Dust poured over me like a great wave and I was immediately thrown to the ground. My face scraped against the cobblestone street as the dust continued onwards and panic began to take hold of me.
This was bad, very bad. My mind moved a mile a minute and I gauged my options. There were, truthfully, very few things I could do in this situation.
One option was to give up.
It was a simple option, and with every second I spent submerged beneath the dust, it became more and more appealing. It would be easy, it always was. I could simply tell myself that I had lives to spare, that there was never a chance of me actually escaping this town and that I should simply be happy with the gains I'd already made since arriving here.
But that was the option of fools.
A man who doesn't fear death eventually embraces it like a friend, and I will make no such mistake. The day I do is the day I stop caring about being alive, and then my whole journey to this world would be worthless.
Small cuts began to appear all over my body as I was pelted by dirt and dust. Vines and roots tried to dig out the ground beneath my feet, but they moved slowly under the abuse of the dust. I wouldn't last nearly long enough for that plan to work.
Which left my only other option, I'd have to rely on something unreliable.
There were few ways to defeat something with no substance, which seemed to be exactly what this monster was.
It was a difficult feat, and I would've sighed if I'd had the leeway to. I'd really wanted to read that spell book before trying anything like this. I'd need to rely solely on my talent in magic, but what did it truly mean to have talent akin to that goddess?
With effort I stretched out my arms, blood flying off my body and into the storm of dust as I opened my body to the mana all around me.
At first nothing happened, and then it felt like a trickle of something was entering my body, and then a stream, and then a torrent.
It was intoxicating.
It was grand.
It was killing me.
My magic had no shape to take, so it was simply building up towards an unseen cap. I needed to give it a purpose soon, or it was likely to end me far before the monster of dust did.
My mind raced. My magic was that of illusions, lies told to the world, and who out there is better at lies than me? And the best lies are those structured around the truth.
So I quickly decided to go with something I could picture very, very clearly.
I settled my mind as much as I could, and then I pictured it in my head, a memory of my past that I usually tried my best to forget. And despite that effort to bury it, it was still crystal clear in my head even after all these years.
---------------------
I woke up to the smoke detector in my room going off, and I quickly became panicked. From the second I'd opened my eyes my house had already begun to rapidly burn down around me. It had to have been burning for a long, long while. I could hear the screams of my brother, my father, my mother just down the hall. At the time, I wondered how I'd managed to sleep through so much noise.
The flames almost seemed to wrap around my room as they threatened to consume me. So I quickly jumped from my bed and ran to the far side of my room where I proceeded to struggle with getting the window open. I'd almost never opened it, and after years of neglect it had gotten stuck in that position.
I struggled and pulled with all my might as the air around me quickly turned to poison. Fire licked at my legs, it burned. I screamed and hit my fists against the window. Then I moved to open it again, and by some miracle, it did.
I lived on the second floor, but I didn't have time to think. The fire had no consideration for my indecision and was eating away at the clothes on my very back. So I jumped, and landed on the grass where I proceeded to break my leg and roll around on the ground to put out the flames.
I was the only one to escape my house.
My family, our staff, our men. They'd all died.
---------------------
I started with the most distinct aspect of my memory, my illusion, my lie, the one that was currently blaring in my mind. Simply put, I couldn't breathe, the dust prevented it. So I quickly applied that feeling to my magic and the area around me, and all of a sudden the dust seemed to flow ever so differently. It no longer scratched and nipped away at my skin. It was confused, and likely hadn't had the concept of breathing its entire life up to this point.
It was a start, but it was far from enough. So I further built upon the bricks that I'd laid, and added the thing I'd been unfortunate enough to be so closely acquainted with in this world and the last.
Slowly, heat permeated my surroundings and the sensation of my flesh burning entered my body. It was the effect I'd wanted, and the dust moved about sporadically in a panic. Preferably the illusion would have only affected the monster, but I had no time to learn precision like that. This spell would be for everything, including myself.
I quickly moved on. Up to this point I'd only applied feelings to my surroundings, but the creature attacking me was likely having trouble understanding them.
It was very clearly not intelligent, if it was, I'd be dead. Simple as that. It was just a monster, and monsters don't fear the air around them or the pain it holds. They need something concrete to fear.
So with a smile and blood flowing down my face I pictured it one last time. The flames that killed my family, the flames that burned my body, and the flames I'd used to kill the man responsible.
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Thirty two years ago.
A man sat tied up in an old warehouse. He was shaking, probably scared out of his mind. Which was to be expected. Afterall, he was going to be burned to death today.
I stood over him, a group of fifty or so men standing behind me.
The tied up man had tears flowing down his face, "Marcus please, I raised you like a son! I fed you, I gave you a roof to live under, I was even going to give you the family business one day!"
I glanced over my shoulder towards the group of men standing behind me, "I'm fairly sure that the 'family business' has been mine for quite a while. You were just to drunk and idiotic to notice."
"What?"
I slowly leaned over my adoptive father, "Do you know why you're going to die here today?"
He hesitated, and then slowly shook his head.
I smiled brightly, "Your memory must be rather bad then, father."
"You don't remember drugging me and my family when we had you over for dinner some ten years ago? Did you also forget starting that fire downstairs? Because you're not going to believe this, but I actually do remember."
My smile widened, "And I'm actually rather upset about it."
His eyes slowly widened as panic truly began to take hold of his body, "I- I didn't do any of that!" You have the wrong guy! I loved your father, he was like a brother to me!"
"You're actually lying? To me of all people? You make me live this life, and you expect me to not see right through a pisspoor lie like that?"
"Where's your evidence?"
I outstretched my arms, "Where isn't it? Many of the men in this very room sold you out, you have the motive and you've always been nothing but a murderous bastard. I know you, and you'd killed anyone if you thought you could benefit from it. I've seen it, I've lived it."
"What d–"
I held up a hand and he quickly shut his mouth.
"Do you know what makes me truly angry though? It's not that you killed my family. Oh, but don't get me wrong, I'm livid about that, but what truly infuriates me above all else, is that you let me live."
I leaned in closer, "Did you not think this would happen if I found out? Did you think that raising me would absolve you of your crime? As if raising your 'brother's' child after murdering him would somehow make you less of traitorous pig?"
I stared deep into his fear laden eyes, "You half assed the job, and this is the result. You should have killed me when you had the chance. Sadly for you, I don't half ass my jobs."
Several of my men poured gasoline over the squirming man.
Tears flowed down his face, "Please! Marcus, don't do this. We can work this out, you need me!"
I ignored him and pulled out a matchbook from my pocket.
"My family didn't get the privilege of having their killer in the room when they died. They died unaware of who and why they'd been murdered. As thanks for raising me, I'll give you what they didn't have."
With that, I struck the match and dropped it onto my 'father'.
---------------------
I stood up in the flames, letting them wash over me like holy fire. They hurt, they truly did, but it was something I'd simply have to get over. It wasn't real, it wouldn't kill me. It only felt like it would.
The cloud of dust quickly retreated from the flames and watched me from the edges, its blood red mouth and eyes forming into an expression resembling fear and confusion.
I smiled with blood-stained teeth, and took a step towards the monster, and the mass of dust actually moved away from me. I took one more step, and that was all it took for the creature to make a full on retreat.
It crashed through buildings and splintered rock in its mad bid to escape me, and eventually it did. I could no longer see it, the flames surrounding me subsided, and for the first time in several minutes I was able to take a deep long breath.
And off in another dimension, a demon watched the whole event with a great smile on his face.
"Look at that."
His assistant suddenly appeared beside him, "Yes, what is it?"
The air in front of them showed Marcus surrounded by flames with a smile on his face taking slow steps towards the cloud of dust.
"Don't you think he looks more like a demon than I do?"