Rou stood at the edge of the clearing, looking at the creatures that had chased him here hours ago, and felt nothing.
Not the paralyzing fear from before, not the desperate need to run, just a strange calm that made no sense given that three bear-sized monsters were staring at him with those sideways-opening mouths.
'Why don't they feel dangerous anymore?' He touched his hair, the gesture automatic, but even that felt different now, like the water in his body responded to the movement. 'They're the same creatures that were hunting us, that killed... whoever they caught. But now...'
He looked down at his hands, remembering how the water had flowed into him, become part of him in ways that should have been impossible. Without really thinking about it, he cupped his palms and watched as moisture condensed from the air, gathering into a sphere of water that hovered just above his skin.
"Is this... magic?" The words came out as barely a whisper, his mind struggling to accept what his eyes were showing him. The water sphere wobbled with his concentration, droplets breaking free and returning, like it was responding to his uncertainty.
One of the creatures chittered, the sound different from before, more cautious, and Rou realized he'd been standing at the clearing's edge for too long. They were getting over their initial fear, starting to remember they were predators and he was just meat that had drunk from a pool they avoided.
He stepped out of the clearing.
The first creature lunged immediately, faster than his eyes could properly track, but his body moved anyway, throwing himself sideways. He thrust his hand out instinctively and water followed the motion, except it came out as more of a splash than an attack, like someone had thrown a bucket of water at the creature's face.
The monster shook its head, annoyed but unharmed, and came at him again. This time Rou tried to form the water into something solid, something that could hit, but it just sprayed wildly, soaking the creature's fur without slowing it down. Its jaws snapped shut inches from his arm as he stumbled backward.
'Come on, work!' He pulled at the feeling in his chest, that new awareness of water, and managed to condense enough moisture to form another sphere, but when he tried to launch it, it fell apart halfway to the target, splashing uselessly on the ground.
The second creature circled to his right while the third moved left, pack tactics that would have terrified him an hour ago but now just frustrated him because he knew he had power, could feel it flowing through him, but couldn't make it work properly.
The one on the right charged, and Rou swept his arm in a wide arc, managing to pull water from the soil itself this time. It rose as a wave, except the wave was only knee-high and barely had enough force to make the creature stumble.
The monster recovered quickly, those jaws opening wide as it lunged for his throat.
Rou fell backward, hands hitting the wet ground, and suddenly the water responded properly. It erupted upward in a pillar that caught the creature in the chest, sending it flying backward into a pine tree with a crack that might have been the trunk or the creature's bones.
'Contact,' he realized, scrambling to his feet. 'It works better when I'm touching water directly.'
The first creature was charging again, but this time Rou slapped his hand into the puddle he'd created, sending the water shooting forward in a pressurized stream. His aim was terrible, the stream wavering like a fire hose without anyone properly holding it, but it caught the creature's front leg and the force was enough to snap bone with an audible crack.
The monster went down howling, its leg bent at an angle that wouldn't support weight anymore, but the third one was already on him, having circled around while he was focused on the others. Its teeth caught his shirt, tearing through fabric and skin beneath, sending him spinning to the ground.
Blood ran down his side, his own blood, red mixing with the water he was trying to gather. The creature stood over him, that horrifying mouth opening wider, rows of teeth descending toward his face.
He grabbed the thing's throat with his left hand while his right pressed against his own bloody side, and suddenly he could feel all the water inside the creature, all the blood pumping through its veins, all the fluid in its organs. Without thinking, without planning, he pulled.
The creature's eyes bulged as the water in its body tried to leave through its skin, blood vessels bursting, organs shriveling. It made a sound that wasn't a scream, more like air being squeezed from wet lungs, and collapsed on top of him, twitching.
He shoved the dying creature off and stood, breathing hard, blood still running from the gashes in his side. The one with the broken leg was trying to crawl away, whimpering with each movement. The one he'd thrown into the tree wasn't moving at all.
Water swirled around him now without him consciously calling it, responding to his emotions, his fear, his anger at being hunted.
The crawling creature looked back at him, and Rou saw fear in the monster's eyes. It tried to move faster, dragging its broken leg, leaving a trail of blood through the leaves.
He should let it go, he thought. It was no longer a threat, could barely move, would probably die from the injury anyway. The Rou who'd stood at a bus stop this morning would have let it go.
But that Rou hadn't watched people get torn apart, hadn't been hunted through a forest, hadn't drunk water that transformed his cells into something that could survive here. That Rou was gone, dissolved like the pool that now lived inside him.
He pressed his hand into the bloody puddle where the creature had been, and sent water through the trail of blood it was leaving, following the red path straight into the monster's body. He could feel the moment the water reached its heart, could feel the organ seize as he crystallized the blood inside it.
The creature dropped mid-crawl, dead before it hit the ground.
Rou stood surrounded by three dead monsters, blood running down his side, water swirling uncertainly around him like it wasn't sure what he wanted it to do. His first real fight with magic, if that's what this was, and he'd barely survived it, his control clumsy and desperate rather than skilled.
But he had survived. The creatures that had been hunting him were dead, and he was still standing.
He pressed his hand against his bleeding side, wondering if the water could do something about that too, and started walking in the direction he thought the river might be. He needed to find out if anyone else had survived, and to figure out what to do next.
Behind him, the clearing where the pool had been sat empty, no longer protected by mysterious water, just another patch of forest that would soon be reclaimed by nature.
Ahead of him, somewhere in this medieval world, were answers he probably wouldn't like and dangers he wasn't prepared for.