Chapter 6: Arrival Part 3

I take off and immediately, the pain is unbearable. I'm zapped everywhere, every inch of exposed skin bubbling with acid, eating away to the fat and muscle. Throwing my arms in front of my face to shield it, I move as fast as possible, sweeping through the hanging fire but all I can feel is the pain - this erosion of my body. My head hangs low, my scalp screaming with scorched flesh but I keep going, biting my lip which nearly bleeds from the assault. I'm almost through, almost to the end but there may not be much of me left. Am I burning alive? It feels like it. Bits of me are being charred away, melting into this poisonous place to be left behind as evidence. Evidence I didn't survive.

But I'm not quitting.

My legs carry me further, wobbling as patches of skin disappear. I'm just about through when I snatch the last few vines to the side and fall into a giant puddle of a sticky blue substance on the other side. The liquid starts to envelop me but I keep my mouth and nose perched high, sucking in air for reserves. I try to wriggle free but can't move. My heart thumps rapidly, racing.

I'm drowning.

The gooey liquid is going to suck me down, and it's here, I know, that I'm going to die. Just as I start seeping under, grabbing the last bit of breath, the burning starts to fade.

I stop moving.

The eroded skin on my hands and arms start to cool, the wounds suddenly repairing themselves. My body relayers the missing muscle, fat and skin until they are fully restored. Able to snatch my hand easier than expected, I turn it over. Healed. No gaping charred holes. No sizzling to the bone. Taking a deep breath, I submerge myself completely, rolling around in the liquid blue as the cooling sensation washes over the skin on my face and scalp, reconstructing it. I come back up for air and find it easier to move. In fact, the substance is no longer sticky, but closer to the texture of water, silky and fluid.

Dragging myself from the puddle, I rest in a patch of dirt and grass at the foot of a mammoth tree, one - like most others - more suitable for a giant than a human. With my left cheek resting on the damp grass, my fingers sink high into the cool dirt above my head. I could stay like this forever. Never moving. Never leaving to discover other horrors that await me in this nightmare. But I've only just started. I haven't put enough distance between myself and... whatever those things were.

I have to keep going.

With every ounce of strength I can muster, I peel myself from the ground. My legs wobble, unsure of the weight they carry, but I force them on, faster and faster.

Just keep going. Keep moving.

Swiping hanging ivy and clamoring over low branches that cut across my knees, I fall to the dirt a few times, tripping over hidden roots, but I get back up, pushing forward, always pushing forward.

Just a bit further. You're almost there.

Except it's not me this time. It's someone else, or something else inside my head. Even if my legs can't carry me much farther, this feeling, this intuition leads me like a compass. There's something ahead. Something important I have to find.

I trudge forward, sweat pouring down my body, grazing over my limbs like drizzling rain. I swipe my brow with my forearm and my upper lip with my finger. I'm soaked. My hands are black with dirt and my hair sits matted to my neck and back. Heavy pounding threatens to explode my chest as my legs barely stumble on, about to give out.

But then I round the cluster of trees and come across something odd.

Just ahead, in the middle of a natural clearing, a collection of broken walls remain, cathedral-sized and overgrown in a wild nest of ivy. The stone fragments sit close to one another, a few disappearing into the treetop canopy above, but most are broken at the lower branches. Ivy drapes between them and covers each like fabric. At their base, yellow cobblestones swim in overgrown grass like sinking ships, dotting the clearing with a losing battle on the sea.

I fall to my knees.

I know this place.

Nearly incapable of moving, I manage to crawl, dragging myself over pools of ivy. The ground pads my swollen palms and knees but they still throb, screaming for rest. I can't stop now - I need to know what this place is... what it was.

I plant my elbows into the ground like stakes, lugging myself closer to the first broken remain. It stands over ten feet tall with chips of stone blown away, moss, ivy and dirt working to clog the holes and mend the jagged edges. There's another wall some ways back and another up ahead, lying adjacent to the ruin on my left. It must have been a room. I scan my brain, searching this image, searching for what it might have looked like but there's nothing.

This needs a more thorough investigation than crawling. If only I didn't ache so badly, if only I'd just discovered this beyond the first few trees. I ignore the throbbing in my limbs, the pounding in my chest about to break me open, and I stagger to my feet, clutching the wall for balance.

Yes, I'm in a room - a compartment of some sort. When my legs secure themselves, I push forward, past the ruins in front of me and find another grouping ahead, also coated in sheaths of ivy with bare blocks of stone wall remaining.

What is this place?

I wander from ruin to ruin and stop at each wall, gazing over the remaining stone and their connection to the others. They were white at some point but age and dirt have eroded them to this yellowish tint. They must have been here for years. Centuries, possibly. But how do I know? It's like a feeling, like a hidden message was stowed away in me all this time - a knowledge I didn't know I possessed.

I continue on, lost in this ruin of a city that at one time must have been quite spectacular to behold. More rooms, more compartments await me until I emerge from them all, finding myself across from a new clearing and in the middle of it, a single tree with flowing tresses of pink, peach and orange blossoms.

It stands alone, overlooking the city with its ancient, ethereal eye. A breeze whisks through, dancing in the blossoms and playing their pink fingers like a pianist on his keys. Drawn by its overwhelming magnetism, I start for it when I'm distracted by a crunch, crunch behind me.

I drop to the ground, my back to the closest stone. Another crunch, crunch - the stomping of leaves. It's coming from my left... or is it my right? Have they found me? Those creatures from the Castle? Or is this a new predator?

My chest thumps emphatically as I listen for the source of the sound. The crunching grows louder on my left but a soft pitter-patter of steps echoes on my right. A pack of something? If I don't move now, they'll find me. Kill me. Eat me, most likely. Maybe that's better, though. Ending my fate now instead of prolonging all this. Maybe the best thing for me is to do is run out and fight it and go down trying. But somehow, I can't. Fear has swelled inside me, blocking the practical from survival. I can't give myself over willingly, even if I wanted to. It's human nature to fight and although I can't remember, it's in my nature too.

Another rustle of leaves. What then? Flight? Fight? Neither sound like an ideal activity. I have to do something. But what?

Crunch, crunch!!

This is it.

My demise.

I wish I could remember someone I once loved, someone I'd think about at the very end. Any person who'd make this time here all worth it. I try to search for any glimmer of light but the rustling is upon me. I've lost. Perching myself to spring from the wall - one final act of survival - I see him.

His deep mahogany eyes burn through me, nonplussed...

...and then everything goes dark again.