He woke up in a vast darkness, unmoving and unfeeling. He was nothing and so were his surroundings. He was unable to comprehend what he was, what was around him, all he could feel was the suffocating darkness. He was unaware of how long he had been in his state, all he knew is that before this point of realization he had still existed.

A Large amount of time had passed unbeknownst to him, he was unaware of the small eternity that he had spent wrapped in this darkness. He did not struggle, he did not move, all he understood was that he existed. As he became more Intune with his existence, he began to feel himself. Slowly, but surely, he began to understand his own state of being. First came his appendages, four long limbs that bent at a fulcrum point. He did not know what these were but he understood they were a part of himself, even though he wasn’t even sure of that concept as of yet. As more time passed he became aware of more, he was able to move these curious appendages. At first he was just able to wiggle them in strange manners, unable to understand what the ground was or even what they were attached too. Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months and months turned into years as he just helplessly wriggled his appendages repeatedly. He was unaware of the passage of time and everything seemed to condensed into a single moment for him.

After ten years had passed of him aloofly wriggling his limbs he finally begun to understand these appendages were attached to something, and that something must also be him. The realization of his body had opened even more options in movement. First he only wriggled the appendage that was attached to the top left of his body, he continued this action for months until he began to understand how it moves. With all his years experiencing movement, this was the first time he was able to control it so directly and concisely. Once he understood the movements of his limbs, he began to focus on his body. This newfound focus sky rocketed his awareness, he was no longer four floating limbs, he was a body with four limbs. Unfortunately, he still hadn’t reached a level of understanding of what he was. He could not feel his own body but he was aware of it, so he did the only thing he could do and he sat leaving all his focus on this new lump of himself that he had discovered. Once again a passage of time went by unbeknownst to him. He spent years unmoving, unflinching just focusing on this lump of himself attached to his limbs.

Four years had passed, and he was still no closer to self realization then the moment he had started. Those four years were nothing but a moment of stillness too him despite the passage of time continuing. One day as he sat unmoving focusing on himself, he finally felt something- but this something was foreign to him. It wasn’t the large lump of himself nor were it the movement of his limbs. While he sat in ignorant bliss his body was slowly dying in a hibernated state. Fourteen years had passed, and he had yet to consume any form of substance, but this approaching death gave him more insight about himself. There was a constant pounding within the center of his mass that he had been unaware of, but now that it begun to subside, he was painfully aware of it. With the slowing of his heart he also began to notice that his mass was constantly expanding and deflating, this was the act of breathing but now that he was dying it had become a labor. These two discoveries led him to a fundamental understanding of the lump of mass that was his body, and with this understanding his eyes shot open.

At first he was overwhelmed, the opening of his eyes also came with the true awakening of his senses. For the first time in fourteen years he was able to smell, see, hear and feel his surroundings. His entire body, including his bodily functions, froze. His brain could not handle all this newfound information and it shutdown in order to avoid overload. As his eyes opened for the first time, they would also close for the first time, never to open again. He sat in pain and agony that he could not understand until his brain shutdown and his body died, his life had ended as it had just truly started.

Once again, the being woke up, but this time he was not longer in a vast darkness. He woke up to the sight of a blinding red ball floating in a seemingly unending sky. He awoke keenly aware of his being, but ignorant to everything else. He was still the same being that had died after fourteen years, but at the same time he was not. He had no recollection of the memory of those fourteen years, instead the experience had ingrained itself in his body. He was not aware of the years he spent dead just as he was not aware of the previous years he had spent living. For the first time since the conception of his existence he used his four legs to raise his body off the ground. The four claw like appendages that sprung out from the base of his legs were his feet, and those feet began to submerge themselves into the soft ground beneath them. He looked around, properly utilizing his eyes to intake information for the first time but was unaware of what any of the info he was taking in meant. He was surrounded by an extremely dense forest. Large trees shot up into the sky almost as if they were trying to reach at a singular target in the unending sky. Large vines adjourned on the even larger branches, hooked in places by the spikey red bark. He begun to move his legs one at a time, not making any ground but simply stomping in place. He continued to do this for several days but unlike before, he had become aware of the passage of time.

He no longer viewed time as a single moment but a sequence of moments strung together. As time passed the ground under him was reformed into a small crater around him. He was unaware of his strength and unaware of how to control it, not only that but he was unaware of the effect of using his full strength on a solid surface. As he continued his legs began to give out, sustaining damage as his impact had uncovered the rock beneath the softer ground. As he once again stomped his legs in a sequence one at a time, his left front leg gave out and snapped as he brought it down with the full force of his weight. As the leg snapped his large body lost balance, he stumbled trying to regain it but failed due to his now damaged appendage unable to support his weight. As he fell into the crater the side of his head was struck, unbeknownst to him. His body was not just a mass but a head attached to a smaller mass where his eyes, nose and ears rested. His head was slightly angular and covered in the same ruff black exoskeleton as his body. He had small holes on either side of his head, and inside of these holes was a complicated series of organs used to hear. The impact between the crater and his head imploded completely crushing one of his eyes. Not only that but it also caved in one of his ears, he immediately became disoriented, his senses now confused by a new, uncomfortable, feeling. He tried to raise his head but the sudden impact had fractured his short neck, leaving him paralyzed. On the back of his large oval shaped body, he felt something. It was almost as if his back had opened up and exposed itself to the world as a large pair of eagle wings protruded. The sensation of these new appendages felt different from the rest of his body. The central part of his body felt firm and stiff almost as if it were a large shell, the same could be said for the limbs attached to it but they had softer points that allowed for movement. He was unaware of it, but these soft spots were his joints, joints that had been badly damaged due to his constant pounding.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

He was unable to move his body except for his new wings, so like before he focused on what was new to him. He began to move his wings slightly one after another, as he tried to move them in several directions he came to several conclusions. The first conclusion was that he was able to fold them inwards and outwards using the ‘softer parts’. The second conclusion was that he was able to move them as a whole from there base, and the last conclusion was that they did not serve the same function as his other appendages. He sat unmoving, unsure of what action he should take next.

Once again days passed and those days turned into weeks, but as the weeks passed he begun to feel something his body was familiar with already. His bodily functions began to slow down. With his newfound sense of self, it was much more apparent to him then the first time. His vision slowly began to blur as the days passed, he lacked the strength to move the appendages on his back as weeks passed, and finally his sense of smell and touch begun to fade. While he himself did not know what this all meant, his body was all too familiar, and unlike the past where he was basically unmoving, this time he had expended large amounts of energy. His body was actively trying to heal itself but lacked the substance to do so and he lacked the knowledge to secure said substance. Finally after a month had passed it was once again his time. His eyes faded to a pale color from their original hazy silver, his body quivered in one final effort- and he died.

Once again he awoke, but again something was different. He had no memory of his past life but his body was keenly aware of his discoveries and his faults. He found he was able to move his limbs naturally but was unsure of there purpose. That’s when he saw it. A creature smaller then himself, this introduction lead him to multiple curiosities. The smaller creature had four legs just like him but lacked the pair of wings on its back or four spike like appendages on the end of its legs. It was colored a pale white and had an oval main body similar to his own, but its neck was much longer and adorned with sharp spikes. Its face was very angular, as if it was shaped like a spike and its eyes seemed to almost be sunken into its face. It also had three tails, all with small spikes leading down its length and at the end sat a much larger spike. The creature slowly moved across the grassy lands with no vigor, swinging its tails behind it. One leg after another it made forward motion slowly but surely, and as the larger creature watched, it began to mimic its movements.

At first the larger creature struggled, not aware of the sequence it should move its limbs in order to replicate the forward movement. It repeatedly fell and got up, each time achieving movement but unable to sustain it. After a few hours of repeated failures, the smaller creature was now completely out of view. The larger creature could not completely understand the movement as it continuously tried and failed, however there was steady progress. First he would lift his front left leg and shift it in front of him, unfortunately he had yet to grasp the distance he should be moving said leg. Sometimes he would over extend causing him to lose balance and other times he would under extend making little to no forward movement. Thankfully he was large in size and strength so the various obstacles of the dense lush forest were of no issue to him, he smashed fallen trees and smaller rocks into pieces without much thought by simply stepping on them. He was not aware but even for his size he held an unusual amount of power. Thoughts of true self reflection were out of reach for the creatures simple logic, yet if you tracked his progress he was already catching up to the pace of the smaller creature he had seen earlier.

Before long a whole day had went by and the large creature had almost mastered forward movement, he was able to extend and retract his limbs in a semi sequential matter. First he would raise the left front bringing it forward before placing it back onto the ground, then he would mimic the movement with his hind leg. After shifting half of his body’s weight forward he would mimic the actions with his right side. His clunky and clumsy attempt at walking was almost robotic in a way, yet still extremely awkward. The large creature had yet to notice the minuet change in scenery around him as he advanced, the tress had become much more spread out and smaller as he advanced, the lush grass had been replaced with dirt sprinkled with fledging blades of grass and moss. Even the bark of the red tinted trees began to shift into another color, giving off a more natural brown tint. None the less the large creature continued to awkwardly stubble forward.

As the days went on the creature was able to slightly refine the way he moved, he began to move the two legs on either side of his body in unison, finding his balance with each step. The creature had no other thought then to ceaselessly move forward he had not even noticed that there were no longer trees or lush fields of grass and moss around him. He had arrived at a flat plain of land covered in black sand. The sand however had formed into sharp blades of glass while basking in the light of the red ball in the sky and were actively trying to pierce the feet of the creature as he lurked forward. By this time his momentum had slowed down to more of a creep then a walk. He was beginning to run out of energy once more. Oddly enough, for the first time in all its lives the creature seemed aware of its depletion of energy and stopped movement altogether. It immediately dropped its body into the sea of minuscule black shards. The glass shards were crushed under the weight of the creature and its thick exoskeleton, only leaving a loud crunch as he hunkered down. The rate of energy lost seemed to be much greater then when the creature took refuge in the forest. The constant moving had drained it far greater than any flailing or stomping in place ever could. Exhausted without knowing so the creature just sat, unknowing that its curiosity had led to another death that was slowly creeping. As he sat, seemingly waiting to die, a large shadow glided across his body. His eyes darted up almost as if he had sensed the large presence that had passed over him. He sat unflinching as a large wolf like creature with horns protruding out of its head flew across the sky with wings as dark as the night.