Using the last dregs of my mana I form a portal and disappear.

I see the Hydra’s jaws inches from my own then I am falling through branches.

I land with a sharp pain spiking from my lower back and a throbbing agony in my arm.

I have portalled a short distance nor more or less than a mile.

Glancing around with bleary eyes I landed on the sharp point of a rock and to my shock a branch is phased into my arm.

The dangers of random portalling.

“Shit, fucking dogshit, why the fucks is this happening to me! Crap!"

I rest against the craggy rock, panting hard and for a moment I have escaped death.

A dense thicket of trees offers plenty of shade.

I see a figure, it moves so fast I can’t tell what it is, it bounds forward on four limbs.

The terror of the latest danger brings me to me feet.

I try to run, but the figure makes a wide circuit and heads me off.

I am too tired to outrun such an agile creature, even if I had been fresh I suspect fleeing would have been in vain. Diving from one tree trunk to the next the creature moves now on two legs.

I stand my ground, spear in hand, the last weapon I have left.

New courage surges in my chest, I am ready.

But to my surprise they conceal themselves in the trees and do not approach any closer. They watch me closely.

"Are you going to make me wait all day?" I shout.

They leap down from the branches.

They loom over, a good head and shoulders taller than me. They have four thick arms, two legs and a tail that seems to act like another limb.

They speak in a language I do not understand.

They ramble.

I raise my hand to be quiet but they leap back and form fists.

The language of violence is common whether you are from Icarious or Minoth. In fact if the legends are true they have charted the sea-above-the-sky and built ships that can sail to different stars. That they fight among factions where entire planets become barren and are reduced to wastelands.

"I mean you no harm." I say in a soothing voice.

They shout back what sounds like an angry retort.

I put a hand to my heart.

"August."

They are silent.

I repeat my actions.

"August."

I point to them.

"Bara." they say.

"Bara" I repeat.

"Augus."

They same my name like Augus rather than August.

"August." I reply pointing to myself.

A wave of suffering washes over me. I stumble to the ground. In the dizziness of pain, hunger and exhaustion my mind wanders.

I was born under the earth and carried to the light to die. Damn it if I have kept living. I’ve spat in the face of death more times than I can count.

I was found and raised by the whims of a stranger. When our home and they burned I grew up in the blood and dirt carrying supplies and messages with new friends. I worked like a dog from one battlefield to the next.

Until the day of the black sun when the enemy broke through the lines and attacked the rear. A spear ws thrust in my hands and I fought dearly to survive. It seems to me that I crystallized in those early years because no matter how desperate and fortunate I am once again, a spear has been thrust into my grip.

What feels like hours but cannot be more than a few minutes I focus again.

The branch in my arm has been pulled out. It is managed with leaves and I feel no pain.

A few of my cuts have been sewn closed.

Bara offers me water and I drink it greedily. When I drink my fill, they offer me some sort of raw meat.

I am too hungry, and the danger is too close to even attempt to cook it.

I devour the food gratefully.

"Thank you." I say with a smile.

I seem to have made a friend far from home. For, after taking care of me from the fringes of death, how can I not admit them into my trust?

We sit and rest. Bara watches over our surroundings.

I drift into a nap. I snap awake, my neck lightly throbbing with pain.

I continue to sit and just breathe. After a while, I start to feel more energy.

I could use like a week’s sleep but an hour break will have to do.

Bara glances over me as I stand up and stretch.

I am grateful to them for helping me, I feel safe and protected and that means something especially when we are on the Isle of Ein, but it is a bit awkward not being able to talk.

I don’t want to pull them into more danger, but I have a quest to complete and friends to return back to. My good intentions and gratitude are undermined by constant ‘buts’. I wonder if there will ever be a future when I can do right by others… and myself.

I look at Bara and screw up my courage.

I point my spear towards Dagonlith.

They shake their head and speak but I can’t understand their words.

I begin to walk towards Dagonlith.

They grab my shoulder and try to stop me. I point the edge of the spear to my own throat.

They hesitate and loosen their grip.

"I must. It is the only way I get to live and go back to my friends." I speak softly.

I know she can’t understand but it feels right.

I am in the palm of Dracos. Alessia has given me a chance. A fool’s hope

We walk up scaling through these small woods, Bara with a few long strides catches up and walks slightly ahead of me.

A blur of motion leaps from behind a tree but Bara grips with two hands, she pummels its stomach knocking the air from its lungs.

I look closer and see it is a fox-hound hybrid.

Bara strangles it. The eyes pop from his head as the creature cries blood.

A squirrel leaps for my throat and I cut it down.

I look around but there doesn’t seem to be anymore near but the wood are loud with screams of violence.

A death cry rings out.

Bara speaks a word then starts to jog, and I follow.

The pace is hard, Bara’s stride is longer and my chest and legs burn with the exertion.

Not more than 300 hundred paces later, I see ahead hanging from the branches is a long white trail of shedded snake skin fluttering with the leaves in the wind.

Could it be the King of the Serpents?

Bara leads me wide away from the snake skin.

Smart.

A ringing sound pieres the air and I look above, I see barely through the leaves and branches a cylindrical metal object falling through the sky heading towards Dagonlith.

A new prisoner?

Bara does not wait, and I rush to catch up with her hard pace.

There are no attacks but more and more corpses. Most are skeletons, while a few are still like they had just dropped dead. A few trees are bashed or uprooted entirely.

I see the tail of a snake thin but gargantuan in length, as long as ten carriages side by side. We are at its back, a few paces from the tip of its tail.

Around the massive creature are dozens of skeletons. An eagle flies past and drops to the earth.

"Basilisk!" I whisper to Bara reactively.

Eyes closed.

Bara gently grabs my shoulder and tries to walk us back.

What is a monster native to Icarious doing here? A hydra, now a Basilisk, what next? Who designed this freakish menagerie? The mystery of this place keeps getting stranger.

Focus! Weakness? What was its weakness again? Fuck, shit, fuck. Think!

Weakness to wesal! Of course.

"Weasel!" I shout aloud in a moment of eureka and oh, so foolishly.

The Basilisk lets out a terrible screech.

I cover my ears.

Bara leaps for the branches and hides among the foliage.

I close my eyes as it swivels around, bashing down trees in its rush to feast.

I can barely use one of my arms, and in the other I hold my spear.

I quickly dig the spear into the dirt and hold it under my arm as a desperate defense.

Then I begin the summon.

Bara roars and I dare a peek and I see her slamming the basalik with a tree. She wields it with four hulking arms like a hammer.

Bara wrestles it into the ground and throws dirt into its eyes.

The Basilisk rages and slams Bara into nearby trees.

I throw my spear and it pierces into the hide.

The Basilisk's fury grows and in a frenzy it crushes Bara into the earth then into another tree. The tree shatters and the top half falls over onto the Basilisk.

The Basilisk screeches and is for a moment distracted.

Bara grip goes slack and she dashes away.

The Basilisk turns its head around.

I summon a common weasel from back home.

The cute little weasel sits in front of the sinister King of the Serpant. Dwarfed by the giant beast it whines.

The Basilisk turns tail and flees.

The Basilisk, with a mighty wail that echoes in its absence, escapes.

Where the Basilisk leaves, new threats emerge.

Bara returns and pulls me along as we run away from a charge of creature of all sorts and hybrids.

We run out of the woods and scale the naked rock.

We fight only when necessary and always running.

Bara rips an Ant in two.

I sprint, dashing for gate of Dagonlith.

A spear the size of a tower flies from above and splatters a mass of the creatures.

From the top of the walls of Dagonliths leaps down a massive creature…