Flight

Alric now knew he had truly made a bad decision.

"From the very beginning, I probably should not have gone this deep into the wood during the night..." he thought, knowing well it was too late to regret.

Discerning the somewhat grateful look in the stag's eyes, his last thought before running for his life with all his might, was that it was somewhat a bit worth it.

After two weeks of consuming heavenly meat as he now called it, Alric could run a small marathon at the speed of a good runner of short distance, more than thirty kilometres per hour, allowing him to cover great distances without sweating much.

As always, the principal property of his body which was greatly enhanced was his stamina, surpassing the previous human limit for what Alric knew.

His other body specifics had increased too but were still in the human realm of conceivable, before the luminous wave in any case.

The problem here was that even with the pale blue light of the moon piercing through the dense canopy, running at such a speed was completely impossible without tripping or falling at each step.

Alric could see in the soft glow no more than three to four meters, a performance allowed by his five senses which had been a bit enhanced moderately compared to his physical abilities.

Having already run a good hundred meters, he took the initiative to turn his head a little bit, trying to see what was going on in the darkness behind him.

"SWOOOSH"

A second later he jumped on the ground, avoiding by some centimetres eight sharp and bloody claws the size of his torso passing just above his head.

"Sh*t! It's already on me! " Thought Alric, while getting back on his feet, sweat streaming down his face.

He thought he could easily escape the large majority of wildlife with his now uncommon body and unreal stamina, probably explaining where he found the confidence to come here, but the reality was far from what he had presumed.

The rabid raven was by far quicker than him, starting two to three-second after him and overtaking him without any sweat.

Its swiftness was more than just enough to render his stamina useless in the short term, enough to kill and devour him quickly.

What saved him was the forest.

Not physically made to easily fly inside a dense forest, the raven with its large span could not operate at its optimal speed and had to avoid at each moment a large number of obstacles while continuing its pursuit.

A shrill call resounded above his head, dazing Alric for half a second before he resumed his course, adapting his run with the vicious and crazy beast following after him.

"If I am like a rabbit hunted by an eagle, I just had to act like a rabbit. I must shuffle between the tree, making my moves hard to predict!" he thought while instantly taking a sharp turn.

"BOOOOOM"

A moment later, an explosion reverberated behind him, the raven having encountered a thick tree with its claw instead of Alric'head.

Hundred of wood splinters were hurled toward him as the tree was shredded at the impact point as if it was no more than some light foliage.

Ducking anew while rolling, Alric decided to increase his speed a bit even if he would probably trip more and not run as long as before while maintaining this rhythm.

Since his first fall, Mozzi had jumped next to him, sharply increasing its speed for a short moment.

When Alric stood up the second time, the fox jumped on him, securing its place on his shoulder, not wanting to waste his lesser stamina's stock.

Gazing fiercely toward the incoming bird, the cub was growling but refrained from using its fire breath, the raven being too high under the cover of the tree's corona.

The impact from time to time of the rabid beast with the tree trunks would echo in the forest, startling many dire beasts with its powerful aggressive sound.

"Why the hell did it go after me before even finishing the deer ?!" he thought, paradoxically a bit glad it did as the stag was somehow still alive, even if probably not for too long.

Shuffling with all his might, ducking under thick bushes, now closer to the speed of a marathoner, Alric had already abandoned the idea of returning toward his home, not wanting the rabid raven to know where he was living, knowing full well he was nowhere as good as this beast for the moment.

Tripping now and then, he nonetheless continued to endure, knowing full well that stopping or slowing down meant death.

Climbing hill after hill, he was steadily increasing altitude, now closer than ever to the magnificent mountains he could glimpse from afar in his workshop.

The black wisps on his left-hand engraving were slowly but surely turning grey, then a soft white, one by one.

"At this rate, I won't be able to run like this for more than twenty to thirty minutes," thought Alric scared of death despite all his previous bold decisions.

"CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

The call of the raven made no mystery of his state of bloodlust, dissatisfaction and desire to kill.

Never having run this quickly in his life and in this forest, always wary of dangerous encounters, he was covering a lengthy distance, much more important than what he had walked since the luminous wave.

Lost in the forest, his muscles cracking, Alric was in pain under the intense effort he was making for the first time in his life.

"If the rabid rabbit threatened my life, its size and look allowed me to underestimate a bit, easing my mind. But this creature here... It is threatening enough" he thought.

Fortunately, when he looked behind a second time while going through a small glade a bit more luminous, he could distinguish some serious wounds on the deadly but nearby beast.

The antlers of the stag had previously pierced a few times the thick skin of the murderous raven, as the blood on it had shown him.

"Well, if it weren't wounded, even with the advantage of the trees, I probably wouldn't be alive to realize it." acknowledging his mistakes and that, even filled with fear, he had underestimated the bird all the same, Alric could feel his heart erratically beating under the physical stress it was enduring.

Mozzi was now standing on its foreleg, solidly anchored on Alric's shoulder, its claws wounding his skin.

Wincing, Alric was prepared to take it in his arm when he saw the fox breathe a thick tongue of fire just as the raven was fast approaching the duo.

Surprised, the bird avoided the red flame at the last second, some tongue of fire burning as if it was nothing, the last feathers of its right wing.

Hurling its pain, the bird renewed its effort to kill the duo carrying this maddening sense of powerful vitality but it began to fly a bit more carefully so as to not be surprised anymore by the vicious fox's attack.

It allowed Alric to decrease his speed a bit, letting him breathe and slowing the consumption of his left arm's energy.

Seeing his half-emptied energy stock, Alric took the drastic decision to eat raw the dangling prey he had hooked at his belt.

The taste was so bad, he almost spat it out but forcing himself, he bit it nevertheless without even removing the feather or the scales, the situation was already a bit complex.

The short increase of energy allowed him to continue running, restoring small wisps on his left hand now and then.

The three of them ran and flew erratically in the night, tripping, battling, dodging, and breathing fire.

After nearly nine hours of flight, Alric finished the last pieces of meat from the previous hunt he had with him, his energy now decreasing without stopping, slowly reaching a critical level.

Nearing his last bits of endurance, Alric could feel he had just a bit more than three minutes before falling off tiredness or falling to his death.

Looking all around him in the now thick darkness of the night, trying to distinguish anything which could save his life, he saw nothing but the black void between the nearby trees becoming scarcer with time as he reached the pic of the mountains.

"What if? I have nothing to lose!" Thought Alric, a bit of inspiration having pierced the dead of the night.

Continuing his shuffling full of dodging, tripping and falling but allowing him and Mozzi to still survive, he was touching briefly the tree's trunk with his left hand.

The idea was to see if having a part of a plant in his body could allow him to take a bit of the tree's energy as he absorbed the energy from the meat.

Focusing a short moment, the time to pass a tree while running was a hard thing indeed.

After a minute of trial and error, Alric could finally briefly feel the placid energy lurking behind the bark.

A minute more and he finally absorbed some of it, feeling as if he was a part of the forest.

"It won't work! The energy isn't near enough to restore even one black wisp. I need more time touching a tree, but with the raven just behind us, it's simply unrealistic." he thought, not knowing what to do anymore.

The small bits of energy allowed him each time to gain a few seconds, looking more and more like a slow death.

Not knowing what to do anymore, he continued nevertheless to do it, his will to survive nowhere near extinct.

Mozzi was exhausted too, his fire breath just some tiny red sparks, its red fur now darker than ever.

Suddenly Alric took a sharp turn and use his last bit of effort to touch as many trees as he can, absorbing a bit of their calm energy while reading them, trying to restore as much energy as he can, his perception having felt an interesting notion while reading an old tree.

Finally stopping before a thick tree, one of its kind in this forest, the trunk a full five meters in diameter, he swallowed as much energy as he could while the rabid bird was quickly coming.

Alric looked into the two venomous red eyes of the ferocious creature which still didn't give up, no fear could be noticed anymore in his gaze.

He had accepted what was to come, he let his life into lady luck's hands, knowing he didn't have the choice anymore.

Taking Mozzi into his two arms having restored two wisps of black engraving on the tip of his middle finger, he let go of the tree and took one step back while looking defiantly into the rabid beast's furious eyes.

His left leg encountered nothing but the void behind the cliff he had perceived while reading some old trees.

A waterfall just a bit ahead, the cliff surrounding a stream with a little lac farther at the bottom, was all he could read from these trees before taking this life decision.

Feeling the wind accelerating under his body, Alric tried to maintain an equilibrium of some sort to be as vertical as he could, the body of water being nowhere in sight in the obscurity, he had dive not knowing the deepness of the cliff.

The small cub paralysed by fear against his torso, its claw shredding his skin, Alric could see the bird a bit upward, its flight stationary as he looked angrily at the disappearing human body, not trying to retrieve it to not fall to its death too, knowing full well what was at the bottom.

Alric had thought the tiny wisp of energy could help him recover from a deadly fall, but this one was taking a bit too much time.

"Damn, it's been close to five-second or more and no contact with water yet..." thought Alric terrified at each new elapsing second.

"Never would I have imagined a waterfall to be this deep, my stock of energy seems ridiculously low in comparison..." he desperately thought while hearing the falling water far away from him.

"SPLAAAACH"

Puncturing the body of water perfectly vertical after a fall of nearly twenty-second, a small eternity for Alric, he could feel the force shattering his left calf and the oppressing pressure of the air was soon replaced by the water's one, more compact, more threatening.

It was a bit after touching the bottom gently with its right leg that he could feel the cold temperature of the water.

Mozzi was clawing his way out, biting and destroying his thick coat with renewed vigour to escape its death.

Propelling his body upward, Alric didn't let the fox go away, knowing full well a fox, and especially a firefox would be quite weakened in a body of water.

Breathing air while piercing the water's surface, he could see nothing around him, the bottom of the cliff not allowing any bit of moonlight.

The sensation was particularly atrocious, as if they were in suspended animation in a black and freezing liquid, with no sense working quite well.

These perceptions quickly began to numb his body while slowly eroding his mind.

Fighting to stay awake until the very last moment, using the pain of the numerous wound in his body to remain conscious, Alric used his last bit of consciousness trying to move the two small wisps of energy at the tip of his finger toward his whole body, a black greenish aura covering him.

Falling unconscious, his body began to drift away on the small stream.

A nearly unrecognizable red and wet fox clawed its way out of his arm to finally fall exhaustly on the floating torso of the man who tried to save it, the green hue surrounding Alric wrapping it too.