I woke up slowly, as I usually did. Turning over, I glanced at the old bedside alarm clock, the numbers reading 1:36PM. Stomach grumbling, I reached out to grab my phone from the night stand. I knew I should just get up and make some breakfast, or at least see if there was anything in the fridge, but I couldn't pry myself away from trying to find at least one new chapter of my favorite web novels.
Finding only a few chapters out, I read through them quickly, enjoying the different world they brought me to, but all too quickly I had read through them all. I gave up on reading, and got out of bed. Reaching up, I grasped for the cord to the light for my ceiling fan, pulling it. As my room lit up, I glanced around, noting with satisfaction my bookshelves filled with books, and my assorted collection of sharp knives and blades strewn across my dresser top. I was proud of my collections, even though I knew that the blades would slowly rust over time and I would only keep a smattering of books when I moved out of my parents house.
“But,” I thought to myself, “It’s summer. Graduation is a long ways off, so no use thinking on depressing things.”
I opened the door to my room and entered the bathroom to put in my contacts. It had always annoyed me that I had such terrible vision, but unless I wanted to get laser eye surgery there was nothing I could do to fix it. After finishing my morning routine, I slowly walk out into the kitchen, greeting my mom with a quick “Good morning.”
As I check the fridge, mom calls out, “I cut you some fruit, and there is some brown rice cooking on the stove for you.” I thanked her, and went over to make some egg fried rice. As I was cooking, I glanced up at the TV, noticing it was on the news.
But something was off. The anchor seemed panicked, even frightened. My mom was staring intently at the screen, and I caught something about disappearances all over the globe before my mom turned off the TV. She looked at me, worried, and opened her mouth to say something, but I suddenly felt faint. As I closed my eyes, mom called out to me, worry clear on her face. At 2:18PM, darkness took me.
Many Years Later
As I pierced my spear into the dirt, I wiped some blood from my mouth. I checked my body, and frowned with anger. After all this, after what I had done to get here, to try to fix it all, would I fail now?! But I knew it was too late. A large gash in my chest showed bone, and it was all I could do to stay upright, leaning heavily on the weapon that had been with me through it all.
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Besides the crevasse that was my tattered torso, I was missing my right arm up to the bicep, with what looked like a giant tooth mark carved deep into the remainder. Blood was gathering in a crimson pool at my feet, and I was started to lose my vision.
A deep, guttural roar echoed through the skies, shaking the ground beneath me. The… Dragon, for lack of a better word, slowly made its way towards me. It was injured too, deeply. Its wings, once long and majestic, were snipped at the bud, leaving it with no chance of flight ever again. Over its head, a small tile read Scrya, Mother of all Winged - LVL.????
As Scrya made its way over, a heavily pocketed mountain crumpled to the ground in a mushroom cloud of dust. There were pockets of earth entirely missing from the landscape around us, with thick scars running like a finely woven net throughout. There was even smouldering flame-like piles here and there, but fully white, like you would see on a blank canvas. It was an almost impossible white, but it scared the once beautiful mountain range just like everything else.
Scrya’s wounds were great. Besides its wings, it was also missing one of its sharp, imposing horns, with the other one lodged the wrong way into its left eye. It seemed to be crying tears of dark blue blood down its injured eye, but Scrya’s other eye burned a bloody, fiery red with heat and anger. I knew nothing would stop it from killing me if it could. For I had given it those wounds, and even more, such as a bone deep cut running all the way down its right leg, leaving the hindquarter utterly useless. Scrya was dragging the leg along behind it as it made its way towards me.
I glanced once at my Status Screen before turning away. I knew how little health I had left, and I was determined to make the most of it. I would not survive this, not with all the curses the beast had placed on me, but I could make sure it would not harm anyone else. I owed her that much.
As Scrya came to a halt in front of me, I tore my spear from the ground and rested it gingerly on my left shoulder. I paused for half a second, then proceeded to laugh. I knew I would die. I knew it like I knew my name. I knew it like the feel of the spear in my hand. There was no hope here. And that? That finally set me free. I licked at the blue blood on the tip of my spear, and tasted something uncomfortably sweet. The damned beast had candy for blood. I felt a burning in my stomach, but before I could figure out what the feeling was, Scrya rushed me, bellowing out.
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The fight was finished. The Mother of all Winged lay, headless, under countless boulders that used to make up a mountain. Its head sat, beside me, although three times as big. But I had no time to admire it. I was drenched in the Thing’s blood, and all I could see was a darkness all consuming.
I leaned up against the massive head, and as I slowly faded away, I noticed one shiny black tile, superimposed over the blackness.
YOU HAVE EVOLVED