Chapter 3

Ice ran through my veins, forcing me to let out a scream from the shock on my body warmed by the race. Hair and pieces of my clothes shook with the breath of air that hit me immediately, and a second later, there was no dark forest.

I was on a hill, looking at what seemed to be an extensive river that extended to the horizon, bathing the setting sun in a deep dark shade of reddish-brown, sliding between a rocky ravine.

The gorge did not seem to have a beginning or even an end, snaking through the rocks below the intense light green carpet of the vegetation on its slope. My chest was filled with relief, but my head screamed against the inconvenience.

That seemed damn wrong. It was beautiful, profane, and gloomy... Like a trap for anyone who dared to jump from that cliff, causing a free fall to the merciless stones below. I confess to having considered the fall, judging by the sequence of sounds that reached me the next moment.

I didn't take more than three steps on the green and fresh grass until I heard a guttural scream and looked back, where the green and bright landscape squirmed around a huge paw “bigger than my two hands together “and claws tried to tear me apart. The animal had somehow found me in that place.

So I ran with all my remaining strength, feeling my thighs burn at the speed. The ground shuddered again and I reached the end of the cliff, where I found myself cornered, with two possibilities of death hovering over my head.

And the weight of this imminence seemed truly serious because I felt heavy and shaken, I felt that my body was entering a collapse that I never felt in all my life and I found myself looking for a prayer, looking in the memories for a prayer and there was nothing.

Despair swept me, so fast that I didn't feel my knees give way until the lawn pinched my fingers. The animal was approaching; I felt it. I didn't dare to look. Part of me refused to recognize him.

I stood on my back, kneeling, leaning my hands on the green grass, in search of that voice, that song that had taken me there. In search of whatever made me survive a car accident without any sequel, whatever woke up the forest in my favor, whatever made me feel heavy and cold as if something on my shoulders was struggling to free itself and defend myself.

Save me. Save me.

The creature's roar sounded along with a puff on the back of my neck, and my body cooled when the first of those claws reached my back in an accurate cut. But despite the pain, despite the scream I let out, my mind begged again.

I need you. I need you.

My torso was pulled with so much violence that the scream in my throat got stuck, rebounded by the vision of the immense bestå in front of me. And I knew why I avoided looking so much... To have prevented my fear from giving power to your intrinsic wickedness.

It was a horrendous, tall creature with a dark humanoid body that ended in claws and paws. There were three heads over the scaly neck “one human, one of a cat, and the last of a snake.

The three heads hissed at me, and the claws that held me stuck deeper around my ribs, creaking bones and blood, dragging me with him away from the cliff, although I screamed and scratched the grass from the ground in a failed attempt to keep me there. I screamed and cried. I cried and cursed that creature. And I kept crying as I begged:

Save me, prince of the seven hells. Save me.

I closed my eyes when a smile deformed the human head when I felt the pain and shock of being gutted without any right of defense. And I begged. I begged for the wind, for the water below the cliff, for the green lawn that was stained with my red blood. I begged deep in my soul, so something has changed.

First I felt a different odor, like the flame of a lit candle, I felt the smell of fire — not sulfur. Pure fire. And red crackled in my vision distorted by the beast in front of me, and for a moment I imagined that my blood had spilled so much that a wall was being formed with it.

But then the creature also turned to look over his shoulder, and I was sure that that red that burned with flames and flicker was not blood. It was a chance to live.

And it was for my life that I decided to move, rolling under the creature, even with blood and bones moaning. She immediately turned to me, determined to finish that soon, but the ground between us broke in a small earthquake, before, a second later, a man appeared before me, wearing black steel armor. He didn't even say a word, he didn't even seem to recognize the creature.

The man simply drew his sword, the blade of a black so intense that the world seemed to darken around. And, as easy as it seemed, he cut the creature in two, breaking it in half with a corner of the steel against the wind.

I breathed in, feeling a terrible odor coming from the steaming creature. She was on fire, with whatever was in that sword. It was burning the creature that remained alive even with the fatal cut.

My stomach turned and hurt in recognition, because I was also alive with a deep cut in my belly, with blood dripping and hurting bones. But she was alive. And all that seemed wrong and disturbing.

The man before me waited until the creature burned until his ashes were no longer visible as the wind took him from there, and although no more than a few seconds had passed, he seemed deeply shaken as he turned to look at me.

My savior was not a God, but his appearance was not at all difficult to drool. Shoulder-length brown hair flew to your face when a dark wind hit us, a full and dark beard partially hiding the angular and extremely beautiful features.

And there, standing with the sword dirty with blood, I realized how lethal his presence was. Eyes of a brown so dark that they could be black watched me, and I noticed how the full beard matched perfectly with the pronounced jaw and the pink and beautiful lips.

Even under the armor, I could be sure of the muscle mass and strength hid inside, also considering the great stature of the man.

Now facing me, I could see that his armor was not a black hole. There was a dark and deep red meandering all that black steel on the front, in the shape of an immense snake that spits fire below its forked tongue centered on the chest of the armor.

I waited for everything that came next, a new possibility of dying, a new attack. Everything. Except for that lethal force putting itself on one of his knees, as his head bowed in such a deep reverence that the world around us seemed to pay attention, as he said:

“Welcome back, Your Majesty.”