AN - 12 - Fire

Liu clenched his fists without even knowing he had done so. Then he closed his eyes and stood perfectly still.

“Yes,” he said. “I can feel it.”

Incredibly, greenish-black reptilian scales began to sprout from his arms. Smoke gusted from his nose. His eyes peeled open, glowing like red lightbulbs, their pupils horizontal slits.

The Dragon, an inner voice that was his, yet not his, shouted. Loose the Dragon!

His anger rising within him in a scalding fountain, Liu belched out a gout of flame that torched several of the demons and sent them scattering like meteors in some stellar cataclysm. The others flew off as well, their jeering howls of laughter curdling to fearful, defeated shrieks that soon dwindled out of earshot.

Liu teetered between a giddy exhilaration over the newfound power throbbing within him like a chrysalis trying to shed its cocoon, and fear of what would become of him if that happened. For a moment he was tempted to find out, to let that terrifying yet seductive force burst free of restraint and take over completely... but the urge was quickly suppressed. He was terrified that if he did that, if the transformation were to complete itself, there might be no reversing it.

Closing his eyes again, he wrestled down his anger, willing it back into whatever fiery chamber of his soul it had sprung from. Slowly his features grew calm, the plated scales on his arms smoothing and softening as they reverted to human flesh.

Within minutes, a kind of thick, gluey lassitude settled over him and everything went black.