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 silt slammed right into the middle of the horse's forehead.
The gigantic hand paused inside the gorge it had carved out. In those few moments, Arin realized that it 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 to answer Arin's thoughts.
'Who… WOKE M… UP!?'
Oh. Sure. Of course.
Maybe the damned lake was catching up on sleep after overtime. Maybe it had stayed up all night playing online games. Understandable. What would he know.
Arin was snapped out of his thoughts by the guttural sound of the horse screaming at him. He turned frantically to shush it, wanting to warn it against making any noise, when he realized that the horse had been warning him instead.
He heard a whoosh from behind his back. Without thinking, Arin dropped down into a crouch and 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. Another hand arose and crashed down towards the horse. 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 yet another hand.
'Wh – WHOOO!?' the voice wailed, breaking as it got even louder.
Large waves started rippling outwards as the very center of the lake began to bulge. It looked like all the water was going to rise up into a behemoth. Arin, stunned silly by the sight, was unable to react in time as another arm swept in from behind him.
He grunted and flew forward, landing face-first into the cold, wet silt. The arm had barely grazed his right shoulder, and yet he felt like he'd been knocked down by a sack of bricks.
Head buzzing and arms trembling, Arin tried pushing himself up. He knew how lucky it was that he hadn't actually borne the full brunt of the swipe. Even so, the right side of his torso felt like it was on fire, making him collapse back into the dirt. Trying again – relying mainly on his left arm this time – Arin managed to rise to a kneel, just in time to see a giant slab of water come crashing down from above him.
Having found its target, the hand was unrelenting, and Arin realized that this was probably it for him. And 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 was going to be able to fix it up after this.
In that split second, Arin wondered if this was actually a good thing. 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 angry face flashed in Arin's mind as the hand dropped, inches away from his face now.
Seriously? That's the last face he was ever going to see?
The next moment, a sleek, silvery blur flew in through the gap, grasped him around the waist, and carried him out. Without any break in momentum, it took him flying away from the churning lake and up towards the sky.
Arin looked past his own dangling legs to see that the lake had pulled all its limbs back, adding to the gargantuan mass emerging from its middle. The lake water rose up impossibly fast, forming a pillar-like structure that must've been over a hundred feet tall. As he was carried higher and further away, he saw what looked like a gigantic mouth gape open at the very top. Reaching out towards them, it widened into a pit so massive it seemed almost bottomless.
Even with their incredible speed, they only avoided the giant mouth by a mere few feet as it crashed shut on thin air. After a moment's pause, the lake's garbled voice wailed out mournfully.
'GO… Awaaayyy…'
And even as the 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 he would know. They'd already left it far behind them.
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. 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 –! So you can even become a dragon!?'
It was a majestic silver dragon, 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.
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 crazed person. He gasped a few times to catch his breath. He could tell that the dragon had been glancing back at him the entire time, concern evident in its dark eyes. Upon seeing him gather himself, it let out an exasperated huff before turning back to continue on their way.