The Power

"GIVE ME MY POWERS!!"

He screams into the air as loudly as he can, accepting the offer of the mystery voice and telling it to be done as quickly as possible as the rumbling footsteps approach from behind. Then...

"A.. white... flower?"

All of a sudden, the mysterious voice goes quiet. Right in front of him, a white, bright, and mysteriously shiny flower pops up. Just a while ago, the ground there looked dead, but now, to his surprise, a small yet shiny white flower has sprung up.

At first, he was confused, wondering what this meant and whether this was what the voice had given him. A white flower, grieving over his imminent death? Or could it be a different reason?

Either way, he doesn't get it. The mysterious voice left without giving any instructions about what to do with the flower. Now, Shuku is left in confusion, unsure about what to do next.

RUMB!

Then, as reality struck him, he was quickly pulled back to the present, with the lizard now behind him. It quickly reached down with its bathtub-sized mouth and grabbed his legs.

"No NO!!"

In response, he quickly crawls towards the white flower despite not knowing what to do with it yet. As he almost grabs it, he is too slow, and the lizard seizes him with its mouth and pulls him inward its mouth in the air.

As Shuku realizes he's headed into the lizard's throat, he gathers all his strength for one last try. With determination, he reaches out and manages to finally reach the white flower.

And pick it up as soon as the lizard starts to suck him inside, pushing Shuku down its stomach, swallowing him down the throat as the last meal of the day.

...

Seeing there's nothing else to do and the food safely in its belly, the lizard starts walking back to its home beneath the rocky cliff. Taking a break, satisfied after a day of devouring full delicious meals.

...

The lizard felt a strange sensation in its stomach; it wasn't sure if it was stomach pain or if its stomach was having trouble digesting all the food it had just consumed.

All of a sudden, an immense amount of pain struck the lizard. It felt like it was being torn from the inside of its stomach. The lizard started jumping, rolling around, and shaking the ground, helpless to do anything to stop the pain.

The intense stomach pain persisted for minutes, getting worse with each passing second. Unable to endure it any longer, the lizard decided to vomit everything inside its stomach out.

Blarghhh...

And as the lizard collapses in relaxation, the intense pain has finally ceased. Emerging from the vomit is a living human, still perplexed about what just happened to himself.

"My legs..."

Shuku's leg has returned to normal, and he doesn't know how or why. All he vividly remembers is being in the lizard's dark and wet stomach, holding the white flower in his hand. A feeling urges him to consume it.

His instinct tells him to just put the flower in his mouth and swallow it, and so he does. Just seconds before reaching the stomach's acid, Shuku bit, chewed and swallowed every single piece of the shiny white flower.

As soon as he did so, a surge of electricity flowed through his mind, and instantly his pain was all gone, in replace, he felt an intense hunger to devour something immediately.

A strange idea comes to his mind and he begins to eat the lizard itself, from the inside and at the same time tear the lizard's stomach to find his way out.

That's a quick recap of what happened. As Shuku finally gets himself outside, he quickly refreshes his mind and gets back to his main focus.

He begins to walk on his strangely recovered legs towards the sword he dropped earlier. Grabs it, raises it at the lizard, and gets ready to charge at it for the second time.

"Come here you son of a bitch!"

He rushes his leg at the still-relaxing lizard, swinging the sword at its stomach to land a strike.

SHISH!!

The lizard, sliced in the belly, immediately stands up and starts rolling around in pain.

"GAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"

Having learned his lesson, Shuku decides to continue attacking the lizard non-stop with each slash creating a wide and painful cut on the monster's flesh.

The lizard, being continuously and spontaneously sliced, can't stop itself from jumping around and struggling in agony.

After a while of attacking, Shuku begins to realize an important detail.

"It's not healing?!"

The lizard's injuries, are not healing themself. The cuts and slashes he created should be closing and healing on the lizard's flesh by now, but strangely enough, they aren't. Instead, blood keeps flowing out like water, and the lizard itself seems to be panicked by this too.

Shuku pauses for a second to take a breath. As the lizard begins to calm down and notice him, he turns his back toward the cliff and immediately sprints as fast as he can towards it.

As he figures it out, he realizes that following the first plan of pushing the lizard down the cliff and then running away is still better and way more efficient than risking himself by trying to kill it manually.

Seeing the one that attacked it running away, the lizard instantly rolls back on its four legs and begins the chase with intense rage.

"Huff, huff."

Despite being the one who ran first, Shuku struggles to keep the distance due to the lizard's terrifying speed. Yet, he still makes it to the cliff's edge in time.

Turning around and seeing the lizard about to arrive within seconds, Shuku holds the sword tightly and braces for impact.

"GGAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"

With the lizard just a few meters away, it jumps up towards him, trying to grab him with its two front legs to stop him from running away. Immediately, Shuku swings the sword up as soon as possible and stabs deep inside the lizard's neck.

He uses the momentum from the lizard's own movement to push the beast's gigantic body with the sword as the fulcrum. Adding force with his legs, he kicks and throws the lizard down the cliff.

The monster, still in shock from its first defeat, falls down the cliff towards its inevitable death where a coincidentally, deadly sharp stalagmite the size of a car awaits it down below.

The sharp stalagmite penetrates through the lizard's belly right in the middle, killing it almost instantly.

...

"I... did it."

As Shuku cleans the dust off himself and slowly stands up, he looks down the cliff at the motionless, bleeding lizard. Bewildered, he takes in the sight of the defeated monster.

"I did it... I did it!"

Because he has actually done it, he has finally, defeated and won over an almost undefeatable, unkillable monster, after going through hell and back.

"Oh my god, I fucking did it!!"

In this moment, all he feels is a powerful surge of triumph and victory. Despite losing his new friend, getting hurt, and nearly facing death, he had doubted his ability to win. The best he thought he could manage was to escape, especially after losing the lizard's tail.

Regardless of what challenges may await him in the future, and whatever hardships might follow, the priority now is to celebrate - marking his first taste of victory.

"How do you feel that huh? You stupid ass reptile?!"

With his new achievement, Shuku couldn't hold himself from laughing out loud and jumping around in joy-

"Huh?!"

The edge he stood on, already bent heavily from all the previous weight, breaks because of his jumping during the celebration. Now, it is all gravity's job, to pull him down from the cliffs.

Shuku, who was just partying over the death of the lizard, is now facing his own death right in front of his eyes as he fell down from a cliff almost 50 meters high, all because of a stupid mistake he made, a mistake that anybody with a sane mind, could avoid.

"Am I going die... like this?"

He couldn't believe it, all those efforts of running around, screaming, struggling, and fighting for his life over a monster, are now all gone in vain as he's about to die a dumb death from falling.

As the winds from the fall whooshing over his head with the dark rocky ground surface grew closer, Shuku reminisced about his life, about all the things he'd done, all the people he'd met, and all the pain he'd been through.

And then he realizes, his life, was meaningless.

'So this is what they called life flashing before your eyes.' He thought.

The sudden memories vanish as quickly as they came, and Shuku is brought back to reality, facing the hard rocky surface just milliseconds before his entire body smashes brutally into the ground.

...

"Ughhh..."

He feels dizzy, his head feels senseless, his body feels motionless, his brain feels disconnected to the bones and flesh, his eyes are blurry, vividly grasping an image of the blood flowing from the giant lizard's body just a little above.

Slowly, his consciousness begins to fade, and his visions get blurrier and blurrier... until everything, turns black.