The ground was hit with such force that the site of impact caved in immediately. Wet clumps of mud and stones went flying in all directions. A small, uprooted bush barely missed Arin's head as it whizzed past, and a clod of wet silt slammed right into the middle of the horse's forehead.
Arin had shut his eyes and held up his arms protectively in order to shield his head. Now, he forced open his eyelids and squinted past his forearms to take in the scene.
Even as smaller debris scattered down around them, the horse stood stock still. A clump of mud slowly slid down its long, gray nose. The scene might have even been comical if not for the… thing that had caused it.
The gigantic hand had momentarily paused to rest inside the deep gorge it had carved out in the riverbank. It was in those few seconds that Arin realized it didn't belong to any camouflaging water-monster or lake-dwelling giant.
The hand was all soil and sand swirling inside furiously churning, murky water. It was as though the very depths of the lake had solidified to form the appendage and risen to vent some unknown fury.
This world was certifiably insane, because what reason could a lake ever have for being this angry?
As the hand slowly dragged itself back, the garbled voice from the lake – or rather, of the lake? – rang out as if in response to Arin's query.
'Who… WHO WOKE M… UP!?'
…
Right. Sure. Of course.
Maybe the damned lake was catching up on sleep after overtime. Maybe it had stayed up all night playing online games. Either way, understandable.
What did he know about the lake's personal life anyway?
Arin was snapped out of his thoughts by the guttural sound of the horse screaming at him. He gestured frantically to shush it, wanting to warn it against making any noise. Then, he realized that the horse had been warning him.
He heard a whoosh from behind his back. Without thinking, Arin dropped down into a crouch and clumsily rolled to one side. In doing so, he barely avoided a second giant hand that had appeared at some point. A puff of muggy air rushed towards Arin as the hand swept through the exact spot where he'd been standing just moments before.
The hand – failing to find its target – broke apart into lake water that splashed down and seeped back to its source.
At the same time, a third hand had risen. It came crashing down dangerously close to where the horse stood. The animal shook splattered mud off its face, then vanished. Arin barely registered a slate-colored crow flying up from where it had stood, before he had to run and crouch to avoid a fourth hand as it swept the bank.
'Wh – WHOOO!?' the voice wailed in distress, breaking as it rang out.
It sounded increasingly distorted as waves began rippling outwards across the surface of the water. The very center of the lake was starting to bulge; it looked like all the water was going to rise up into a murky behemoth. Stunned by the sight, Arin could only stand still as he watched it rise.
To the extent that he was unable to react in time when yet another arm swept in from behind him.
The front of the hand barely grazed the right side of his torso, and yet, Arin's feet were literally swept off the ground by the force of the strike. He grunted and flew forward, landing face-first into the cold, wet silt.
For just a moment, all he felt was a strange numbness spread out from his shoulderblade, to the side of his ribs, and down the right side of his back. Unfortunately, it quickly bloomed into a burning, bruising pain.
Even in the haze of his discomfort, Arin recognized how lucky it was that he hadn't borne the full brunt of the swipe.
Head buzzing and arms trembling, he tried pushing himself up. The movement made his body feel like it was on fire, and he collapsed back into the dirt with a pained grunt. He tried again – relying mainly on his left arm this time – and finally managed to rise to a kneel and look up.
Just in time to see a giant slab of water come crashing down from above him.
Having found its target, this hand was unrelenting, and Arin was forced to accept that this was probably it for him. And for Rin, by extension.
Sorry, dude I've never met, for getting your body smashed to bits the same day I got it. Because surely, there's no way that white-haired guy is going to be able to fix it up after this.
In that split second, Arin wondered if this was actually a good thing. Once Rin's body was destroyed, maybe his soul would somehow find its way back into his own body, in his own world.
He'd wake up to beeping monitors in a hospital somewhere, bandaged up after losing his one-sided fight with the bedroom ceiling.
His mother would be by his bedside, crying with relief when he opened his eyes again. His siblings, having heard the news, would've probably also flown in by now. They'd try to lighten the mood, cracking jokes to conceal how worried they'd been. And his father would smile at him from the corner of the hospital room, too tired to actually say anything after the night's ordeal, but holding himself together regardless, for the family's sake.
Over the next few days, a couple of his colleagues from work might drop him a text, wishing him a quick recovery. And his boss… would probably still complain about how he was delaying the team's projects by being unavailable.
The balding, middle-aged man's disapproving face flashed in Arin's mind as the hand filled his vision, inches away from his face now.
Seriously? That's the last face he was going to ever see?
In the next moment, a sleek, silvery blur flew in through the gap. Arin felt something large and hard grasp him around the waist and carry him out of the hand's range. Without any break in momentum, it continued speeding away, rising from the churning lake and up towards the sky.
Arin gasped, winded from the impact and pain. Looking past his own dangling legs, he could see that the lake had pulled back all its limbs, adding to the gargantuan mass emerging from its middle.
The lake water was now rising impossibly fast. It had formed a pillar-like structure that must've been over a hundred feet in height. As he was carried higher and further away, Arin looked on in shock as what appeared to be a gigantic mouth gaped open at the very top of the column. Twisting to reach their escaping forms, it widened into a pit so massive it seemed almost bottomless.
It was only thanks to their incredible speed that they avoided the giant mouth as it crashed shut on thin air. Even then, it was only by a mere few feet.
After a moment's pause, the lake's garbled voice wailed out mournfully.
'GO… GO AWAY! Go away…'
And even as its words rang out, the giant pillar of water seemed to collapse in on itself, splashing back down with a loud crash to, presumably, fill up the lake again. Not that Arin would know. They'd already left it far behind them by then.
Arin took in a deep breath, then another. While it didn't quite calm him down, the fresh air rushing into his lungs helped clear his mind enough to get his bearings. The whole of his right side protested in pain as he tried to straighten his upper body. He pushed past it to keep looking.
Now that they were safe in the air, he finally noticed that he was being held up at the waist by large, steely claws that sprouted from sturdy legs covered in silver scales. Looking further up, Arin saw that the legs belonged to –
'Holy –! You can even transform into that!?'
He was being held aloft by a majestic, silver creature with smooth horns on its head and large, leathery wings flapping at its sides. It held Arin close to its broad chest, its ferocious-looking claws gingerly curled around his waist. Further back, its hind legs were pulled up, and Arin could see a long, powerful tail swaying as it trailed after them.
…
A dragon.
A dragon!?
A DRAGON!!
Arin laughed out loud in delight. His movements made the pain in his side flare up, but he didn't – no, he couldn't – stop. Surviving a near-death experience seemed to have had the effect of laughing gas on him. As the lingering traces of stress finally faded from his limbs, he felt unnaturally, wonderfully euphoric.
He was alive! And he'd been saved by a dragon! A real dragon!!
Somehow, after everything he had experienced, and all the various transformations he had witnessed, it took seeing his companion transform into a dragon to finally fill him with a sense of wild, almost childlike wonder.
It took Arin a few minutes to finally stop laughing like a crazy person. He had to gasp a few times to catch his breath. The dragon had been glancing back at him the entire time, concern evident in its dark eyes. It was only upon seeing him gather himself that it let out an exasperated huff before returning its attention to the way ahead.