Chapter 4 I think I broke it?

James rocketed across the forest floor, sprinting as fast as his injured legs could carry him.

BOOM!

An explosion of force came from behind James as the tremor nearly tripped him.

Close behind him, the arm of the massive golem was buried deep into the soil. Pulling its arm out of the ground, it lifted a dirt boulder and aimed it at James.

Taking a quick look behind him to see the golem with yet another projectile in hand, James quickly detoured, hoping a grouping of roots to the side could slow the golem down.

This game of "tag" he had been playing with the massive angry boulder had been ongoing. James was exhausted and getting desperate.

As soon as he dived into the crevice between two entwining roots, he was launched forward by the air pressure of yet another explosion. Tumbling forward, he rolled with the momentum until he could get back onto his feet.

"Damn, that was close!" James panted as he hobbled forward, the injuries to his legs doing nothing to help.

Daring another look behind him, he saw the golem had already made it over the group of roots. Its casual pace taunted James as if to say it had all the time in the world.

Gritting his teeth, James glared at the walking boulder.

After seeing his home destroyed and barely surviving a fight with that cultist lady, he was thrown through a reality gap and still endured.

Now, as if his day had not been bad enough, a sentient rock was trying to squish him for seemingly no reason other than it could. James was having an awful day.

"What the fuck did I ever do to you! You damn boulder!" James shouted at the golem as he continued running away, even as the golem drew closer.

It had gotten so close that James no longer needed to look back to know how close it was. Every one of its steps shook the ground below him like an earthquake, and the impact sent a gust of wind strong enough to push him forward.

As he was still amongst the cluster of roots, the wind and uneven footing saved him from being crushed by tripping him into tumbling under one of the bigger roots and out the other side.

Scuffed and dirty, James lay there in exhaustion. He wasn't sure how long he had been chased, but it was further than he had ever run. He was confident he had hit the limits of his stamina.

The thing is, James didn't want to run away. That isn't accurate; he had simply realized that running wasn't helping.

He couldn't outrun the golem. Not when he first arrived relatively rested, and most certainly not now that he was exhausted.

So instead, he hauled his body off the ground and blearily reached for the root that inadvertently saved his life.

Channeling his ability for the first time since he stepped into this reality, he pushed his consciousness into the root before him…and immediately froze.

James knew his ability, knew it better than he knew anything else. He had tried desperately while growing up to find a way for it to be more powerful, more valuable.

Nothing worked.

All his efforts had been in vain, as he could only interact with what he immediately touched and nothing beyond it.

However, as soon as his hand touched the rough bark of the massive root, he felt his mind expand.

His consciousness spread like lightning as it raced out from his touch to cover the entirety of the root.

He could see in his mind the root digging deeper into the ground than he had ever known. He felt the pressure of the dirt and rock push against its bark. Felt the vitality of the root, refusing to give under the pressure of the earth.

Then his consciousness reached the tree, and he truly felt shocked.

The tree was a monument to life. In his mind, he could see the vibrant green life force of the tree shoot out through the ground and into the sky.

The sight was beautiful and majestic, the size of it astounding and humbling James. This was a tree that had lived for thousands of years and would have no trouble living for thousands more.

More than anything, James felt he could affect the tree, lengthen its branches, enforce the durability of its bark, and, most of all… manipulate the very vitality he was so awed by.

Before he could get lost in his thoughts, he felt, more than he saw, the golem gripping the root in front of him as it began lifting its massive body upward.

In that single moment of distraction, he lost his connection with the tree and could no longer grasp the feeling of power he had over it.

However, he was not entirely disappointed because he immediately realized his ability had grown from the experience.

Before, his ability was limited to what he could physically touch. Now he felt he could freely manipulate anything within a meter of himself.

It was as if the surrounding meter of space was his own body, and he could manipulate it just as quickly, even easier.

Shocked by the growth of his ability, something that he had never thought possible, he nearly forgot about the golem again. However, it took the liberty to remind James of its existence by falling from the sky toward him.

As soon as the stone foot touched the outside circumference of James' new manipulation domain, he felt it. Without truly considering anything, he instinctively pulled on his power and willed it to launch himself away from the impact point.

In that instance, as the stone foot of the golem closed in on James's head, the ground below him was ripped from its place and slid forward like a conveyor belt on steroids. James even felt the air in front of his body part around him to eliminate friction.

In a split second between noticing the golem falling towards him and invoking his ability, James had already moved 20 meters.

A moment later, he felt the familiar feeling of the ground trembling and heard a large boom. Looking back to the place he was standing a second ago, James saw the rising figure of the golem as it stood from the crater it had left on the ground.

He knew without a doubt that without the change to his ability, he would have died just then. The thought was terrifying and, at the same time, enraging.

All he wanted to do was live peacefully at home. Instead, he had to witness his home destroyed, fight off a crazy terrorist, and travel through a fucking crack in reality. Now, a bunch of moving rocks was attempting to kill him.

James was pissed.

However, he also was not an idiot. The walking pile of stone had followed him for quite a while without seemingly stopping or even slowing. It had even found him when he hid outside of its sight. So, the logical thing to do to get it to stop was to destroy the stupid thing.

At least, that's the justification James came up with as he launched himself back toward the golem.

He shot across the ground again and felt the golem enter his domain. He felt the immense sturdiness of its body that was somehow harder than the metal he had worked with in the past.

He also felt lines of pulsing energy barely beneath the surface of its rocky exterior. The uniformity of the lines reminded him of the circuitry in modern-day electronics. However, the power was beyond his imagination.

It seemed to pulse and move within the confines of its lines as if it was sentient and trying to escape in one direction or another. James had never seen anything like it before.

Although he couldn't sense the rest of the golem, as it was simply too large. His gut told him that the lines of energy were essential and that messing with them would probably be his best shot at damaging the golem.

Grasping the lines of energy within his senses, James pulled.

And nothing happened. Or, more accurately, his ability was resisted, which had never happened before. James's ability had either worked or not but never had he felt it being opposed.

Shocked, James could not react in time to the massive golem's arm swinging at him from the side. In a desperate attempt to defend himself from the blow, he grabbed everything he could within his domain and compacted it in front of himself to form a makeshift shield.

Crack! The arm shattered James's hasty defenses like they weren't even there and launched his body into the distance. He skipped across the ground like a flat rock on smooth water, rolling to a stop against yet another root.

Laying there, struggling to keep his consciousness, James was surprised and happy to be alive.

It was only luck that saved James. In his desperate attempt to form a shield in front of him, James accidentally compressed the very air into his shield.

The compressed air exploded like a violent airbag when hit by the golem's arm. It smacked James backward, turning a deadly blow from the golem into only a glancing one.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean he got off lightly. James could feel, without even looking, and knew his arms were shattered and one of his legs broken. Based on his trouble breathing, he could also guess a few ribs were broken.

All of this he observed calmly through his senses while he watched the giant golem slowly move toward him once more.

Watching it seemingly take its time to walk over and kill him enraged James, but he knew he could do nothing about it. He simply was not strong enough. However, in this new world, he would become stronger.

So, he glared at the golem. Even as its shadow covered him completely, his eyes remained fierce.

As if sensing James was about to do something, the golem picked up the pace towards his prone body and swung its arms down with enough force to once again crater the ground.

As it lifted its arms from the crater it had left, all it could see was a hole.