Staying Alive

Ethan’s fingers were holding tight to the bow, light on the arrow, he breathed in and out as rhythmically as he could, waiting for the inevitable arrival of what he assumed was a beast, a predator of some sort.

His wait was not long, as he counted his fortieth breath out, the branches of the trees parted violently and a big cat came bounding his way, he released the arrow without a moment of thought, hitting the great beast right between the eyes.

As he stood up to check his prize, he noticed that something was emitting a whistle in his backpack, he knew that this must be the alarm system and that something was still coming his way.

He fell to the ground as fast as he could when he realized that the danger was not past him yet, quickly drawing two arrows, one regular and another with the magical red tips and started to count the breaths as before after knocking both arrows to the bow, a technique that he learned from Miss. Julia to use when in doubt of the incoming target.

Sure enough, almost as swift as the tiger before it, the enormous head of a land-bound wyvern crashed into his sight.

Ethan released the arrows immediately, hitting the great creature in both its eyes at once, the red-tipped arrow seemed to burrow deeper into the skull of the creature.

Sadly, this didn’t counter the momentum of the great beast, but at least it forced it to tilt its head sideways as it crashed into Ethan, instead of being crushed in its maw, which was a blessing.

Ethan was thrown off the spot he was crouched in by some ten meters, dazed and bruised he knocked another red-tipped arrow as he ascended erratically to his feet.

The monstrous creature screeched its distinct roar at the world in general, as it now had both eyes blinded by Ethan’s arrows.

Ethan forced his breathing to return to the rhythmic manner he had before the crash, he knew that the non-magically treated arrow would soon fall off, and the beast will regain partially its sight, a conundrum that Ethan decided to avoid.

So, he aimed his second arrow at the beast which was flailing around biting at tree trunks and generally destroying the surrounding scenery, yet slowly advancing in the general direction of Ethan as the non-magical arrow started to be pushed out of its eyeball, bit by bit.

Then he released the arrow, aiming and predicting the way the beast will move its massive head from watching it, analyzing its movement during the entire half a minute the whole encounter took.

And the arrow hit the second eye perfectly, the beast screamed in rage and agony combined, as both arrows doubled the burrowing speed into its skull as if they were both taking power from each other to give higher magical damage.

The beast stopped flailing and ran maw open at the exact location of Ethan, who dropped down, rolled to the side three times to get out of the way of the huge predator.

Not five meters from where he originally stood, the beast suddenly fell over on its own head, toppling its entire body behind in the process.

It was dead or at least dying.

Ethan’s heartbeats climbed suddenly to an improbable speed, and for a moment he felt as if his chest would explode, but then something strange happened, he felt as if for a moment all his senses were heightened to inhuman limits, he could smell every mote of dust in the air, he could taste the sweet nectar to peaches growing a few hundred meters from where he stood, and he could hear the heartbeats of all the creatures of the forest as an entire concert of drums beating their hidden music to a few select audiences from the other worlds.

Then his heartbeats started to slow down, he was surprised to realize that he stopped breathing altogether and his first gulp of air hurt his lungs as it would a newborn baby, then all the superior senses which were his for a moment were gone.

7000cookie-checkStaying Aliveyes