The first thing he felt was pain, a pure white indescribable fire of agony that no amount of screaming and thrashing around seemed to alleviate. Not that he could thrash around anyway, this realisation was lost on him however as it played second fiddle to the pain.
As he lay there, whimpering and crying, hoping and praying the pain would stop. Begging for the sweet release of death.
But it never came, and he was forced to stay there, for what felt like an eternity. Before long, the fact that he couldn’t move seemed to bring itself to the forefront of his thoughts, along with the pain, and a new urgency to his situation arose, as he panicked and sobbed, tried to move and whimpered.
A third realisation hit not long after, he couldn’t see, the the haze of pain seemed to blanket everything in white, and he accepted that, but as the pain somewhat started to recede, he only saw the pitch black around him.
His fourth realisation hit not longer after that.
He couldn’t remember a goddamn thing.
Not his name, not his history, not even how the fuck he ended up in this situation.
Not a single goddamn fucking thing.
His only consolation was that the pain seemed to be easing up, as much as it could and still feel like he was being ripped apart. The panic only kept at bay by the pain for now. Through his efforts, he managed to get his head to work somewhat, moving a tiny fraction of an amount.
And still he struggled, squirmed and moved. Until he could feel his body again, moving everything by just the smallest of hairs. And he struggled, for an eternity it seemed to him. Fighting tooth and nail, through gritted teeth, threatening to shatter under the force of his clenched jaw, his nails, pulling at the stone, dirt and something that could be grass. It felt like grass, it didn’t smell like grass, but he didn’t really care what it was called, as long as he could struggle against it.
His skin scratched and then cut, as he used even his face in his war for movement. He didn’t care where he was moving to, as long as he moved. Something, at the back of his thoughts telling him that to stay still was to die, inaction was equal to waiting for death and crying unfairness at the end.
Before long, his head bumped into something, something solid, a wall most likely, he struggled to push his body against it and winced as his body protested in pain at what he was doing. But he managed to get himself into a sitting position, his back up against the wall, as he panted for breath, not realising quite how strained he was at his attempts at movement.
It felt like it had taken hours just to get to this point.
As he looked around to see if he could see something, anything in the pitch blackness, he noticed a dull glow, in the exact opposite direction of where he came from and groaned to himself at the fucking luck he seemed to have.
Just a rest, just a few minutes, and then I can try to move that way.
Closing his eyes, he tried to rest up, it wasn’t easy, with the panic still being kept in check at the pain, but eventually, an uneasy rest came to him and he fell asleep.
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He woke up with a start, as he heard growling, somewhere around him, but he couldn’t be sure where it came from, the sound, seeming to echo in the passageway where he was.
Time to move
He found that the pain was manageable, still present, but he could crawl at least, instead of using his body like a fucking worm, to move down the tunnel, towards the dull glow he saw earlier.
It was slow, and even slower because he tried to be quiet, not that it did much, his skin scraped against the dirt and stone, causing an appropriate scraping sound, as he moved.
Just hope whatever is down here with me is deaf, and wont here me like I’m breaking sticks in the wood.
His musings, interrupted by that same growl, once again echoing down the chamber. Still unsure of where it was coming from. He decided to shuffle down the corridor as best as his now four legs would allow him to crawl.
Meter by meter, he came closer to the glow, and his anxiety grew.
For all I know I could be walking into a bad situation here, what if it turns out to be hostile or… or something trying to kill me!
Fuck me, I’m going to die down here, I’m actually going to be fucking eaten by whatever thing is growling and its gonna find me, its gonna find me on all fours basically begging it to eat me.
He started to hyperventilate, as he imagined being torn limb from limb, screaming in agony. Stabbed through the head, bashed with a club, boiled alive in a pot over a fire, his thoughts continuously spiralling into deeper and darker things.
Sobbing as he crawled closer to the glow, he didn’t want to die, he needed to live he needed t-
NO! I refuse to die down here!
Mentally berating himself, promising that whatever found him, would not find him a willing sacrifice and he would go down fighting, as best he could.
Struggling and still sobbing, but managing to get his breathing back under control, he pushed forwards on slightly shakier limbs.
I don’t know if I will manage walking yet, it feels like a mountain is pressing down on my body, the pressure, it feels like I’m going to collapse.
His thoughts, returning to a somewhat normal thinking pattern for the time being, as he pushed onwards once more.
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Getting to a corner in the passageway he could now start making out details in his environment. The passageway looked and felt… ancient… as if this was made many thousands of years ago. And at the same time, it was beautiful, reliefs carved into the rock of what he assumed to be a mountain. The stone relief carvings depicting battles of epic proportions, prosperous cities flourishing, before falling to some or other calamity, before a might battle ensued once more.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Struggling to his feet, he could take in a bit more, and see a bit more of his body.
His bruised and battered and torn body. Cuts and scratches littered his body, with pieces of his body seemingly torn open, but most interesting of all, his wounds seemed have the same dull glow as he could see from the corner.
Interesting… I wonder if wha-
All to quickly his musings where again cut short as the growl reverberated through the corridors.
And this time, it sounded a lot closer.
As fast as his legs could carry him, he shuffled down the last few meters and around the corner of where the glow was coming from.
As he rounded the corner, he had to shield his eyes, as he noticed what seemed to be the heart of whatever was glowing almost blinding him from its intensity.
As he covered his eyes with his hand and recovered, he risked opening his eyes again, but this time no looking directly at the source, and with his hand covering the source in the approximate direction of where he believed the glow to be.
Interesting, although when looking at it directly it almost blinds you, the blinding light doesn’t funnel into the area around it. Everything looks like its lit up by the glow. Would make a good light source though, if I can pry it from its base… would also send a huge message to whatever is round here that I am the one walking around. But if there were monster in these tunnels and they were raised in the darkness… would the light source blind them or help them?
His rational part of his brain seemed to be functioning at least, hopefully it would be enough to see him through this.
Reaching out to touch the thing on the pedestal, he heard a crash behind him. Wheeling round in panic, he saw a nightmare.
A literal thing from a nightmare. A massive body was trying to force its way through the opening, a body made up of coiling shadows, flexing round its body before seeping into the body before abruptly appearing in another place.
Its face, an animal skull of sorts, with ember red eyes that had a fiery glow, its jaw that of a human. As it opened its mouth to breath, a glow came from its throat. The same glow as its eyes, almost as if it had swallowed molten metal and now it was stuck in its mouth.
And the being was gigantic. He couldn’t see the roof from where he stood. Well… he could maybe see the roof if it was maybe 3 meters up, just outside of the orbs full effect.
And it was definitely not a maybe that the nightmare trying to force its way in, was way bigger than the opening.
It had its right arm and upper torso, its head, and its left shoulder through the opening to the passage, and its sheer bulk was forcing its way through the rest and making quick work of it.
He didn’t even think about it, he turned and ran.
And immediately ran straight into the pedestal and fell to the ground.
The orb broke free of its restraints as it crashed to the ground and rolled slightly Infront of him.
He looked at the orb, then back to the monster, that was frantically pushing itself through the opening.
He stood up, scooped the orb, and started running.
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Straight into a forest.
What the fuc-
He immediately crumpled to the floor, feeling a familiar pain, but at the same time, a different one.
This time around it felt like everything on his inside was on fire. But there were no flames.
It didn’t take long for the pain to knock him unconscious.
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When he woke up again, he was still alive luckily and found himself staring at a canopy of leaves.
The pain had receded to a tolerable level, and he was finally able to look around.
The fact that he was still alive meant that the nightmare creature wasn’t around, but now that he looked at himself, he noticed just how much of a bad state he was actually in.
He had no clothes on and his body was crisscrossed in an uncountable number of cuts, scrapes and bruises. But luckily it seemed like nothing was actively bleeding, just earlier gore from whatever happened to him, so there didn’t seem to be the danger of bleeding out.
He was still in the forest and the orb he had picked up was nowhere to be found.
In fact, he didn’t think he would be found out here, it looked like he hadn’t been moved to a place near a road and that meant he would have to survive long enough to hopefully stumble in the direction of one.
That’s the point at which the panic started to set back in. he was at least out of his previous situation. But considering he didn’t have any weapons or clothes meant that he couldn’t hunt food so he would be reduced to foraging, and with his lack of memories and subsequently his lack of knowledge, he wasn’t confident in finding something that wouldn’t poison him.
The lack of clothes meant that if it got too cold, he could likely freeze to death if the temperature dropped to significantly low enough degree.
Dropping to the floor he started to sob. He couldn’t take it anymore, this felt like way to much for him to handle on his own.
Danic… run…
Yelping jumping in surprise from the sudden voice, his eyes met those of a wolf staring straight at him.
But he didn’t take the advice and immediately fell to the floor in fear, scrambling backwards until his back was against a tree branch.
The wolf ran forward at him, snarling at him as it moved.
There was nothing he could do except bring his hands up to try and protect his head.
Suddenly he felt an ambient heat from his hands before it disappeared and the sound of fire catching on to particularly flammable materials was heard and then the air was filled with yelps and howls.
He took a quick look to see what was going on when the savage mauling from the wolf didn’t come, only to see the tail end of the flaming wolf running deeper into the forest.
DANIC… RUN!
He heard the voice again, this time from within his own head he noted.
He didn’t question it and just ran, not choosing a particular direction, he just ran.
The air was soon filled with a cacophony of howls behind him.
The wolf pack was hunting him.
He kept on running hoping against all hopes that he wasn’t going to die, he had just jumped out of one danger, why was he immediately thrown into another one.
And the voice, where was the voice coming fro-
A sudden impact to his back sent him flying forward ass over head before he was again pounced on by a large wolf.
Danic… close… your eyes…
The voice, now sounding laboured, demanding him to obey. And he did, closing his eyes and then seeing the world beyond his eyelids light up, he felt heat invading his body from.. whatever was going on.
As the glow abated he felt the wolf bear down full on him.
Run…
It took a second to realize, the wolf was no longer trying to eat him. It was dead on top of him. He shifted the weight of the wolf and carried on sprinting, hearing the pounding of the wolves on the forest floor behind him.
He couldn’t keep this up. He would be caught eventually, his stamina was flagging and his breathing was becoming ragged.
Seconds passed, but to him they felt like hours, his muscles protesting in pain.
Stop… running… stand and face… the wolves…
He immediately threw that suggestion out the window. He would die in seconds if he did that.
Trust… me…
“FUCK” he swore loudly, before stopping his sprint and turning to face the wolves.
Hands… up… point them… at the wolves…
The voice sounded exhausted, he didn’t know what this voice was, but did as he said nonetheless.
Suddenly the forest was filled with the sound of thunder as lighting shot out from his hands, straight at the wolves, some stray bolts hit trees and shattering the base of the trees.
Some trees started to fall in on themselves from the sudden lack of support, one tree even crushing two wolves under its weight.
The remainder of the wolves that were hit suddenly slumped to the ground. Whether paralysed or dead, he couldn’t say, but the remaining members of the pack skidded to a halt and took one look at the chaos, and promptly turned tail and ran.
He himself was in shock… staring at his outstretched hands… before promptly slumping to the floor in exhaustion.
“Who… are you…” he managed to get out.
Save… the questions… for later Danic… for now… run north… directly behind you… you will reach… a road… once you do… head east… in 2 days… you will reach… a town… there… you will be safe… I must rest… we will speak… again… take this knowledge… to keep you safe…
As the voice slowly became weaker and softer, Danic felt his head slump to the floor and he cradled it with his hands and groaned as the makings of the worst headache he had ever felt made its way to the forefront of his head.
But as he lay there cradling his head, he felt the knowledge flooding his mind, the knowledge of magic.