In a dark, wet cave an opening appears in one of the many dismal walls. A head starts to pop through, almost seeming as if it were phasing through the stone. The torso and arms follow, then the hips, the legs, and finally once the feet have fully phased through the body hits the floor of the cave splashing into the slime like liquid that fills the ground of the cave. The sensation of the vines was long gone, but the warmth of the embrace had felt constant as if I were dreaming. I don’t know how long ago it was since the concept of time had faded away from me. Slowly though, the warmth started to fade, and I felt as if I was waking from a long slumber. “This must be how animals feel after a long hibernation”, I thought to myself.
“Wh… what happened?” I say out loud in a groggy tone. The last memories I had start to come back to me, those of being tied up, my village sacrificing me to the tree, and that unknown dreamlike warmth. I stand up in the sludge that feels unlike anything I’ve felt before. The clingy, but viscous liquid leaves a tingling sensation as it crawls up to the top of my legs, towards the surface of the pool. The liquid remains constant as far into the cave as I can see. As I gain my bearings in the dark, my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I notice the faintest light coming from one of the connecting caverns. Wading through the sludge I look down and notice that my body is not the same as before I was sacrificed. I no longer look emaciated. My chest and abs look different. I also feel taller than previously.
As I enter the next chamber, the light pours in a little more than previously, now defining a few more features of the cave, and myself, than before. I look down to confirm that my body indeed is different from beforehand. I take my hand and run it over my body to see that it is fully built. I estimate that I have to be at least 20 years old and have never missed a day of body training. While examining myself, I run my hands over both of my forearms to notice something peculiar about them. It feels like there is a smooth rock or metal embedded into the front of both forearms in the same place. I look down to inspect further, but there isn’t enough light to get a good glimpse of what it could be. Light emanates ahead from two connecting chambers. The chamber to the left has its floor elevated, such that the sludge stops short before it is able to enter. On the other hand, the chamber to the right retains the liquid that I’ve been constantly trudging through. “Easy decision, left”, I say aloud triumphantly. The cave towards the left returns with a response of, “WRRRRREEEGGHHHH!”. So anyways, I hastily start trudging through the muck towards the right chamber.
As I start to enter the right chamber, the floor starts declining at a slight angle and the muck rises up towards my hips. I raise my hands up to prevent my forearms from dipping into the gunk of the cave. Wading forward, I notice the increased light of the chamber bouncing off the liquid revealing it to be semi-clear and nearly transparent in some areas. The light that bounced off the water illuminates the walls of the cave to show a textured interior with numerous stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Part of the light hits the mysterious part of my forearm to reveal an interesting glare. Both forearms appear to have bluish transparent gems akin to sapphires, with something inside of them.
Rotating my arms to achieve the best lighting, I see inside the left forearm’s gem scratch marks that seem to make out a symbol. “Is that supposed to be fire?”, I think to myself, and simultaneously heat radiates out from the gem around my forearm. Less than a second later and the arm spontaneously combusts. “FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!”, I say waving my arm around as the light from it dances around the room. Swiftly, I dunk my arm in the gunky liquid hoping that the fire would go out. The liquid started to bubble, and apparently boil. The warmth from it felt relaxing in the dank cavern almost as if I had my own personal jacuzzi, but the smell from boiling the mystery gunk was less than appealing. It smelled of a mixture between rotten eggs, and the smell of rotten wood being burnt. The smell helped to distract from the arm that was currently submerged, and the boiling started to lessen. The sensation of heat from that arm was also petering out slowly, as it returned to normal I pulled my arm out, expecting to see the burnt remains. Surprisingly, on further inspection, there was no damage to the arm at all, but it did reek of that foul smell. Now that I think of it there was no feeling of pain, just warmth, but that warmth is way too much if it’s going to boil whatever this garbage is.
Feeling inquisitive, I raise my left arm up again and imagine a fire while I look directly at the gemstone. Again, warmth emanates from it and it combusts. I don’t feel pain from my arm at all, as I inspect all around to see that my left arm from the elbow down is fully engulfed in the flames. I dunk it back into the gunk, and as expected it starts to boil, but before the whole room is filled with that egregious smell, I raise it back out to see it still is aflame. Now how to put this flame out. Previously, I had the thought of wanting to put it out by putting it in the liquid, and then got distracted by the smell. Was it the putrid smell that made it become lessened? Maybe it was the rotten egg smell from it that got me. I’ve always thought that I had a good nose for smells. Everyone I knew in the village would go nose blind super quick, and I would be left suffering. The smell of a dead boar from a hunt would always make me want to gag. I look back to my arm to see that its flame had decreased to just being from the middle of the forearm where the gem is located down to the hands.
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Holding my arm straight up to avoid having it submerged, I wonder why the flame size would’ve lowered. Maybe being disgusted in something played a role, or just losing focus made it lose potency, or maybe it had to do with a limited amount of time it could be aflame. While thinking aloud, I suddenly notice that the cavern is becoming dimmer. I look back to my arm to notice that it was no longer aflame, and that the light that was illuminating this cavern originally is much weaker.
It’s probably getting close to night outside, that also means I'm probably pretty close to the outside, I think gleefully. I don’t know why I feel so generally happy. I never felt like this before, maybe there was something wrong with me beforehand, or this is just a very elaborate dream. If it were a dream I most likely would’ve already pissed the sheets, and this gunk is me waddling around in my soiled covers. I slap myself as hard as I can with my non-flammable hand to see if I was sleeping. A refreshing, stinging pain overcomes my right cheek. Yep, This is real,... maybe,... probably.
With the last bit of light I start to waddle across the pool to an elevated section where the suspected daylight was coming from earlier. The tingling feeling reappears on my legs. I hadn’t noticed it when I was toying around trying to figure out how the fire worked on my left arm, but now it’s back. I look down to see if I can see anything, but it’s too dark at this point. The brilliant idea of “Arm Torch” passes through my mind, and, “Fwoosh”. I look up to my left to be greeted by “Arm Torch”. “This is awesome”, is the only thought that went through my mind. The rest of the cavern is back to being illuminated by the arm torch, and the light from the left arm’s flame bounces off the right arm’s gemstone. How did I forget there were two of these things, I ask myself, acting surprised.
Glancing over at the gem, I recognize what looks like the character for brain, mind, head, and other related meanings. I don’t think I remember ever seeing this character before, not to mention the fact that I could barely even read before. In the village we did have a written language, but this is a completely different style. Originally, we had around thirty characters, if I remember correctly, and combinations of those characters would create words that carried meaning. This one was just a single complicated character that carried meaning, but the meaning that it had was also fluid and capable of change. I don’t know how I know all of this, but maybe it’s just the power of the tree filling this body’s brain with background information.
Bringing my mind back to reality, how do I activate this gem? Before, to activate the flame torch I had to imagine what I wanted in relation to the flame gem. Thinking of what could be used in relation to the many meanings behind that character there were too many to think of. Increase cognition speed, become smarter, give headaches, cause someone to pass out, the ideas behind what could be done with this are too limitless to figure out, so I’ll just try the few with myself as the target where it wouldn’t be detrimental. Attempting to increase my cognition speed with thought proved to be difficult to imagine, and I didn’t feel any different from it. Thinking of making myself smarter seems hard to measure, and I don’t really feel the gem activating or myself becoming any smarter, if anything I just feel mentally fatigued. Lastly, I don’t really feel like giving myself a headache, so I’ll just pass on testing this one till I get out of this cave. Speaking of getting out of this cave, I’m nearly done trudging through this pool, just a little bit more till I'll be back on the damp cave floor.
Once again, I notice the tingling on my legs had slightly increased while I was toying around with the right arm’s gem. I will need to take a look at my legs once I’m out of this pool of muck. Just a few more steps.
‘Sploosh’.
‘Splish’.
‘Plop’.
Falling forward, I scramble onto the floor, crawling the final push onto the cool cave floor. Okay, now to look at those legs. “Aughhhh, Yuck, Yuck, Yuck!”, I scream aloud after seeing the sight revealed to me. My legs were covered in small black leeches the size of a finger, but thicker and slimy. My left leg had significantly less leeches, but altogether it was an unredeemable sight. “Flame Torch On! Flame Torch On!”. Frantically, I rub my fiery hand up and down my legs hearing sizzling, popping, and writhing sounds coming from the leeches as they dislodge themselves from my legs. The same revolting smell from earlier comes around again. I must’ve burnt a bunch of the leeches off my left leg earlier when I dunked Flame Torch into the water. Looking back down I can see all the leeches were off my legs, burnt to a crisp down on the ground, some still wriggling in what I hoped was pain and death. God, I hate nasty shit!