Author here! Before I start the chapter, i would like to say that I'm very new to writing and this is my first novel/web novel I'm working on, and it is hard for me to write intense moments like the fight scenes and it's also really hard for me to write characters and form a connection between the reader and character. But, nonetheless, I will continue to try and work on improving my writing, so please suffer through any cringy or bad chapters at the start, I promise it will get better! Also, sentences with ' ' surrounding them are thoughts, while " " are people saying stuff. Three dots (...) indicates a change in perspective or a change in area/person. For example, it might switch from third person to first person perspective or change characters. Anyways, let's start the chapter!
…
Aiken slowly sees a scene in front of his eyes as he wakes up. He sees an almost pitch black room, illuminated by a wisp of crimson light. The room seems like a medieval hut with no modern amenities. In the room, there's a bed that appears to be made of black skin and otherwise made of stone. There also seems to be a table in the corner of the room, with 2 chairs. Although they looked very unproductive and odd, they were nonetheless still a bed, table, and chairs.
He then looked at the floor where he was laying. It looked as if he was on a sacrificial altar, with a circle drawn out of unfiltered human blood and a circle with symbol-like grooves inside. The red light enveloping the circle faded away to a small wisp, eventually disappearing and leaving the room in an endless darkness.
Aiken slowly stumbled off the ground, and noticed that his body wasn't in shambles anymore. He was completely healthy, and felt better than ever! His muscles were still weak, but his body still felt stronger. While he adjusted to his fixed body, he stumbled up from the ground and get over to the door of the house.
As he walked through the door, he noticed a sinister, burning crimson moon hanging over an endless void. He discovered that wherever he was now, below the island he was on, there was only a void, and an endless void at that.
Aiken slowly stumbled off the ground, and noticed that his body wasn't in shambles anymore. He was completely healthy, and felt better than ever! His muscles were still as weak as a fly, but his body still felt more sturdy. While he was adjusting to his fixed body, he managed to stumble up from the ground and get over to the door of the house.
As he walked through the door, he noticed a sinister, burning crimson moon hanging over an endless void. He discovered that wherever he was now, below the island he was on, was only a void, and an endless void at that.
Illuminated by the crimson moon, he walked around and inspected the huts that he suspected a past civilization lived in. He also noticed that there were walls surrounding the village. He walked from house to house, looking through them to see if he could find anything useful.
The huts of the past civilization would have normal appliances, well, at least as far as medieval technology goes. There was also art and paintings on the walls and in other places. The huts usually didn't have anything special, and most of the huts were identical. It looked like they drank and got all their water from a mysterious lake in the center of the village, but Aiken didn't even dare to approach it.
…
Aiken was walking ahead to go to the next hut, when he suddenly saw a lake, or at least what looked like a lake, a few hundred meters away. 'Why is there a lake on this sinister island? Theres no place that water could come from, so how did that get there?'
As he was thinking about the strange, abandoned lake, he caught out of the corner of his eye what looked like some kind of human-like fish emerging from the surface of the lake. The entity looked like a hybrid of a human and a fish, being a bit taller than an average human, at 195 cm (6'4) tall. Their head was that of a fish, but they had limbs like a human and a relatively similar stature to a human, except looking exceptionally strong. It also had gills and instead of having skin, it had shiny, green scales.
The Fish-hybrid type entity crawled its way out of the misty lake, slowly standing up on the shore surrounding the lake. With its inhuman fish-like eyes, it scanned the area surrounding where it was, in a daze, like he had just woken up after hibernating for many years. The raging madness within the Entities' emerald green eyes seemed to calm down and settle, when he saw his surroundings, like it hadn't changed since the last time it emerged.
Meanwhile, Aiken was hiding behind the wall inside of a hut. 'Fuck fuck fuck fuck! Why the hell did I have to find whatever that thing is as soon as I finally found water!?!?!?!' Aiken was enraged since he felt like he hadn't had a sip of water in days, feeling his flaky, dry mouth and lips.
He silently watched the entity walk, albeit slowly and shaky, across the barren landscape surrounding the lake. He seemed to be walking towards the huge hut that just happened to be where Aiken had been taking shelter, directly behind the lake separated by only a couple hundred meters of barren land.
'Holy Fucking shit! why the hell is it coming towards me????!?!? Why is my luck always so horrible?' once he confirmed his suspicions of it walking in his direction, he thought 'well, if i want to have any chance of surviving this hell, ill eventually need to eat. And I haven't seen anything else living here, let alone anything I could eat, except for that weird fish creature. Guess i'm having some sushi for dinner tonight!' While thinking about this, he had a stupid grin on his face, and he went to take out an old rusty dagger from his makeshift waist band he used to carry things he found around the island. He currently had the rusty, but still sharp dagger, some type of makeshift rope, hide / skin from some type of creature, and about 20 throwing knives made out of stone.
Right before he departed, he checked everything he had and prepared for his little journey, and thought 'you know, that thing can't be that hard to kill right? It might be the size of a human, and have limbs like one, but it still has a fish head with green flaky scales covering it, so it cant be too smart either. And plus, I don't think whatever kind of fish that is would be too smart to be able to kill me easily, otherwise I don't think this past civilization, whenever they were here, would have survived to become this size. Right? Yea, it has to. Well, I guess here goes nothing!' He slowly walked out of the huts opening, where the door should be, and went to go fight the monster.
…
'Ah, I guess it really did have to be THAT hard to kill.' Thought Aiken. He had just nearly escaped the little demon fish monster, whatever it was. When he met to fight the damn fish, he tried to throw one of the throwing knives straight at him, but he dodged it easily, even though it was only flying through the air for less than half a second. The entity ran towards him at an inhuman speed, and ripped off some of the flesh on his arm instantly, with his long nails, which were so dense and long that they were closer to claws than nails.
With the burning pain of his arm, it was hard for him to focus on the fight. To make it worse, Aiken was left handed, and he just so happened to have injured his left arm.
(A/U note: yes, he's left handed, because Aiken always gets the worst possible things, and since i'm also left handed) -
Because of his injured arm, he was forced to switch hands with his knife, making him take a huge hit to his accuracy and maneuverability. When the entity lunged out to get Aiken with his claws again, he managed to side-step, using the martial art skills he learned when he was younger, and sliced open half of the abdomen open of the entity. When he took a quick glance at the wound he had just inflicted, he noticed inside the body, there were what looked like some kind of organs, but its entire insides were pitch black, even his organs. It looked like something out of a horror movie.
While the fish leaked a tiny bit of blood from the wound, it automatically started to cover up the wound with new, grown flesh. It looked like he was in dire pain, but that was only for a second.
A second later, his maneuverability doubled, and he somehow became faster and stronger than before, like he just got done warming up for a workout. He ran circles around Aiken, and tried to reach out and rip out another chunk of his flesh every few seconds. He was able to dodge most of the attacks, but not all. He managed to get swiped 2 times by the entity, once on his leg, and the next dangerously close to his neck, on his shoulder.
After a minute or two of trying to defend himself, the creature slowed down and stopped running around him, looking a bit tired, like he had just run a couple miles. 'Yeah, no way i'm killing this monstrosity for now, gotta go!' Aiken thought. He used the opportunity and sprinted in full speed in the opposite direction, zig zagging behind huts and buildings, hoping to lose the entity. After sprinting at full speed for a while, he was totally out of breath so he slowed down for a second and looked behind him, noticing the entity to be nowhere to be found.
'What the heck, where did it go? Did the entity not follow me, or is it hiding behind a building, waiting to get me?' Aiken thought. He looked around once again and thought harder. 'Based on how that monstrosity acted and what it did, I'm assuming it isn't very intelligent. So, it would make more sense for it to stay there, and not chase after me, wasting more energy. I'm guessing it will try to come back to hunt and kill me in a few hours, when I'm asleep, giving it a better chance of catching and killing me, just like how an animal would do on earth.'
Realizing this, Aiken slowly walked away, catching his breath. He noticed he hadn't been to this area of huts before, which was weird, since he seemed to have explored all of the huts in the village, besides the few by the lake, and he was definitely not near the lake currently. Confused, but intrigued, he decides to walk into the biggest hut in the vicinity, probably around half the size of the huge hut by the lake, and about triple the size of a normal hut.
Aiken decides to go inside the hut, since it was visually and physically different from the other huts, with stronger and sturdier stone walls and it looked more refined and life-like compared to the normal soulless-looking buildings. It radiated a warm and holy energy that seemed to heal and mend his soul, slowly mending the scars and wounds on his soul.
Pulled towards the hut, he mindlessly walked into the hut, noticing a bright, holy-like light radiating from the center of the room. He slowly walked towards it without thinking, until he randomly regained his rationality. 'Wait, isn't this oddly like what happened in my office? Maybe this could bring me back to earth!' Aiken thought. He ran towards it, but was even more amazed at what he saw, albeit still a bit disappointed.
The radiating holy-like light was coming from a sword that seemed to be stuck in the ground. It didn't just radiate holy light, it also radiated pure power, more than he had ever experienced. It seemed to stand out in the Abyss like the sun in a night sky. It illuminated everything in the room beautifully.
Aiken continued to attempt to pull the sword out of the crack in the refined stone. The sword slowly slid out, like It had rusted and stuck to the stone, slowly sliding its way out. As he pulled out the sword, he suddenly felt a nauseating feeling. It felt like his mind was being overtaken and corroded, by some kind of evil spirit.
He suddenly felt his consciousness fading, while trying to deal with the unimaginable pain. As his consciousness was fading, he thought 'Goddammit, not again!' As soon as he finished this thought, his mind went blank, and his consciousness slipped away.