out of this realm.
I sighed and without giving the black grime on the ground another glance I turned my attention to Ash. His mouth was still wide agape, his sights trailed between the hole in my chest and the ground I lay on only moments ago. 'Can't believe it, eh?'.
It was hilarious to see this man as flabbergasted as a child on a magic show. It was so hilarious that I wanted to kill him even more so...
"H-How can that be possible?", his complexion turned a shade whiter as I kneeled onto the floor to pick up my broadsword. I kicked his sword far away, it clattered against the arena walls, leaving small cuts all over the floor behind.
I would certainly not fight fair.
A devilish grin grew larger on my face, my jagged canines greeted from behind my upper lip with murderous intent.
"Heee... you certainly underestimated me didn't you?", I tilted my head and held one figner against my chin, on a child it would certainly cute but my blood stained body, dark smaragd eyes filled with malignant desire, black bruises, black horn and crippled body and the large fangs that were able to rip spines apart were somewhat diametrical to cuteness.
"Resurrection magic, can it be?", as fast as the surprise came as quickly was it gone.
Ash pounded on his grey shield with his plated fist. "Let's get this going!", he shouted and sprinted forward.
'Magic!', the thought hit me like a meteor. In the next instant I churned my inside world, looked for this energy that constantly seeps out of my pores, and finally found it. Unlike before the mana inside my body felt much heavier, crassly contrasting to the light feeling I had at the beginning.
Thinking about it for a second I blamed it on my emotional state and maybe the poison that the collar excreted.
The mana maybe acted as a purifier, causing it to absorb parts of the toxins. But naturally I had nothing to base this theory on, where should the poison even cluster itself on? As far as I knew I had no knew organs were mana could be stored and neither could be absorbed poison. Of course it could be egested by natural processess like defecation, but then the mana had to transport the poison somehow into my inner organs. To much to think about now.
I felt a headache barrel its way into my mind as I kept thinking about useless stuff. Maybe I needed this to distract myself from the growing hate that would certainly consume me one day, who knows and who cares?
Ash stampeded forward like a raging bull, his shield was raised to the front, intimidating and oppressive. He might have been a single man, standing alone on this blood flowered field but in my eyes he looked like a silver wall moving in to shatter any offense, to shatter the will of his opponent with tyranical strength.
The low whisper he invoked before impaling me was heard once again. His muscles wriggled in ecstasy by the influx of foreign power, his skin turned sanguine from profuse perfusion and wisps of steam rose from his flesh. He indeed looked like a crazed bull.
His legs twitched, the ground errupted with each step, and in seconds he stood already before me, showing no signs of stopping. Some people might turn afraid but I just stood there, waiting to embrace my inevitable death. The audience stopped their breaths, Miril shouted from the spectator seats, the air turned feral.
An evil smile etched onto my face. This is what I was waiting for, my body was aching to fight, even the mana coiled in anticipation. I willed it, the mana inside my body, to leave at once, to take control of the elements to make them do my bidding; I turned the flow of the wind, the throbbing of the earth, the heat of the sun; the surroundings became my domain and my domain only.
The deadliest weapon is one you can't see.
I created paperthin vortexes of wind in the air, rotating and oscillating like a saw I planted these deadly wind blades all over the arena. It could have been because my body matured but I had a great feeling for the mana and essence around me, greater than the five years before.
I warmed the wind up with small heat patches, invisble to the eye. I heated the air up and thusly created blurrs and minuscle fractions of light created by the two different heated air layers. It was barely enough to fizz my image but it could help one survive a sure-kill strike by a hair's breadth.
But was that enough, to place deadly wind guillotines in open space, invisble to the naked eyes yet as real as it could get, and create what is most likely a miniature fata morgana? No, I was far from over. I would play this game dirty, very dirty.
Another second passed, I backstepped and at the same time dispatched balls of water essence into the earth, turned it into thick quicksand that wouldn't let go. A layer of dry earth covered the fraudulent pits, gave them some kind of stability, enough for me to walk over but insufficient to keep Ash's huge frame above the ground, after a few steps.
I gave myself a nod, all of the above mentioned was quikcly made in 5 or 6 seconds, the time was spent with evading the berserker Ash and parrying his huge shield with my heavy sword. Those few and rare encounters further clarified the difference between our skills and overall strength. The 'buff' or how one may call it made even tanking one hit nigh unbearable. I felt my bones breaking when I blocked the mighty shield with my broadsword. This was no simple strength difference anymore.
My lungs burned, my mana was depleted. My legs were sore from the explosive dashes to keep all damage to a minimum. My fingers were squashed as I falsely blocked for only a single time, broken between sword hilt and a moving wall of grey steel.
The traps were set up and now I had to stall. There was no way for me to fight back against a monster of such caliber, a killer of dragons, his physical prowess made it more than clear that those weren't baseless rumors.
Urging my tired legs forward I narrowly dodged the wild iron bull, else known as Ash. I brushed past his burning skin, tumbled in the air and landed crudely with weaving steps. The sword was barely enough to keep me from falling face first into the ground. I was exhausted.
A last time I organized my thoughts, memorized the adequate placed traps and inhaled a calming gust of air. My vision focalized, my palpitating heart returned back to its usual rythm and a portion of my strength, those last tad bits of energy left in my body, spread through my system, the gush of adrenaline felt good.
Gnashing my teeth and gulping down the damming blob of bile I exhaled sharply. Ash gazed at me fiercly, smote his balled fist onto the bastion of a shield and began running. He ran faster than any human could ever achieve under normal means, Usain Bolt? Not even worth comparing. It was truly fascinating how such a large frame can exercise such fleet movements.
'Enough gawking', I slapped my cheek.
Having the traps on my inner 'radar' was extremely tiring but that way I could now move them at my will, allocate the wind blades to the right position. Lucky for me the cheering from the crowd that was now witnessing the climax of our battle drowned the shrill noise of the wind 'saws', making them inaudible for the unstoppable Ash.
Three steps, his body was only breaths away from the first winding, slashing twister. Two steps, he should now feel the circulating air on his skin. One step, runaway gusts of wind manage to cut into the first layer of his skin, scratching him at most. And then he came into full contact.
Much like how iron reacts to high friction the impact between Ash and the first wind blade resulted in a small firework of glittering sparks, while at the same time a vexious, high-pitched noise filled the arena. If I wasn't standing right before the origin of this sound I would think I was placed straight in a sawmill.
After only the fraction of a second and a few traveled centimeters red speckles mixed into the yellowish sparks, they increased more and more until a steady stream of red fume frothed out of Ash's shoulder. His reaction speed was miraculous, only moving a few inches into the danger and he changed the trajectory of his body so that the blade misses any vitals, without even knowing where and what the danger is.
Kinda baffled I retreated another few steps backwards, Ash in turn moved forward. He experienced the deadly wind blades just once but whenever he came to close to one he dodged by a hair's breadth. The turbulences in the wind might be the cause, I should improve on it later. 'Yeah, later because I will surely not lose this.'
His right foot sunk into the earth, the surface crunched loudly and gave away only after a short instant, revealing the quicksand underneath.
I was sure that people in this world have rarely seen or heard of quicksand and its properties and I made use of it. Ash, as expected, started to struggle with all his might; he pushed the sand beneath him away only to seep in deeper into the water pervaded dirt and sand.
At that moment I thought I had him and I surely would have if not for the existence of a certain property, namely magic.
Before his face vanished behind a veil of toasted sand, swallowed by masses of earth, he mutterted another chant. One could differentiate between the normaly spoken tongue and the unhuman, godly, demonic and angelic tongue that goes hand in hand with magical chants.
Finishing his prayer the red hue on his skin intensified. The wisps of steam that arose from his skin turned into a full-on cloud of white vapor, beclouding the environs. I faintly heard the sizzling of water on probably the ground or Ash's set ablaze skin.
The ground dried out, scrunched as the water left the minuscle cavities and made them collapse on themselves.
Behind the cover of white a orange orb of light blinked from nothingness. It coalesced into a faint human form, streaks of fiery red whipping through the air made it look synonymous to a demon from hell.
As the vapor rose rapidly into the air, like the curtain in a theater, the 'boss' was revealed. Bloodshot eyes with a silver core; purpure skin that sizzled from intense heat and blue veins that squirmed under the purple dermis; muscles that blared for sweet relief, abound in strength; silver hairs, steel threads that floated gently in the air. 'What have I done?!', I questioned myself as the real dragon slayer Ash showed its colours.
Unlike the rowdy atmoshpere from before the air was now filled with deadly silence that made us adversaries numb with its shrill stillness.
The onlookers held hand before their agape mouths, fearing they might anger the beast that was towering inside this ring that turned into a death trap for me. But then there was a light. A symbolic light.
The wound that Ash got on his shoulder, the baneful cut close to his carotid, stretched apart with the increase in tension on skin and muscles alike. A, probably, warm gush of blood left the now wider wound and turned the skin around Ash's neck further into the inside of a blazing star.
I swa a slight wince in his expression, more wounds openned up all over his body. It seems this super buff didn't come for free.
He roared, I roared. The situation was forlorne as long as I wouldn't take action now. It seemed as if Ash sacrificed literally all of his defense, even the sparse armor on his body broke on a handful of spots. in turn for explosive fire power.
I dodged enough attacks, the light fractions around me were subdued by my will; I placed enough traps, the saws and pitfalls turned into still air and hard earth respectively; I ran away for to long. I was stupid when I first engaged, out of my mind and now I would do it again, but with a different purpose. There was no alternative for me. I run, he finishes me off. I defend, he breaks my bones. The traps were now nothing more than accessoirs, the heat disrupted the air currents and hardened the earth, he countered my magic unknowingly. I am pretty unlucky.
Hyat told me to be what I am, not try to accomodate to this new world. If I will turn to this worlds demise than so be it, but as sure as hell I won't die here, not again, not right now.
Collecting all those emotions that laid in shambles, all the hate that fueled my every step, I swallowed it down and prepared for the encounter of my life. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew, even if I lose I would most likely survive. Some kind of higher power would bring me back, but in all honesty, dying sucks dick.
I might not lose my life if I fail here, but I would certainly lose my dignity and sanity as human. Call me stupid, but a man gotta do what a man gotta do! Maybe it was the remains of mental turmoil that made my heart and mind change so fast but I felt this choice was the right thing to do.