Thunder and lightning crashing around them would have absolutely terrified a normal person. A tree burst into flames, only for the flames to be blasted away by a massive thunderclap a moment later. A normal person would have been hiding, terrified in their village, waiting for someone to save them, or for the embrace of oblivion to release them from their terror. A tree was smashed by a massive tail and crashed to the ground -

And a figure, so small in comparison to the mighty beast that was the source of the devastation, rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the tee lbs that would have pinned him down and spelled his doom. Despite the narrow brush with death, there was a wide, brilliant grin splitting the man's face as he came to his feet. He hadn't bothered drawing his sword - there was nothing the simple iron blade would be able to do to harm this glorious creature. He needed range, needed a distraction of some kind.

Erik had no earthly clue just why this massive winged serpent was so enraged. He had woken from... Well. From what most would normally consider a permanent sleep, back at the smoldering remnants of a campfire that he had slept at a few days ago - really, the last time he slept. He had plunged off the side of a cliff he was trying to work his way across - some of the stone beneath him had crumbled away at a rather inopportune time for him, and he had fallen down to the sea below. Or rather, to the large and pointed spires of rock that emerged from the sea below. The implement had been rather painful, but at least he had expired quickly enough.

But so, he had woken up at the last place he had slept - and found a destructive beast raging across the forest he had been in just days before. A normal person would have been terrified in this situation - but a manic smile had spread across Erik's face. How fortuitous for him - this thing was definitely large enough to have a Grand Soul inside of it, which meant he wouldn't have to hunt down a large amount of forest animals to regain his Humanity. And it was already attacking, which meant there would be no need to feel bad about defending himself.

So to keep the crazed serpent from leaving the forest, and attacking the Flame only knew what else, Erik had picked up anything he could grab and thrown it at the thing, getting the winged beast to focus its attention on him. The lightning plunging from the sky to hit the ground was nothing new to the sage - in fact, it was actually more normal than the fights he had been in before, because this thing seemed to just generate the lightning and call it to the area, it didn't have the fine control necessary to directly target him.

In the end, t was just another big winged lizard. It didn't even have claws with which to attack, just its tail - and the occasional blast of lightning from its mouth. But for a man who had once fought dragons, dodging lightning was just as easy as dodging fire. Meaning, he had taken a few shocks, but avoided the brunt of the damage. And hey, he was already well used to electrocuting himself - messed up Lightning Miracles tended to shock the unfortunate caster.

Flame curse it, it was just his luck that this world didn't have soapstones. Summoning a phantom to help in this battle would have been a huge boon. He needed to get the time to get his great bow out and start shooting this thing. Even if they were of iron, the hard metal spear-arrows would hurt even this thing. Still. It was just a big snake with wings. He would kill it eventually - it might take him a few tries, and he would almost certainly die repeatedly to this thing before he figured out its patterns of attack and its weak spot - but Erik was proof positive that 'the bigger they are, the hader they fall' was an effective strategy.

So it was just a matter of time. And he certainly had plenty of that to spare. So he dodged another tree just as it was set ablaze, and waited for his opportunity.