Chapter 1: Nothing

At first I someone, who that is I am not sure, for as with all things, it came to an end. In the beginning I was furious, livid at the notion I had died. As time passed however, I found my anger cooled, only to be replaced with curiosity. Where was I? What had happened? How did I die? What of my loved ones?.... What was next? Questions flowed through my mind in rapid succession, but answers did not come, only silence, and for the first time I looked out, and found myself staring into the void. Nothing answered for there was nothing out there to answer. I drifted through a blank space.

Time passed and with it my curiosity did too, at first, boredom took me, and then as more and more time passed, insanity. I passed through empty space endlessly, lost to my thoughts, and my thoughts turned dark, I tried to end it, take what was left of me and finally snuff it out, but I could do nothing for it, I was simply a manifestation of who I had been before, a lost soul, but even that was becoming unwoven. My memories abandoned me, one by one, at first I didn’t notice, lost in my frustration and apathy. By the time I did, it was too late.

“My name..” I thought one day “What is my name…..john? Lyra? Haziz?No, those aren't right…”

I pondered on this for some time, eventually consoling myself with the notion that I was beyond names, they simply wouldn’t fit me anymore anyhow, seeing as I had no one else to address me by it anyhow.

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It got worse however, and soon I found myself losing more and more. Memories of my companions, great and powerful though they were, men and women of great influence and power, but they could do nothing for me now, and the memories faded into but fragments of what they were. Then more cherished memories, of my wife, the births of my children, I could feel the anger rising from long ago somewhere deep within me,anger at myself for letting myself forget, at the gods for letting this happen, at my wife, my children, my friends for abandoning me now. The anger subsided and all I was left with were impressions and broken pieces.

The last things to leave me were the pain, the memory of my fathers death at the hands of common thugs for the gold heirloom signet ring on his hand, of my mother’s escape into alcohol and drugs, and the means she used to acquire them. Selling herself of to men of wicked nature's to fund her sorrow.

I forgot it all over time, the love, the joy, the pain, everything except for the sheer injustice of it all. There I remained, drifting listlessly throughout space, lost amongst a vast expanse of nothing at all, simply darkness. I had no hope, having resigned myself to my fate, perhaps a punishment by some deranged and vengeful god, perhaps the universe was simply cruel.

Then it happened. Fitfully and miniscule in size, but enough to catch my interest, just for a moment, a single moment, but having been deprived of any form of stimuli for so long I charged for it, a speck of light and a sound. I approached with haste, rushing as quickly as I could towards this tiny speck of, well, something in this nothing! It started shrinking, and I panicked, I would not reach it in time…..NO! I would reach this something, it would be mine, whatever it is it would be mine! I shed it all, all of my strength, my spirit, all of the fragments of me that remained, I shed them all in a sorry attempt to go just a little faster, just to reach it a little quicker. I lurched forward and just as it was about to fizzle out of existence, I lunged...and touched it….and my everything changed.