“Perhaps Humanity; In this instance those who conquer and modernize nature and the land it sits on, are the true evil of this world. Is there a soul in this world who cares to think about why the creatures that attack our settlements and ravage our cities do so?” - ‘The Truth of Humanity’ by Grue Joris

Ezekiel’s world felt… slimy. He squirmed and wriggled around for a few minutes before eventually hearing a loud pop and rolling out of what seemed to be some kind of strange sack. Wiping away the strange slop that surrounded him, he began to look at his surroundings. He was low to the ground, inside of a dark and damp cave. Or he thought it should be dark, but surprisingly, he could see relatively clearly.

Ezekiel looked down to check out his body… only to see the ground. This deeply worried Ezekiel, who then proceeded to look at his arms, or rather… his wings. Hopping over to a small puddle, Ezekiel looked at himself in the reflection. He was not a human male, like he was just moments ago, but rather a large eyeball with large red veins and bat wings attached to each side of his eye. Ezekiel found his body disgusting, and a little repulsive. He secreted a thin layer of membrane to keep his eye moist and “lubed up”. It seemed like this would be his body for the rest of his penance… but that was to be expected. After all, this was a test to reach Heaven, who said it’d be easy?

Flapping his bat wings carefully, Ezekiel slowly floated off the ground and into the sky. He was surprised how intuitive it was to zip around the dark cavern, having never had wings before. It was truly an enlightening experience for him. However, what made it even better was how much visibility he had from all the way up at the ceiling of the cavern. It was strange… despite being a cavern, there was plenty of flora and fauna roaming the grounds of the cavern. Large tree-like structures loomed over the ground, and a cacophony of sounds emerged from the cavernous forest. Ezekiel was terrified to go back down to the ground, now realizing the weight of the situation he was really in, but he really couldn’t fly around forever. His little bat wings had begun to get tired, and he would have to rest soon.

Carefully and quietly landing on top of a large, luminescent mushroom, Ezekiel let his tiny bat-like wings rest, even if just for a second. As he sat there, idly staring at the vast expanse, he wondered to himself.

“Is this all that there is? All that’s here for me? My penance, my redemption, my purgatory, an endless system of caves? Stuck inside this pitiful, limbless body?”

As those thoughts spilled out of his head, he was hit with a blinding light! Letting his eye adjust, he sat in front of what looked like some kind of screen. There were a long list of words and phrases, and numbers everywhere! Focusing hard to read it, he realized that this screen looked eerily similar to the ones that his younger brother poured hours over in those silly games of his. Guess they weren’t all that silly now, were they?

Channeling all the might of his tiny eye brain, he carefully read the large blobs of text on his screen.

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[System]

[Penance]

Time Left: 9,999 Years, 364 Days, 22 Hours, 37 Minutes, 22 seconds left

[Status]

Name: Eye

Race: Eye Bat (Lesser Eye Demon)

Age: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Skills: Tail Whip [Rank F], Night Vision [Rank F]

Current Objective: Survive.

Despite his initial surprise to the screen, it was actually rather simple to understand. Though it was nice to have some kind of way to see his progression, Eye felt somber. He felt weak, and helpless… But even so, he couldn’t just let himself be beat up anymore. Though this was his penance: his punishment, it was also a new life. A chance to redeem himself: thinking about it, that was probably the point. Now, Eye was ready to take on the world!

As that thought crossed his mind, as if Karma herself had overheard, a large screech echoed throughout the cavernous room. With his poor night vision, Eye could make out, far from where he was… a bat! No ordinary bat either, but rather something much… much larger. It had to have been at least 10 feet tall, and its wingspan twice as wide! Eye wasn’t stupid, and quickly fled the scene, finding themselves huddled up in a small hole. The crevice they had somehow squeezed themselves into (not without pain, for certain), was incredibly cramped. From just outside, they could hear a fight of colossal proportions!

It was a scary world, Eye could tell from an instant that their Penance would not be easy, in fact, it may even be worse than hell itself. However, Eye was a determined creature, who was given a new lease on life. They would have to learn to survive their penance, no matter the cost.

After a couple hours had passed, the coast became clear. Eye slowly peeked their ocular body outside of the small crevice they had found slightly earlier in the day. What they assumed was day, anyways, time was hard to keep track of in a cave that received very little light.

For a small amount of time, Eye wandered some more, slowly mapping out the layout of the cavern they now resided in. It seemed that wherever they were born from was out of the way, likely to keep the eye-spawn safe from predators. This strategy was sadly wasted on Eye, who immediately flew out of the safe area and into the great unknown.

As Eye wandered, they grew more and more hungry. How a creature who was 99% eyeball could get hungry was really outside of Eye’s knowledge, but that didn’t matter. What did matter is that Eye had to act, and fast. They needed food; They needed prey.