EnroItzal

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Henry spent a good chunk of his morning learning how to land. To be precise, he spent the whole morning doing just that after filling his belly with some sour berries he found amidst the ruins. The craters of his image littered the fields around the ruins, turning the area into some strange ritualistic grounds.

He had stopped counting his blunder and failure after the tenth time. In the process of learning how to land, he came to learn how long he could keep them materialised. Under average circumstances, he could keep his wings functioning for about fifteen minutes. The duration was doubled if he did nothing with the wings, so that was a pointless discovery. If he was using his other abilities while flying, that duration was cut down to a mere duration of five minutes and that wasn’t taking into account the strain on his mind.

Another interesting discovery was that his breathing was not greatly affected at great heights. He had flown above the clouds but he did not face any difficulty with his breathing. He had never been so high up in the sky before and he had always heard how the air gets extremely thin at high altitude. As a Dragon, the high altitude wasn’t a problem. However, the fatigue and dizziness did begin to set in when he reached the mesosphere but that was a non-factor as he didn’t think anyone or anything would go that high unless one was trying to go to space.

The underlying problem of flight was the descent but he eventually figured out a way to bypass it. In every following descent after a string of failures, if he went too high, he didn’t need to “fly” back down. He simply just dispelled his wings instead of folding them, and letting the gravity do the rest. He only reconjured his wings when he was half a mile away from hitting the ground. This way, he could be efficient and thrifty with his Murux.

Of course, this kind of trial and error test rarely ever went so smoothly and at times, it would yield an interesting and unexpected result. His greatest blunder in this training session might be the time he forgot all about his wings' limited up-time and he was high in the sky when his Murux ran out. Thankfully, his great fall was mitigated partially as he landed grazing down a long slope, so he didn’t end up flattening himself on the ground like a pancake. Still, the fall did hurt like a bitch, eased or not. Though his hide and flesh were tough, it was nothing compared to the might of physics. Some of his bones were fractured and a few ended up jutting out of his flesh.

It went without saying it was an agonising experience, one that he barely remembered due to the intensity of the pain. He even turned numb from the agony and was unable to move for a few hours. In his incapacitation, he faced many nuisances with the silver lining being none of these nuisances were life-threatening. They were just nuisances. The greatest one had to be the birds taking a dump on him. He wanted to roast those birds but the numbness did not offer him the liberty to.

Just when Henry thought the rest of his day would just be him wallowing in agony over his broken limb while dreading for some strong predator to stumble upon him, he realised his injuries were all but healed. His bones had somehow snapped themselves back into place. Organic black gooey tendrils erupted from his flesh and the wound stitched itself up with those queer appendages which appeared as if they had minds of their own. He was good as new when the wound had closed up and those black gooey tendrils. There was no scar or any pain remaining. He was confused at first but then he remembered. He recalled how the Demon had healed itself up in a similar manner.

Is this an ability I gained from consuming the Demon’s Murux Heart?

As handy and convenient as this ability was, it came at a huge price. It took a lot out of him. It consumed a lot of his Murux and he felt tired and hungry after that. And that was just the cost on the surface level. If the cliche was to be believed, there would certainly be some underlying cost to this remarkable ability, not that he cared to find out. Even if he did care, who and where would he even ask?

His throat was very parched after his regeneration. It felt like he had gone through a whole day without having a sip of water. Thankfully, there was a small puddle of water nearby. It wasn’t enough to sate his thirst but it would do for the moment. There was a large and long river in the valley just beside the plains. The other side of the river was the foot of the snowy mountains of the north. From where he was, he could faintly make out a few stone buildings on the mountainsides.

Settlements? Another tribe?

Henry surmised as he was strolling to the river. Though he called it a stroll, he was very vigilant of his surroundings, especially the skies. In the forest, he didn’t need to pay too much attention above him as the densely-packed branches and leaves were hard to avoid and noises were always made whenever something came from above. But in the plains, there was only the wind and an unobstructed view of the radiant skies.

He did spy a few of those vultures but as he did not have any carcasses with him, the vultures stayed in the skies and did not bother him at all. He also saw the same feline beasts from yesterday but they were far away and when they took notice of Henry’s presence, they ran further away. In fact, every animal or creature that he could see or perceive was keeping a distance from him. Not even a whole day had passed and Henry had already asserted his dominance in this domain.

Henry didn’t need to walk far as he fell quite near to the valley. He merely went down another slope, walked for an hour, and he was there. Though it was called a valley, it barely felt like one as the two hills sandwiching the low land were quite a distance from one another. It was only treated as a valley due to one side being a range of mountains. Without it, the valley would just feel like an incline or a basin amidst the plains.

The queer and never-before-seen amphibian creatures scattered from the riverbank with the approach of Henry. Some of these novel creatures even looked ferocious but against Henry, they looked no different than a small rabid dog. Some were able to muster up the courage to bare their fangs against  Henry but he repelled them with a flick of his claw-fingers and let them off with a warning growl. To those that were still adamant with their hostility, Henry simply squashed them easily with his paws.

Please, no tentacles or crocodile monsters.

Henry prayed in his heart as he approached the water. Fortunately, the surface was quite clear and he could see into the water but not entirely to the depth. He plunged his entire head into the water and took gulps without any worries about imminent dangerous monsters. It would appear the fauna was on the tamer side around these parts.

After his thirst was sated, his hunger was next on the list to be quelled and that was something much harder to lull than his thirst. At present, none of the animals would tread close to him or even look his way. They were staying as far away as possible from him. The creatures were tamer than the ones he was used to but even being tame had its drawbacks, towards Henry at least.

Fish, perhaps?

Henry wondered. He peered into the water. The fishes swam close to him nonchalantly, seemingly unperturbed by Henry’s presence. They swam away when they felt the ripples and the disturbance of the water but they swam right back to him a few seconds later as if they had forgotten all about his presence. He knew little about aquatic animals. He didn’t understand why they dawdled so close to him. Were they unaware of the threat he potentially posed or were they simply unafraid of him? Whichever the reason was, Henry didn’t care. His mind was on his empty belly, which he intended to fill.

He dove into the water and the fishes scattered and scampered. Gills and fins manifested on his body. His limbs and tail became paddles. These aquatic features were no different from how his wings materialised. They weren’t biologically part of him, just magically. A bizarre phenomenon he had long accepted. His bones and flesh could mend themselves. Nothing could top that.

The tattoos on his limbs glowed and he streaked through the water like a torpedo, instantly catching a fish with his jaws. The undrained blood of the fish left much to be desired but he was starving. He didn’t mind the strange aftertaste. It didn’t matter in the face of his hunger. It was miles better than eating bugs and those outlandish monsters.

As the water was clear, not just in the sense of the murkiness, but also clear of dangerous monsters lurking in the shallow depths, Henry could swim freely without worrying too much. There were fishes that were the size of a child that bore razor-sharp fangs but a glare from him was enough to send those fishes scurrying away. There were plenty of fishes that were unfazed by his presence and his attempt at intimidation. Some were even hitching a ride by swimming under his belly and sticking to his side. There were small fishes that swarmed his bared jaws, picking at the leftovers stuck between his teeth.

Damn… I’m really one of them now, aren’t I…

Henry mulled. It was moments like these that reminded him; all traces of his humanity were in his mind. Be it body or spirit, he was a beast, a monster, and nature had accepted him as such. There were times that he dreaded if he would gradually forget that he was ever a human. As he could barely remember anything about his life as a human, he didn’t have any significant lingering yearning for his past life. He was content. Well, as content as he could be.

In his nonchalant hunt for food and his recreational swimming, a fragrant scent drifted into his nose even while he was underwater. He emerged to the surface and glanced around. He found himself being just a few yards away from the riverbank of the mountain foot. He had somehow meandered away from the bank he came from in his airy water-treading.

But that wasn’t what roused his curiosity and wonder. It was the scent he caught. It smelled good. It wasn’t the kind of aromatic smell that begot his hunger. The scent was more akin to a flowery fragrance. It was soothing. He followed the scent with his nose, leading his gaze to the source. And he found it coming from the bank. He expected to find flowers but the cliche was followed. The scent came from a girl.

Not just any girl, a stark naked girl. She was bathing in the shallow parts of the river and her wonderful scent permeated the water, flowing into Henry’s nose. The girl’s barren state wasn’t all that made Henry stare. It was also the colour of her skin and hair. She was as pale as the snow and her waist-long hair was of a colour Henry could only describe as a platinum blonde. Her eyes were of a vivid pale blue, like a pair of glowing sapphires. She was lithe but decently ample in the arms, chest, and lower half.

A fighter was Henry’s immediate conclusion of the girl’s disposition. A very good skilled one at that, probably more so than the lady in white’s sister and guard, Iora. He could feel the immense aura emanating from the girl. Her Murux was tremendous.

Henry was skimming the water from under like a shark tends to do in movies. He was moving towards her. He knew he shouldn’t be approaching the girl but he was pulled by some unexplainable attraction. He couldn’t resist. He couldn’t even peel his eyes off of her and when her eyes found him, he knew he had just brought trouble to his doorstep on his own accord.

Oh… great.