Seeking the world beyond these caves
1
It begins in cramped darkness, confined inside an oval barely bigger than I am. Before I can even ponder my circumstances a chime sounds in my head, followed by a voice like 1000 people saying the same thing in perfect synchronization. “Incarnation complete. Soul fusion with body successful. Access to menu restricted until mission completion. Missions acquired... 1 escaped from the egg. 2 make your way to the surface. 3 survive until Blasphemy arrives.”
In the utter silence that follows a timer appears in my vision counting down from 100 days, incidentally the days consist of 32 hours. And so I find myself in an egg and needing to hatch, explore, and most importantly survive for a fairly long time, alone, in unfamiliar territory, and likely not as I vaguely remember I once was.
With a quiet giggle, I begin trying to free myself from this confined condition. It proves more difficult than I expect as I am restrained in a fetal position while the shell is slippery, and extremely tough yet flexible. I thrash about throwing elbows knees kicks and headbutts, I try pushing against it, all to no avail. After an hour of increasing frustration I release an angry scream, I notice however that my breath during this scream is not normal. When it hits the shell the shell begins to dissolve, and odd multi-hued light flows into the increasingly large hole in my confinement. With the aid of this new light I see that while screaming my breath is gray with flecks of darker gray mixed in, and it is flooding vigorously out of me at a rate far more voluminous than my size and lung capacity can explain.
As I stand up and stretch for the fist time in this life I notice some things about myself and environment. I cant figure out just why but it all feels unusual to me. I do not know what incarnation entails, but the word feels familiar to me as if I should know it, also the words soul and Blasphemy feel as if I should know what they are.
I am a humanoid, for some reason that is the word that comes to mind, in shades of gray. I have 4 bat like reptilian wings, and a long slender blade tipped tail. I also have strange dreadlock like growths where my hair and beard should be, they all hang down to my sternum and are in fact some sort of sensory organs. My forearms and hands are heavily armored with scales, as are my legs from the knees down including my feet. The rest of me is also scaled but the scales are so fine they look and feel like silk. My fingers and toes are tipped with claws. I am obviously naked and though the air feels nice I do wish I had something to cover my dangly bits (genitals) so they wouldn't be such an obviously vulnerable target. I can however fold my wings in such a way that I appear to be wearing a robe of sorts.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
As for my surroundings I am in a cave populated by bio-luminescent plants and fungi. As I look around trying to identify the things in my proximity a chime sounds again in my head followed by the voice. “Skill acquired. Appraisal level 1.” Hearing that I appraise everything I can see, and as a result I learn that most of them are edible promoting growth both physical and magical. Some are poisonous while others are the antidote. I graze as I go, eating even the poisonous ones when the antidotes are nearby, eventually my small cave is left devoid of plant life and I find that one area of the walls has a hole in it through which I can feel a tunnel stretching beyond.
The hole is about the size of my finger but the wall is only about half a fingers length thick. I am surprised when the wall cracks around the hole when I punch it but quickly decide to back away from it in order to charge at it and slam my shoulder into it. As I collide with the wall it collapses outward in a crumbling heap of stones through which I find myself falling face first though the now much larger whole. Instinctual motions turn my fall into a diving roll that brings me back to my feet in a low crouch.
As I suddenly find myself remembering once having an entirely different existence. Try as I might however I can not recall any detail of what must be my prior life. I can't help but feel that my mostly unremembered previous life was substantially different from this one, I feel like even my body structure and functions are different, my senses seem vastly more powerful and wide ranging than I feel they should be, not to mention more numerous. Because of the vast scope of my various senses I can tell that this cave system is both very large and densely populated.
Soon I am wandering through this oddly illuminated tunnel snacking as I go,when not to far ahead of me the tunnel forks, and in that fork stands what appraisal tells me is a goblin. It is a malformed green humanoid carrying what looks like large leg bone still clinging to the last of its rotting flesh.
I crouch against the wall to my left and observe the creature who though slightly smaller than me happens the to be armed, while I am not. As I'm watching the goblin, it turns around and stares down the tunnel I am hiding in.