A Journey That Changed The World

Archer spat black blood into the muck and flashed crimson-stained teeth. ”Put it on my tab.”

The snake’s coils shifted, water hissing against scales. ‘Bold words for a fallen star.’

A growl rolled out of him. Every frog and insect within a hundred paces fell silent. Her tongue tasted the air. Golden eyes narrowed to slits. ‘You’re wearing a mask even now.’

”This face?” He dragged a thumb across his jaw, smearing the blood. ”My wives like it. Keeps them from complaining about my other as it’s too big.”

She laughed, a wet, rattling sound. ‘I can taste the power caged inside you, star-born. Someone went to a lot of trouble to break you here.’

Archer’s grin didn’t falter, but his pulse betrayed him; the monster’s nostrils flared. ‘Past the swamp lies the jungle,’ she said, almost kindly. ‘Nothing that slithers comes back out unchanged. If you do.’

She leaned until they were close enough that he could feel her breath. ‘I’ll look forward to meeting what’s left of you.’

He swallowed once as a wicked grin crossed his face. ‘Looking forward to disappointing you.’

Just then, a bone-chilling roar tore through the jungle, shaking the leaves and freezing the blood in his veins. He flinched, heart hammering, but forced himself to keep moving away from the swamp. ”I’m going to find food and shelter,” he called back.

Following that, the jungle swallowed him whole. One moment, he stood at the edge, boots sunk into the wet mud; the next, the green curtain closed behind him and covered him in shadows. The air was thick enough to drink thanks to the humidity, and he felt the seal over his heart throb every time he reached for power that wasn’t there.

No magic, no mana, nothing but claws and a body that still remembered how to kill things bigger than itself. Fifty paces in, the ground decided it was hungry. His foot punched through moss that looked solid. Seconds later, something cold and rubbery snapped shut around his ankle.

Archer dropped his weight, slammed an elbow into the vine, and felt it bruise. A second coil whipped for his throat. He caught it bare-handed, snarled, and ripped the thing in half. Green sap sprayed everywhere. The vine shrieked and let go. He limped on, wiping the burning sap from his palms onto his trousers.

Moments later, another roar rolled over him again, closer, rattling his teeth. Whatever owned that voice was pacing him now, patient. He veered toward a spine of black rock that broke through the canopy. Halfway there, the jungle sent its cats. The first one came down in total silence, a shadow with claws and hunger.

Archer heard the air part a heartbeat too late. He twisted, took the swipe across the ribs instead of the throat, felt skin part and hot blood run. Pain sharpened everything, and to his surprise, his body began slowly healing. He countered, driving his forehead into the cat’s snout.

Moments later, he heard the cartilage pop, then grabbed a fistful of fur and used the beast’s own momentum to hurl it past him down the slope. It landed with a crunch and didn’t get up. The second cat thought better and vanished. At the ridge top, he paused, shirt stuck to the lacerations in his side, breathing through his teeth.

Far below, the jungle breathed with him, slow and ancient. A volcano smoked on the horizon, its cone shaped like something he almost remembered. The seal clamped down hard, draining most of his strength, but something stopped, surprising him. Archer was growing increasingly annoyed, but he shook his head and started down the far side.

The undergrowth parted, almost politely, revealing a narrow game trail. Prints the size of shields, still steaming. At the bottom of one lay a single scale, warm to the touch. He pocketed it. ”I wonder what creature left this behind,” he muttered.

The trail ended at a stream so clear it looked fake. Archer knelt, sniffed, drank. For one dizzy instant, the seal slipped its leash; violet fire crawled over his knuckles and died. He hissed, splashing his face until the burn cooled. Moments later, the sun started to set. Shadows pooled like spilled ink.

Archer needed a hole to crawl into before the night monsters. He found it at the base of a tree. Its roots arched overhead, forming a hollow big enough to sit upright. Inside, the wood glowed faintly. He wedged himself in, back to the heartwood, knees drawn up, hands resting easy on his thighs, even though every instinct screamed for his magic.

‘Hopefully it comes back soon,’ he mused, a tired expression crossing his face.

The jungle went still. Even the insects shut up. Something circled. He smelled something different as the ground trembled: one step, two. A shape filled the entrance, blotting out the faint starlight that leaked through the canopy. A head the size of a house. One eye, bigger than he was, fixed on him.

He looked straight into it and smiled slowly. ”Evening, big guy. You lost, or just hungry?”

When he heard his words, the monster exhaled. Frost raced across the gnarled roots like a living thing, devouring every hint of green. His own breath bloomed white and vanished just as fast. ”Right,” he said. ”Till dawn, then. After that, we’ll see who bleeds prettier.”

The single eye regarded him for one slow heartbeat. Then the darkness folded around it, gentle as a shroud, and took the cold with it. Archer let his skull thud back against the trunk. Beneath bark and sap, he felt the tree’s pulse. He shut his eyes and waited for morning, or for whatever came first.

Hours later, the tree he was sheltering exploded when the giant snake finally attacked, sending him crashing through the jungle and slamming into the side of the mountain. Pain flared throughout his body, but something changed inside him; mana flickered to life as he pointed a finger at the monster.

”Lightning Blast,” he muttered.

Violet mana erupted and shot toward the snake, conveniently covered in swamp water. The lightning shocked the gigantic creature, forcing its body to thrash around as it used an old spell he just remembered. ”Earthquake.”

The ground began to shake and open up as it swallowed the titan, sucking it into the dark abyss. Seconds later, the earth had barely calmed down when the swamp detonated. A column of black water and shattered stone punched into the sky, high enough to blot out the moon.

Archer watched as the snake erupted out, scales smoking, half its body charred to bone-white, the other half still gleaming like fresh obsidian. One golden eye had burst; the socket wept blood. The other fixed on him with the kind of hatred that predates language. He was still on his back against the mountainside, ribs screaming, blood in his mouth.

Violet sparks dancing across his knuckles like drunk fireflies. The seal on his heart throbbed once, hard, as if someone had just kicked it. The snake landed with a sound like the world cracking in half. Trees flattened outward in a perfect circle. The shockwave hurled Archer twenty feet higher up the slope; he hit stone, rolled, and came up coughing black mud.

It rose above him, taller than the mountain now, coils thick as siege towers. Lightning still crawled over its body in dying veins, but every twitch of muscle forced the electricity deeper, cooking it from the inside. The smell was pork and ozone and old gods burning. Archer laughed. It hurt, but it bled, and it came out anyway. ”Still breathing, huh? Good. I’d have felt bad if that was all it took.”

The monsters remaining eye narrowed. Its ruined jaw unhinged, and a voice rolled out, no longer wet or amused, just raw and full of rage. ‘Devil born. You will beg for a slower death.’

It suddenly lunged. The strike was too fast to see; Archer felt the air part like a guillotine. He threw himself sideways, felt fangs the size of longships graze his shoulder and take a chunk of mountain instead. Stone exploded everywhere. He rolled under the follow-up coil, came up inside the monster’s guard.

He drove his fist straight into a half-cooked scale the size of a wagon wheel. It was shattered. Something wet and scalding sprayed across his face. The snake screamed. The sound punched the clouds apart; somewhere far away, thunder answered in fear. Archer’s knuckles were raw, bleeding, healing, bleeding again.

The seal pulsed like a second heart trying to tear its way out of his chest. He looked up the length of the creature, past the smoking wounds, past the lightning still chewing through its flesh, all the way to that single burning eye. ”Hey,” he said, voice hoarse, grinning like a corpse that forgot it was dead. ”My turn.”

Archer’s grin widened as something inside felt like it was breaking, causing his eyes to widen. ‘Looks like the Dark Gods have some enemies,’ he thought.

Seconds later, the seal cracked, sending mana rushing across his body. It cracked. A hairline fracture across whatever blocker had been burned into his soul.