A sun rose above them, and the ground beneath Sparrow’s feet warmed. He was sitting on a circular patch of earth in the middle of a large open grassland. On a blade of grass about five metres opposite him was a snail whose little beady eyes were staring intently at him.

The demon paced up and down on the grass beside Sparrow, giving little sniggers and clapping his hands until Sparrow asked, ‘Okay, am I racing a snail?’

The little demon gave a gleeful hehehehe.

'For slothfulness, we are going to be playing a riddle that is popular with the kids hoo-man. You see, this is no ordinary snail. You are back in your world, and you are now immortal. In your pockets are gems and rubies worth a million gold coins. However, the snail before you is also immortal, and if it touches you, you will die.’

Sparrow nodded his head slowly, ‘So I have to escape the snail?’

‘Not just escape it hoo-man, you must make sure you escape it permanently, you must make sure this snail can never touch you.’

‘Okay. Sounds easy.’

‘Ahh yes,’ the demon gave a massive grin, ‘but like the ropes of our lives there is a twist hoo-man.’

The demon gave a little giggle and did a dance, but the creature’s little legs were awkward, and it tripped and landed on the snail.

Sparrow cringed, anticipating the sound of its shell breaking. Instead, the demon exploded into the sky. Bits of flame stuck to the demon as it fell. It landed hard on the grass and gave a groan. The snail was perfectly unharmed.

‘Okay hoo-man,’ the demon croaked, ‘start planning. You have three days before the snail is set loose.’

****

Sparrow sat on the ground, cross-legged, with his shirt wrapped like a turban around his head to protect him from the sun. He didn’t know why, but the shirt no longer carried the large, bloody rip that had been formed by a warrior's spear.

He thought about all the assets he had - massive riches - his brains - his limbs - his shirt

For three days he sat there, locked in a meditative trance, staring at the snail in front of him. Its eyes writhed like they had a life of their own and its little mouth opened and closed, as if it was trying to speak to him.

****

‘What’s your plan?’ the demon said, crouching in front of him.

Sparrow blinked and tried to shrug off the tiredness that had settled over his face.

‘Well, first I’ll take off my shirt, throw the shirt over top of the snail, and then I’ll use some of those rocks over there to pin down the shirt just to make sure the snail doesn’t go anywhere.’

‘Over time it will escape,’ the demon said.

‘Yes, well, I don’t care, I’m only doing the shirt and rock thing to give me time to set up the next stage of my plan, which is to trade a gem for large amounts of concrete, salt and steel. I’ll then pay three gems to a team of masons to help me create a series of ever larger concrete balls. I’ll have one of the masons put the snail into the smallest concrete ball, then I'll concrete it all up, and then put that ball into the next largest, cover it with concrete, then put that ball in the next largest, and then keep going until there are no balls left. After that, I’ll pay another gem to a team with shovels who’ll dig a giant hole, and we’ll lower the concrete balls in there slowly so they don’t break, and then I’ll pay someone to stand guard over that hole and I’ll wander away, a rich, immortal man.’

The demon stroked its black, blister-coated chin, and Sparrow had to blink a few times because the demon seemed to be growing taller.

‘That’s a good plan,’ the demon said.

‘It is,’ Sparrow replied, ‘It took me a long time to come up with it.’

‘Did I mention there’d be a twist?’ the demon’s voice sounded lower pitched now and it was looming over Sparrow. The grass also appeared to be growing, it nearly reached Sparrow’s waist.

‘Yes, you did, that’s why I’m also going to add a large bag of salt between each ball so that even if somehow it makes its way out of one ball, its trail will be dried up and it’ll slow its progress even further. Each stage will also be incredibly painful for the snail.’

The snail opposite Sparrow was also growing, its shell changed to a tanned-human skin-like colour, then it began to grow muscles and limbs that separated from its body.

All the while the grass around Sparrow grew longer and longer. Thistles started to look like skyscrapers, and the demon was starting to get blurry it was so tall.

‘You have completed slothfulness hoo-man,’ the demon’s voice boomed from somewhere well above Sparrow, ‘now you begin on envy.’

Sparrow’s right eye turned in a circle, staring at the forest of giant grass that surrounded him. His left eye peered upwards.

Hmm, something doesn’t seem right. Sparrow thought. His body sagged forward. He tried to move his arms, but they weren’t responding. He twisted one eyeball stalk until the eye was facing him.

I’m a snail. Sparrow thought, and then someone picked him up and tossed him into a circular concrete ball. There was a loud splat, and then a thump as a wad of wet concrete filled in the gap in the sphere. Sparrow felt a deep fear set in the pit of his slime-coated stomach.

Stolen novel; please report.

I’m the snail.

He thought back to what the demon had said, and the word immortal floated in front of his eyes.

****

Sparrow's gooey belly shivered slightly as he contemplated the years before him. At least the first challenge had allowed him to die and reset. Being immortal, there was going to be no way out for him.

How could his soft jelly-like body even hope to compete with hardened concrete?

He thought back through all the masters, gods and wise men of the road he'd come across, he thought of the lessons they'd imparted upon him and tried to recall if there was one he could use to break the concrete apart.

He thought back to his first master - Master Lee, who taught him to breathe and gifted him the belt of invisibility.

He thought back to Brother Han, who'd taught him to make fire from his hands, and gave lessons while sitting in a freezing mountain stream as blocks of ice sailed past him.

But none of the masters he'd ever encountered had the answer to the ball of concrete he'd found himself in.

Sparrow attempted to apply stone skin to his feeble body, but when he wacked his slimy tail against the ground, it did no good, the concrete remained firm and his tail remained squishy.

Sparrow's eyes began to adjust to the gloom, he could see just an arch curving away from him.

So the Masters won't do this for me, Sparrow decided, human logic isn't enough. I have to look deeper.

So he did. In his mind's eye, he travelled through his life from picking turnips to being thrown from school to the calluses that grew on his feet as he travelled the roads of his homeland.

He thought about the mountain ranges that stretched into the clouds.

Even with my human form and all my powers before me, I would struggle to change the face of a great mountain range, he thought to himself as he sat gazing into the space between his memory and the concrete ball he now lived in.

He pictured banks coated with snow, trees that swished in the slight winds and a torrent of waterfalls and streams running their way down the rock.

He flew closer to the waterfalls, bathing himself in the freezing cold torrent. He felt alive and exhilarated.

I must become like water.

Sparrow didn't know where the thought came from, it didn't seem to have originated from his own mind, but more from the universe around him.

I must become like water. Water is the softest thing in the universe, yet water and time can bring mountain ranges to their knees, turn boulders to sand, and have crushed every empire that has walked this planet.

And from that thread of thought, he felt himself grow stronger. I am going to use time as a weapon against the cage I’ve been imprisoned in. Slowly he began to circle around and around the concrete sphere.

At first, the routine circles felt good, he was going to escape. He was going to find his body and progress onto the next challenge, but then time dragged on, as his body tired his mind wandered and he found it hard to keep himself going. He turned to meditation, instead of thinking he focused on the concrete beneath his single foot or the feel of the air molecules as they passed by in a slow continuous dream. Minutes turned into months turned into years and then…

The concrete sphere shattered under the onslaught of his repeated spins.

****

Sparrow found himself in a gleeful tumble towards the white-coated ground. That was the first, now all he had to do is repeat the process and…

The instant his foot touched the ground, pain burned through the slimy patch beneath him. Sparrow wanted to scream or cry, but there wasn't enough moisture left in his body for that. Instead, his eyeball shrivelled and he was left a withered husk.

Yet still, he didn't die.

Sparrow cursed himself for what he done. How could he have been so cruel and so stupid as to have put salt in every concrete sphere?

He peered his tentacle-like eyes in two different directions. All around him were mountains of salt.

Sparrow took a deep breath and wished he had a leaf of lettuce to eat, let that thought pass and then struggled along the concrete surface, carving a new path through the burning soft salt around and around the concrete ball. Although the salt pained and dehydrated him, over time, he found it also aided him as the little grains ate away at the concrete beneath him.

His second concrete ball took half the time that the first did, and when it cracked open to reveal yet another larger concrete ball, Sparrow didn't allow the pain to cloud his mind. Instead, he harnessed it, trampling grains of salt beneath his foot and using it to eat away at the seven remaining concrete seven spheres he'd placed around himself, until the last sphere cracked and broke and earth from the outside tumbled in, burying Sparrow in a giant landslide of brown and green.

Sparrow was only forty percent sure he was upside down, and had no idea how far he was from the surface.

He tried to turn himself but the ground around him was soaked with rain and sucked him back every time he tried to pull away.

For days he struggled against the earth, until on the third day he felt something tapping at the side of his shell.

The thing started off with light taps, and when it found him unable to move it slowly coiled around his body.

Sparrow poked one of his eyes up to see what was happening and found a worm sniffing his eyeball stalk.

'I'm not going to make a very good meal. I'm sorry my friend,' Sparrow tried to say in snail talk.

The worm, which didn't seem to know the language, ignored him and started chewing on one of his eyeballs.

If Sparrow had teeth he would have bit it right back, instead, he used the extra patch of free space that the worm had created to roll himself onto his foot. The worm reared, gathering its body into a fat mass of muscle preparing for an attack.

The worm's first lunge caught Sparrow straight in the eye.

Sparrow cursed his new body - he'd seen the attack coming and everything, but his reflexes were just too slow to do anything about it.

The worm went for another attack, this time using its head like a club to batter him on the nose.

I don’t have speed, I don’t have strength, I do have time… but that’s kind of useless right now. Sparrow’s eyes darted in all directions trying to find a solution. His right eye, which was slightly stumpier, and was oozing a kind of green goo landed on his brown shell.

Oh yeah…

Sparrow bobbed his head back into his shell, and the worm’s attacks thundered on the outside.

He wondered why he hadn’t pulled back into the shell before. The space was warm and cosy, like a den made of warm stone.