Chapter One- Start

Eric woke up, face down against a smooth stone ground. Looking around, it seemed to be made up of bricks. As Eric started to look up, he realised that there were a number of stone arches over and around him, leading up to a circler roof.

The brick work hadn’t aged well and beyond the pedestal Eric was on top of, a large open field stretched out, rolling into hills. He stepped out of it, stone felt hard and cold under his bare feet, holding on to one of the arched columns to support himself. He felt light-headed and his legs wobbled like jelly.

The sky was a definitive, dark blue, not quite night or day perhaps morning. As Eric stepped out into the grassy fields, he become very aware of the chilling breeze that constantly bombarded him. The wind wasn’t strong enough to influence Eric’s plain white shirt or the cotton sweat pants below. His arms clung to his torso in an attempt to keep warm, and he put one foot in front of him, then another. The grass felt soft but the ground under it was cold, hard and uneven.

A single, well trodden path led Eric away from the stone structure. Ahead of him was a iron railed fence that surrounded the stone structure on all sides, the path would lead him to the only entrance, a gate with two figures standing on either side of it.

They where a fair distance away, enough that Eric could barely make them out and wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t see him either, “that would put them at maybe 3 miles away,” Eric thought to himself, another breeze hit him, “Je-Jesus it’s cold.” He muttered as he kept on walking.

The path itself was dry and hard, so he avoided walking on it directly, instead walking over the grass besides it. His hear formed tight curls that wouldn’t sway in the breeze, meaning that while his face was deathly cold, the top of his head was well insulated. The, largely unseen, hair on his arms stood on end and he rubbed then with equally cold hands. Somehow he was used to being much warmer then this, yet he couldn’t remember way or how. He wasn’t quite sure why he was here in the first place, and for the moment, Eric really didn’t care.

Eric’s attention was taken away from the cold and drawn towards simply staying up right, he felt a light-headed for a second then it passed. He looked around confused, then he looked up at the red sky. The moon, that had seemed so unremarkable before, was now oddly black.

Eric’s eyes were then drawn away from the moon and towards the source of a noise, looking to his left, he saw an overgrown frog pick itself up and stare at Eric. It was bright green with bulbous red eyes and lines for pupils. Each finger stretched out as it seemed to roll its shoulders. It bent down on its front arms, raising its arse into the air before kicking off against the ground. The frog soared through the air. The dog sized frog tackled Eric hard enough to push him to the ground. It hurt, a lot, in that moment Eric became oddly aware of something. He didn’t know how he knew, but the number 11 flashed in his mind. Eric had lost so much and was left with only 4. Eric coughed up blood, spewing up into the air only for it to fall back onto Eric’s face.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The question was, 4 of what. It pained him horribly, like he was going to die. It panicked him, terrified him as if his life was in danger. At the same time, the frog sat on top of him, letting its weight pin him to the ground. It didn’t try to do much else, yet it was breathing heavily, like it was tired.

Eric pushed up against it and threw it off of him desperately. With that Eric began stumbling away from the creature that was lazily waddling towards him. Eric didn’t fully understand what the numbers were, but he did know that he wasn’t going to let it reach 0. His entire torso felt exposed and pained. He couldn’t let the frog attack him again, so he kept his distance –no-he ran away.

After several metres the sky just faded back into blue. Eric turned his head back only to find that the frog had disappeared. Having ran, even for the brief moment, Eric became aware of another set of numbers: this time he lost 3 and was left with 19.

“4 and 19,” Eric thought to himself, he couldn’t imagine what the importance of these numbers were.

That’s when the breeze hit again and Eric considered returning to the path. Eric sighed and moved onwards. After a couple minutes, 4 became 9 while the 19 didn’t improve.

But before Eric reached the gate, he was approached by another frog and again, sky turned red the moment they appeared. On both occasions, Eric ran until the sky turned blue again. In the end of it all Eric reached the gate without suffering any more damage.

When he did reach the gate he was greeted by an armoured soldier. “You look like shit.” He observed and tossed something towards Eric. He barely caught it with both hands.

“What is this?” Eric asked, studying the vial of red liquid with a cork sealing it closed. Eric clenched at the vial and the cork, turning it around in an attempt to unscrew it.

“Do you want help with that?” The guard asked as he ushered Eric to the other side of the gate.

“No,” Eric grunted until it finally popped open, “I got it.” Eric experimentally sipped the red liquid. It was surprisingly flavourless, like water, yet the moment Eric took a sip, 9 became 10 and he started to feel better. Eric downed the drink and the sore regions of Eric’s’ body were soothed into tranquil peace.

The guard was considerably older than Eric, that much was plain to see, that being said Eric was the taller of the two and it seemed strange that he would be so confident. The other guard however, seemed content with simply standing there, ignoring Eric and staying decidedly at his post.

“You can call me Tim.” The first guard said, “Now lets get you out of here.”