The creature had a terribly long body. A body so lengthy, it was actually still partially hidden beneath the ground, even though there was already at least fifteen feet of it visible above it. Said body was almost fully covered in grayish white scales, with only some being absent. It was leaning on the ground with two immense legs, each one looking very muscular. At the end of each of them were four toe-like constructions, topped off with claws as sharp as the pain they could bring. The head was not that of a conventional snake – actually, nothing really looked like a conventional snake on it. It was a sleek, rather long face, with two horns on the sides of it, curving downward, then forward. Its eyes were frontal – unlike reptiles normally have – and didn’t have any pupils; they were a bright blue color, looking almost crystalline as they glimmered in Valentina’s now blue light. Out of its closed mouth – on which were two big, smoking nostrils – were coming two fangs. We could barely see its back, but it looked to me as if a spine was digging its way through the scales, as a bone-like row of smaller spikes was coming out of its back.

The beast let out another roar, which let the tunnel shake briefly. While its mouth was open I got a glimpse of his teeth: two rows, both filled with teeth as sharp as razors. If you were to get caught in that, you’d be dead within milliseconds, and I’m confident in that assumption. As soon as it stopped making noise, its head rushed in my general direction at high velocity, mouth open. Luckily my eyes were locked on the creature from the moment it rose from the ground, so I swiftly evaded the bite. This caused him to go face first right into the stone-hard ground I was floating above. I could imagine that probably didn’t lessen its uncontrollable rage one bit.

The beast needed a minute to get a grip on the situation again, when it got back up again. On the ground there were a couple scales visible, and one of the fangs coming from his mouth seemed to be cracked. The beast was all but happy about this, and was preparing for another attack. This time, however, the attack wasn’t directed at myself, but at my companion, who was frozen by her fear.

“Hey! Hey you! You big… fat... thing that you are!” I tried to distract it from Valentina. (I’ll admit, I’m not good at insulting people intentionally.)

He didn’t even glance at me, he was fully focused on Val and the thought of consuming her.

I was getting angry – if not at the beast, then at myself. I couldn’t just go about standing here. I had to do something to stop it from attacking Val.

I took a look at my surroundings; there lay several rocks, but all of them were too small to get the attention of the beast; there were growing fungi, but I don’t know how that would be helpful in my current situation; there lay small fragments of Essentia Crystals, glimmering with the slightest bit of Essentia left in them; there lay… Nothing else. So I went on a limb: I decided I should just try it, not knowing what exactly would happen.

In my anger I reached out towards one of the Essentia Crystals – one of Fire Essentia – trying my best to focus on channeling the Essentia out of it, and to my biggest surprise, it actually worked. A red liquid-like gas was flowing from the crystal right into my channeling hand, which got really warm really quickly. It became so burning hot, I had lost my focus, and the link with the crystal; to which the crystal shattered to fragments so small, they could better be classified as dust.

So here I was, looking at a gigantic beast at the verge of attacking the sole friend I had on these lands, while my hand was rapidly being burned by stored up Fire Essentia inside it. I figured there was only one thing there was left to try: I didn’t have time enough to gather more of any Essentia, so I had to use this small amount to get the attention of the creature. I saw a small fragment with a purple glow – which I assumed was Magica Essentia – lying near me, and I hoped so hard it would automatically channel to me as I was putting the raw Essentia to use in the form of a Fire spell.

I brought both my hands together, creating a sphere with my fingers. My hand which had the Essentia stored in it, was cooling down – but still hurt from being burnt – and that warmth was filling the air in the form of a tiny flame, floating between my hands. As I was charging the flame, the beast lashed out towards Val. Even though not nearly enough Essentia had been channeled into the flame, I had no choice but to already throw it at the beast, leaving my hand still warm and burning. I saw the flame traveling towards the two of them, and I deeply hoped it would hit the creature and draw its attention away from her.

This entire scene appeared to me as if it was slowed down, from the gathering of the Fire Essentia, to the small fireball hitting the beast right beneath the eye, where it had lost a couple scales. If it wasn’t in a blinding rage before, it was now (and I’d take that very literally: I’m pretty sure it was now half blind). It turned around, going in my direction now. I flew away from it as fast as my Manipulators would let me, while the beast followed me.

It was now almost fully visible, crawling out of the hole it made, and only the tip of its tail was still under the ground. It was fast, but I was just the slightest bit faster, so it wasn’t catching up to me. I’m sure it quickly got to the beast that was the case, as he pounded the ground with his massive front legs, which caused a giant amount of rocks and dirt to rain down in front of me: I was trapped in a corner now, a wall in front of me, my end behind me. The beast rushed towards me like it did the first time it tried to attack me, as I closed my eyes to accept my fate.

But instead of feeling the razors of teeth pierce through my shell, I heard the ground move in front of me, followed by the sound of a massive impact. I opened my eyes again to see there had appeared a rock wall in front of me, with which the beast had collided. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place (in the most literal sense, that is), before the rock wall fell back to the ground. Behind it I saw a mess of stationary flames covering most of the tunnel, yet the beast wasn’t to be seen anymore.

“You got yourselves into some big troubles, I see,” I heard a familiar, elder voice sarcastically say.

“Feldir Ex Machina,” I responded with the same sarcastic tone.

The flaming mess was beginning to lessen, as I saw the body of the once terrifying beast lying dead underneath it.

“I told you I’d come and find you two,” Feldir happily said, while I saw him standing just besides Valentina, who was seemingly unharmed, yet blue and shivering from fear.

“I never doubted that. Thanks for saving us, I honestly couldn’t be more grateful for this.”

“You’ll get your chance to prove that to me, don’t worry. Now hurry up and follow me, we don’t have much time left.”

“Please, wait just one second, I have some questions.”

“Those can wait, Kate! We have to get to The City as rapidly as possible, ask them when we are traveling there.”

“Can you at least wait so I can heal these burns on my hands?”

“You got your hands burned? How did you do that? They shouldn’t breathe fire yet.” He asked with more curiosity in his voice than concern.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about: I got these burns due to storing Fire Essentia in my hands after channeling them.”

“You manipulated Fire Essentia?” He was as surprised as I was.

“I’ll tell you all about it when we’re going to The City,” I casted his own words back at him.

“I would love to heal them, or at least ease the pain, but I’m afraid I’m running low on Water Essentia myself. Sorry.”

Valentina came rapidly floating towards me, in her blue color.

“Hey girl, what’s the matter?”

She slowly floated above my hand, after which little drops came raining from her, landing on the burns. It eased the pain a great amount.

“I knew this would end in tears,” I jokingly said, “You’re an amazing person, Valentina. I’m so happy to have you as a friend.”

As my friend was easing the pain, I looked at the beast, now lying dead on the ground. There was a strange symbol appearing on its forehead: something that looked like a black flame, curled around a white circle in the middle.

“What is that?” I asked while pointing at the creature’s forehead, “That symbol?”

“That is not just a symbol,” Feldir silently laughed at it, “It’s a mark. The Mark of The Hunt.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means this creature was met with the terrible fate of being marked by The Hunters. His destiny was sealed, and now their Mark has been lifted.”

I saw the flame engulf the circle as it twisted around it and vanished.

“This one was taken…” I heard a soothing female voice ignorantly whisper.

“…Yet wasn’t theirs to take.” An aggressive male voice angrily answered her.

“What was that?” I started to worry again.

“They don’t like it when they aren’t the one to claim their Mark. They don’t get the benefits from it; it’s another wasted life. Don’t worry, they cannot physically hurt you at the present moment.”

“I think that’s about good,” I was now talking to Valentina, “thanks again.”

She turned purple again and started floating at the usual spot next to me.

“We should get going now.”

“I agree. Please lead the way, sir.”

We were floating through the tunnels again, the same gray texture of the stone walls was being repeated over, and over, and over again.

“You didn’t put any effort in decorating the tunnels, did you?”

“They used to be decorated, actually. They are just made redundant ever since we got a better way of traveling between points of interest, so we took the decorations down. But you had some questions for me?”

“I did. Do you mind if I ask some?”

“Go ahead, we’ll be walking for another half an hour at least.”

“Great,” I said with a sarcastic tone, even though that meant I could ask all the questions I wanted, “First things first. What was that thing and why was it there?”

“That thing was a dragonling. Some of them live underneath The Mountain to The North-East, as we do. Normally they aren’t hostile creatures – there aren’t many left, you see – but I assume this one was aggressive due to it being marked. Death was inevitable for the creature, so what did it have to lose?”

“A dragonling? Is that something like a young dragon?”

“Exactly. Dragonlings is the name we give to dragons from the moment they’re able to seek out prey themselves. Dragonlings that still need to be fed are called hatchlings.”

“So when do we talk about a ‘real dragon’ then?”

“A dragonling is generally assumed to be a dragon from the moment it gains it wings – though not all types of dragons bare wings. In rare cases, they are regarded dragon when they are able to manipulate Essentia.”

“Dragons can manipulate Essentia too?”

“All living things can. If something has a soul, they can harvest Essentia and put it to use,” the Dwarf clarified, “Dragons can only manipulate Essentia via their breath though, and also only one type. They don’t need to harvest it, but can take it directly out of the atmosphere. The only dragon known that is able to put all Primal Essentia to use is The Elder Drake.”

“Interesting, so there are multiple types of dragons?”

“Indeed. All of them have come forth of The Elder Drake, which is deemed to be the spiritual ancestor of the Dragonkind by many.