Free Web NovelThe smoke horse kept trotting. Its red eyes hadn't left Liam's face.
"I've only ever heard stories," Elizabeth said. "Townspeople talk about them like they're weather patterns. Spring used to…"
Elizabeth stopped. He heard her breath hitch, a small wet sound. "God, I miss that foot-fetish weirdo. Why did I just say that? Liam, focus. They're rare. Like, stupid rare. And they regenerate if you damage them; they just reform. Immediately. Nothing sticks. And they're secretive. They don't approach people; they don't, ugh, they don't do this."
Liam's arm was still out. The horse cheese puff was close enough now that he could feel the air around it change, cooler, heavier, the way the air feels before rain when the pressure drops and everything goes quiet. It smelled like nothing. Like the absence of smell. Like breathing through cloth.
It stopped an arm's length from his outstretched hand. Its muzzle was made of shifting white, and when it lowered its head toward his palm, the mist didn't burn or bite. It felt like putting his hand through cold steam from a kettle, it was damp, faintly electric, and then gone.
The horse marshmallow blew a soft breath across his fingers. More mist, warm this time, curled between his knuckles before it dissolved.
Liam looked at it. It looked at him.
"Hi," he said.
The vapour equine didn't blink. It couldn't, given that its entire orbital structure was composed of localised humidity. It just stood there in the quiet plains, the white condensation of its body swirling lazily in the crisp morning air, continuing to breathe that damp kettle air onto Liam's open palm.
Liam's analytical mind, typically operating at a blazing five hundred frames per second, ran through the available tactical options. Standard taming protocols in this world required some sugar and a pat, but his high-tier protein bribe had just been vaporised by a volcano horse, and his charisma stat was currently working overtime just to keep his party from completely dissolving into a localised civil war.
This thing before him wasn't a standard monster. It was an environmental anomaly. A living weather pattern that literally unrendered solid matter and deleted the shadows of river stones. You couldn't negotiate with a sentient void using conventional methods. To bind an entity that existed outside the standard laws of physics, one had to establish an immediate standard of mutual psychological damage.
So, Liam did the only logical thing a smart, calculating chef could do.
He leaned straight forward, opened his jaw, and bit the fog vape horse directly on its shifting, misty nose.
His teeth sank deep into the swirling white condensation. It didn't feel like flesh, or bone, or hair. It felt like aggressively chomping down on a pressurised block of dry ice laced with raw static electricity. A freezing, numbing shock shot instantly through his incisors, vibrating straight up into his skull. It tasted faintly of a wet, overcast Tuesday afternoon and old iron.
The smoke stallion froze.
Its flat red eyes, the exact shade of dried blood, widened into massive, circular saucers of absolute bewilderment. For a single, breathless second, the entire white fog composing its neck and mane stopped moving entirely. It was a rare, ancient force of nature, a creature that most people would consider a mythical omen, and a white-haired wolf guy in soot-stained leather gear had just casually marched up and taken a bite out of its face.
The condensation pony's nostrils flared, a heavy plume of white vapour exploding from its snout. It tilted its head at a sharp, dangerous angle, leaned straight over Liam's outstretched arm, and bit him right back on the shoulder.
CRUNCH.
The sheer force of the pre-emptive chomp echoed through the quiet valley like a breaking branch.
The entire clearing instantly dissolved into absolute, unbridled chaos.
"LIAM!" Elizabeth shrieked. Her cat ears snapped so violently backward that they were flat against her skull in sheer panic. She lunged forward, her boots tearing up the dead grass as her hand instinctively flew to the hilt of her blade, her face turning completely pale.
Rogue choked violently on his own breath, letting out a horrific hacking sound as he nearly fell completely off his mount / hobby horse, what ever barnaby was. His ears turned a deep, shameful crimson of intense secondhand embarrassment and shock. He kicked the dirt in pure, unbridled frustration, desperately looking around toward Mirra while raising an eyebrow, silently begging her to validate that what they were seeing wasn't real life.
Mirra's sharp eyes were wide, a faint, uncharacteristic pink dusting her mature cheeks. But instead of returning Rogue's look, she kept her gaze locked entirely on Liam's back, completely and sadly ignoring Rogue's existence altogether.
Only Jace remained entirely unbothered. He slowly leaned his weight back against the sleek flank of his shadow horse, crossed his arms over his chest, and let out a long, casual whistle.
"Honestly," Jace muttered, shaking his head with a smug, jaded expression. "I'm not even surprised. If he didn't try to physically assault the local wildlife within ten minutes of arriving in a zone, I'd assume he was a shapeshifter. Let them cook; they are clearly meant for each other," he said as he waved his arms around.
A massive, crimson-red warning block slammed directly into the centre of Liam's vision, pulsing with the violent intensity of a critical system meltdown.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE RECEIVED]
Damage Taken: 99% of Maximum HP
Current Status: 1% HP (Absolute Threshold)
Target Damage Dealt: 1% (You managed to scratch an anomaly. Good job.)
The text flashed aggressively, lighting up his retinas in a blood-red haze. Liam's vision began to blur at the edges as his biological functions hit the absolute danger zone.
Immediately, the shadows beneath his boots began to boil and tear open like wet paper. A thick, suffocating wave of dark pink mana flooded the grass as Midnight's form violently glitched into reality. Her small dark wings flared wide, rigid with a level of frantic, unhinged protective rage that threatened to snap the local server's physics engine in half. Her eyes were completely bloodshot, her tongue out, drooling slightly from the sheer, volatile adrenaline of seeing her master harmed.
[Tool Tip]:
Status: HP: 1%
Target Atmosphere: Numb & Faintly Electric
The system notes that while the fog horse tasted like a wet, overcast Tuesday afternoon, its retaliatory chomp successfully wiped out 99% of Liam's maximum HP, proving that you cannot assault localized humidity without immediate physical consequences.
The Unbothered Spectator Catalyst: Jace completely separating himself from the party's panic to enthusiastically wave his arms and declare the two "meant for each other" has unlocked the [Jaded Wingman Buff]. This completely synchronized with Rogue's total cognitive collapse, as his desperate attempt to look at Mirra for validation resulted in her completely and sadly ignoring his existence to stare at Liam's bleeding shoulder.
The Glitching Dragon Rage Overdrive: Liam hitting the absolute 1% health threshold has violently torn open the local shadow architecture, forcing Midnight to glitch into reality with her tongue out, small dragon wings flaring, and eyes completely bloodshot with feral protective instincts. The server notes her unhinged draconic fury is currently queuing up a 2,000% True Physics Damage payload fueled entirely by raw, firsthand existential embarrassment for the horse.
