Akna awoke on a beach. Stars twinkled overhead. She groaned as she came to grips with the fact that somehow, she had survived. How long had it been? Where was everyone else? Did anyone survive? Why was she alive? Maybe most important of all, where was she? Answers would have to wait however as she coughed her lungs free of water, her body exhausted.
A small crab was pinching her toe in anger. She must have disturbed its burrow at some point. Blinking the salt from her eyes, she pulled the crab off and tossed it aside and sat up. Slowly her blurry eyes cleared and she could see where she was.
Before her was the ocean, sprawling and blue, sparkling in the light, with beach stretching into the distance on either side of her. Behind her was a sheer cliff. She could barely see trees peaking above the cliffside. As she shakily stood up, her stomach growling at her, the cliff came into clarity. The cliff was massive, its shadow stretching over half of the beach in the nearly noontime sun.
As Akna stared, her stomach grumbled at her again more insistently. She was used to starving at least, the last meal hopefully being enough to tide her over. She grimaced at the thought of finding food. Although there might be other concerns now that she thought about it. She was on a beach so she could theoretically catch fish for food, though how difficult that might be she did not know. Shelter and water though? She couldn’t drink the ocean, she knew that much, and the cliff was relatively smooth and flat with no caves or cracks for shelter. Her best bet was to try to find a way onto the top of the cliff and into the forest she spotted above.
“How am I supposed to do that?” she mumbled to herself, seeing the daunting task before her. Water was the most pressing, the sea water having made her parched, the salt sucking the moisture out. She was already hungry before she was beached, with most of the nutrients going towards her magic. She had no protection from any of the elements other than her ragged clothes which would most certainly hasten her demise. She was on a time limit and it was short, far too short for her liking.
One thing about the People though? They were stubborn. And survival was a great motivator. So she went to the cliff and tried to climb it. There were too few holds though, nowhere to put her feet. She didn’t even get far enough to fall down. So she moved farther along the cliff, and tried every spot she thought might let her climb. Nothing. She kept moving along the beach hoping she would find a place where the cliffs shortened or sloped. Nothing. She hoped for a boat on the horizon she could call for, but none ever showed. She was truly stranded. Yet she kept trying. She didn’t live through everything just to die here.
As the sun peaked overhead and started sinking to the west, her desperation pushed her to try anything and everything. So despite knowing that using her magic would worsen her situation and starve her more, she didn’t see a better option anymore. She tried to use her magic. She had no tool, nothing to channel it through, no training. Yet she did manage to push her magic into her hands after many attempts. As the magic drained her remaining energy she went to the cliff, hoping against hope that her magic would do something. And it did.
As she brought her hand to the cliff, her hand sunk slightly into the stone. Not a lot, but enough. Enough to make small footholds, enough to make finger holds. She had climbed trees often enough growing up, but never anything like this. What else could she do though? So she started climbing. It was slow going, incredibly slow, unbearably slow. But she was climbing. Her muscles, atrophied by the boat ride, were not up to the task. What else was she to do though? She didn’t know how tall the cliff was, she didn’t check, she didn’t look up or down, she just moved one limb at a time. Progress was progress no matter how slow. Adrenaline fueled her body, hormones flooding her body to keep her alive and moving.
Night soon fell, the chill of the coast creeping in. There was barely enough moonlight to see. Akna kept climbing. The adrenaline faded at some point, who knows when. Her arms burned, her muscles cramping. She had blisters on her feet and fingers, the blood making the stone slick and even harder to climb than it already was, causing small slips throughout the night that she could barely recover from. As the sun rose the next morning, Akna was barely conscious, her body moving more through repetition, instinct, and magic at this point. The top was in sight, but still so far away. Her body ached for release, her magic sustaining itself through whatever fat stores she had left, just focusing on moving upwards. When her hand finally grabbed the top of the cliff, the shock of it woke her from her stupor and almost made her let go. Her hand was so cramped though she literally couldn’t, so she was able to hold and and use the last of her strength to pull herself on top of the cliff, and lay on the green grass that surrounded her.
Her climb was, to put it mildly, a miracle. A bloody trail was left up the side of the cliff on her path, to be stripped away by wind, rain and time. She should not have been able to do what she did. Her body was thinned to the bone from the strain of her magic. Yet here she was, alive and on top. She had made it. As the last of the stress left her body, her body finally let her go unconscious.
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Something chirped in Akna’s ear. She opened her eyes and let out a scratchy groan, scaring a small bird away that had been pecking the grass around her. Her whole self ached. Her bones felt like they had been ground to dust, her muscles felt like she was being stabbed, her fingers were so scraped and bloody she could swear she saw bone. Maybe she did based on how thin her body had become. Worst of all was her magic, which still had not recovered despite the rest she had. Her magic felt like someone had rubbed her organs raw, stuffed it into a sixth dimension, bathed it in fire, and twisted it into a nightmare. She could swear she could even hear her magic groaning in pain with her.
Suffice to say, Akna was not feeling up to doing more physical activity. Her timer was still going though, her thirst demanding attention more than ever, her tongue swollen in her mouth and joints so stiff it was amazing they weren’t stuck. So, despite just wanting to stay laying in the grass, she dragged herself off the ground to get her bearings. Her body did not like this, but it was either pain or death, and she was not ready to surrender to the spirits yet.
She was in a, rather large, meadow. Small flowers dotted the ground in varying shades of white and yellow. The wind blowing through the field of grass giving a sense of peace, contrasted against Akna's thin and bloody form. Ahead of her on the other side of the meadow, sat the forest she had seen from the beach. Forest wasn't the right word though, it's size dwarfing anything she had seen before.
Colossal trees stretched up into the sky, thicker than a house and taller than a spire. Their branches blotted out the light, allowing only the smallest of plants to grow around their roots. Their roots, so massive and twisting that it was clear they made up the forest floor in most places, like a wooden maze from green hell. They wound around each other up and down making wooden caverns and bulges and tunnels.
“It looks like I've found my shelter" she thought. She trudged towards the roots, hoping to find something to eat along the way. She wasn’t too far from the nearest roots, though the trees were a good deal further from the cliff than it had seemed on the beach. Looking on either side trying to spot sustenance, she walked across the meadow for a while before she managed to find a sloped root that led to the top of the mass of wood that was the root floor.
Limping faster over to the root ramp, she managed to get on top of the roots, and find a paradise. At least, a paradise for her. There, slightly further in, was a pool of water cupped in a dip in the root mesh. Far enough from the tree trunks to still have sunlight, but dense enough to form caves and tunnels of roots. Small prey animals, and some small plants with what looked like a nut or berry of some kind. The plants seemed to be almost parasitic, grasping onto the roots and getting their nutrients from the trees of the forest. The small animals all scattered as she got close, not letting her get a good look at any of them, though the majority were white with red eyes as if they had been in the dark most of their life. Which, she supposed, they probably had been, only surfacing for water and maybe food.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She collapsed in front of the pool of water, and started to take small sips. She wanted to chug it, so badly, but the village hunter had taught the children of her village that if they were ever dying of thirst, they needed to take small sips so as not to overwhelm their bodies.
Her mind cast back to her time in the village, a precocious child absorbing every word the hunter taught. Her love of learning would serve her well here at least. She went over to the berry nut things and crushed one, juices spurting out of it onto her hands. A berry then, just with a tough exterior. She let the juice linger on her hands, knowing that she could live without food for a little longer, and that the berry might be poisonous. Testing its juices on her skin and letting it stay there overnight to see if she had a reaction was her best bet to make sure this was a real food source for her.
Throughout the rest of that day, Akna sat near the pool, taking small sips and keeping an eye on her hand. Animals did filter by occasionally to drink, realizing she was a non threat. They all seemed to be herbivores, some eating the berries and some not. One was a little creature with a large fluffy tail, small ears, and beady eyes. It had some stretched skin between its forearms and its back legs. She noticed this one in particular, as it didn’t come from the root caverns like the rest. This one glided down from a treetop in the distance.
It was close enough that she thought she might be able to reach out and pet it, when a screech screamed overhead, a massive bird draping the small root clearing in shadow as it flew deeper into the forest. The animals scattered, the one she wanted to pet scurrying up the roots to a tree trunk and into a knoll higher up. Luckily the bird didn't seem to be hunting, as Akna was not in good enough shape to scatter like the rest. A while later after she had drank a little more and her adrenaline had calmed, a few creatures including the one from the knoll came back.
Akna likely would have been more invested in looking at the animals, but honestly her body and mind just hurt too much. She named the creature from the knoll a glider in her mind, but didn’t really think much more of it that day. As the sun started to set, she slowly got off the ground, ready to look for shelter. There were many openings into the tunnels below around her, but she didn’t want to go below. She would likely have to explore it at some point, but for now she found some roots that had formed a small cave a little ways away from the pool of water.
Akna curled up in the shade of her root cave, and laid there for a little while, her thirst finally slated. The roots were tough, she was cold and hungry, but she was alive. She was still alive. She would make it through this, she would find her family, and she would make it back home. She would. Slowly, Akna nodded off and dreamed of her family together again, eating dinner and smiling to a story yet untold.
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Akna woke the next morning with a throbbing headache. Her body was finally feeling the pain it had held back now that she was safe. She hadn’t realized there was more pain to feel, but bodies were strange things. Sitting up holding her head, she checked her hand to see dried berry juice and no rashes or other strange effects. That was a good sign. Knowing what she needed was likely more water, food, and rest, she got up and slowly walked back to the water pool. More animals about, but again they scattered as she got close. She got down on her knees to take a sip of water, and grabbed a single berry for one more poison test. She lived this long, she wasn’t going to die because she ate too eagerly, ignoring her lessons from childhood.
The berry tasted heavenly, hunger being the best spice, and she drank some more water before heading back to her cave. If she didn’t feel sick or dead by the next morning, she should be good to finally eat. Though even then she would have to take it slow, as her body was severely malnourished. She also realized her body had kick started enough to have… other functions again. So finding a small bush to deal with that also took precedence.
Her magic still felt rubbed raw, but there was a slight, tiny, infinitesimally small amount of magic recovered now. Everywhere that magic traveled felt like she finally put cool water on a burn. She tried to pull magic to her hand again like during her climb, but the sharp pain in her core put a stop to that. As long as she just let it cycle through her body and didn’t attempt to use it, she seemed to be fine.
That night, her sleep was more restless, dreams of her family waking her up in the night. Restless, she went for more water and food. None of the creatures she had seen were out at night, so she didn't have to worry about that this time, though a few things she thought might be large bats did converge overhead before swooping into the forest. The forest was loud even at night, the cacophony of many bugs and beasts calling out into the void for a mate or to scare others away.
She wondered why there weren't larger nocturnal animals around while she drank from the pool, and she got her answer later that night when she woke up for a second time to a screeching roar from the depths of the jungle. It was followed by a bassy growl and a loud crack and crash as she saw a cloud of wood dust fly up from the forest floor in the distance, and a scream of pain from whatever had woken her up, before a silence took over the forest as all the creatures paused in suspense. Her body covered in sweat and her breathing more erratic than before, she laid back down to try to fall asleep after that scare. Slowly, the bugs and other smaller wildlife started to make noise again, filling the air with the ambient sound of the forest once again as she nodded off into a fitful sleep.
The next few days, she made sure to have a stockpile of berries so she wouldn't have to go out at night as frequently. Otherwise, they went very similarly to her first day at the pool. Wake up, drink and eat, relieve herself, cycle her magic, eat and drink some more, and go to sleep. The roots were not comfortable, the nights were cold, the forest loud and scary, but she was alive and she was recovering. Sometime later, Akna wasn’t sure how long it had been, her magic recovered enough for her to use it slightly again. She didn’t know what she could really do with it, but she at least was able to fill her hands again like she had on the climb.
All things considered, she was recovering well. Her fingers and feet were scabbing over, she wasn’t starving anymore, she was able to handle the cold despite the state her body had been in. And now, her magic was recovered enough that she could start to practice her magic. Her parents had always said that in any new situation, the most important thing was information. She didn't have many tools on her own, so learning to use her magic even a little bit was vital.
Since she didn’t want to travel while still recovering, Akna spent some weeks or maybe even months learning what her magic could do, slowly whittling away at her stock of berries. First, she learned that her magic seemed to travel through her body through magic veins, or channels. Those channels, if magic was being passed through them, provided a minor strengthening to her body. She could feel the magic traveling through, and her arms gained more strength back faster if she moved magic through them constantly. Her magic almost sang in joy as it traveled through her body.
Embarrassingly, she also learned that magic healed her faster, something that would have been useful earlier. It had rained one day making the roots slick, and she had slipped and cut her arm. She had unconsciously started running magic through her body at all times at this point, and noticed that her cut seemed to scab over much quicker than normal. This at least explained why she was able to recover as well as she had, her magic supporting her body even when it was failing.
The one downside she had already learned about magic was that she did seem to need more food in order to get its levels past a trickle, but she would always have a small amount even if she was starved. Running her magic to her tummy did seem to make it so she needed less food after using magic, but it was hard to tell how much since she was being more conservative with her magic due to having a limited food source.
The final thing she had learned was how to push magic out of her hand. It wasn’t much, but she managed to make a small spark. With it, she was able to make a fire. No more cold nights at last! She was more grateful than ever that the People had at least a minor connection with all the elements. While they may never have the power the Rakt could have with their fire, or the freedom of the Elghim with their wind, her people were adaptable to it all.
After a long time, Akna finally felt healed enough to think about her future plans. She would be fully recovered in only a few more days. She could try to find civilization soon. She just had to explore, see if she could find signs of Zamani. She stared into the forest in front of her as a shrill screech ripped through the air, followed by a thunderous clap as a tree deeper in the forest snapped.
“Shit.”