10 Years, Forest. Showdown.

I abruptly awake as I crash onto the ground back first, forcing the air out of my lungs. Coughing and gaping for fresh air, I confusedly try to assess the situation. I am lying on my back in a layer of snow, and see trees rising into the sky everywhere.

I fell off the tree while sleeping. I feel tired and exhausted, I probably slept for only a few hours. The sun has still not risen, but the moon is shedding its silver light all over the place, making eyesight not a problem. It has stopped snowing, and the night is clear.

My body is killing me. I feel like someone stomped onto my chest, someone who weighed considerably more than I do. I need to take a look at all my injuries, to assess in how they will affect me and my further plans. But first, I climb back onto the tree, back into safety. I do not feel comfortable on the ground any more, I have to stay at least seven meters up, far from everything down there that could hurt me.

At the top, I take off my clothes, the robe and the shirt and the pants beneath it, to get a better look onto my body. I try breathing as shallowly as possible, as one particular spot hurts like hell when the linen of the shirt glides over it. Bruises are covering my chest, but are especially dense around the area that is hurting the most. I try touching this spot to feel if anything is actually loose.

Ughhh... No.

So, no touching. I wish I had the expertise of the doctor in the village, but as I am now, I can not make a better guess than “A few ribs are cracked or broken, and the pain will not stop anytime soon.” I thought the same yesterday already, and I come to the same conclusion now as I did before: As long as I am still able to cast magic and bring myself to do what is necessary, I will continue. This mindset does not lessen the pain, but the prospect of setting everything on one card to get this situation dealt with soon helps enduring it greatly. I can still whine and pity myself all I want after this.

The injuries on my hand and feet have evolved in a disturbing way: My hands have turned bright red, and large blisters are covering the top of my fingers. They are filled with a clear fluid, as I learn when I accidentality pop one while inspecting my left hand. Luckily, my palms and the insides of my fingers are not that badly hurt, which allowed me to grab firmly onto branches yesterday and not release them in a pain reflex.

My feet are another story. I feel them, every part of it, and I am glad about that fact. They do not hurt as much as I would expect them, but are still more than distressingly painful. The top and soles have turned greyish-white, and are sprinkled with the same blisters as my fingers, but only even larger. The dark blue hue of my toes has turned into a dark black, the part I have the least feeling in. It was the right call prioritising my own temperature over a bit of extra output for combat techniques. Seeing how the wounds only seem to worsen, I can imagine how they would look when exposed to more cold.

I put my clothes back on, after taking a split second to pity their disastrous state: Wet, ragged and dirty. Dry clothes are a luxury I never thought to value so highly before. Wet clothes do not cool me out, my magic covers for that, but having them stick to my skin is giving my mood the last kick downwards.

The sooner this is over with, the better. Yesterday, I ran into magic exhaustion for the first time. This is strange, since normally, my magic energy consumption is too low to ever deplete the surroundings. Even when joint with Ione and Brian, we never reached a point where it was noticeable. It honestly escaped my mind, and I noticed almost too late what phenomenon I was actually witnessing when the need arose. But how did this happen? Was the recovery inhibited due to some reason? That would be the first time I heard of such an effect.

My coefficient did not rise randomly, either. What in the world...

I hit my forehead with my palm. A sudden realization overcomes me, hits me like a rock, and it has tremendous implications. This would be the puzzle piece missing in the picture, giving me a good understanding of what actually happened.

The owlbear is a magic user as well. How else could I, in retrospect, explain its terrific strength, inexhaustible stamina, and rock-like endurance? How else would such a creature, seemingly not even feeding on the prey it hunts, sustain itself?

Not only does the owlbear have unnatural capabilities, but it also does not breath, has no pulse and no temperature. Magic must be the essence of it, keeping its body running, moving and thinking.

What a majestic, yet pathetic creature: apex predator, unchallenged in every respect, but only due to foreign powers, and not their own. In a sense, we resemble each other. Without magic, I would only be a human, and it would not even be alive.

Having found a bit of solace in understanding what I am facing better, I, for the first time, feel like I am facing a person, and not a wild beast.

I reminisce about yesterday's encounter again. When I was jumping around in the trees, and was right in the middle of the magic energy deprivation zone, I most likely was not only one affected by it. If we fought each other until the last bit of magic energy runs dry in the area, it would definitely have consequences for both of us. I would be standing, as a normal human boy, utterly defenseless. But the Owlbear... It would perish. Robbed of its own source of energy, it would stop moving like a starved bee.

The plan is risky. It involves presenting myself in a vulnerable state, it involves so many unknown factors. But at the same time, I also feel like it is the plan with the highest chance of succeeding. I will trap the owlbear in a confined area, keep it from leaving by any means necessary, and do so as long as it takes for it to collapse. As if it was fate, we are at the perfect location for that: The ravine. If I trick it into getting down there, and keep it busy for long enough, it may just drain it from its resources.

The owlbear will have protection mechanisms against that, most likely. It will shut down its energy consumption, like it seems to do when sleeping, when in danger of using up its last magic power. But, if it is going to do that, I will do whatever it takes to keep it active. Every last bit of magic it does not consume I will relentlessly use to shoot pebbles at it, which have proven capable of causing injury.

A distant sound, so quiet I did not even fully realize it was there, has continued getting louder and louder. Rumbling through the forest, trees bursting, and screaching: Unlike last time, the owlbear seems to have decided to go after me instead of the village. It was furiously boiling with rage when I escaped its claws yesterday, so it probably will try to hunt me down with iron determination.

Then, today will be the deciding battle. Whatever the outcome, I doubt that both of us will be alive at the end of it. Either the owlbear will die in the ravine, or it will kill me beforehand. Given the trend of my situation to deteriorate, even if I escape, my chances of defeating the foe will be abysmal.

I jump down the tree, and eat a few hands full of snow. I am both thirsty and hungry, and this is the only thing I can do to stop that. After quenching my thirst, and clearing my mind to something that can only be described as “almost half-conscious”, an improvement over before, I get back into the treetops, and scream as loud as I can, to get the owlbears attention.

“Come at me, piss-head!”

The rumbling in the distance stops for a few seconds, but then it returns, and this time followed by an angry shriek. This got its attention alright. I swing from tree to tree, at the direction of the ravine. While previously the rumbling got quieter and louder at random, it now grows in volume, rapidly. Finally, I see the owlbear breaching through a tree in the distance.

At the same time, it spots me as well, and stops for a few seconds to cry out a primordial scream of hatred. Like a creature from a nightmare, it is visibly mangled, but its functional eye locks onto me with steel-like precision. Then, it charges at me faster than I would have deemed possible. I am on guard, so I jump off in time, and cling safely onto the next tree.

Even so, I feel first signs, however slight, of my body turning cold and heavy, and that even faster than yesterday. I can not fathom how quickly the owlbear burns through the energy here, and while this power is frightening, it also reinforces that tiny glimpse of hope that my plan could work.

I traverse the trees at speeds unknown to me before as well, not even waiting for the owlbear to take down the trees before switching, simply jumping off to the next as soon as I grab hold of a new one. Finally, I reach the ravine, and the owlbear, fearing to loose me the third time in a row to the same trick, desperately yelps and in a last effort, tries to charge at me again and again. However, escaping is not my intention – not this time. Therefore, I continue swinging from tree to tree, but remain on one side of the cliff.

Most of the trees the owlbear breaks remain on the ground, but some fall into the chasm, resulting in sounds of wood bursting on hard stone when they finish their fall around thirty meters deeper.

Alright. Now, only one question, one part in my plan remains unclear: I need to lure the owlbear down there. If I jump down, will it follow me? I think that is not unlikely, given its furious state. That alone could injure it greatly, but if it will, it is also less likely that the owlbear will dare the jump. Furthermore, what about me? I can, in my lightened state, jump down a ten meter high tree without problems. But, what about here, with triple the depth? Even if it does not outright kill me, it would surely burden my cracked rib and aching feet.

I could continue to forge plans, continue just evading over and over again, hoping for something to change in my favour, but a feeling in my gut tells me that is not going to happen. I have to seize the moment, if I want to emerge victorious. I steel myself for what is coming.

The owlbear points its beak into the night sky and screams in frustration over my unwillingness to let it tear me to shreds properly. I realize how ridiculous my plan is, but also realize that this one time, I can not seem to be rational, and therefore run away, hide, and let this problem be someone else's. I let a slight smile play around the edge of my mouth, as good as I can given the pain I am in, and as the owlbear focuses on me, and charges with relentless violent intent, I let go of the branch I hang from, from which I previously hung right over the chasm opening beneath me.

I fall freely, slow at first. The tree I grabbed onto was destroyed only a split second after I released my grip, and its trunk falls next to me, but way faster, it was blown away by the force of the impact. The owlbear stares at me from the ledge, a spark of triumph seems to glimmer in its eye, finally it got me out of the trees. It strikes at me with its right paw, I see the strong moonlight reflect on its claws, shining in amber, it does not reach me by a good meter.

As I fall, looking into the owlbears face quickly tilting downwards to track my movement, I can not come around noticing how we resemble each other, in a way that we are both giving our all to bring demise to our opponent. Our mutual hatred, for it killing my Father, for it dragging Brian into his condition, for me stabbing its throat and gauging its eye out, forms a bond of negative emotion between us, as strong as the the bonds of positive emotion I feel when thinking of my family and friends.

I fall, faster and faster. Time seems to slow down, as my excitement accelerates my thoughts. I realize I did a miscalculation: The same principle is at work here as when I shoot a stone. Accelerate it for half a second, it flies fast. Accelerate it for two, it flies FAST, a big difference. If I continue accelerating like this, I will end up down there as a smear on the rock. I have to slow down or stop my fall now, when I am still relatively slow, or else I am dead.

Immediately, I drop the self-heating. Cold starts creeping and seeping into the wounds on my feet and hands. I can treat frostbite later, I cannot treat death. I am going to need every last bit of energy I can get to avert this peril. Even then, with all my coefficient on self-lightening, it wont be enough to stop my fall.

I apply acceleration to myself, not directed upwards, but directed at my front. I begin moving to the rough, stony wall in front of me, and try to grab a protruding rock at random.

A jolt of pain runs through my arms as they scream in agony, and it feels like they are being pulled apart, and stretched unnaturally. My fall comes to an abrupt end, and I finally find solid grip against the wall. I feel wind trying to rip me off the wall as something enormous falls past me, screaming familiarly. I grin, only to have it wiped of my face the second later with my my chest bouncing against the stone and slamming it, driving a figurative hot needle into the broken rib.

The first step of my plan succeeded. Tears of pain roll down my cheeks, not the first since lately.

As if the world was expecting the sound of me getting blown apart on the rock floor, another half of the fall I already had down, and is now, that it did not get to hear it, compensating for that violation of nature, a heinous sounds of cracking bones and splattering meat caresses my ears.

I look downwards at the same time as an eruption of sound seems to blow through my clothes like wind, stinging into my eardrums like a blade. The owlbear lies down there, with ghoulishly shattered hindlegs, and cries bitter screams. Broken bones are protruding from its equivalent of my shins, and the rest is yellow-grey goo permeated by splinters of the bones formerly giving structure its hindlegs.

I answer its death cry with a definite scream of triumph. It is already dead, its still squirming body just does not know it yet. Now, there is only one way history can take its course: by me draining it of all its energy, and having it die miserably in a ditch for what it did to me.

I shake off the freezing feeling in my extremities by shuddering and reapplying my self-heating, and start climbing down to the bottom. The wall is rough and has good climbing opportunities everywhere.

I jump down the last three meters, roughly three of its body lengths away from the owlbear. The bottom of the ravine is very dim, only little of the moonlight bathing the surface reaches down here. Mosses seem to cover the stones, but apart from that, it is just barren rock, from what I can tell in that light.

The owlbear, still releasing its never-ending, deafening scream, albeit visibly in agony, continues to lash out after me with its claws on the uninjured forelegs. It seemed to land in a way that the hindlegs took the damage from the fall, and left the rest battered, but not splattered. I am too far away for it to reach me, so it ultimately lashes out in vein.

My body grows heavier and colder. The owlbear is still active, while my body seems to freeze away. I look in its eye, and notice a shining glimmering in there, almost bright enough to actually cast light on the outer world. Even though it may have shown signs of intelligence before, it now displays only beastly rage. If it had kept its smartness, I doubt we would stand at the same position as we do now.

The rate at which this enemy of mine churns through the energy here is unprecedented. I watch it flailing so fast, its scream makes concentrating even harder than before, and I feel all my body's weight more than ever.

Yet, I stand my ground, still facing the owlbear, even though I feel like a freezing stone. Suddenly, the owlbear stops just flailing at me, but tries to drag itself using its forelegs to reach me, a sight that horrifies me. I take a step backward, and another, but the owlbear is still dragging itself faster than I can walk, and so comes closer and closer, and the closer it comes, the faster I feel all my spells losing effectiveness. Magic euphoria grows weaker and weaker, and only now I realize how much it did to lessen my pain and mend my mental condition. Having this soothing effect withdrawn, my body revolts, and screams after only some more magic.

I try to pick up my pace of stumbling backwards, but overestimate the control I still have over my body, and fall onto my back. I barely manage to land in a way that I do not hit my head, but the fall still forces the air out of my lungs, leaving me struggling for breath.

I gasp for air, which now, without the dulling effect of magic euphoria, is unbearable to to with my cracked rib, and under great efforts lift my head, only to see the owlbear dragging itself towards me.

Is this how I will die, after all? I try to push myself backwards with my arms, but my body feels all too heavy. My body feels cold, no – freezing.

A weird mix of feelings overcomes me as the owlbear closes onto me, meter by meter. It is regret and sadness, pain, but also mixed with something else... What is it? Acceptance?

My clouded mind does not seem to be able to make sense from it. I try to ponder over it in my last moments, as the owlbear comes closer and closer.

Then, it stops. With a thump, it falls over, and comes to an halt. Is this... it? The glimmer in its eye has faded, and now been extinguished. I want to sigh in relief, but out comes only a grunt of pain. Finally, it is over...

The remaining eye flashes up again, with a burning intensity, and sheds me in a bright, orange light. The owlbear revives, and drags itself to me in enormous speed. Yet, I see also changes in my body: It grows light, and warm. What is happening? Am I hallucinating? Euphoria, no – magic euphoria wipes my mind clean, leaves me grinning. I lift of the ground, the upward acceleration overcomes the natural downward acceleration. My skin seems to burn, it is unspeakingly hot, but in my euphorious delirium, I do not mind. I levitate upwards, and so the owlbear, raging as it is down there, can not reach me. However, I now rise slower than before, and the burning feeling lessens, and worst of all, my euphoria weakens, too.

The owlbear's movements lose in ferociousness at the same rate my abnormal status normalizes itself.

Then, I stop rising upwards, hover in the air for a moment, and then slowly, but getting faster, fall back down. The owlbear collapses a second, final time, and I fall directly down onto its corpse.

My mind turns black when I land on its feathery back.