Inside the tear we just entered is a massive field spanning so long I can't see the end of it, and the tear in space disappeared behind us.
"Woah, this place is beautiful, it's a way different vibe and looks than those cold corridors we were in before," Elara says with excitement.
And then the ancients voices boom once more.
"Thou hast killed one of the ancients protected being of the trials, and for that thou shalt face the consequences. The trial of peace shalt now become a flaming hell and warfare for thee."
The fields suddenly burst into flames, surrounding us. The flames creep closer and closer to us, but they do not seem to be hot, so I calm down a little. But then from the flames themselves comes a rumbling, and the fields somehow start moving into one place, forming a massive beast, at least ten times my size.
The beast is a giant flaming scarecrow. It flicks its hand to the side, and suddenly an insanely big pitchfork appears in its hand, and it points it at us.
"You two have killed the pets of the ancients, and I will not stand by and let you disrespect the ancients. Now, for your horrible actions, which of you wishes to get greeted by the ancients at the gates of hell first?" The massive scarecrow speaks with a deep voice filled with spite and anger.
"If you worship the ancients so much, let's make it so you be the first to be greeted by them!" Elara screams at the scarecrow and starts charging at him.
"Elara, stop! Don't charge the giant beast that wants to kill us." I yell at her and start running after her.
"God damn it, why did I have to attack that fucking centipede?" I mutter to myself.
"Huh, nah, don't worry about it, it's just a big pile of hay and it's on fire, so it'll die out on its own soon enough anyway, may as well deal as much damage to make it happen faster. Elara replies to my screams with a calm voice.
"So I'm just a big pile of dying hay now, am I?" The giant scarecrow replies to what Elara said to me, and then he raises his foot and slams it on the ground, sending a powerful shockwave that sends both me and Elara flying back. I get thrown into a tree, the pain is immense, and all the air just flies out of my lungs.
I fall to the ground, groaning and struggling to catch my breath. All the while, Elara wasn't as unlucky as me and just flies quite far but lands gracefully on the ground with no pain or any consequence for her charge.
"Come on, Airoh, it's just a big pile of hay. We can defeat this thing with ease, so get up and let's fight this dying hay!" Elara screams at me, but I can barely catch her words. My vision is blurry, my head feels like it's spinning, I try to stand up and fall back down.
After a short while of being knocked down, I see Elara rushing to me.
"Airoh, can you hear me?" She asks me with genuine concern in her voice.
"Yes, but barely." I manage to say.
"That's good." She says, and then I'm in the air, she picks me up and starts running towards the scarecrow. Is she crazy? Doesn't she realize I can't fight anymore, but then my body starts feeling better, my vision is no longer blurry, and my head is no longer spinning.
"Are you good now? You look better." She asks, looking down at me.
"Yeah, I think I do now for some reason." My sight and hearing are clearer than ever for some unknown reason.
"Good," Elara says, and then she puts me on her shoulder and throws me onto the giant scarecrow right on its face.
I hurry and take an arrow out, stabbing it and stopping myself from falling off of the scarecrow.
"Are you fucking crazy? I could've died from that!" I scream at Elara.
She sticks her tongue out and winks at me, and starts climbing the giant herself, god knows how she is that agile, because she just leaps onto him and in mere seconds gets to me, she sticks her legs in him and starts punching him.
The punches begin slowly, like normal punches, but then they gain speed and she starts punching so fast it's hard to follow the movement, and each punch tears some of the hay, and in about 15 seconds, there is a hole so big it can fit both me and Elara, we enter it.
"Hey, can I have six of those arrows?" Elara asks me, so I just give them to her without thinking. She breaks the tips of them and places them between her knuckles.
She then continues punching, and again it begins slow and accelerates insanely fast. The giant brings its hand towards us, trying to throw us out of its body. I shoot the hand with my arrows, but it doesn't stop the hand that comes to grab Elara.
She spins around so fast it looks like she just changed positions without moving at all, and then as the hand comes, she throws a punch so powerful it sends the hand of the giant flying away, but because of the blow, it tips of balance, making it fall, and as it falls, so do we.
Unluckily for us, he catches himself with the pitchfork, leaving us to fall alone. And we do, although unlike Elara, I don't do it with a graceful landing, and I just land in her arms, and she puts me down.
She recharges at him, but this time, he doesn't let her climb him, he brings his hand back in a fist, trying to crush Elara. She tries to push it back, but can barely manage. I rush there to help her, shooting at the hand while running to her.
I get there before she gets crushed, luckily, and together we manage to push the hand back enough so we can both roll away from it.
The giant screams with rage. He then jumps up in the air and dives back down with his pitchfork spinning so fast and falling at such an immense speed, I just give up.
As I close my eyes, readying myself for the pain of death, I feel myself being picked up and thrown away from the danger. Elara saves me. She starts running fast, but not fast enough. She gets close to getting away, but he is falling too fast.
He hits the ground, the sound is so strong, I think I might have gone deaf, and that's not the worst part, the ground trembles and rips open, and he doesn't stop at the mere surface of the ground, he drills into the ground, creating a massive crater in the ground.
"Elara!" I scream so loud my throat hurts, but there is not one thing I can do to save her. The only hope I had in completing these trials was her, she was far more powerful than me.
My eyes fill with tears, and I fall, crying and hitting myself. It was my fault she died because she saved me instead of herself.
"That's one sent to be greeted in hell, and now for you." I hear the voice that loathes me so much for doing what I needed done to survive, the voice I know grow to hate so much just as it hates me.
It raises its hand and throws its pitchfork at me. I duck beneath it, and it jumps to it, grabbing it before it can even hit the ground.
If Elara couldn't defeat this thing, what am I supposed to do? God, I wish I knew, but nonetheless, I must defeat it. I will not let Elara's death be in vain.
I shoot at the scarecrow, hitting him, but it doesn't seem to be doing any bit of damage. It lands with a shockwave. This time, I was prepared, I tank the shock, managing to neglect the wave that would have sent me flying had I not been ready.
I run around the giant and see that wherever he walks, a flower grows. I try picking one up, and it explodes on me. The hit is hard, but I ignore it. I pick another one, this time not touching the flower itself.
I put it on my arrow and shoot it at the giant. It explodes on it, and I can hear him groan. It didn't do much, but it is better than my arrows alone. I continue shooting at him with the explosive flowers. I aim at the legs, trying to make him fall.
It isn't hard to hit him for his massive size. He starts picking up a tree and throws it at me, and the tree replants itself, or in other words, if I am hit and survive, I will be trapped under the tree or suffocated. My body fills with terror. I run around him, and luckily for me, he can't see me very well because of my small size.
I shoot at his leg once more, and he falls to one knee. He gets up, throws his pitchfork up in the air, jumps after it, grabs it, and starts stabbing at the air so fast and spinning the pitchfork that it creates a beam of wind that sends me back so hard I'm in the air, and he has full control over the wind, bringing me to him.
He brings his other hand up, grabbing me out of the wind trap he made for me.
"I've had about enough of you running around. This is ending now." He speaks to me, trapped in his grasp. He starts crushing me slowly, so I'll feel the most pain possible.
"You know, I think you're right, this is ending now," I tell him, looking him dead in the eyes, and then the flowers I had in my pouch, so I could shoot him burst into flames, exploding from the pressure his hand is placing on them.
They create a giant explosion, which wounds my leg deeply, but luckily, he absorbed most of the blow. He lets go of me, and I fall on a tree that slows my fall, but even with that, I was so high up that I can't manage to stand up anymore.
Unlike me, he recovers quickly, almost all of his hand was blown to bits, but he still has another hand and the pitchfork.
"Hah, I guess it is ending now, at least I gave a good fight." I laugh to myself, tired.
He starts walking towards me, slowly making sure I know who won, it's annoying. Who would've thought giant scarecrows could boast?
"It appears our little charade has finally come to an end. This has been quite fun. I haven't fought like this in at least fifty years, however, all good things must come to an end, and so must this fight. You have been entertaining little one." He talks with pride and relief, it seems at some point he really did think I had a chance.
He leaps into the air, going to use the same attack he used to kill Elara with.
When he reaches his peak height, like flowers blossoming in the spring, the centipedes that were in the corridors before the trial dig out of the ground as if cheering him onward.
With nothing else to do, I use my last ounce of strength to dash to one of them, pick one of the explosive flowers, throw the centipede in the air, and throw the flower behind him, sending the centipede flying right in front of the giant.
He can't react in time for the centipede is far too small, he only notices what he is about to do when it is far too late. The centipede gets absolutely annihilated as if someone took a hammer and just crushed it into dust, and like a divine blessing from the heavens, the scarecrow is stopped mid-air without me meeting the same fate as Elara.
"Thou hast failed the ancients, thee hast killed one of the trials' protected beings without any sign of remorse. Thou kill a protected being and fail to finish the task we give you to defeat the ones who dared do the same. Thou hast disappointed as deeply. Die." As they finish their short speech, the giant bursts into flames, screaming with pain and agony I have never felt, so relieved in my entire life.
His burning corpse falls to the ground, where he then explodes into a field of the explosive flowers, and I am in the middle of it, it looks like a dream come true. I laugh to myself, how in the ancients did I survive this monster? I don't think even they know.
I'm lying quite close to the crater where Elara was killed. I try rolling down there, it's a mistake, the pain of rolling down in the crater is horrible, but just as the giant said, all good things must come to an end, but so do all bad ones, and I manage to reach the bottom without dying.
In the middle of the crater, Elara is lying, and somehow her body is still intact with barely any wounds. I go to check if she is breathing, hoping that by some miracle she survived, but the world is not that kind, she is not breathing.
I start to cry, but I stop myself. I get up, going to leave the crater and continue with the trials. I start climbing them when I hear something move, but it was just some rocks rolling down the crater.
"Hey, just leaving me to die here?" I turn around as fast as I can, rushing to Elara indeed. By some miracle, she managed to survive that killing blow that created such a massive crater in the ground.
"How in the ancients are you alive, and why are you not even wounded?" I ask my eyes, filling with tears, and I break down crying on her.
"I think he just barely missed me, but the wind still carried me with the force, so I landed here, and the blow made me lose consciousness." She says, grinning.
"Don't ever get so close to dying again. I don't think my brain can take facing losing the only friend I have here." I say, wiping my eyes, and help Elara get up.
We climb out of the crater. I pick a lot of the explosive flowers, which I decided to start calling Flamize, for the way they bloomed as the giant was bursting into flames.
And then another tear in space itself opens, and the booming voice speaks again.
"The second trial shalt now commence."