Even with an immediate reaction and the assistance of a distortion, I'm nearly overwhelmed by the gust of icy wind that slams over me. To my side, the land disappears beneath a blanket of frozen crystals, only for them to fracture and peel away in the wind.

  The line of fragmented icicles extends beyond my sight. A path twice as wide as my current length. The forest its path now frozen and shredded, leaving lone frozen stumps with crystallised trunks shattered. Hardened earth left with countless, long gouges.

  I waste no time. Immediately, I push my body to shift. With distortions, my current size is faster than even my largest, but I cannot afford to treat this opponent with anything but my strongest. The chill emanating from the wave of cold power that barely passed me by already seeps deep through my spine.

  But I change too slow.

  The albanic hovers in the air, carried by gentle winds that slice through anything else. Gales twirl around her, endless swarms of tiny icicle blades spun with deadly speed. In the few moments since she arrived, the forest all around has been left in frozen splinters, and the earth an algific waste.

  I force myself through another bend, already too thick to pass through easily, as I barely avoid another blast of frost bearing down on me. I avoid the attack, but a wall of ice blades crash into my side regardless. They scratch at my scales, carving away deep ridges that leave me riddled and pass the chill further through my body.

  Not wanting to sit here taking the sapient’s attacks without retaliation, I slide through a dozen bends. I go for her neck. An ape-like being like this of such limited size and soft-looking flesh should be easy to kill, regardless of the energy flowing through her skin.

  But I find it impossible to get close. The intense winds grow stronger the nearer they circle the albanic, carrying and endless quantity of icicles that slice through my scales with hardly any resistance. They stab at my innards like I’m the one with soft flesh.

  The wind pushes me back and I don't fight it. I’m too small. My scales not hard enough. I need to shift to my full size to survive against this onslaught, but I’m not given a chance.

  I shift larger than my bends can support, leaving me vulnerable to the albanics power. The thrumming lines of energy covering her skin — and glowing through the fake-skin she wears — shift. The spinning winds converge, compressing down on the sapient and whip around her faster than ever, right before they explode forward.

  Feeling a true existential threat, I leap away. A bend appears, torn wider than I’ve ever forced it, and thread through. My body scrapes against the sides; the bend immediately destabilising as I lose control over it.

  Not quick enough. Despite creating a bend wider than ever, it didn’t carry me far enough. The intense chill washes over my lower half of my tail, effortlessly breaching my scales and freezing solid every fibre it touches. All heat saps from my body, and even that the muscles not caught in the blast slow with lethargy.

  The ice needles follow immediately after. They pass painlessly through my tail, leaving me riddled with countless tiny fractures and holes.

  Slithering forward, I find my lower half doesn’t listen. Neither muscles, bone nor scales can move. They’re not coated in ice, but frozen to the deepest fibre. Behind me, nothing of the land remains. Ten times thicker than the last blast trail, the earth is cratered beyond my sight, small and deep fissures carve through the otherwise smooth icy surface. At the edge of the blast’s path stands massive crystal growths standing well over the head of the sapient that caused it.

  The Albanic looms above, carried by an embracing wind. She lingers there, the central eye of the storm tearing through every part of my sight. Her gaze alone, piercing with a terrible chill.

  I refuse to allow things to stand as they are. That arrogant glare; enraging. I push my body harder than its ever needed to grow. My size, I need it now. The longer it takes, the worse things will get. I can’t dodge any more of those compressed storm blasts, not with my current body, and neither can I handle the cold it inflicts.

  Agony wracks my spine as it is forced out of the isolated space unnaturally fast. The metaphorical muscle connecting my fabric to the rest of space strains under the effort, screaming at me to relent. The scales along my tail crack as I grow. The frozen sections shattering by the forced addition to my body.

  Bones break, only to make way for more. The fractured remnants soon incorporating into the rest, leaving odd notches all along my spine. My muscles are less affected by being torn and mixed, but the twitches quaking across my length are hardly soothed by the chill.

  Far sooner than I should, I snap forward. My rapidly expanding tail crashing against the earth throws me speeding through the air towards where the sapient hovers. The air itself is impossibly cold, leaving my strike to slow as if crashing through a wall of rock.

  Her eyes widen, clearly not expecting me to be moving after having been struck by her condensed storm. But that surprise doesn’t stop her from reacting. The wind lifts her higher, while also blasting me back. Icy blades continue to rip through my scales, but as I grow to half as thick as she is tall, they begin to scrape off, rather than pierce through.

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  The storm gathers around her again, spiralling into a tornado of glacial winds. I impact the ground, but spring back at the albanic long before her blast is ready to unleash.

  Unlike my first fight against sapients, our roles have been reversed; now, my opponent is the one able to float in the air and I’m forced to arc up towards her. It’s a disadvantageous position — one made worse by my still lacking size — but I don’t hesitate to attack.

  My jaw widens, giving the albanic a view of my fangs already the size of her arms. Each razor carried by the wind now slams into my side, leaving small nicks in my scales and nothing more.

  The albanic reacts predictably, shifting to the side to avoid my trajectory, but I spin and slam my tail down on top of her. She hits the earth in an instant. Already with the weight advantage, my strike buried her in a crater of ice.

  The twister explodes along my tail, no longer gathered by the sapient beneath me. Thick, cold crystals spread over me, covering me in a skin of ice. I fall through the air, encased.

  At least, until my growth shatters the crystallised second skin.

  In the crater below, the albanic stands again. She glares up at my form with distaste. It’s not the hate of one opponent to another, but the annoyance towards prey that doesn’t know its place. The very thought enrages me.

  I hit the ground — sending a heavy quake through the rock — and launch forward. The albanic doesn’t move. Instead, she raises a hand and at the same time an intense gust crashes into my side, my mouth, ready to bite into the woman’s torso, fills with ice and cold wind.

  The wind only pushes me slightly off course, and I try to swing my tail again, but she steps out of range, the wind gracefully lifting her back into the air.

  I crash into the earth again, disoriented. My body tears through the surface frost, only to find the rock beneath the soil just as chilled, and not the reprieve I’d hoped. My tongue aches. My fangs burn at their roots, feeling like they’ve become so brittle a single touch could shatter them. I try to shut my jaw, but find it sluggish to respond; the chill seeping too deeply through the muscle.

  The albanic has returned to the sky, floating higher than before, yet still looks down on me as if I’m nothing more than an annoyance. I find her eyes flicker across my form with more care than before, but overall, her attitude remains the same.

  Would it not be better to flee? I don’t need to risk fighting a creature as strong as her. I’m not in my distorted tunnels. This is not the optimal place for me to fight. An open aired cavern like this one is far more beneficial to this sapient than myself, and I have no reason to play this to her benefit.

  The wind gathers around her. The very environment listening to her will, ready to crash down and kill me all in one blow, while she watches over and enjoys playing with her prey.

  The lynx flashes over the albanic, her haughty stance the same as the Titan.

  No. She is not beyond me. She is a challenger I must eradicate. If I’m unable to beat this simple albanic, then how can I ever hope to threaten the lynx? She is sapient; head-on attacks are never going to work. I need to do better. I need to think my efforts through properly. No longer can I rely only on my size and strength alone. I must use the same tools she does.

  I work my jaw, trying to overcome the cold permeating the muscles. Considering the blow she took earlier, she’s stronger than her small ape-like appearance reveals. That should have crushed every bone in her body… and yet she got of with mere bruising. I need my mouth. I need my fangs.

  The storm converges around the albanic again, spinning faster as it tears through the air around her. As fast as the wind moves — engulfing the air with the sound of its shrieks — it should cut through her, but as always the frozen wind treats her with a gentle caress despite everything.

  With my body now as thick as she is tall, and far longer than that beam of hers, there will be no dodging. I can either brace, or take her on.

  I snap off the earth. The sudden spring crushes all the rock beneath flattened and frozen soil. Each progressive shock, louder and more powerful than the last.

  As I spear through the air, the blizzard around the albanic finally compresses to a point and explodes directly at me. The powerful wave freezes air as it passes, creating shards of ice from nothing, only for them to tear apart and be carried along with the wind. A blast powerful enough I would never want to feel it again, even at my full size.

  And yet I don’t deviate.

  I tear through the air, spearing along the path of the frostbitten gale. Before it collides, I strain my spatial muscle again, I create three bends before me of the same, larger size I forced into existence before. Both entrance and exit pair of each distortion appears side by side, creating six holes in space to reflect the tempest.

  It is not enough to obscure my body entirely, but the mitigation allows me to brush off the effects and continue soaring towards the albanic. The reflected gust slides over her form without consequence, but the widening of her eyes as she realises what happened is a memory I will never forget.

  The wind gathers above her and tries to push her out of my path again, but I’m ready. Without realising, her wind pushes a leg down through a bend I formed beneath it. She stares, uncomprehending at her own leg rising before her face.

  She jolts to a stop, doubling over as her leg suddenly wants to stop entirely while the rest of her body still pushes down with the wind. So great is her disorientation, that I reach her without any retaliation. I snap my jaw shut. My fangs sink deep through flesh and breach the other side. One passes through her chest, while the other scrapes bone of her thigh.

  Her scream is just as delicious as the blood that flows over my tongue.

  Her liquid life is unsurprisingly just as cold as the energy flowing along her skin. Temperature low enough it should be frozen, but it remains a liquid.

  The screams reach a fevered pitch as my fangs widen while still buried deep within her. Not only widening the wounds, but stretching her leg away from her torso.

  Before long, my mouth is once more flooded with a freezing chill. I lose feeling and in a rapid motion, the albanic snaps herself out of my hold. She floats high into the sky as I fall.

  Upon hitting the ground, I find feeling coming back to my mouth quicker than before. Her energy less effective against my strengthened body.

  “You will die.”

  Her words fill with such intense presence that even an animal unable to understand language could understand her meaning. The albanic halts in the air. All air around her stills as a chill seeps through my scales even without wind. The energy flowing along her skin rapidly intensify, shining where they didn’t before. Her eyes land on me again, glowing with unrepressed power.

  She’s finally serious. No longer treating me as something lesser.

  But that’s fine; I’m twice as thick as she is tall and as long as the clearing.

  I’ve reached my full size.

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