The air was cold and unforgiving on that mid-autumn evening. The leaves crackled and broke under her feet, sounding as though she were stepping on bones. The shattering noises were only interrupted by her thoughts, and by her own cloud of misery which had drowned out most of what was going on. She was in an inescapable bubble. The trees reached for her, threatening the sanctity of that bubble, but it was impenetrable; it only allowed the blood of words to run into it, and scratch at her feeble brain.
Her tired eyes looked up at the canopy of the fingers of each branch, the trees were on fire. The leaves so many different colors, yet their vibrant glow did nothing to calm her dying consciousness. Black and white, no color no emotion besides the pain that threatened to consume her.
She froze, a foreign noise waking her from her daze. She stood and listened for it again before finally her suspicions were rewarded with a low and monsterous growl. This sound forced a reaction not too alien to her, as she broke into a sprint to attempt at getting away from the entity that hd created it.
Earlier that day she was running from her fellow humans, now she ran from what she assumed was a wolf. Her legs screamed as her body moved faster than ever before. Her mind was too gone to concentrate and her vision went hazy. She knew she was aimless, and she knew she would be running. For how long, or from what, she hadn't a clue. But she ran nevertheless, and found herself suddenly falling. But this was no mere trip. No, she fell and fell, the wind the only thing attempting to catch her despite gravity's force.
A startled scream escaped her throat, and her hands reached for anything that might stop her sudden collapse into the Earth's crust. She was swallowed by darkness, consumed by a world not yet known to her. She fell.
Seconds felt like days, as though time had stopped all together yet was moving rapidly as she finally saw a soft golden glow at the bottom.
Then she came face to face with the glow. A loud splitting crack filled the darkness around her, followed by her own blood curdling screams of agony.
Echos of her suffering could be heard all around. Her mind too taken to care as she expressed the pain through her noises. She yelled and screamed until she couldn't anymore, the idea that no one was coming was all too familiar. She wasn't getting out of this one, not unless she willed the shattered glass that was her mind, together.
Slowly she made her arms work. She grasped the golden flowers below. The crimson stains from her blood seemed to disappear as though the buds had milked from her wounds, impregnating them with the very essence that kept her alive. She tried to crawl, this was despite the tremendous amount of pain that surged throughout the appendage. Although she found that she was going nowhere fast, as the vines of the flowers wrapped around her legs, filling her with even more agony. The prick of the thorns caused a copious amount of blood to seep from her wounds, which in turn fed the flower's insatiable hunger.
It was like they were alive, feeding upon her, biting her with their thorny teeth. They wished to tear her apart, and slowly she began to accept this fate. However, something happened. The grip loosened just enough for her to breathe. A voice filled her head, and made her heart pound against its cage, "You must be new to the Underground. Golly, you must be so confused. Someone ought to teach you how things work around here. If you wish to live, you have to do one thing."
Words, it had been so long since she heard anything but her own screaming. Now she heard another soul, one who sounded so relieving that she was willing to do anything to hear it again, "Please make it stop!" She cried.
The voice let out a small undignified laugh, "I will let you go, but you must do as I command." The voice shifted and changed, "Kill or be killed, command or follow!" It howled.
"Anything!" She whimpered, her eyes not finding which was speaking, only seeing darkness.
Another chuckle left the apparition, "Open your soul to me, tell me your name."
That was all, it wanted to know her name. Finally someone wanted to know her by her birth given address, "Chara!" She cried, "My name is Chara!"