Rane continued to struggle in vain to open his eyes. He let his head fall back against the wet leaves of the forest floor. They smelled vaguely of mildew and decay, but that did not concern him.

He was still being dragged away. To somewhere. By… Something. He still was not lucid enough to grasp hold of the ambient around him to substitute for some semblance of sight, but he did not think that it would matter anyways.

Whatever being that held him by the leg was a presence that Rane had never detected. He assumed that it was the same thing responsible for breaking a metaphorical hole in his skull in order to bombard him with thoughts. If not for that, he would have thought himself being dragged away by a nearly completely mundane beast, the likes of which could be raised in captivity by ranchers.

He had no way of knowing how far they went; however, at some point, it seemed that the creature had gotten frustrated with their speed and simply lifted him off the ground to begin bounding towards their destination.

The creature eventually stopped. Rane could no longer feel the breeze nor the heat of the sun. They must be in a covered area. It’s home, perhaps. If not, at least a cave.

Rane flinched back as he felt the hot breath of the creature in his face.

A single scene played in his mind. It was a small, striped creature with four legs that ended in hands rather than paws. The creature searched through the leaves for a moment before finding what it was looking for: a stash of various nuts and berries. It grabbed what appeared to be a fruit and brought it to its mouth to bite and tear away a bit of the spiked peel. It ate the flesh of the fruit while peeling it. It threw the peel away, and was careful not to consume any as it ate.

When the vision ended, Rane found that there was something in his hand. It was the fruit from earlier. Its rough and spiky exterior were unmistakable even if he could not see. He brought the fruit to his mouth, and like the creature, bit into the peel with his teeth.

He gagged and heaved, but there was nothing in his stomach aside from river water. It was easy enough to keep down. The peel tasted somehow bitter and sour at the same time, and gave off a pungent odor of fermentation. He quickly realized why the creature had no interest in the exterior of the fruit.

He ripped away the peel to reveal the fruit inside, and brought it to his mouth again.

He took a small bite, then took another few bites with the intense voracity of the starved. It was sweet, incredibly sweet. Juice dribbled down his chin and onto his neck where it immediately began to feel sticky. He didn’t mind.

The texture was strange, spongy and slick, with dense fibers running through it. They stuck in between his teeth as he continued to consume the strange fruit until there was nothing left.

When he finished, he was taking deep breaths to make up for the lack of air he took in while eating. He relaxed comfortably against the wall. Well, as comfortably as he could. His face was burning, and now his stomach hurt as well. He definitely should have eaten slowly.

The burning question on his mind; however, was if he could or could not cycle ambient. Would it provoke the creature, or would it not care at all? He knew nothing of it, and while it didn’t feel powerful, that was incongruent with its abilities. It was literally communicating with him through some sort of mental connection; its control over the ambient could not be compared to… anything Rane had encountered.

Curiosity won out, in the end, and Rane grasped out at the ambient, cycling it and assessing the problem with his eyes.

Rane felt another scene displayed to him, and the sense of curiosity intensified greatly.

Rane ignored the scenes, but noted that it was not angry or threatened by him. Rane’s eyes were swollen and irritated, and his face felt as if it could melt steel. He had been severely burned by the sun. It was not an injury that he could heal with his current skills.

Burns were complicated injuries, somehow damaging the tissue in ways that Rane did not understand, and therefore could not fix. He could, however, simply accelerate his body’s natural processes to speed up his recovery.

This also increased his sense of fatigue, and he quickly succumbed to sleep.

*****

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Rane opened his eyes with great difficulty. He raised an arm up to wipe them, which proved to be a mistake. His sleeve was speckled white with flakes of dry and dead skin, and the pain brought tears to his eyes. These were the first tears of pain that he had shed in a long while.

He looked around to find himself in a cave, as he had assumed before, but instead of a roughly hewn burrow, he saw smooth walls and corners, which were mismatched against the rough, uneven surface of the floor.

The dim light that allowed him to see all of this came from a series of root-like protrusions in the ceiling that glowed with a dull incandescence. Furs covered some of the walls, and others were filled with intricate carvings etched into the stone.

Before he could focus on the stone work, Rane heard the taps of claws on the rough stone floor. It grew closer and closer until he could see the shadows dancing at the edge of the corner of his tunnel.

Rane had no idea what to expect as it stepped into view, but even still, he could not have been prepared. It stood taller than most axtls, and on digitigrade legs, but that is where their similarities ended. Atop its head were antlers that stretched upward into many points. Some of its antlers grew down and around its bird-like snout, creating a natural helmet around each of its eyes, two of which sat on the top half of its head, and two that sat below.

It sported four arms, two long and ending in a segmented set of claws, nearly reaching the floor even while standing, and two shorter arms closer to its chest that ended in a more dextrous looking hand which had opposable thumbs.

Behind the creature was a thick tail that scraped and felt along the ground constantly, finding purchase in crevices briefly before moving on, sometimes seemingly assisting its balance, and at others being used as a human would use their arm to reach for a handrail.

Rane’s newly opened eyes were fastened on every aspect of the strange beast. Now, even more, he was sure that despite feeling no presence of ambient from it, this creature was surely a monster.

So this is my savior, Rane thought with a sigh. He had run from all manners of beast, monsters and demis alike, but he still found himself here, in the lair of a monster.

The creature turned its head, two of its eyes locking onto Rane, and thoughts and scenes again filled his head.

Rane saw himself, then himself again, and again, and again, until there were dozens of him. Then, the dozens of figures scrambled, each changed slightly. Longer ears, lacking eyes, lacking limbs, and some with wings. Some were smaller, and some were larger. No, one was unchanged. One still was simply himself.

Then, each figure began to do something different. Some took to the sky and caused great thunderclaps that struck the earth. Some hid under the ground as this happened, and others gathered around to fight back.

Rane thought he understood. There was an emotion behind the scene. Inquiry, curiosity. It was a question of some kind. The first part seemed simple. Who are you? What are you? It was asking him to tell it what he identified as ‘himself’. The second part, he was unsure of.

When he could not determine an answer in time, he felt another mental nudge, so he simply elected to answer the first part of the question. He closed his eyes.

Rane thought of himself. In this mental image, he was clean, his gray hair flowing down the back of his head from a loose leather cord that kept it back from his face. Above him were his mother and father. His fathers face was blurred.

“Rane,” said the blurred face of his father.

“Rane,” said his mother.

Both of the figures dissipated, replaced by the now dead members of his squad, who also repeated his name.

He opened his eyes to find the creature still staring at him. It turned its head with a jerk, and it let out a coarse sound, “aayy.” It shook its head loosely, and suddenly Rane heard his name called, seemingly from all around him. It was not loud, but it was clear. It was the voice of his mother. He looked at the creature in shock for a moment, but quickly regained his composure.

Rane closed his eyes in preparation to ask a question in return. In a similar manner to what was asked to him, Rane conjured scenes in his mind, directing them instead at the creature that stood before him. Perhaps this would also give him the context as to what the second part of the question was, which he had been unable to answer.

Rane saw a great storm cycling in front of him. From it came four beings, each similar to one another, all of the same species, specifically the species that was in front of him right now, in the cave.

Three disappeared, leaving only one behind.

The storm dispersed, and in its stead was a great mountain, beyond which was an even greater forest.

The creature bounded forward, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Atop the mountain was a great white bear covered in snow and stone. With a spray of red, it was over, and the creature stood over the mountain, looking down at the forest. Rane felt an intense and overwhelming sense of pride. There was nothing else that would challenge its rule.

Rane opened his eyes with a new sense of understanding. Its sense of self was not the same as his own. It did not have a sound that represented itself, but rather a series of actions and position in the world.

Rane thought for a bit before deciding that its name would be something along the lines of, ‘the one which conquered the mountain and rules over the forest.’

It was definitely not a convenient scheme of getting one’s attention or directing communication, but, considering how quickly the other three in the scene disappeared, Rane doubted that communication was something that this creature regularly did.

Why, then, had it done so with him?