Chapter 2: Dark Flame

In the middle of the night, the boy's silhouette could barely be seen as he weaved through the trees. He knew that he could not afford to stop, he knew the consequences would be enormous. So, he just kept walking, occasionally picking a fruit he knew not to be poisonous.

As the sun came up, the boy hoped that the worst had already passed. He sat down to rest when the earth shattering roar he had hoped to avoid sounded out above him. The boy tried to run, but found that he could not move and that he was actually shaking uncontrollably.

The one thing he could do was wait. A few seconds later, a shadow covered the sky and landed in front of him in all of it's glory. He once again saw the majestic griffin, and couldn't help but admire it's beauty.

"HAHAHA, what is a human doing in my territory? You have guts boy, what's your name?"(Griffin)

"..."(Boy)

"Well? ANSWER!"(Griffin)

The boy couldn't handle the pressure and dove towards the griffin, dagger in hand. The griffin just stood there, deeming it impossible for the 'weak' boy to even leave a scratch on it's body.

With a wild look in his eyes, he brought the dagger down towards the griffin's heart. The dagger became covered in a dark mist that started to spread along the boy's arms like snakes. Seeing this, the griffin felt something was wrong and immediately jumped away.

The dark mist reached out towards the griffin and streaked towards it's chest. With a sound like metal grinding on metal, a dark gash was left on the griffin's chest and the darkness was slowly creeping throughout it's body.

The griffin looked at the boy's dagger with insanity in it's eyes.

The boy also looked down at his dagger which had reverted back to normal. He looked up towards the griffin, then turned and sprinted away. Behind the boy an enraged roar reached out from the griffin's beak and paralyzed all of the weaker creatures around it.

Without a single look back, the boy continued to Sprint through the forest. He looked down at his arms that had black tendrils curling around them and slightly panicked, causing him to trip and stumble through the nearby bushes.

He used his arms to push himself up off the ground, but jumped back as he saw that the ground where he had put his hands had started to look like the mist on his arms. He looked up and saw that his surroundings had changed. He was now surrounded by stones with a few vines here and there. He decided to address the current problem of his dark arms.

He found a cave that seemed uninhabited and decided to rest there. Once inside, he sat down and tried to use his mind to feel his arms and the dark mist spreading throughout them. He realised that it was the same feeling as when he had gathered the heat and power in his arms to let out the incinerating flame. The difference was that this time, the power had come from an outside source so he couldn't control it.

He tried absorbing the mist into his body and it worked. The mist was now attacking him from the inside. He figured that if he could gather power into one place and shoot it out, that he could scatter it throughout his body. He sat in a meditative position and focused his sharp senses inward and saw the mist swirling around in his chest.

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He focused on trying to control it to spread throughout his body. Miserably failing, he still felt the mist growing and trying to eat away at his insides. The boy decided to take a different approach. He pressed all of the mist together inside of his body and after around an hour, he had compressed it into a marble the size of a ping pong ball.

After that, and the exhausting day he had, he fell asleep on the cold floor. In the morning, his eyes snapped open and he took a deep powerful breath in and let it out, blowing away anything in front of him.

He pointed out both of his index fingers. Out of one, a dark mist that seemingly sucked away any light that made it's way towards it. On the other finger, a small, purple flame that seemed to have been affected by the mist swirled around. With a sudden thought, he touched the two power together, causing them to merge and create a dark purple flame seemed slightly gaseous and had a dangerous air to it.

The boy closed his eyes and spread out his sense to feel the dark flame. Wait... sense? The boy then experimented spreading out his sense even further. He found that his maximum radius was around 50 feet around him. He marveled at the feeling he got when he felt all of the cells and workings of the surrounding objects and creatures.

He felt himself and he felt his cells all working together to create the working mechanism. He then felt the potential of his body after absorbing the dark mist. He felt the dark power swirling inside him and slowly building up. He felt the air around him and the air beneath his feet.

"Beneath my feet?..."(Boy)

The boy snapped his eyes open and became excited to see what conclusion his next experiment would come to. He once again closed his eyes to feel the air around him, he focused on controling the air and manipulating it to where he wanted it. He pushed it beneath his feet and tried to propel himself into the air.

He was straining himself and exhausting his spiritual energy, yet couldn't feel anything happening. Disappointed, he opened his eyes and a happy light flashed through them as he realized that he was unstably floating about 1 foot off of the ground. He continued it for around 1 minute before he ran out of energy and fell to the ground.

The boy became excited for the future as he could feel that he just needed to increase his strength and he would be able to FLY!

The boy sat in the cave for the rest of the day meditating on his newfound abilities of fire and the dark mist caused by the mysterious dagger. He had tried to investigate the dagger with his spiritual sense but it had just been repelled by the dagger and was just a waste of energy, so the boy just let it be.

A little discouraged by the dagger, the boy quickly shook it off as he had made breakthroughs in various other aspects of his powers.He had realized that the mist was like poison and would corrode anything that it touched. Paired with the fire, it made an explosive poison that left a lingering poisonous burn.

The boy shivered imagining facing someone with his power. To exploit the strengths of his dark flame, he created two techniques. The first one was a standard fire ball. Do not underestimate this attack though, just hitting something with this attack would poison and weaken them till they could barely fight. Do not forget about the explosive power of a fireball in and of itself.

The second technique was shaping the dark flame into a thin needle that you could discreetly shoot at an unsuspecting victim in the middle of a battle, leaving them weakening throughout the fight as the poison slowly spreads through and burns there body.

The boy happily smiled, knowing that he had gotten stronger. The boy then spread his spiritual sense outside of the cave to see if any enemies he might have to prepare for were roaming around. Finding nothing more than a few bugs and small herbivores, he found nothing dangerous.

He walked out of the cave to once again start his journey. The boy suddenly leaned towards the ground.

"These are the weirdest trails I have ever seen."(Boy)

The boy followed the trails out of curiosity and because of the fact that he was headed in that direction anyways. He hadn't noticed yet but this trail was of humanoids just like him, where it lead he would have to find out.