Haerclus fell through the portal, an endless void filled with wisps of multicolored mist. He opened his eyes, and the black void filled with numerous stars filled his vision. The wisps felt comfortable upon his skin, as he noticed that he was not breathing, and nor did he feel like he needed to either, in this strange in-between plane. He tried to speak, though no sound came out. It was strange, this feeling, as the sensation of falling accompanied his movement, though the starry expanse moved slowly in his vision.
Waving red smoke, while the thorn-mouthed tentacles gripped and crawled on the structure he flew away from. It disappeared into mists and reddish smoke the further he soared through the portal’s travel, as iridescent swirls covered his body, and his wounds closed before his eyes. Time hadn’t felt like it had passed, and he saw himself as the same man, though he knew that had been soaring for a long while already.
If it took this long for anyone to go through this portal, I bet everyone would have been dying of old age already, he groused in his mind, before he drifted off to sleep in the void shimmering with colorful mists.
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It was cold, as blistering winds that whined and howled tore through snow-covered turf, a boreal storm that encompassed the plains. Haerclus woke, his stomach screamed with hunger soon after, as he shook off the snow that had covered his body. He felt confused -- leaving the comforting mists of the void was very disorienting -- as the unfamiliar feeling of starvation left him in unending pain. He cried out, a hungry rasp as it escaped his throat, as he rose, barely able to crawl out of his discarded armor, and left his maul covered in the snow upon the frozen ground. Hunger and thirst wracked his body, as tiredness battled with excruciating pain.
He nearly fell once more, exhausted, though forced himself up, and looked around with his faded and blurred vision. He spotted a group of pine trees nearby, where a young rabbit foraged for sustenance as it sniffed the roots of the trees. A single thought entered his hungering mind, as he thought only a single thing: FOOD!
A burst of energy hit Haerclus, as his vision narrowed, as it featured only his prey, the rabbit as it nibbled around the roots of the tree, as he leaped forward, his horrible scent masked by the blowing boreal wind. His thin hand clasped the rabbit, as he opened his jaws before the creature as it squirmed, about to slip out of his grasp. He bit down, and ravenously chewed and shredded the flesh of the creature, the cries of its pain fell upon his deaf ears, and his hunger took precedence over anything else. Haerclus wiped his mouth, spitting out bones and scraps of fur, as the focused and gluttonous hunger subsided.
He felt tired, though his hunger was sated for now; he had no idea how long he had gone without food nor drink. The empty void of smoke and stars had kept him alive for what seemed like years, though he felt no different. He slipped closer to sleep, though slapped himself awake, for if he fell asleep out in the open, while in the middle of winter, would leave him dying of frostbite quickly. Haerclus sat for a minute more, and stood, shaking off the snow, and stumbled off into the forest, searching for shelter.
As he staggered through the forest, the blood crusted upon his face and hands, and the snow upon the ground thickened. Trees began to grow more common, their trunks covered in snow, as pine leaves waved in the winds, a crisp and cool air directly contrasted with the disgusting musk of his unwashed body. Haerclus trudged through the snow, squinting his eyes as a blow of wind sent snow out in a puff of a white, icy, cloud. He stood, and wiped his face, as he looked around, and spotted a cave closely hidden by shrubbery and a low-hanging pine branch.
He turned toward the cave, and strode through the snow, wanting to enter the cave and repurpose that into a basic shelter. He brushed aside the branches in his way and stepped foot into the dark and damp depths of the cave, looking around as he rubbed his arms for warmth. The darkness took a little time to adjust to, the sun through the clouds reflecting on the snow had been a little bright for him to handle, as he stood for a while, still not daring to go deeper until he could at least see where he was going. He held a hand upon the wall, and stabilized himself, while his eyes roved the inside of the cave, the fading disappearing.
A while later, Haerclus stood again and brushed himself off, as his stomach grumbled as hunger reared its gluttonous neck yet again. He walked deeper into the cave and searched for a place where he could warm himself up from the icy cold. The deeper he walked, he began to smell something foreign, and heard slow, light, breathing from around a bend in the cave’s stone. Haerclus stopped in his tracks, and stood still, though he heard nothing further, the sound gone. He walked forward, cautiously, and thought, for whatever creature there was, he would likely be able to slay it while it was asleep in hibernation.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The temptation of meat and perhaps a pelt to wear overcame his fear as he stepped quietly around the corner, and spotted a large bear asleep, snug within a depression in the stone, its light breathing coming slowly but surely, sound asleep. He watched the creature sleep for a while more, and steadied himself, thinking about how he could slay the creature quickly with his bare hands. He knew he could not afford to leave the cave, for he would then be exposed to the frosts of mid-winter yet again, yet he could not simply risk the creature waking up and slaying him in his sleep.
He pondered his actions and remembered the training he had done with Johnson, and the past where they had tried to exchange their power, though he had chosen not to use them, for his maul was far better in his opinion. Haerclus looked at the sleeping bear again, and straightened his hand, as he held it at an angle akin to a javelin’s soaring strike, and thought of performing the same attack that his companion had favored, and channeled his pitiful amount of magical influence around his raised arm.
He channeled his power into a bladed spear superimposed upon his arm, and swung forward, and aimed to plunge his powered hand into the neck of the bear, and decapitate the beast with the strike. His hand plunged through the creature’s neck, as an arterial spray blasted him full-on with blood, his friend’s technique far too much to handle for the bear’s fur and muscle. The pelt was covered in arterial spray, and blood stained his body, though what remained was the juicy smell of meat to his hungering stomach.
He tore at the wound he made in the bear’s flesh, ripping at its flesh and trying to pull even the meagerest portion of food he could from the creature he had just slain. He set upon to eat, his jaws tore at the bear’s meat, as he sought to eat whatever food he could, even the fatty, raw, meat of the bear he had slew. He stood, as he polished off his meal, and saved a large portion of the bear for the future, as he walked to exit the cave and find some firewood. He snapped off the branch that hung before the cave, and brought it inside the cave, to dry by the body of the bear.
Haerclus sat by the chewed-upon body of the bear, and set to pick up the branch, and broke it into smaller pieces, as he beat it against the walls of the cave, the wood snapped the more he waved, into smaller chunks of wet bark and its drier interior. He took the small pieces he had revealed from the center of the branch and set to rubbing them against each other, as he stacked them into a pile together, and sparked a small, wispy flame to smolder at the mound he had gathered.
He warmed himself by the fire and fed it with the few branches and sticks that he scrounged out from the trees and shrubbery outside his cave. He sat in the cave, as he sharpened a thin stick upon the rock, and went to make spits of bear’s meat to roast in his camp. He flipped a length of sharpened stone in his hand, cut into the bear’s body, and struggled to pull out the bones that filled the length of the carcass. A few more cuts brought him to skin the beast, and when he draped the creature’s mangy fur upon his form, he solved the problem of cold, though its crusted blood made the smell even worse in the cave.
He wrinkled his nose at the smell and leaned closer to the fire to smell the meat that cooked above the campfire, as its flames crackled and licked the meat, as hidden juices arose atop the gloried fumes that filled the cave. He bit into his fare, its taste astronomically better than the first tastes of food he had had ever since he had fallen through the portal. The food finally sated his hungering gluttony, as he felt waves of tiredness wash over his body, the past day or so caught up to him in vengeance, as he slipped to the sweet caress of sleep.
He woke, a while later, stood up, as his back cracked from sleeping while sitting upon the hard, stone walls of the cave. He swore and walked out of the cave, while he brushed aside the snow and bare sticks which covered the ground. His feet got wet and soggy, as the frosty ground of the deep winter bit against his uncovered feet, his ragged, furry, cloak dragged and gathered dirt upon its form. He went to retrieve his weapons and his armor, for they would make any future encounter with a wandering beast just that much easier.
A flurry of snow fell from the branches above him, a blow of wind whipped through the forest, as iced flakes of snow flew in a breeze of whirling wind. He exited the treeline, as he trudged through the plains, as the wind flowed freely here, the glow of the portal in the distance faint and showed upon the dancing snow, lighting it up as if the gusts were dancers dressed in white, spinning and twirling. White flakes gathered over his furs, as frost encrusted itself atop the long hairs, as he wrapped his cloak closer, the cold biting and freezing.
He arrived at the base of the portal, a faint heat drifting from beyond its rippling pane, from flames that still burned many uncountable distances away. He looked for his weapon, along with his armor, searching the land that was filled with falling snow, leaning down to look at the ground where he had left them. He found the ground empty, his things gone, as faint tracks led away from their old spots, their bottoms seeming to be imprinted by the outsoles of a thief’s boots. The tracks were covered in snow, though it ended a ways away, too obscure to be seen, Haerclus’s gear nowhere to be found.
Haerclus sighed in annoyance, annoyed that his weapons and armor had been left to thieves and petty crime, while he lamented his misfortune for the immense hunger that had hit him after entering this world in the middle of winter. He stood and screamed into the sky for a few more moments, seething about the pettiness of stealing even the horridly damaged armor, along with his most favored maul.
Haerclus came back to his senses, as the wind blew and howled by his ears, as he felt the grumbling of his stomach again. He trudged back to the forest, ready to hunt, while he thought while he walked. The entire time that he had traveled through the portal, he had not seen a single person, much less another Demon, even though he had gone through only several moments after the others had. Perhaps they had all died? No, that could not be the case, or he would be standing upon a mountain of bodies. Perhaps they had all left for towns and villages nearby? Though he surely would have found footprints, or the traces of their presence, though all he had found were the tracks of a dishonorable thief, and not that of the hundreds that should have gone through.
He searched the trees, his mind still filled with the possibilities of what could have happened to his people, the worst possible case being if they had all died in the process of evacuation, and he was the sole survivor, though he wished to discount that possibility as much as possible. The trees rustled gloomily, only the slightest of drifts coming down to land upon the earth below, as he went upon his hunt, looking for another creature to slaughter once more, the desolate winter wasteland completely unfit for him to explore, as his hunger took precedence once more.