"Hahh… hahh." Nancy's breath came out in sharp, trembling bursts as she crouched behind the thick trunk of a towering frost-covered tree. She slid down until her back pressed fully against the bark, her legs weak and shaking beneath her. Every inhale stung her lungs with cold air, every exhale turned to fog that drifted in front of her face like pale ghosts.
Her body was finally feeling the full price of what she had just done.
After fleeing the crater and reaching deeper into the frozen forest, she had deactivated every enhancement and strengthening spell she'd stacked onto herself. Her dragon wings fizzled into motes of shimmering blue light before disappearing entirely. The gleaming scales that armored her body receded beneath her skin. Her right arm, once morphed into a dragon's limb, shrank and twisted painfully back into a human arm.
And with each spell she dispelled her exhaustion surged tenfold.
