"It hurts!" Pieces of my body fall away from me as something hard and sharp separates layer after layer away. Some sadistic entity slowly shaves away sections of of my body. What ever is doing this to me had the patience of a gram grandmaster craftsman, except their craft is torture and I'm their latest victim.
"Make it stop!" whatever sadistic tool the entity uses on me seperates another layer of my body as I bellow in agony anew. I wish for nothing more than an end to this existence of suffering, but there is no way for me to end my life. I have no control over myself. I can't tell whether my limbs were slowly whittled away before i became conscious or if the entity chose to numb only my limbs. The pain resumes. It's as though I am a block of cheese, except I am made of pain receptors and a hot knife slowly cleanly cuts away prions of myself. Whatever intentions the entity has with my body they seem to enjoy taking their time with torturing me.
"Ahhh!" Another wave of pain overcomes me. "How did I get myself into this helpless situation?"
Images flash before me. I'm floating above a wizened old man. The flesh hangs on his bones, strewn about bony outlines lacking the supporting structure off muscles. Blotches of brown consuming his skin. Webbing a war against what little whiteness bleaches his leathery skin. Scraggly patches of wiry hair seek freedom from the confines of a finely aged scalp. The gray color of an advanced age all forgotten but a single rebellious strand hanging over the many mountains and valleys built as a monument to a forehead lost to a lifelong war against creases, irises clouded beyond usability, along a precipitous nose with gray tentacles fleeing a hidden abyss, to hang over cracked lips, parched as a sheet of papyrus and colored a dull pink, instead gray and white intermingle along it's length as yin seeks yang or salt complements pepper.
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The man wears what remains of a black robe overcome with the gnawing of insects. One hand lies on simple tree branch the sap still dripping from where it was torn from a tree. The other lies above the body of a youth, but his features are fuzzy. It's as though I see him from a great distance through a film of water. For some reason I know that the body is of a young man who's life was taken by the wizened man.
He's chanting some unintelligible words in stone unknown melodic pattern. I know that hems chanting a spell tip bind his soul tip the youth. Awareness dawn's on me, I know because i was the wizened man. The youth's body glows with ethereal light as the chant progresses. The snap of a twig draws the attention of the man as the light reaches it's zenith. The youth stops glowing as the man turns to check the source of the sound, but the stick takes on the glow. Looks as though a craftsman, denoted by his tool belt stumbles upon the man as he was finishing a ritual. His attention turns back to the ritual and he looks at the hand over the boy, seemingly shifting mana back towards him, but a look of confusion overtakes his focused face as he says "right when you write." The staff glows brighter in his right, or is it left, hand. His face contorts with frustration as his body falls limp and the branch falls into the grass. Everything goes black.