Chapter 1: Awakening

Things should have been easier. His situation was anything but easy, by all intents. All around him, bullets whizzed, zipping into the tree line behind him towards the direction of the helicopter that had been the only one to take the almost-impossible rescue mission they had volunteered for. He was a combat medic. And while it was a war crime to shoot a combat medic, that did not stop a bullet from tearing into his arm as he ran forward, completely unarmed.

It was not like the axis power he fought against in this bloody war cared at all for the rules of war. In their jungle of jingoism, whatever depleted the enemy forces was the choice that was made. Including committing war crimes such as knowingly shooting combat medics with the intent to kill. The enemy was overpowering their unit, but there was only one soldier left to retrieve on this mission. One last soldier's life that was capable of being saved.

He thought back on the things that lead him to being here as he loaded the second-to-last injured soldier. He remembered what he was before this war drafted him into combat. He had always sworn himself to helping people, it was the only way he could find his own happiness after he lost his parents. He would not ever call himself a great man. He would not say he ever lived a noble life, either. He had never experienced love. He had no family to return home to, and his achievements were lost to the blood spilled by war.

Nothing had any significance to him except his mission. His mission to serve a cause bigger than him. An oath he swore himself to twice in his life. Once as an oath to the military and once more to himself.

"So that others may live." He mumbled to himself, looking at the bloodied face of the soldier he had just loaded into the helicopter. The words usually did well in making him feel at ease under stress, but this time he had a feeling he couldn't shake away. There was a moment where he felt fear, a moment where he thought of what could have been instead of what was. He could have been home right now. Drinking his life away in hopes that his misfortunes would magically go away while staring at the nametag on his gear: 'Hyoudou.'

But he volunteered for this without a second thought or an ounce of regret. Something inside him had clicked in that moment when he red-balled his way onto the helicopter. He shook his head. He could have complained, he could have been upset. But life never was so simple: no, life was fair.

At the doors of death, he knew what purpose he served. His legs moved on their own, running towards the final soldier of the squadron that had called for their rescue only an hour ago. They had been lucky to survive for so long with the amount of people they had.

Another bullet zipped into his side. The adrenaline he felt in the moment made the pain bearable, even when the bullet failed to cleanly pass through him. It was a pain he had not experienced, but something he had mentally prepared himself for as the shot bit at his side viciously.

And just as he made it to the downed soldier, an explosion shattered his balance, tossing him aside like he weighed nothing and forcing him to the ground with an impact that sucked the breath from his lungs. In his dazed state of mind and panicked confusion, he could only see the misplaced, mangled arm that had landed away from the body of its owner. As his ears rang from potential rupture, his eyes wandered weakly before landing on the target he was searching for. The soldier he tried to save.

The arm he used to hold his gun was blown off, and the body of his fallen brother was what took the brunt of the damage… ineffectively saving his life, but only briefly. Regardless of that revelation, Issei pressed on. He stumbled weakly onto his feet and began to move as fast as his spinning head would allow him as his ears rung. The man's yelling fell on deaf ears as Issei pulled the last tourniquet from his pack.

He tied the tourniquet two inches above the amputation sight of the man's arm and twisted the tightening rod almost like it was clockwork. He had done it hundreds of times. As messy as it was… it saved lives. And sometimes, that was all that was needed. His mind shut down as he worked on the man's arm to stop the bleeding by any means, which meant tightening the tourniquet tight enough to make his arm looks like a sausage roll. Thankfully, the bleeding stopped in only a few turns.

But he couldn't afford to waste time. Carefully pulling the black marker from the sleeve of his camouflage uniform, he wrote the time across the man's forehead—as he had been trained to do. What was important now the blood had stopped, was getting the man out of this hell and onto that helicopter. And that was a much easier task to be said than to be done. He picked the man up and military carried him over his back in a fireman's lift towards the helicopter he had flown in on. Thankfully, it seemed the one thing they did not shoot, was the helicopter with the giant red cross on it and no weapons.

Of course, it wasn't like the lack of weapons meant anything by this point in the war. On the small land where he was, the enemy shot without care for the laws of war. There was talk among the upper tiers that medics would be given weapons to use in combat. But he wasn't fortunate enough to receive a rifle. He instead received an M1911 that he kept holstered because he was taught that if he ever used that weapon, the laws that kept him protected were immediately forfeit.

When the final soldier had finally been loaded—nine in total—he tried to jump into the helicopter himself… only for another bullet to strike his leg.

A sudden shift of weight broke his balance, the leg that supported his weight onto the railing of the helicopter suddenly vanished and he started a quick descent to the ground that forced him to release the helicopter.

As he fell, his leg did not fall with him. Instead, it fell beside him, in his view. Whatever size the weapon was, it had been large enough to blow his leg off in a mangled mess. The closest thing he could compare his injury to were the injuries that had been represented from troops who had lost their limbs from exploded landmines. But he did not scream in pain, he did not mutter a word. He only stared blankly upwards. The pilot looked scared, attempting to move out of the seat, but Issei only waved his hands, signaling for him to leave. To not risk the lives of others just for his sake.

He watched the helicopter take lift. After what felt like many minutes—which he was sure was only several seconds—the helicopter began to move, the chopping of its blades growing more and more quiet with each second as it left him on the ground.

He felt a tear roll down the side of his face. He thought back on his life as he stared at the darkening sky above. He accomplished the only oath he swore for himself. He had saved the lives of others, but at the cost of his own. There was no higher or more honorable sacrifice that he could imagine.

He was never much into religion, he considered himself to be more agnostic than devoted to a specific religion. To him, the gods were an aggregation of the human mind needing something bigger than themselves to serve to. To most, it was a deity. For him, it was his country. But he would never say they didn't exist either, he just hoped—if there was something out there—that he would at least be judged fairly.

He remembered the nights he spent at bars, the nights he spent in his teens at parties terrifying his parents. And finally, he remembered the night he lost them both. He hoped that—if they could see him—his doings now would have made them proud. He remembered the irrationalism he had experienced before he arrived on this island. Hatred being personified, countless war crimes being committed by the axis and also by the side he was on.

After that, it had finally dawned on him what would happen next. He was going to die. An empty casket, flag and photo would be taken home to a family that wasn't there. And only service members who never knew him would salute as the guardsmen carried his casket away. And it was all… fair.

He was not sure when it had begun to rain, or when the bullets stopped flying, but the stars above twinkled in his vision. He was not sure how long he had been like this, but he knew one thing indefinitely… he knew he was long past the time where he should have died. He moved his head, the strength somehow gathering in his muscles, and looked towards the trees. But his head never moved. It was like he was a ghost.

The moon shimmered above, each droplet refracting the light like millions of tiny diamonds that fell from the night sky. The darkness that had been building in the corners of his eyes finally took over, drowning him in silence.

He awoke an unknowable amount of time later, floating in a sea of black infinity that reflected no stars. There was nothing—no sound, no taste, no smell. He couldn't even feel his own touch as he tried to move his hands to his side.

It was peaceful. There was no war, no gunshots or screams of pain. He felt tiny, like a small speck in the vastness of infinity. Like he was both nothing and everything. He couldn't feel his body, and he couldn't see it either. He began to recall things from his past as an uncertain amount of time passed around him, he began to recall more of who he was and where he came from. But the thoughts were cloudy, like they had been imagined in a dreamy haze.

He tried curling his fingers, then his toes. He tried flaring his nose, and he tried opening his mouth. But he couldn't feel anything. There was no sensation of air filling his lungs and he couldn't feel the beating of his heart.

Fear began to take hold of him, but it was completely ambiguous since there was no way for him to show it. In the mix of his dazed panic, he struggled to think properly. He thought about himself, his name was Issei. Son of…

Who was he the son of? Names swirled in his head: Ellie, Anna, Brian, Connor…

His thoughts recoiled away from the names. There was a pain associated with them that went through his head with ferocity, but he couldn't remember why. Like a hand touching fire, he recoiled away from the thoughts like they were dangerous to him.

He tried desperately to keep himself grounded, but the only thing he remembered was an oath. An oath to a war, and a life that had long passed. He tried to bare his teeth and claw at the endless emptiness around him as if he would rip a hole and reveal a light of some kind. He opened his mouth to scream soundlessly into a darkness that seemed endless and void of even himself.

It seemed that despite his best efforts, nothing was going to change the stark reality around him. It was like he existed without direction or purpose in this place. He felt present, while his body wasn't.

Insanity effervesced to the corners of his consciousness like his fear, but like his fear it had no substance. He couldn't show his feelings in any way contained in the darkness.

Fear. Anxiety. Worry. All of these emotions weighed heavily inside him—if there even was an inside of him—that burned away all of the thoughts he could possibly have about himself.

He knew that time flowed, but he had no reference to measure the amount of time that had moved past him. He had no way of determining how long he had been in this state.

There was a moment where he heard a voice that made him very suddenly aware that sound was beginning to form around him. The darkness that had once been empty and filled with nothing began to change as color bled onto the dark canvas like a light was being shined into his closed eyes.

'Save us…'

He felt a prickle. Yes, after an uncertain amount of time had passed, he felt an itch on the back of his neck. At first it was something easy to dismiss, but only a few seconds later, he felt movement under his back as if grass were moving beneath him.

It was odd to him, but he brushed the thoughts bubbling inside him aside and struggled to open his eyes to the strange colors above. And just as his eyes opened, they grew wide in awe and terror.

Stretched endlessly before him, was a cavern of rock walls and ceiling, littered with stalactites and fauna from large mushrooms and plants. Massive trees filled his vision, each one tall and adorning beards of glowing blue moss that hung to the ground from their limbs that disappeared into profound darkness. In fact, the only light that he could see came from the glowing trees and absurdly large plants. There was no sun, so bright ball of light that allowed the plants to grow and thrive. It was only the light that the fauna produced themselves.

He moved, paying careful attention to the wet rocks and blue grass that poked into his back and neck. In the literal sense, the grass literally was glowing blue, and wherever he touched, the light seemed to vanish, as if afraid of his touch. Immediately, he noticed the strange things that lined his arms in place of skin. Scales the size of small coins lined his arms up to his shoulders, and in the place of his fingernails were long, claw-shaped appendages that glowed with the same energy the grass seemed to have, as if it had absorbed the energy in the grass.

Carefully, he stood on unsure feet, and began to take a few steps around. His eyes directed to the treetops as he moved, and as he result, he tripped over something he had missed the first time his eyes scanned over his surroundings. He fell flat on his back, landing somewhat gently as the grass cushioned his fall, and his eyes once more landed on the jagged, rocky ceiling that loomed above.

Taking a short moment to recover from his sudden loss of balance, he picked himself up only slightly to get a look at the thing that had tripped him. His breath hitched in his throat as he looked at the object he had tripped over.

A human skull.

For a moment, he wanted to backpedal away in voiceless panic. He continued to look around, looking for more bones that he had possibly missed. And sure enough, to his own terror, many things filled his vision. Skeletons and skulls littered the floor, hidden in grass and some even hanging between the glowing mossy trees as if something had been taunting the bones of the lost. There was a thought that occurred to him in that moment, something he didn't want to accept, but something he was forced to at least consider.

He wasn't alone.

And whatever was with him, wasn't interested in chatting. It was dangerous. Rusted swords and shields jutted from the ground in the distance, and certain skeletons donned rusted plates of armor and leather, horribly cleaved chainmail from looked to be from claws. His heart raced as he looked at the scene that stretched before him, his brain putting puzzle pieces together that he didn't want to vision but the reality of his current situation was something he couldn't escape.

Something felt off. He still felt groggy as he was still just waking up, the world was still coming into focus as his brain worked in overtime to make sense of what was happening around him. His heart was pounding in his chest and his head had joined in the pounding, beating hard against his temples as sweat began to run down his face and back. Visions racked through his head as he began to overthink, vision of a battle, loud bangs and explosions echoing around him as he rushed forward. He was shot.

He was killed.

He had died.

And now he was here. In this place that he didn't understand, surrounded by existences he couldn't possibly understand, things he had never seen the likes of before, and he was being constantly consumed by the pressing feeling of being hunted.

Soon, footsteps shattered the silence behind him, each pounding thud coming closer and closer and shaking the earth below as it got closer. Issei couldn't imagine the size of a creature able to do that, maybe the size of an elephant or larger? But it sounded like it was walking on two legs. He turned his head slowly, looking in the direction of the footsteps, and froze. Purple eyes stared at him through darkness, impossibly high up, and filled with emotions he couldn't possibly misplace.

Hate. Rage. Vile.

That was only three of the many words he could think of to explain the horrible feeling he received from the looks of the thing alone. The darkness around the eyes of the creature was so unbelievably crushing, he couldn't even make out the rough outline of the said monster. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know what it looked like either. A single thought rushed to him in the moment as the smell of death and decay began to fill the air, so thick he could almost taste it.

Am I going to die here? He thought to himself, his pulse began to race out of control, adrenaline pumping past redline as he froze like a deer in headlights. The thing began to come into a rough focus. Massive hind legs supported a colossal body of jet-black chitin armor, standing like a tyrannosaurus. The thing was an apex predator, standing at the top of all life, and the look in its horribly impossibly purple eyes screamed that it knew all of that and more. To that thing, Issei was nothing more than an insect that it was more than willing to feast on.

His mental thought process had slammed the brakes. It was stupid to sit still and wait. Foolish. A moment later, he picked himself up into a sprint, the muscles in his legs burning as his adrenaline continued pumping past redline with each additional pounding of his heart in his chest. He had made a sprint towards the trees that adorned the glowing moss, hoping that the thing would lose sight of him as soon as he disappeared into the glowing mossy heights. And just as he was about to make it to the hanging foliage of glowing moss, he tripped.

And skidded to a dazing halt as he all but ate the grass in front of him like a grazing cow. The fall didn't exactly hurt him as much as it confused him. He was looking ahead the entire time he was running, not daring to turn to look at the creature a single time as he sprinted around. He quickly recovered himself and turned to give a quick glance and what had tripped his sprint, only to met with the massive black creature still mid-turn.

The creature had a massive tail, long a filled with black spikes that he hadn't noticed before. The monster spun and tripped him while he was running. Whatever the beast in front of him was, whatever monstrous outgrowth beyond his mental range that the things was… it was also intelligent. It was toying with him, knowing that it had already won the fight between them without Issei even throwing a single attack.

However, before Issei could pick himself back up, the things swung its tail around once more, this time jabbing it his direction and whipping it his direction. The tail was nowhere near hitting him, but that wasn't the beast's intention. The jet-black spike he had seen previously jutting from the tail of the monster shot out suddenly, whistling towards him like an arrow. Issei brought his arms up in a desperate and futile attempt to possibly stop the projectile. But he knew it wouldn't be enough. There was simply no way for him to dodge the projectile or reflect it, it was simply to close to him and moving too fast. He closed his eyes and braced for the impact.

I'm going to die now.

I have only just been revived, and I'm going to die before I even got to enjoy my new life. How unfortunate.

CLANG!

The impact of the spike had hit him with enough force to throw him backward, but it didn't pierce through the scales on his arms. The black spike spun in the air like a baton before landing beside him and bouncing. The creature looked displeased as Issei lowered his arms slightly and looked between it and the needle of black chitin. He was completely unharmed. The scales that lined his arms looked like they hadn't taken even a minimal amount of damage, not even a scratch was visible on their emerald, green surfaces. Issei quickly reached for the spike that he had just blocked, grabbing the thing and noticing immediately how lightweight it was. It didn't even feel close to the weight of a sword but felt much lighter. It would make quite the formidable spear, and as such, it was now the only weapon he had that seemed capable of defending himself, unlike the shoddy rusted armor and swords he had previously seen.

The creature seemed to acknowledge that Issei was now armed with a weapon that belonged to it, and the anger behind the monster's eyes only grew as it understood. It let out an ear-piercing screech, opening its great maw and screaming fury to demonic-sounding heights that made Issei's head hurt.

Almost immediately, the ground began to move and bulge upwards at certain places. Much to Issei's terror, the beast that hunted was no longer alone. Beasts similar to dogs—though much larger than a dog and with two heads—rose from the ground, their flesh horrid and squirming with sickening flows of purple. Alongside the dogs, bodies rose from the ground, these figure more familiar. Figures of people. But not skeletons.

Fleshy figures, with veins that flowed with the same sickening purple that was behind the monster's eyes. Decayed flesh that clung loosely onto bones that looked broken and twisted from years of misuse. And below their skin, was a visible squirming, the same as the dogs. Yes, their flesh were maggot-ridden, and the smell of decay filled his throat with the taste of bitter bile that clung to the back of his throat.

His instincts screamed at him to run. And so, he did exactly that. He picked himself back into an outright sprint, running towards the trees with the spike in his hand. He noticed almost immediately how filled with energy he felt, he didn't feel exhausted, he didn't even feel the need to breath hard as he ran, the only thing he felt was the burning of muscles, stimming from a clear lack of use. The things behind him wailed as he began his sprint, a horrible sound of curdling from a liquid sloshing in the back of their throats that had been enough to send a chill down his spine.

Finally, he ducked into the cover of the glowing tree and took only a second too look around him before he broke back into another run. The trees would provide a moment of cover, but it wouldn't take long for the creatures to catch up and surround him, then he would be forced to fight. And that was a predicament he wanted to avoid at all costs. He wasn't sure of his own fighting abilities against monsters that much larger than him, especially the undead. How was he supposed to kill something that had already been dead?

He rushed through the other side of the tree, breaking through the low-hanging glowing moss that blinked dead as he touched it, and broke into something that left him completely and utterly speechless.

Before him stretched a cavern of unprecedented size, falling to staggering depths that he wasn't sure even has a bottom. Water flowed from the cracks in the earth above from an unknown source, crystals of blue and purple jutted from the walls, ceilings and ground below him. The water that had fallen from the ceiling gave birth to fantastic flowing lakes that donned the same blue glow as the moss he had seen. The mix of purple and blue was an alluring sight, the colors popping vividly from the dark rocks heights that created the place he was in.

But the horrifying part of it all, was that the place looked lively. Creatures by the likes of which he had never seen before flew in the air, from birds with two tails to hundreds of the same massive monster that had shot spikes at him. Each creature seemed to have their own magical glow; the birds he had seen produced a blue light from their tails. There were even creatures that vaguely resembled deer with two heads. The patches on their sides where white should have been replaced by patches of glowing blue and green.

It was a thriving ecosystem. From the water and plants to the creatures that walked and grazed on the glowing grass, everything seemed to have an order. It was an environment that had completely adapted to a lack of light by producing its own. This wasn't his world. He wasn't on Earth, something like what he was seeing would have been impossible on the place he once called home. But then, where was he?

He needed to find his way out of the cavern somehow. And the only logical thought was to go up, up to the place where he had seen the water falling downward.

A growl sounded behind him, forcing his attention away from the sight he had been admiring. As he turned to face the wolf thing with purple veins, he brought the spike up into a shoddy stance, holding it like he was preparing for a quick jab into one of the things two heads. Behind him was a steep drop, more than a high enough drop to kill someone, which meant he couldn't run away anymore.

I have to fight.

I have to fight to survive this.

I want to survive this.

And with his will solidified, he gave a pivot of his foot and thrust the spike forward towards the beast with all his strength.

Klunk!

The spike had contacted something, but the sound he received wasn't the sound he would have expected to hear from a spear hitting flesh. As his eyes traced the length of the spear, he immediately noticed, the target his attack was aimed was simply not there anymore. No, instead, it had been replacedby the tail of the first massive, black creature on hindlegs that hunted him from the start. The thing suddenly moved its tail like a whip once more, this time its attack was aimed at his center mass.

"Oh shit," Issei breathed out, dropping the spike a second later and throwing his arms up in one last-ditch effort to protect himself from the collision.

And as soon as the tail hit him, he was sent sprawling backwards in a floppy, confusing mess. The attack of the beast was enough to knock the breath from his lungs and leave them his arms burning, but he didn't have the time to check himself as he focused one where he was falling. He was going to land in a massive lake of glowing blue water. Getting closer and closer, he could make out distinct figures swimming around in the water, and he hoped the things weren't going to eat him too. He needed a moment to process the information he had already obtained.

Splash!

He landed in the water with a deep breath that filled his lungs with suffocating water, causing his adrenaline to surge once more as he rushed his way to the surface of the water in a fit of coughs and gags. As he struggled to focus on his surroundings, he looked up and around for the place he fell, searching for the exact spot before he eventually saw the purple eyes looking down at him. He fell far. Easily more than a few football fields.

He began to swim to the closest patch of dirt and grass that he could see, swimming as fast as he could in fear of the things that he could see in the water around him. Swimming—or more like slithering—in the water were things that resembled snakes but were much fatter and shorter. They had blue lines along their black, slimy looking bodies that screamed danger to him, and he didn't want to know what the strange alien water creature was capable of doing if it go close enough. But seemingly at the feeling of his movement in the water, the things began their steady movement in his direction, but he made it to the ground before they reached him and they stopped moving abruptly as he made distance away from the water, having his fill of the fluid to last him for quite a long while.

To his left, a deer sipped with both heads down to the blue and crystal-clear water. One of the eel-like creatures began its move towards the deer as it drank. Until, suddenly, the things eel shot up out of the water, forcing its slimy body into the maw of the deer and completely disappearing inside the deer's mouth completely as it ran off in panic, rushing up a large hill.

The shock that filled Issei was profound as he watched the deer run off like nothing had happened. The eel had just forced itself into the stomach of the deer with ease. He had no doubt the thing was a parasite of some kind… but for what purpose did have? He couldn't imagine a creature so horrifying, even in his wildest of nightmares. He shook the thought away, quickly. It didn't matter why the eel had done it, what he needed to focus on was getting out of this damn place. As beautiful as it was, it was also equally horrifying.

He stood and began to quickly run, moving to the incline the deer and went up and noticed the incline led to more and more inclines, stretching further and further up into different portions of the cavern.

Just how massive is this place? How far down am I? He thought to himself, looking at the inclines of some of them that were far too steep for him to possibly climb up by foot.

He started to think of other ways to possibly get out, but most of them were immediately marked out. The deer could climb places he couldn't clearly, and he didn't exactly feel like exploring the rest of the terrifying place in search for an exit without a proper way of defending himself.

"How the hell do I get out this place?" He murmured to himself, looking around for any path that looked better than the one he was currently looking at. However, as he looked around the walls of caverns and began to move, he seemed to have stepped into a patch of mushrooms that he hadn't noticed at first.

As soon as his foot squished the first glowing green mushroom, the rest of them in the patch immediately reacted by shooting a milky-white smoke into the air that immediately filled his lungs with the putrid smell of rotten eggs and sulfur, sending him reeling backwards in another coughing fit that soon turned into a fit of spasms that rocked his body. He fell on his back shortly after that, the grass scratching his face and body as he continued his spasms. Whatever the mushroom was, it poisoned him. His muscles started to expand and contract as the caverns started to fade in and out.

When his vision returned to him, he was no longer laying on the ground of the caverns. Instead, he found himself standing on a platform of sorts, with the same bright green and glowing grass he had first seen when awakening. Crystals of various colors jutted form the ground below him and the sky was a beautiful shifting scene of colors. Red and green lights shot across the blackness of the night, leaving a trail of burning sparks behind them as they went until they eventually blinked out of existence and disappeared into the flowing darkness between the stars.

He tried to force himself to stand but only hobbled over in pain as it felt like his head was splitting in half as though someone had buried and axe in it. A huge, thunderbolt of dull pain shot through his head as he tried to soothe his pain by massaging his temples with his hands. He doubled up in a ball shortly after, choosing to lay in a fetal position as another pain came to him—this one rising from his stomach as he was hit with a profound hunger that pounded at him. The pain from the hunger was so huge that it felt surreal. It was the hunger of a starved beast. An enormous, howling emptiness that filled his entire body with a dull ache that felt like the feeling of being hit in the gut with a sledgehammer.

And then came the convulsing. Issei screamed into the earth as his body thrashed back and forth as if he were having a seizure. He screamed and screamed into the darkness of the grass below him until his voice gave out, and after what felt like an eternity of time—which was actually only a few minutes—the pain vanished, just as suddenly as it had arrived.

Issei felt like a weak infant as he recovered from his seizure-like convulsing, wiping the sticky rivulets of saliva than ran down his cheeks and chin with his arm. He analyzed his surroundings through watery eyes and noticed the appearance of something he hadn't noticed at first: the shape of a woman dressed in a white robe with long flowing hair. He quickly tried to stand and face the figure, but the vacuum in his stomach reared open once again, forcing him back to his knees.

The emptiness in his body pulled harder, sending shockwaves of agony through his body. He forced his scaled fist into his mouth and bit down in a desperate attempt to suppress his screams. A muffled shriek sounded around his fist as he yelled, the sound tearing at his vocal cords as he experienced a second wave of one of the worst pains he had ever felt. Issei flopped down onto the ground, his body still a spasming mess as the grass he landed on went dark at his contact. His mind had been completely emptied by the enormity of the pain he was experiencing, forced to only wait in agony for the convulsing pain that came in waves to vanish in painful desperation. He twitched and convulsed and waited, desperately and pleadingly wanting the pain to pass.

The figure of the woman that stood over him moved closer and kneeled to him, resting a single scaled hand onto his head as he tried to focus through the pain.

"This world… it hasn't been kind to you, has it?" came the gentle voice of the girl who gently stroked his hair.

He couldn't find the strength to respond to the girl, but he knew there wasn't any reason to. The question was a rhetorical one, since she could clearly see he was not having the best of experiences. He just hoped the woman was able to help him through the pain in some way.

"I'm sorry I can't make the pain go away, but I can help ease you through it." The girl spoke to him smoothly and with a gentle tone, sinking down to her knees and moving his head onto her lap. "I know it hurts… but it won't kill you."

She gently ran a hand through his hair before placing the other above his chest. With a golden glow, the throbbing in his body began to fade into a dull ache that wasn't nearly as painful as before. He was able to relax himself slightly from the pain that slowly faded away from his body and look up at the girl who held him.

She had long golden hair that flowed freely behind her back, bright emerald and slit eyes stared back at him. The girl had fair skin and pointy ears, but the most noticeable thing about her appearance was the crown she wore on her head, made of gold and green emerald that formed three pointed horns atop of her head. She had scales along her arms that went up to her shoulder the same as his own, but she wore a dress of pure white in contrast to the tattered black clothing he wore.

To put things simply, the woman was beautiful. She moved her hand through his hair as he looked up at her, seeming to be lost in the motions as he continued to be mesmerized by her appearance above him. Every movement she made seemed fluid and graceful, like he was watching the movements of a professional dancer.

"There, feeling better now?" She asked him without looking away, a smile forming on her face.

The pain was certainly still there, but it wasn't as bad as before. As he looked at the girl, he couldn't find the words to say, and somewhere between his brain and his mouth there was a disconnect in his words.

"You are beautiful," Issei found himself saying.

She let out a soft laugh and shook her head gently.

"You are still light in the head, no one had ever said that before you."

"No, you are certainly a beauty." Issei insisted softly as he reached out to her slightly.

She didn't say anything as she simply took his hand in return and held it close to her. "I suppose there is a first for everything."

Issei decided there wasn't much else to say, so he instead decided to sit still and think while she stroked his head with one hand and held his own hand in the other. The longer he thought about the similarities the two of them shared, the more his thoughts drifted towards this girl being the cause of him being here, and after a while, he couldn't stop his curiosity from spilling out.

"You're like me…" Issei began.

"You are like me. I gave you a body similar to my own." The girl replied quickly, correcting him while also revealing valuable information that he processed immediately.

"You were the one that brought me here. If I might ask, for what purpose?" Issei asked her. She looked away for a moment, as if collecting stray thoughts before she finally met his gazing eyes.

"I wish I could say the reason for your existence was to simply enjoy life, however, I need you for something…" the girl paused for a moment, before she continued her explanation with a downcast expression. "I need your help saving this world. My world."

Issei fell silent for a moment. Though she hadn't revealed to him what exactly he would be saving her world from, he had the rough idea that it had something to do with the things he had seen and ran from when he awoke. And honestly, he was hoping he was wrong in that assumption, since he wanted absolutely nothing to do with said beasts again.

"I'm sure you have already seen them. Products of my own creations gone awry. They were once followers of my name, but they turned their powers against me and were met only with corruption." The girl further explained, but something hadn't made sense his own head.

"If you are so powerful, why need someone like me to help you?" Issei asked the question that was on his mind, not daring to move himself away from the girl.

"Let me tell you a story you haven't heard before." The girl began, "Many thousands of years ago, humanity—as small and weak as infants—sought the gods above for power. The only one to answer their pleas, was a then-young goddess by the name of Sylvia, the Goddess of Spirits. Of the nine divine beings that resided over this world in their own dominions, only she walked among them as if they were her own. The goddess gave humanity the ability of all other species—the ability to use magic. But using such magic was to be susceptible to the will of the gods and the maddening worlds of existence they dwell in.

"So, the young goddess offered them an accord. A way of using magic at the expense of their souls. This goddess, however, was not a bad goddess by any means, she made it so that humankind could use spirit magic. They kept their spirits, and for a thousand years, mankind prospered. Moving away from their tunnels and caves where no other species dared step, and finally began their building on the world above. But some who saw the power of other gods desired more and turned their cold and unsympathetic eyes towards Sylvia. They rose from the depths of darkness and regarded the world's many creatures above with envy, blaming her for their misgivings and slowly, began to enact their plan against her. Using their own souls, they banished her from the world, disconnecting her from everything that allowed her to walk among mankind."

Issei listened carefully to her as she spoke, taking in each additional piece of information she spoke to him and processing it carefully, slowly but surely putting the puzzle pieces she gave him together in his mind until a clear image had formed. "You're that goddess. Sylvia."

"It feels good to hear my name from someone's lips other than my own." The girl said bluntly, her eyes still staring down at him unmoving and almost expressionless. There was a profound loneliness behind her eyes that he was far too familiar with for his own comfort.

Issei held his tongue, waiting for her to continue in whatever way she wanted.

"While many on the world below still believe and remember me, my touch upon the world has waned greatly. I can no longer walk the earth and among its people. But you can. You can do what I am incapable of doing, and when the world remembers and once the world is saved… you will stand beside me, until the end of time, my consort eternal."

His thoughts paused. The words she had spoken to him reverberated through his head like thunder, and he was even further left at a loss for words. Thankfully, he didn't need to find words, as the goddess continued speaking shortly after as if she hadn't said anything strange at all.

"I can't do much in the way of effecting the world below, but I can at least speak to you and guide you. It's time for you to wake up now. I will do my best to make sure your adventure this time will be more fruitful. I wish you the best. Until we meet again…"

The world around began to shift like it had the first time he had awoken, a shifting kaleidoscope of light that eventually came into form as a dark and bioluminescent world. When his vision returned to him, he was lying flat on his back, his body resting on top of strange blue mushrooms that felt ice-cold to the touch. The world around him seem strangely lifeless, as if the monsters around him had decided to rest in their nooks and leave him alone to his own devices. He stood on shaky feet, and readied himself for more travel, letting his eyes trace the only way that looked to lead out of the twisting madness around him.

Up.

End of Chapter 1: Awakening

Chapter one of the Amazon Original series written by me The Isles – Book one: Awakening converted to this archive. Any ideas expressed herein are purely fictitious and any relevance to other works of fiction or persons are purely coincidental.

As always, if any ideas found in the book inspire you to write a novel of your own, feel free to use whatever ideas I have created, including the unique conlang that will be used in later chapters.

Let me know how I did in a review!