First Demonic Dragon

In a barren biome consisting solely of ice and snow, Monica was on a continuous journey through the bitter cold as she pulled her hooded cloak further over her head.

Perhaps the hardest part of surviving in an environment like this was the temperature.

When it's cold, you cannot stop.

It is so easy to succumb quickly to hypothermia and frostbite if your body is not moving to keep itself heated up adequately, or if you have no food in your system.

Loss of limbs wouldn't normally be a problem for someone like Monica, but she wasn't really that keen to experience it's symptoms either.

The only reason she hadn't taken to the air was to keep her body moving and conserve energy without having to draw in magic from her surroundings to keep her temperature up.

Besides, with how hard the storm was coming down it would be nigh impossible for anyone to track her by her footprints, as they were usually gone and covered with a new layer of snow by the time she'd taken two more steps.

As such, she figured it was fine to keep going like this for a little longer.

Finally, her tireless treck yielded some form of results as she spied a large forest a few kilometers away.

'Yes!'

Excited, she floated off the ground and flew towards the first lands she saw that weren't solely flat white snow.

She had overwhelming anxiety the entire time that she was moving out here uncovered like this, as she worried that being so exposed would make her the perfect brand of extra spicy monster bait.

However, no matter how worried she was, the monsters never came.

She had to admit that she found that to be quite the enigma, since given the size of the rain cloud she saw her Emperor create the entire planet should have been teeming with them.

No matter... she wouldn't complain about her surprisingly good fortune, she would just enjoy it.

Finally, Monica reached the forest full of dark and towering trees that were significantly larger than most any on earth.

The first thing that she did was fly deep enough into the grove before perching onto a snowy tree branch.

With a bit more coverage at her back, now she began spreading her senses throughout the forest, trying to discover as many hidden nooks and crannies as she could where she could potentially hole up if need be.

Unfortunately, the range with which she could expand her senses was only a mile at her absolute most concentration.

...Even the youngest Nevi'im could span theirs over an entire state's length in an instant.

'No, don't do that... We've already made our choice, so now we will do the best with what we have.' She reaffirmed.

While Monica was able to keep her negative feelings in check, she missed the moment where a very small woodland critter suddenly crawled down from it's nest a few branches above her.

To the closest possible degree, the creature resembled a snowy white chinchilla with four eyes instead of two, and the flat tail of a platypus.

Monica finally noticed the little woodland creature and was indeed wary at first, but ultimately found nothing wrong with the little guy.

It was just starting at her inquisitively, not seeking to do any real harm.

That was, until it decided that the fire spirit could be an ample source of food for it's children.

Suddenly, it's four eyes became a luminous violet color and it opened it's small mouth to release a low vibrational sonic wave.

Because Monica didn't know to look away or cover her ears, she ended up falling for the creature's trap instantaneously.

Her entire world started to feel like it was spinning as her vision became hazy and she lost the ability to keep her balance.

Unsurprisingly, she fell off the tree branch and plummeted straight down in what was almost a twelve story drop.

She hit her head hard on a large rock awaiting on the ground and the entire left side of her face was split open.

But as she was still a fire spirit, physical injuries didn't really affect her all that much, so all that one could see inside her skull were billowing orange flames.

The nightmarish chinchilla crawled down from it's high position in the treetops without falling as she had, and came over to inspect what it thought would be a fresh kill.

However, the moment that he came too close, Monica's hand shot out like a bullet and she grabbed it by the head.

Heating up her hand, she literally cooked the head of the furry white creature all the way to well done in a total of two seconds.

Once it was dead, she threw it over her shoulder and got started trying to pick herself up off the ground, but it wasn't easy.

Whatever that thing had done to her just now, it had left her feeling mortifyingly disoriented and weak.

She tried to get back to her feet, but almost immediately toppled back over like a drunken toddler.

'Vivian's horns... What manner of maniacal monster could create something like that?'

-

Abaddon suddenly scratched his ear as he looked over his shoulder.

'I feel like someone definitely cursed me just now...'

Mira: "Daddy stop twitching, you're gonna ruin the drawing!"

Courtney: "Yea!"

"Hm? Sorry girls."

The two girls went back to drawing tattoos of their own designs on their father's body that were a bit more wonky looking than the ones he already had.

Sure they weren't the prettiest, and they were done in crayon instead of ink, but he considered them to be even more meaningful than his ones that hypnotized beings and ripped away their free will.

'Although I can't really tell what they're supposed to be... but they're happy so I guess it doesn't matter.'

-

As Monica was finally able to somewhat get her bearings after an uncomfortably long time, a certain smell began wafting into her nose that made her crinkle her brow in disgust.

Burned flesh.

Even though she was a fire spirit, it wasn't a smell that she was particularly fond of or that she would ever find herself getting used to, so she was fairly repulsed.

"Ugh… I was just so ticked off just now that I... wait..!"

As Monica's eyes went wide with horror, she heard one of the loudest and most frightening roars that she had ever witnessed in her life.

'God, I'm an idiot!' she cursed herself internally.

Abaddon had told the entire testing class that these things were fearsome trackers.

Of course one of them would come running in her direction at the scent of burning meat.

She was so annoyed with that chinchilla thing that she just killed it in the most painful way she knew how instead of just cleanly snapping it's neck like she should have with no muss or fuss.

And now, she was about to pay the price.

Upon listening for just a moment, one could hear something very large and hostile approaching at an extremely high speed.

Her options limited, Monica did the most sensible thing she could at the moment.

She turned herself into a small, barely noticeable flame, and flew in an entirely different direction as fast as her body would carry her.

In the very spot where she once stood, a large creature came barreling out of the sky mere seconds after her.

It was a large thing; horrifying and unnatural.

A creature with the head of an octopus, the body of a cicada, and the wings of a dragon.

In the field of trees it had destroyed upon landing, it began sniffing about traces for that burned smell it'd had picked up a few moments ago.

It expertly found the spot where Monica had fallen out of the tree and sniffed the area only to find that the trail had gone cold.

But there was a heat signature.

It was faint, so faint that it was growing more and more minuscule at every second.

But it was there.

And that was literally all that the abyss walker needed.

Shrinking down it's body to a size more conducive for tight spaces, the creature flapped it's wings and got started on chasing down it's prey.

By now, Monica was a little bit under a mile away, but the lead she held was becoming less and less meaningful with every second.

And there was another problem too.

Staying in this little bitty wisp form of hers was so incredibly dangerous.

She had no faux layer of skin to cover her inner flame, so if she were to be blown out like this then that would be the end of her story.

The snowstorm was still raging around her in full swing and it's blistering winds were beating down on her nonexistent body relentlessly.

It was taking all of her concentration to not only keep herself lit, but also to ensure that her body temperature didn't rise beyond a certain degree so that she wouldn't act as a beacon drawing things towards her.

'Need better cover, I need better cover!' she panicked.

Finally, the small wisp emerged in a deserted clearing, with a freezing lake resting just in front of a shallow cave.

Monica was able to recognize that at the rate things were going, she was about to be cornered very, very fast.

And since she still hadn't fully shaken off the effects of whatever that furry bastard did to her, she was in no condition for a stand-off here.

Which meant that she had to take a drastic measure if it meant she was going to come out of this encounter unscathed.

Gathering up all of her courage and saying a small prayer, she let the people she lived with cross her mind one last time before she dove towards the icy water.

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