A small, weak sensation gently prodded at Mican’s nose, nearly forcing a scream out of him, pressuring him wide awake.
The young man’s brain felt extremely sluggish, and his thoughts ran as slow as a snail. He could not feel his body properly, and his lower half, below the torso, didn’t respond to him at all.
He feebly opened his unbruised left eye, sluggishly shifting his pupil to inspect the world. What met his sight were vague and blurry colors, carpeting his view as if a sloppy painting made by a young child.
He didn’t want to wake up or even move, but his natural instincts screaming for survival told him that he needed to get up.
Something deeper than an instinct for survival told him where he needed to go. With his blurry vision, the man was able to see a soft, golden light, shining a little way away from him, around three meters away from the top of his head.
The golden light emitted a soft warmth that soothed the young man’s body as it shone on him, bringing back some of his senses.
As his vision cleared up slightly, Mican noticed a large green canopy over his head, connected to a pillar dark brown in color, leading into the ground. He was being sheltered by a tree.
Darkness hung above the trees, and a slight panic arose in the young man until he realized that it was the dark of night, not the void. There were sources of light around him, but he did not have the luxury to check them out.
The young man heard a soft, constant rhythm of a sound, and felt a wet coldness beneath him. Feeling a droplet of cool liquid on his face, what woke him up became apparent to him.
He felt a faint pain as he flipped his body over, using both of his arms to shift the center of his weight. He quickly realized that not being able to feel his broken arm was likely a very bad sign, as if the numbness in his body was spreading from his torso to his upper body.
Using his left arm, he clawed his way forward across the cold ground, his lower body still facing the sky.
The snail’s pace was agonizing to him, but the closer he got to the source of the warm light, the more he felt of his body. The constant beat in his ears became the soft pitter-patter of rain, and the vague colors turned into vivid shapes.
Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, Mican’s senses being restored included the acute pain he felt in his arm and face.
Gritting his teeth, the young man propped himself up with his left arm, ignoring the pain shooting through his broken limb. Shifting his weight to his legs, he unsteadily stood up, shuffling over to the source of the golden light.
In his open eye, a single severed golden finger lay upon a cracked white pedestal of stone. The finger was the size of your average male adult’s, measuring about three-and-a-half inches long, with three intersecting phalanges.
Viewing the bottom of the finger, Mican noticed that it was severed very crudely, as if the tool used was extremely dull.
Upon closer examination, the young man was startled to discover that the finger was not colored at all, but that it was some sort of dried liquid, staining the digit.
Mican did not know what this was or what it meant, but staring at the finger gave rose to a strange, intense desire in his mind.
Reaching down, he picked up the unmoving finger, finding it still warm to the touch. The young man didn’t understand what caused this phenomenon but a new discovery about the finger occupied his mind.
After moving the finger, a few drops of golden liquid fell out of the bottom of the finger. This was when Mican realized that this was not a golden finger, but a finger covered in golden blood.
Questions sprouted in the young man’s mind, but any thoughts he had were quickly washed away once he caught a whiff of the blood. There was no way for Mican to properly explain the scent with words, but if he were to speak metaphorically, he would say that the blood gave off the scent of peace.
The scent gave birth to a ravenous hunger in the young man, and he popped the finger directly into his mouth, his body moving before his brain could even react.
The injured man chewed on the digit thoroughly, his teeth stripping the phalanges of their skin and flesh.
A sense of ecstasy and joy filled Mican’s body, the corners of his eyes subconsciously raising, and his facial muscles relaxed as he all but forgot about the pain in his body while relishing on the finger.
After a few seconds Mican finished the small finger, swallowing even the bones whole. A bloated feeling came about in the young man’s stomach as he sat down, and leaned on the pedestal, closing his eyes and reveling in the aftertaste of his meal.
“GRAHHH!”
A scream erupted from the mouth of the sitting young man, as a horrible pain sprang up from his body. It felt to Mican as if he was once again staring into the eyes of the dark figure in the void, as if a force inside his body was playing a game of tug-of-war with him.
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“Ahahahahaha!”
Laughter rang out from the young man’s mouth into the surroundings as he rolled about on the ground. In the void he could not move, but now he could, and move he did.
The young man stood up and viciously rammed his head into the stone pedal, over and over again. Warm red blood sprayed out onto the ground and pedestal, loud crunches and the sound of laughter echoing into the surroundings as he continued the onslaught on his head.
After a good ten seconds, the man slumped down face-first onto the ground, completely silent. One would believe him to be deceased if not for the subtle rising and falling of his chest.
The noise in the forest died down and the rain continued on, peace returning to thicket once more.
. . .
A cold droplet of water landed once more on Mican’s nose, waking him up yet again, but this time he felt no sharp pain.
Opening his eyes, the young man groggily pushed his limbs up, rubbing his eyes out of habit. Halfway into doing so Mican immediately stopped, staring at his hands in curiosity.
His right arm that should have been broken felt completely fine to him, and the nose that should have been completely shattered on his face gave him no pain.
Looking around, Mican stood up and made a quick inspection of his surroundings for any immediate danger. He clearly did not sleep for long, as it was still raining.
A cool night breeze ruffled the young man’s hair and softly blew past his skin, blowing a bit of rain his way.
He was surrounded by old stone pillars each being five meters apart, holding torches that lit the surrounding forest for him. The forest canopy seemed too thick and the night sky too dark to be able to see above his head at all.
The young man looked around, listened, and even perked his nose up, smelling for any potential dangers, but he found nothing.
Checking off the most urgent task in his mind, he then shifted his attention to his limbs. After thoroughly examining each part of his body, he then began performing slight exercises.
His injuries had completely healed, having disappeared as if they had never existed. The pain was still vivid in Mican’s mind though, and he knew it was not an illusion. In fact, Mican felt even more energetic than before. He could only think of one reason as to why his broken body was healed, and his thoughts drifted back to the blood-stained finger he had devoured.
Remembering the event, Mican, even if he were to assume he had gone completely insane, still believed he should have been experiencing at least some form of negative emotion from it whether it be disgust, horror, or revulsion.
Despite this, the only emotion he felt about the matter was a desire for more. More importantly, he acted without control over his entire body. He wasn’t even able to think about the situation before tossing the finger into his mouth.
Unnerved about the matter, the young man tossed it to the back of his mind, writing it off as a moment of delirium from the past sequence of events. This was not an issue he wanted to let go of so easily, but he had no choice as there were more pressing matters to attend to.
Shaking away the thoughts of morality, the young man turned his mind towards the more immediate matters of concern. This was the first real opportunity he had after arriving here to fully investigate his surroundings.
The ground beneath Mican’s feet appeared to be an old, cracked, cylindrical slab of stone, rising three feet off the ground. Stairs surrounded the entire structure and led to the forest biome beneath. A lone stone pedestal was the only thing of notice on the slab.
A large amount of half-dried red blood stained the slab and covered a large portion of the pedestal. Approaching the pedestal, Mican closely inspected it for any clues to his location and summoning.
A dark brown, small, sheathed blade of some sort was laying on the ground behind the pedestal, nearly invisible in the darkness.
Mican had not noticed it earlier due to his attention being preoccupied with the finger and pain, and the natural camouflage. Approaching the sheath, he picked it up to inspect it.
The sheath was brown in color, made of a smooth leather, with a bit of metal encasing the end. It had a strap that hung loosely in Mican’s hands. A black hilt was fit snugly inside of the sheath. Grasping the hilt, the young man drew out a short, shining blade.
The blade of the dagger was about a foot long, and double-edged. The weapon had a common cross-guard, and a pommel embedded onto the end of the hilt. Most noticeably, one side of the weapon was stained golden.
Mican recognized the dried liquid as the same blood that was oozing out of the finger he had eaten. Logically, this was likely the same blade as the one used to sever that very finger, but after gently touching the blade, he it became obvious to him that it was extremely sharp.
A small nick appeared on his thumb where he touched the blade, and as he sucked on it he pondered to himself.
Why would there be such a rough cut from such a sharp blade? The only conclusion that Mican could come to was that the cut was not a single, smooth strike.
There were only two ideas that came to mind, either the person was being tortured, or he purposely stopped mid-cut for some unknown reason. There were too many unknowns for him to come to a solid conclusion.
Sheathing the blade, the young man strapped it around his waist, and continued examining the nearby grass and foliage for any nearby clues. After a little while of fruitless searching, the young man stepped back and surveyed the area one last time.
It had become obvious to Mican that this old slab of stone was not normal at all.
A golden finger, an open area surrounded by lit torches, and his appearance right in the middle of the stone. The stone slab was an altar, and the finger likely the offering, or sacrifice.
This was the conclusion that Mican had come to after deep consideration. There were still too many unanswered questions. Was the perpetrator of the event alone, or was it multiple individuals? Where did they go?
Following his philosophy of danger, he decided to trust in his own judgement and took the safe option. Take advantage of the absence of people and leave the scene before anybody decided to come back.
Turning around to face the forest, Mican vividly felt the soft rain falling onto his body. A cool breeze blew past, bringing with it the scent of nature, and refreshing his thoughts. The young man shivered slightly, taking a deep careful breath. Grabbing a torch off of one of the pedestals, the man resolved himself.
Thinking back to the immense physical pain he had felt since he jumped through the portal, to the unbridled terror, and the pain that had threatened to tear his mind apart. Thinking back to his delirious actions of eating a finger and bashing his head in on a stone pedestal, the young man smiled.
Looking ahead at the dark forest, in a strange land he knew next to nothing of, not knowing who or what awaited him, he began humming softly to himself, making his way into the unknown.