8 Pest Control (2/2)

”What!?” Drosso's eyes, small and squinty as they were, managed to widen immensely.

He had sundered down at this peasant with all his might, with power fueled from the blood of almost a hundred sacrificed souls.

But the figure had simply raised his arm and grabbed the sword with his hand. An explosive and metallic burst of sound emanated as Drosso's blade slammed into a hand that seemed indestructible, solid like mithril.

The man pinched the blade between his thumb and index finger. Drosso grunted as he tried pushing back to pry his blade free. He dug his feet into the dirt and as his muscles strained and his sweat poured, his feet caved craters into the forest floor – a testament to his immense power.

But it was nothing compared to this man.

No matter what Drosso did, he could not twist the blade from the man's mocking grip.

A flash of pain. He felt his vision go white as he roared in agony. He took steps back, his body feeling lighter. With shaky sight, he looked at the man.

The man held Drosso's sword. Still gripping the handle to it was Drosso's tree trunk of an arm, cleanly dismembered at the shoulder joint.

Drosso took a few seconds to register what had happened. Pure shock had slowed his thinking. It was only when he felt the pain of blood spurting out of his empty arm socket that he regained his senses.

”Who are you?” said Drosso as he used his demonic hand to press hard at his wound, attempting futilely to staunch the bleeding. The crimson liquid leaked between his fingers, dripping onto forest grass hungry for more. ”Your equipment is cheap – it's obvious you're using an illusion to conceal its true power. But your strength is formidable, too. You're a Hero, aren't you? How much did the duchess pay to use you has a hound dog? Did she whore herself out like her kingdom?”

The man tossed Drosso's arm behind him. He took a step forwards and Drosso took three steps back.

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”Hero? Nothing like that.” The man stopped. Drosso didn't know if he was hallucinating, but he felt he could see the grasses growing around the stranger, curling around his feet affectionately. ”I'm just a farmer here to pluck out some weeds.”

”You dare mock me?” said Drosso. He knew he should run, every instinct in him told him to run, but his instincts also told him that he couldn't outrun this man. He had to stand and fight. ”I did not expect to face a Hero so early, but so be it. Zagan, draw upon the souls we have feasted upon. [Demonic Transmogrification].”

Drosso's demonic arm shook uncontrollably before exploding into a mass of writhing, serpentine darkness. It slithered over his entire body, covering him in waving undulations of black until he was no longer humanoid but instead a brutish mass of amorphous darkness. He howled into the air, his voice completely bestial.

With the howl, his form stabilized, the darkness regenerating his lost arm and molding his limbs into monstrous things covered in coal black fur and brutish claws. His body lost its armor and became that of a beast's, doubling in muscle mass and covering itself with a protective hide of thick black fur.

His head had become lycanthropic, his eyes glowing a feral red and his jaws lined with serrated fangs long and sharp like daggers.

He stood almost as tall as a tree and three times as wide. His sinews coiled monstrously under his fur and his breath came out in deep, rattling clouds purple and noxious.

”A hundred souls have I devoured to be reborn in Zagan's form,” said Drosso, his voice laced with a guttural growl. ”My strength surges. No knight will fell me. No mage will slay me. Not even you, a Hero, will match me. ”

”Are we doing transformations now?” said the man. Compared to Drosso's new demonic form, the man was tiny. Not even a quarter of his size. But the man sounded bored. ”I see. You think strength is everything? That bigger is better? I can play that game too - [Shapeshift: Fist of Ymir]”

The man held a fist to the sky. It began morphing. The linen sleeve tore apart and disintegrated into nothingness, revealing a bare, human arm. Then the arm grew. As it grew, it changed, the skin becoming blue like the ocean.

All the elements of the world began sprouting on that arm – crystals of ice emerged like warts, cracks of igneous magma flared like scars, and vines grew like hairs.

And then, the arm grew even more. It grew and it grew.

Drosso's jaws opened wide as he took steps back. He kept looking higher and higher. Soon, a great shadow was cast over him. The fist stood high in the sky like some colossal obelisk, blotting out the moon. It was like a floating mountain, an image of the primordial giant from whose body was fashioned all the lands of oceans of the world.

Compared to that, Drosso felt impossibly small. He knew now that he was nothing. All his dreams of enacting change, of toppling kingdoms, meant nothing. Compared to creation incarnate, he was no more important than an ant.

The fist began to lower slowly and surely like a meteor. Finally, fear overtook him, and he ran. He ran faster than he had ever done so in life, even faster than he had so many years ago when he deserted, but he knew as the shadow of the fist grew darker around him that his fate was to go return to the earth, mashed into a fertilizing pulp for the soil.