The night was lonesome, undisturbed. Forest trees sway amongst the wind, the snow bare and clean. The world had gone to sleep, resting as it should. But all things couldn’t last forever. With the crack of lightning and the glow of magic followed by a loud thud, the reptile slammed into the hard ground. His face buried in the snow as he groaned in frustration. He clung to his side; he felt a rib had broken and punctured something. His lips curled, holding back every urge to swear and curse at the sharp pain spiking through his body being forced to endure the cold.
He looked around, thankful that he had returned to Earth. The reptile let out a relieved sigh as he tried to stand up. In his first attempt, he slipped and fell. Fortunately, he was alone.
Concerned, he scanned his surroundings. He was next to a road that was similar to the town he was in. But the more the reptile looked around, the more he realised what had happened in his absence. There were no bodies, but there were multiple pools of blood. Every building and tent mysteriously vanished, replaced by a dark patch where they should be. The haunted Ikea was gone, but that was the least of his problems.
Vroom!
The ground shook as two massive feet crashed into the ground. Dirt, snow, and ash spewed up and rained down below. The reptile shielded his face with his right arm as peddles pelted him all over. Appearing in front of Jackson was a colossal creature. A few hundred feet tall, it had a feminine form, its skin as grey as granite, and its facial features moved and shined like the night sky. It looked down at the reptile. Its immense power was imposing and daunting. It let out a low hum; the air cracked and electrified around its back. Lighting up the entire open field that could be seen from kilometres away.
Jackson knew he had no hope of beating the giant. He had no means of hurting it, no method to kill it. The reptile stood up, straightening his back to look up at the colossus in defiance. His flimsy pocketknife at the ready. Death was always a possibility, a guarantee in most cases. He had already accepted any and all outcomes, regardless if they were fair or not.
He spat on the ground before he stared at the giant. His blue eyes radiated a fiery hatred at the creature. A passionate anger aimed at it, determined to do everything in his power to inflict as much damage as possible no matter the cost. The colossus looked down, how the reptile’s body was covered in blood, both his own and of the creatures he butchered in the complex, his clothes torn apart. It expected the reptile to run, yet it deemed the reptile was foolish enough to challenge it to a fight.
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The reptile stared into the abyss. The abyss stared back and blinked. It was clear the reptile wasn’t normal, that hatred, that anger, it wasn’t expected. The colossus looked at the fractured soul of Jackson and saw an unmovable object of destruction. The giant knew the reptile didn’t have any hope of winning, but it knew… it believed! It believed the reptile had a plan, something up his sleeves to make the fight painful and dangerous for the colossus.
The abyss stared into the eyes of the reptile. The reptile stared back tenfold. A man who was only 5’3, struggled to breathe under the cold, his scales paler after losing too much blood, and exhausted beyond measure. He made the colossus flinch by his presence.
There was a horror behind the reptile’s eyes, a wrath the giant had witnessed for the first time. The colossus felt fear for the first time. Threatened, it walked away, heading north, far from humanity and anything to hide in the ocean.
The moment the creature was out of sight, Jackson let out a pained sigh as he collapsed onto his back. Taking a few deep breaths to catch some rest from an exhausting mission. He would call Heresy soon, telling them about the mission and how he was the only survivor.
Though, he won’t be given any praise. A monster escaped, and the world knew of its existence. The best the Order could do was tell the world that it was a powered human in the area that had killed everyone in a small town. People believed it, of course. It was far more convincing when there are now people who are powerful enough to destroy cities on their own. However, the exposure of the monster, the death of an entire town, and the destruction of the data slate was deemed to be a critical mission failure. One that the reptile was blamed for, even if he survived a task intended to kill him.