2. Awakening

He woke up in a strange place. In his memory was a female voice, that had told him that he had to change to go one living. That he was not the same as before anymore. The Voice had told him he had to choose a Class befor going forward, he didn´t now what a Class was, only that it meant power for him and the chance to see the open sky again. The voice had told him to find flowing water. To follow it and if he managed to get out of the caves alife she would send someone for him to help him. To answer his questions.

He looked around. He was in darkness, but a strange one. He could see forms and outlines on which the darkness ate like flickering flames. There were pillars, like those flowing stones that he had seen sometimes in the caves and mine shafts where water dribbled down from the ceiling. But these were destroyed. Eaten and melted by the dark flames all around. He felt they all had been choices he might had have. Destroyed choices. Choises that weren´t possible anymore. He looked at the leftovers of one near him. He felt it had been the choice of becoming a warrior. He moved through the rubble, searching for a choice that was still there. As he glanced at them, he understood that these must be those Classes the voice had told him about. But they were all destroyed, some more some less, and he felt the clear knowledge, that choosing them would mean death.

Finally, he found three collums that were mostly intact. One showed a deep darkness wavering around it. Walker of Darkness, it called itself and promised the ability to merge with the darkness, to been unseen in the dark. The dark flames had marred this collum, but it still stood.

The second collum had bright flames of fire burning over it´s form. Infuser of the Flame, it called itself and promised the power of fire and heat. The dark flames had bitten deep furrows out of it, but it still stood.

The last one was fully drenched in those dark flames but stood prestin without a scar from it. As it seemed to not give heat instead pulling away the warmth burning it away and leaving just a burning cold. Holder of the Dark Flame, it called itself. It promised a unity with himself, to be the only one to be warmed by it. Stealing the heat for himselve.

He looked around. There were other collums that were not destroyed completle. Some holding together by mere hope. Their promisses were weak and faint. He had to choose, so he took the Dark Flame. The loudest promisse. The collum that was whole. That which promised the most power. What gave him strenght to do what the voice had said. To find a way out. To see the sky again.

As he embraced it, darkness enclosed him once again.

“Why did you do that?” The Mother of Beasts asked Balance furiously. “He is mine!”

“No, he has the right to choose for himself.” Balance answered. “My follower that I will send him will just help him. Answer his questions. Help him into a world he knows nothing about. I will not claim him or try to pressure him to become my follower.”

“You know that this help will already sway him in your favor, sister.” The Lady of Harvest argued.

“That may be.” Balance said firmly. “But both of you put your finger on the scale here today! You both interfered in the fate of him. This is my part! My finger is on the scale to keep the balance! Do you claim I don´t have the right sisters of mine?

There was only silence as an answer from both.

As he woke up, he clearly was chanced. He hadn´t even opend his eyes yet, but he felt the chance already. His head hurt, but this was nothing, he had worse. But inside his head there were things that hadn´t been there before.

First, a whole new language. Not only spoken, but the writing too. He never could write the language he already had known. But suddenly he could write that new one. That wasn´t even all, a way to speak this language with gestures was suddenly known to him as well.

Secondly, he felt different inside. There was a filling power inside him now. Some knowledge called it Mana. Energy to fuel the Dark Flame. To bring it forth on his body. And finally, there was a new kind of hunger. He knew hunger all his life. He felt it now, the empty stomach growling for food. But there was another deeper hunger now. Different and still the same. Something told him he could feed it, he had just to find the right food.

As he opend his eyes he saw that he had changed way more than that. His sight was different. The darkness had given way to fuzzy outlines but colourless. Everything was different shades of grey to white. It didn´t give him a sharp picture of his enviroment, but way more as the total darkness had been.

As he pulled himself up from the ground, he had the feeling the propotions of his body weren´t quite the same anymore. But he wasn´t sure. The one thing he was sure of was that his hands had changed. His fingers were longer and where broken fingernails had been there sat now longer, sharper and way harder ones. The rest of his hunched gaunt body seemed unchanced, as far as he was able to feel. In his sight his arms and everything else he could see of his body was dark, nearly black.

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He sat down beside a small pool of water that collected here in a deeper laying part of the ground. What had happened to him. He remembert going down. Going deep down to die. But he haddn´t. Who was the voice he had in his memory? She promised answers if he managed to get out. If he found flowing water and followed it to the outside. What was this Mana he felt? What was a Class? What did it mean, that he was the Holder of the Dark Flame? He was alive, but so confused.

Burrying his face in his hands he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. After a while he managed that. He also dicovert that his breath came out much colder than the air he breathed in, which was not normal at all. Another question. But he put that one away with all the others. The only question he had to face now was what to do next. Looking around didn´t help much there. He was in a cave. Not high enough to stand upright. A tunnel with smooth wet floor. The water he had trank from was in a slightly deeper part of that floor, where it had collected naturally. He rememberd his meager belongings and searched for his sack. Luckyly it was still bound to his tattered loincloth. In it all he had. A hammer, a chisle, a shar rock, an empty canteen and a few of those shiny stones the clean ones wanted. He had not traded everything he had found for a while, because he had known that his end was near and he hadn´t wanted to starve too, when he would not longer be able to work. For a short moment he wanted to toss those stones away, but he stopped himself. What once was a means to get food might in futur help him find those he wanted his revenge on. These must be somewhat rare, why else would they want them, they might give him a lead to find them after he got out of these caves.

He filled the canteen and thought about which way to go. Two options, and no way of knowing which direction he had come from. A light brise moved the warm air in one direction. He knew that warm air travels upwards, but the mines had been hot, way hotter than here. The brise was cooler and he didn´t want to go back, so he decided to move against the brise. Not knowing how far he had traveled already he would sooner go deeper than going up now and find himself back in those mines.

After binding his sack back where it belonged, he started moving. He was very weak, but walking slow using his feet and knuckles to balance himselve he traveled down the tunnel. It was slow, a deep breath, collecting what little energy that was there and another step forward he moved more of will than by virtue of muscle power.

He traveled like in trance one breath one step. He came to cracks and splits on his way, going where the coldest briese came from, staying in the tunnels with smooth ground. They had to been washed out by water at some point in time. They were wet. If he had a chance to find more water, it had to be those tunnels. At some point there was a new scent in the air. A scent that hit his hunger and let it come free from the long-practised chains of ignoring. He didn´t recognised the scent, but his body screamed at him that it was the scent of something edible. After some more steps he draws near. A little cavern, not much bigger than the tunnel. Water dripping from the ceiling into a shallow bowl-shaped floor, filled ankledeep. The smell comes from the edge of this little underground lake.

He kneels, sniffing and feeling the stone near the water. A slimy moist something is on the stone. His strange vision dosen´t make out any difference, but his finger feel it and his smell tells him it´s nourishment. He scrapes some of it from the stone, sniffes it again and finally tries to taste a little bit of it. It is utterly dicusting and as slimy as it feels, but as he feels no side effect of it in his mouth, he carfully eats a little more of it.

There had been things to eat in the mines. Insects and funghis mostly. But you couldn´t eat all of them. Some gave you the shits, other cramps, and a few might kill you. So, he just scraped it from the stones above and under water, only eating very little amounts of it. Waiting and carfully watching out for any ill effect on him.

The first thing he felt was a slightly burning sensation as the slime hit his stomache. He stopped eating at once. But besides the burning sensation, which soon stopped again, nothing else happened. He waited, but nothing changed. He finally ate another little bit, not even a mouth full. The burning came back and stopped soon again. He had a feeling as if his exhaustion was getting better, for a short moment. So, he took the chance and gulped down a full mouthful. The burning returned. It was not stronger, but it stayed longer and yes, he felt power coming back into his limbs. He was still weak and exhausted, but able to move faster as his snail like pace he had to before. But as soon as the burning sensation was gone again, he was back in his absolut weake state again.

Setting all caution aside he scraped as much of the slime as he could into himself and then started going onward again at a higher speed. At least as long as it did hold. He now checked every crack and splitoff carfully with his nose, and he found more. Small patches off perhaps lichen or fungi, more slimy stuff where water stood in puddles and pools. Not much of it, not enough to even once ease the deep hunger he felt, but enough to get him going. And that was his luck, because as the air gott colder and his exhaustion grew he wouldn´t have come far without it. Without the burning his speed was down to a very slow crawl.

When not even the burning kept him going, he broke down where the next little bit of nourishment was and fell in either sleep or unconciness.

He slept. Got up again and traveled this underground world from food source to food source and slept again. He started to find small insects, worms and slimy things. He didn´t care what it was, if his nose told him, it was food, he ate it, stuffed what he could in his sack and get on going. He didn´t care to count how many times he slept; it made no difference to him.

What made difference was that those insects kept the burning longer than lichen and fungi. The worms and slimy things too, but the insects were best.

Luckyly nothing was poisonous or venemous. At least not to a point to harm me. Sure, some insects’ bites were much more painfull than any wound he received should be, and some spit fluids on him that burned on his skin, but nothing that meant lasting harm to him. The most he got was a tingeling numbness in his arms, where some fat spider bit him as he plugged them out of cracks in the wall. But the numbness had been only for a short duration, and they had kept the burning going long. So, he just kept going on, exploring most of the soon narrower getting offshots, as that was where he found most insects and ate everything he could. He didn´t care how many times he slept or how mamy steps he had already taken. All that was important was the next mouthful to eat, and the miniscule bit of water that flowed downward the way he was going. It was such a small amount, he haddn´t even noticed it until it had collected against the dam of his sleeping body. Not more than a generall wetness of the floor, but slowly dripping in the same direction. He didn´t count it as flowing water yet. Partly to not get his hopes too high. But it might lead him to the real thing.