I awakened to a dark sky, a cool breeze, and an all-consuming sensation that something was wrong. I may have screamed–I don’t really know. Those first few moments were a jumbled mess of feelings that even hours, perhaps days later, I struggled to interpret.
After the initial flood of…everything subsided, I just lied there staring up at the stars. I searched for the moon, but it had either fallen below the horizon already or it was hidden somehow. Maybe that was what was wrong? The moon was gone.
I should probably go and find it…
My attention turned back to the world around me. I hadn’t fully processed exactly where I was before my mind was distracted, so I resolved to do that now. With an incongruously immense effort, I managed to roll myself over onto my side–where my eyes immediately met those of another person.
I blinked.
He did not.
Confused, I reached my arm out to touch him, just to see if he was actually real. My finger made contact with the man’s cheek, but the poke did not elicit any sort of reaction. He felt real, and he looked it too, but he didn’t move at all so I must have been mistaken.
I rolled fully over onto my stomach and got both arms beneath me, and I put all thoughts of the thing-that-looked-like-a-man behind him. If he wasn’t real, then he wasn’t worth thinking about at all.
But when my efforts to marshal my stubborn body finally had me on my feet, and I got a good look around the rocky ravine in which I found myself, I found more of those not-people littered across the ground in every direction. There were around a dozen–both not-men and not-women of no distinguishing similarities apart from the fact that they weren’t real.
Their abundance did not make them anymore worth my consideration, though. I turned my attention to the rest of the ravine. The two sides were quite steep, and they didn’t look too secure, so that couldn’t be my path away from here. Following the ravine in one direction, I saw it taper off to a close a little ways back, but the other direction looked entirely unobstructed.
I started walking.
I had absolutely no idea where to look to find the moon, but if I picked a direction, there was a chance that it would show up eventually.
Further down the path, the ravine opened up wide to a mostly featureless rocky slope that was only interrupted by the occasional corpse of a tree that had long since withered away. Off in the distance, I could see a mountain, with more just like it in any particular direction. Even the ravine I had just exited and the slope I now stood on was part of a mountain.
I kept walking–descending, for there was little else to do. Nothing I could see in any direction struck me as significant. Maybe if I found people, real ones, they could point me toward the moon.
A few minutes later, my foot caught against a rock and I tripped forward. I caught myself before I collapsed fully to the ground and scraped my palms against the rough slope. It didn’t hurt, so it didn’t matter.
When I refocused, however, my eyes met those of a woman below me. We both blinked, and though the dim light of the stars did not help at all, I quickly took in her features. She had long, dark hair and a pale complexion on a thin, but muscled frame, squinted, suspicious eyes, slightly pointed ears sticking out into the open, and she was wearing plain clothing.
As I studied her, she studied me as well, and she certainly looked real. I stuck my hand out just the same to be sure. She mirrored that action. And when the tips of our fingers touched, the image rippled and clouded until I could no longer see her.
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So that’s what I look like…
I got up and kept walking. That experience had been interesting, but a reflection wasn’t any more significant than not-people. It couldn’t point me anywhere.
I made it to the foot of the mountain around thirty minutes later. The ravine really wasn’t that far up. The entire time, I had walked at a comfortable pace, so the distance covered was anything but great.
At the bottom, I found a river running between the mountains, and a thought occurred to me. People often gather around water, right? Maybe if I followed the river, I could get some directions.
Before I even started down that path, I was interrupted by the sound of loose rocks falling down the slope behind me. Curious, I turned around to see what was going on and for the third time this night, I met a set of eyes. These ones were yellow and easy to see in the dark. The thing they belonged to screeched and jumped.
In the air, the moment before it hit me, I got a better look at it. The creature was sort of shaped like a person; it had four limbs and a head, and the proportions were quite similar to my own, but that is mostly where the similarities stopped. The creature had grey skin and a wild look on its savage face, and it didn’t wear any clothes.
It also had lengthy talons and sharp fangs. The last thing I saw was those fangs tearing into my throat while the talons came for my eyes, then everything went dark.
I awakened somewhere void of all light but for the smallest trickle in the distance, with the sound of running water echoing around me. The feeling of wrongness was still there, so I knew I couldn’t stay here for long.
Getting back to my feet was tricky in the pervading dark, and my body had gone back to being stubborn as well. Still, I managed. The path forward was clear. Wherever I’d found myself, I could surely find the way out by following the light.
I’d forgotten about the creature.
A growl rang out and bounced off the surroundings, distorting its source of origin in my senses. I whirled around, looking for the thing that brought me here, and its bright yellow eyes immediately gave it away. But it was moving fast, right toward me.
It jumped and I threw myself back to the ground. I’d only just gotten up, but I wasn’t all that interested in letting the creature have its way again. I had places to be.
I wasted no time in getting back to my feet after it flew by overhead, then I turned again to face it. Once the creature landed, it whirled as well to keep me within its field of view and we eyed each other.
It hadn’t expected me to dodge its lunge, and now it was cautious.
I didn’t have time for that, so I took the initiative and dashed forward. The creature yowled and backed up slightly, but that momentary act of cowardice must have enraged it, because it leaped at me again a second later with its talons held low.
We each quickly close the intervening distance in a mounting head-on collision. I looked into the creature’s eyes and saw the bestial satisfaction when it thought its victory was near.
Got you.
Just before the two of us would have collided, I ducked down and moved to the side. The creature’s right talons passed inches by my face and I latched onto their base with one hand, still moving.
In the greatest effort I’d made since I awakened earlier, I spun with the creature in hand and smashed it into the rocky wall as hard as I could. It yelped in pain, but I wasn’t done. I closed the distance again and lashed out with my own empty hand in the shape of a talon, catching it in its ribs and producing slight lacerations.
That wasn’t enough. The creature fell to the ground and immediately started getting back up. But with the hold I still maintained on its upper-right limb, I had no trouble drawing in close once more. This time, I swung with the creature’s own talons and buried them in its eyes, up to their base.
The creature cried, twitched, and then stopped moving altogether.
A moment later, I leaned back, satisfied that the fight was over.
[*ding You have slain [Ghoul - level 146]!]
The ding of the creature’s death notification immediately commanded my attention. I looked it over, but the words meant nothing to me. It might as well have not said anything at all. However, the words that followed were different. For once, I found something significant.
[Astraea Kaion - Revenant]
[HP: N/A]
[MP: N/A]
[STR: 645]
[DEX: 644]
[VIT: 419]
[WIS: N/A]
[INT: 323]