Chapter 36

In a split second, everyone notices the beast coming out of the forest. Seech shouts at Eska a single word.

"Run!"

The beast powers through the forest and crashes onto the back carriage, breaking it apart in its entirety. The Namuras continue to run, fearing for their lives while dragging the remaining cart towards the middle of the bridge.

The beast flips and lands on the back cart on all fours as Eska lands on the bridge with her spear in hand. Everyone is shocked as they try to move away from the destruction.

Valen jumps down from the carriage, falling and rolling on the ground. Denise looks at Kael in distress before they both decide to jump out of the carriage as well.

The beast puts its massive hind legs in front of itself, leaving massive gutters of dirt on the road, slowing down then turning around, facing its destruction. Eska gets up from what is left of the carriage, looking at the massive beast. Ross shouts at her.

"Run! Run away!"

Ross gets up, turning around and sprinting away into the forest.

"Eska! Run!" Seech's voice rings in her head.

The beast then locks eyes with Eska as she stands there in disbelief, watching as Ross runs away into the forest. The beast rushes towards her with incredible speed, covering the twenty feet between them in a single second, jumping in her direction while leading with its massive claws.

Eska makes great efforts to dodge the claws of the beast, barely missing them by a hair. She then sprints towards the forest on the opposite side of Ross.

The beast skids on the ground, turning around and following Eska with its eyes before running after her with speed.

Eska hears the beast approaching, pushing her muscles to their limits but finding it unable to go fast enough to escape its wrath. She pushes through the pain in her abdomen, fueled by her instinct to survive.

As she reaches the edge of the forest she decides to use her spear as a jump. The beast follows close behind as she jams her spear onto the ground to propel herself into the forest, dropping her bag in the process. She manages to dodge the next strike as it lands on her spear, shattering it into pieces. She manages to get into the forest and keep sprinting as the beast's thrashing is heard behind her, chasing her every time it hears her moving.

She does not have time to think nor plan as she jumps and dodges each tree, throwing everything she can find at the beast to slow it down. Her attempts have no effect, as the beast pushes through everything she throws at it, slowly but surely reaching her.

Eska keeps running and weaving through the forest as fast as she can. She finally comes to a cliff. Before she can even think about what to do, the trees behind her explode to make way for the massive werewolf chasing her, pushing her into the cliff. The cliff could be about a half mile in height, with more trees below.

As she falls for a few seconds Eska thinks of an idea. She extends her hand away from the cliff, drawing blood in front of her, then the blood bursts pushing her towards the cliff. She turns around, drawing more blood into blades with both of her arms and landing them on the cliff, trying to slow herself down. It works temporarily as she keeps moving down, but the rocks come loose and she falls once more. This time onto a tall tree, trying to use her reinforcement she falls through the branches, bouncing around some branches and breaking more as she lands on them. Then finally hitting the ground. 

She lays on the ground in pain for a few seconds unable to bear the pain before she hears the massive roar of the beast then making every possible attempt to quiet down before it can hear her.

The trees are thick enough to hide her, but they are spread out. The tree tops are wide enough to cover the sun, but the leaves aren't too close together to cover all the light. They look like several umbrellas made of leaves placed together and making their way down with more, smaller umbrellas below each other. 

She sits on the tree she landed closest to, facing the cliff she just fell from. The giant werewolf is heard running around the forest as if nothing had happened, even if it just landed from the same height as Eska without slowing down. Eska sighs in relief as the sounds the creature makes begin to sound further away.

Eska tries to stand, but is hit by even more pain. She sits once more, breathing heavily.

"What the fuck was that." She thinks.

"That was the one and only Kragen." Seech answers her. "An ancient beast that lived even before my time. THE original werewolf. It's a good thing it never landed a single claw on you. Back then he was the only one able to transmit the disease. Other werewolves can't transmit lycanthropy to other living beings. I guess they didn't overstate it when they classified the Kragen as the only true immortal."

"Are you telling me we just happened to run into a fucking Titan?!" Eska asks exasperated.

"Apparently so. An immortal beast, if you harm it it will recover in a few seconds and get angrier, and if it scratches you even slightly you are infected. You see the Kragen and the only thought you should have is to RUN. We don't try to drive it away, we don't try to fight it, we don't try to save people. Do you understand?" Seech says sternly.

"So that's why Ross ran away as soon as he could." Eska says solemnly.

"If we are lucky, the beast will forget about you and move on." Seech tells her in an attempt to calm her down.

Eska tries to stand once more, but the pain hits her once more. "I'm not going anywhere with these injuries." Eska says. After a few seconds of silence, Seech says "Then it's time I teach you about healing magic. This isn't magic can be dangerous Eska."

"Healing magic.. Dangerous? It's been nothing but help this entire time." Eska expresses

"Then I'll explain to you, its origin. And what a coincidence that it starts with Doctor Kragen." Seech says, pausing for a bit before continuing. "Doctor Kragen was a person studying for a way to create healing potions and magic. Something to use to save the lives of combatants in the field. His research included very many animals and sometimes even people on their deathbed. His research mostly ended up in failure, up until his... demise?" Eska says confused, unable to think of a better word, "Every test would involve a partly success, where the wound would heal up faster than normal. Triggering an accelerated oriented mitotic division on the cells to heal the wound at a much faster rate."

"Mito-toit- What?" Eska asks, confused.

"Oriented Mitotic Division. Your skin is made up of cells, your organs, your bones. Everything is cells, and these cells divide as a normal process to keep yourself healthy. Cell's life spans are low, but due to this process your body can live for much longer. To give you an example, skin cells live about two weeks to a month before they die, whereas your liver cells could live for nearly a year."

Eska's eyes are wide open in surprise. Never having heard of this before.

"This is why I told you, understanding of the world around you makes you more effective at using magic." Seech tells Eska proudly, happy to teach her. "When Kragen did his experiments, he found out that skin cells in animals had different life expectancies than humans."

Seech's tone then takes a more serious turn "Nothing is for certain from such a long time ago, a few millennia before my time. But the story says that he ran into an accident in the lab, and while the doctor was desperate he used a prototype for the healing potion on it. His cells became extremely reactive, undergoing a massive explosion of cell division. Every person that touched the doctor began to fuse together, creating an amalgamation of people. At times he had lucid times where he could talk, and even write a journal while it happened but all this was over when he escaped and the dogs they used to track him down were... well you know. At that time he lost all consciousness and became The Kragen we now know."

"You know a whole lot about a lot of things Seech..." Eska says, impressed at her level of knowledge.

"Of course I do, the more you know about the process the easier it is to manipulate it. This includes knowledge about the past so we can skip mistakes others have made. For example, the good doctor KNEW about the cell division, how to trigger it and manipulate its speed. What the doctor didn't know is that you don't just trigger cells. The rapid cell division resulting in unstable mitosis happened because he was targeting patches of cells. Healing a small cut and triggering only those cells will result in a healed cut. But when you trigger forced mitosis through magic, the divided cell inherits the traits of the previous, including the forced mitosis trait. So in reality the cells are dividing at an exponential rate, until the body can't take it and dies from excess use of its energy, or worse. The body can take the massive cell division and they experience their body becoming a cancerous amalgamation."