Darkness.

Darkness was everywhere, warm and thick with a sort of oppressive atmosphere that made it hard to move.

I gave a tentative wiggle, trying to stretch myself out in the blanketing heat and heavy weight that I had woken up into, but there was very little movement. At most I could give a twitch here or wriggle there, but aside from that I was unable to do much. If it wasn’t for the fact I had definitely moved myself just a bit I would think I was actually incapable of movement entirely. I had moved, however, and I focused all of my attention onto that fact as I kept trying to wriggle out of the dirt.

Dirt.

That was right, I was buried in the earth, covered completely over. I had the vaguest memory of a leftover sensation that I had once been happy and content to just lay here before, but that was back when I was still asleep. Maybe it had even been before I was born? I still wasn’t sure if I had been alive before and was only just alive now, or if it had been a slow sort of awakening. I had impressions of before realizing it was dark, but that had seemed to suddenly change all at once.

If I had been happy buried in the earth before, then something about that had changed now that I was aware of where I was. It was just a little bit too close. I needed more room. I had to stretch myself out. I had to reach the light.

Light.

After all this time buried in the darkness and the earth, all I wanted was to see the light and maybe feel a cool breeze. I wanted to smell the scent of something other than dirt and decay, maybe even eat something. All sorts of images of food flashed through my mind, all the things that I could eat, and I wanted to eat them all.

As it turned out, now that I gave it half a thought, I was hungry. Ravenous really. I could eat the whole world I was so hungry.

The desire to move combined with the fact that I was hungry caused some sort of reaction, it seemed, because one moment I was buried in nothing but pitch black and then the next there was a flash of red light that seemed to glow out from somewhere deep inside me. The light shone so brightly in the darkness that I could make out the texture of the dirt that I was buried in on all sides, as well as the tiny roots tunneling through against my right side.

Expand?

The thought shot through me, something that was my voice but wasn’t, like a subconscious thought in a voice that only bore a vague resemblance to the one I had already decided was mine. I was curious how exactly I was expected to “expand”, or even how to reply to that, but I focused very hard on the idea of wanting to expand, of wanting to agree.

[Tunneling].

The red light grew brighter as the voice rang out from inside of me again, and that red light that shone from within me got even brighter for a moment, almost blinding me, before something shifted and changed. Automatically, without me even trying, my body began to move as I shoveled the dirt and pulled it back towards me instead of away. The taste of soil began to fill me, and with each swallow of dirt I felt myself growing more and more tired. I was using energy to eat up the dirt, which made sense in a way, but how much dirt did I need to go through before I had enough room to move and seek out the sun?

Not too much, it seemed, as just as I was on the verge of passing out and into the darkness I awoke from I saw a glimpse of a bright, white, light piercing through the darkness. It cut through me in a way that was painful, like something was stabbing into me over and over again. It was beautiful in its own grinding sort of way, but it burned so badly that it seemed to flash me back awake.

I wriggled backwards and into the shadows, away from the direct light of the sun, just as it seemed I had run out of energy to do so. Floating somewhere between mind numbing panic and the exhaustion at having used up all of my current reserves on something that had turned out to be so stupid in the end, I struggled to stay awake.

It turned out that dirt wasn’t actually food. 

Despite eating so much of it, I was still absolutely hungry, but I couldn’t leave my hole. Sunlight seemed to be much too much, and I was far too tired to put any real thought into the conundrum. If only that voice would come back, if only I knew what I was supposed to do, or what my situation was, then maybe I could begin to puzzle out how to move forward.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Since I could do none of those things, however, I chose instead to slowly, inch by inch, move the bulk of myself toward a tree root that I had unearthed as I chewed. It was the source of those small vein-like roots I had spotted earlier, and I found myself grateful it was so close. It seemed as if rocks and roots were just a bit too tough to digest for now, so they had been left behind. In this case it suited me just fine, and I wedged myself down between the roots so that I would be safe and out of sight of the sun in case it chose to shine my way again.

That red light still shone in the small hole I had eaten myself out of, pulsating softly on the smooth walls. It was coming from me, I realized. It dimmed as I grew tired, and brightened as I tried to shake myself awake again. It was good that it got darker the more tired I was. I would hate to be caught unaware before I could figure out how to protect myself, and that red light would have definitely given me away.

I let all the tension leave me as I relaxed and readied myself for sleep so that I could actually recharge some energy. I had a feeling, gut instinct if you will, that since I couldn’t venture out into the light that I would need to expand backwards and make the hole larger so that I could lure something in to where I was. 

The question after that, of course, was how to go about killing it.

I wasn’t exactly strong, it seemed. Moving just a little bit had been one of the hardest things I’d had to do since I woke up, and I was counting my compulsion to devour dirt. I really regretted now all that useless wriggling I had done when I first realized I was buried. If I had known I was using up precious energy just for that, then I would have stopped much sooner and focused instead on using my wits to get out. 

As much as I wanted to get started on figuring out how to eat, it was looking like I would have to take things one step at a time. I didn’t have enough energy to do much more than think about things, and I had used up the very last drop of my reserves to move myself into the tree roots. Now it was time for sleep. 

If I was right, which I hoped I was, I should regain some energy slowly over time as I rested. It would be so much easier to figure out what to do next if I had some idea of how much energy I had and how long it would take to restore. Not knowing what I had at my disposal had caused me a lot of trouble so far, and I would kill for the chance to not make that mistake again.

Purchase [Appraisal]?

There was that voice again. Like a thought, pulsating through me. My own but not my own. 

I wasn’t sure how I was expected to purchase anything, I didn’t have pockets or any kind of currency that I knew of, but just in case I focused hard on the idea of saying yes to that question. 

Before it had been automatic. I thought of expanding, and I ate through the dirt to reach my goal. If I followed that train of logic then focusing on saying yes would have a similar result, right? 

Something seemed to hit me, like a weight inside my mind by not my body, and I felt it drain something from me. Something from some deep part of myself that I wasn’t even aware of, somewhere outside but inside myself both at the same time. 

It was all very confusing and complicated, and it was probably harder to understand given I felt like I would pass out at any moment. My thoughts felt barely pieced together as it was, and that was without trying to understand weird voices from inside and other things like that.

[Appraisal] purchased. Points remaining: 10

So it seemed like that had worked out for me, I managed to purchase that ability. It would probably come in handy for figuring out my surroundings later, if it did what it seemed like it did at least. It would be terrible if it turned out I had just wasted some of my points, whatever those were, on purchasing something that would just tell me the value of things. What need did I have of that? I didn’t have pockets!

Exhausted and somehow even more hungry than before, I settled into my new home in the tree roots to have a proper nap. As much as I wanted to start testing out [Appraisal], I was too tired to even focus on any one thing at a time. My attention kept drifting about as I relaxed myself, darting from thing to thing in my immediate area like a bee looking for nectar.

A breeze blew in, bringing with it the scent of fresh growing things that made me absolutely ravenous again. Those crisp green smells seemed like they belonged to things that would be absolutely delicious, at least when I could finally focus on figuring out how to properly move and get food. The air was sweet and fresh, much cooler and lighter than how oppressed I had felt when I was still buried. Even if the sun had burned and cut through me, at least one of my goals had been a good one it seemed.

Air good. Sun bad. Lesson learned.

Satisfied that my first day awake hadn’t been a complete disaster, I let myself finally begin to fade away toward the sweet abyss of sleep and rest. I could feel my awareness dropping away, all of it falling back to the single point that was the bulk of me that I had wedged into the tree roots.

A single, small, red crystal.

As the red light faded away and my vision began to darken, I became aware of a scratching sound from somewhere nearby. An animal maybe? Something walking by? It was close enough I couldn’t help but to pay attention, the light returning briefly as I stretched my awareness to the edge of the hole, stopping just shy of the bright pool of sunlight spilling in. Whatever it was it sounded almost like it was meandering about, not looking for anything in particular.

That was a relief. I faded back in and let the light go out as my vision quickly became nothing but blackness. There was nothing to be worried about, after all I was tucked into a hole and wedged behind tree roots like I was. I was safe for the moment, even if I was hungry, I would be fine. I was sure of it.