From Oblivion, It awoke.

              Consciousness began as nothing more than feeling the wind on Its skin. The soft earth It laid on. An understanding that It was thinking.

              Yet, despite knowing It was conscious, It knew nothing more. It simply existed, and that was that.

The light dimmed at times until there was not but darkness. Then there was light again.

The winds picked up at times, accompanied by water other times, before the air stilled and the sky dried again.

Then the air grew cold, the sky was dark for longer, and the water was replaced by cold water.

No; ice… Actually, it was snow, It realized around the time when the air heated up again, and no more snow fell.

All was cyclical and nothing changed for a while until It suddenly realized something that it had not known before.

It…was a “he”. He knew that now. Male. Not female.

Which meant that “shes” existed too. What were they? If he was male, what was female? In fact, what did being male mean?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t dwell on that matter for long, not thinking it too important because new thoughts took priority.

He was not a unique existence, he realized—or rather, remembered. He was from somewhere. That somewhere had other people in it. Other hes, and shes. Hes and shes who were important to him. People whose lives were entangled with his own.

For the first time, he sat up and looked around, finding himself at the base of a large, dark-purple tree beneath a vast azure sky, and surrounded by yet more purple vegetation. However, there were no people in sight. He looked down at himself to confirm he knew what a person looked like, noting his four limbs attached to his torso. Yep. Other people should look like that, but none were around.

On instinct he tipped over and used his arms to drag himself forward, feeling the need to search the area because his people might have been nearby. Yet, the motions felt very inefficient. He included his legs into the motion, picking himself up by pushing off the ground, falling forward slightly, then catching himself on his hands before he hit the ground. Like that he managed to traverse the area very quickly, but the motions still didn’t seem all that right.

The word “crawling” flashed through his mind, but he remembered now that crawling wasn’t the best way to move. Something deep down urged him to rise, to gain a greater vantage point.

He balked at the instinct. It was already hard enough to crawl, yet he was supposed to balance himself on two limbs instead of four? The notion seemed absurd…but it was worth a try. His gut assured him that he would move very quickly.

And after just a few attempts he managed pull it off easily enough, performing the cycle of pushing off the ground, falling, then catching himself, but this time doing it with solely his feet instead of his feet and hands.

              Walking; it was nice. Though the many rocks littering the ground still bothered him, they were now far easier to bare because his feet were tougher than his hands. Looking down to step around the pointy things also helped.

              Armed with the ability to walk he began traversing the area, searching for his people. He first walked a few circles around the purple tree—which was a few times as thick as he was tall—and confirmed that no one was present nearby. So he continued walking in a random direction, passing by violet bushes, grasses, and flowers. There were few trees in his immediate vicinity and they were smaller than the big tree he awoke beside. Although he could see more trees at the edge of his vision…trees that weren’t purple.

              He drew farther from the big tree, closer to the brown and green trees that seemed to stand in a neat line. No, a circle. They circled him in every direction. He wanted to know why they were that way.

              “AAGHHH!” he screamed as agony exploded in his right foot, wiping away the world and replacing his vision with a chaotic mess of colors as he collapsed onto his left side.

              He reflexively curled up into a ball and gripped his injured foot, which now oozed out a foul, dark liquid.

              It was blood, as strange as it looked.

              He was bleeding, he realized through the pain.

              And this wasn’t the first time, he vaguely remembered as wild clashes between people and animals flashed through his mind.

              But it lasted merely a moment until the world returned to him, and he saw the purple plants and the azure sky.

              “Owowowowowow,” he muttered as he cradled his bleeding foot. What had done that to him? Looking to the spot where it happened he noticed a glimmer in the dirt. He had stepped on something sharp. Best to avoid that.

              He attempted to rise once more but the agony in his foot did not allow it. He examined his injured appendage again, wondering how to fix it. He’d only just learned to walk and now he lost that ability? However, he did not have to worry for long as the gash in his foot began closing on its own, the flow of blood ceasing with it.

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              Problem solved then, he thought happily as he stood up, testing the foot’s ability to hold his weight. When no more problems made themselves known he continued his walk, making sure to step around the damned pointy thing in the dirt.

              Nothing new happened by the time he arrived at the tree line nor had he yet found his people, so he resolutely marched on into the new environment…which felt strange to him, somehow. It was a new feeling, one that he knew to be familiar, yet one he could not yet identify the cause of. Being in the purple circle felt good. He wanted to go back into it. Even his foot began aching in memory of the gash now that he’d left it.

              But…his people.

              “My people…need me,” he found himself saying, the sounds giving him the same familiar-yet-not feeling that everything else had produced. “My…friends, and family.”

              So he walked, fueled by a ferocious flame that would eat him up inside if he didn’t. He marched. He climbed. He ran. Past bushes. Flower stalks. Boulders. Trees larger than the purple one who constantly called him back. With every step he grew weaker and his instincts demanded he return to the purple circle, but at the same time he yearned more and more to rejoin the ones he’d left behind. The friends and family he couldn’t remember the faces or names of, but whose existences he was sure mattered very much to him. Whose existences he needed to bring back into his life.

              Then the wind brought him the sounds of a person nearby. He was atop a rocky ledge that steeply dropped some ten paces, allowing him a better view than he’d get if he was at the bottom. The higher vantage point was so useful he would never travel along low ground again.

Almost directly beneath him was a person carefully inspecting and pulling pretty flowers from the ground. Their brown hair was tied up in a bun and they wore…clothing. Hunting clothing? Thick shoes…boots. A stringed-weapon on their back…a bow.

Information poured into his brain from watching the figure. He remembered that the person beneath had the common traits of a female, and he realized that his skin was bare when normally he should be wearing clothing of some kind.

But most importantly, he had found another person.

“Are you family?” he asked with hope glowing in his chest, causing the person to jump away in surprise, landing a few paces backwards before unsheathing a bladed weapon from her hip and locking hard eyes on him…only for those hard eyes to soften with confusion.

“Why are you—”

She cut herself off as her eyes sharpened with hatred, only for her eyebrows to furrow in more confusion a second later.

“Are you really Level 1?” she finally asked, though her stance remained aggressive, which he didn’t know how to feel about.

Not understanding the question, he ignored it and asked another. “If not family, are you friend?”

The Hunter looked conflicted for a moment, though her weapon remained raised. “Umm, I don’t know?”

“I’m looking for my friends and family,” he informed her. “Do you know where they are?”

She pursed her lips, eyes frequently pulling away from his and looking around.

“Are you out here alone?” she asked carefully.

“Yes.”

She made a sound as if to ask another question but cut herself off again, and the two simply stared at each other as he felt himself grow weaker still. For some reason he did not have much time. The tree urged him to return.

But people.

Deciding he had no time to waste he chose to ignore the scary person below in favor of continuing his search for friends and family. However when he took his next step, the ground beneath his left foot gave, sending him painfully sliding and tumbling down the ridge. He was scraped and bumped hard all over by rocks and dirt, and the pain was worse than when his foot was pierced.

‘The purple tree,’ he barely realized as he fought to take control of his body back from the evil clutches of pain and shock, ‘it makes me feel better in all sorts of ways. I need it.’

“Oh, RahNay help me!” he heard the female person cry. When he looked up to see what she was doing and to ask her for assistance, he saw the woman retrieve a…length of rope from a bag on her hip opposite her shortsword. What did she need that for? That wouldn’t help him get back to—

“Don’t bite me don’t bite me don’t bite me!” she cried even louder than before as she rushed over, roughly placed her boot atop his head, and pressed his face into the dirt before moving his limbs around.

Before he knew it, he was tied up and unable to move.

‘Oh no.’

“Please don’t struggle please don’t struggle please don’t…” the woman repeated under her breath as she hoisted him over her shoulder and began running through the forest, leaving behind some items and, most importantly, taking him farther from the purple tree.

His stomach lurched and his insides grew hot. The air had been feeling…pointy for a while, but only now that he knew he was no longer in control over his travels did he really feel the ache that resulted from the distance.

There was no doubt about it. He knew for sure now that he could not be away from the purple tree for too long. He so desperately wanted to find his people, but he’d never have the chance to find them anyway if he was…

Dead.

“PUHlease LEt me gO,” he choked out through the pressure on his abdomen that originated from bouncing on his captor’s shoulder.

Hearing him speak caused the woman to squeal, but she did not slow. In fact, her grip on him tightened.

“It huRTS,” he pleaded through gritted teeth. Every one of the woman’s steps aggravated his injuries, yet that wasn’t the worst source of discomfort; not even the spicy air that was beginning to warm him uncomfortably.

It came from deeper. Much deeper.

He didn’t like being tied up.

His body battered.

His limbs restricted.

His freedom in another’s hands.

His fate unknown.

His family so far away.

Far, far away.

An inexorable cold crept down his spine, chilling his insides, freezing his heart.

Why? Why do this to him? What had he done to deserve this? Why take him like this? Hurt his friends?

Who were these people in his mind? Where were these places?

He could no longer see anything through the tiny rains pouring from his eyes. His body spasmed as his lungs seemed to break, irregularly sucking in air and sputtering it back out through his teeth. His throat produced a haunting, high-pitch groan which only served to panic him further.

And those symptoms weren’t even the product of how the air now constantly burned him.

“I’m sorry!” the woman began saying as she slowed, caught her breath, and finally began setting him down. “I realize that you’re probably just a babe and that treating you like this isn’t—AAAAIIHHHH!”

Through his ailing body and mind he could barely make out that the woman was appalled as she rubbed a hand against his dark, peeling skin, speeding up the erosion.

“Uhghhhg, what do I do?!” she yelped as she circled him in worry. “I didn’t know you were that young! There’ll be nothing to find if you’re dead! What do I do?!”

She seemed to both speak to herself and him, and though he wanted to respond, his breathing was too chaotic. His lips only produced garbled wheezes.

“Ohhh RahNay help me!” she pleaded to the sky. “I’m still over a day’s pace out, but he looks like he’ll be dust long before then! Is he worth going back? What do I do? He was clearly fine when I found him, which means there is some kind of miasma source, but those are usually guarded! But then how did a babe just walk out on his own looking like a motherless fawn? Could it be he was really alone? But he’s so young! He musta been born recently! Yet he was alone. The miasma source couldn’t have been that big around here anyway. Ohhh, if I take him in dead I’ll get barely a silver mark, but alive he’d be worth gold, surely!”

The woman paced back and forth in front of him for a while before stopping, adorned with an expression full of grit. She quickly rifled through the bag she’d retrieved the rope from, nodded to herself, and moved to pick him up again.

“Oohhhhh, for goodness’ sake, ya can speak and were even named at Level 1! I’ll try to keep you alive if I can, Joy, but if there’s a single sign of other undead out there near whatever miasma kept you alive then, I’m sorry.”