Perfect One-Winged Angel
Chapter 1: After the End?
Where am I?
That voice…so familiar…
Am I alive?
I'm sure I've heard it before…
Darkness…
So close…
AWAKE!
No light seeped through the cavern where the silver-haired man lay. No light, yet the walls sprang into vision as clear as if it was midday. He could see the rough stone that surrounded him, the recesses and points. He was in a cave, then. He noticed that there was a faint green mist around him and slowly rolled to the edge of a crevice; a crevice that had no end, that just stretched endlessly down. There was a pulsing green light in the depths of the chasm, and he thought that he could just barely see something. His head began to hurt, and he lay it down…but who was he?
The figure gazed at his hands in apprehension. Who was he?
Get up!
The voice seemed to come from all directions and from none, the figure only knew that it was not his own. Who was this invisible antagonist? Why would he not let the figure lie in peace? He let is eyelids slide shut…the blackness embraced him. He was so very tired…
AWAKE! AWAKE!
The voice cut through the fog that seemed to fill his mind as the green mist filled the chamber. You are injured, if you sleep now you will never wake up. The voice urged him on, it told him that he did not want to die here in this dark place, that he did not want the blackness to consume him forever. He had no energy to deny it; he listened to his antagonist.
So up he climbed, past rocks and cliffs, past islands floating in the green-tinged air, past the limits of his fatigue. He had no idea how long he climbed, only that the path spiraled gradually upwards, and the mist seemed thinner the higher he traveled. His eyes and legs burned, his hands were torn and bleeding from sheer rock faces. Still the unknown force drove him on, past all limits. He stumbled and fell and tore open wounds that crossed his body. But he never failed to struggle to his feet, to continue his ascension, even if he fell again before he had walked more than a yard.
His entire being was focused onto one action, placing one heavy foot after another. All scope was reduced to the path ahead of him; he was a body and nothing more. The indomitable will of the voice pushed at his sanity. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. Above all, he wanted to collapse and close his eyes.
Suddenly a pain split his skill, and all became white. He shielded his eyes with a bleeding hand, and the pain subsided to a dull ache behind his eyes. It slowly ran its way down his neck and spine, and infused all his nerves with its persistent discomfort. As he shielded his eyes, he received the brightest stab of pain yet, and this was when he noticed that he had carried something with him the entire way. It was a large object that he clenched in the blood-stained hand blocking the searing rays.
The thing was long and shined like liquid silver in the beams that lanced down from the heavens. It had caused the extremely painful brightness just a few seconds ago, because of the way it caught the light and condensed it to the point of pure white. It spanned larger than his body length; though it felt light in his hand, as though it had been made for him and he had possessed it since before time began. It reassured him, and he was suddenly glad that he had not left it in the bowels of the earth. He felt calm, and knew that nothing terrible could happen as long as he kept it close.
He gazed up from the object and saw that he stood in a depression in the earth, with walls sloping up all around him. He dreaded the climb, but knew he would collapse soon if he did not do something. The grade daunted him, but not nearly so much as the thought of remaining here, alone with the voice.
He weaved his way through jagged rocks and past gaping holes in the ground that seemed as if they might reach to the heart of the world itself. As if they might even reach that forsaken place that he had awoken in. He dragged himself up step by ragged step, his breath cutting through his chest in painful gasps. Several times he passed areas where wind buffeted him to the point of blowing him off the cliffs. He had to time his motion to make sure he was anchored before the next gust came, lest they catch him and drag him off the rocks to his death. He clung on desperately to his silver companion and to the voice which urged him on, which would not let him lay down and die.
He began to wind his way down the slopes, and gradually the traveling grew easier. The path grew from nothing to something he could at least walk on, and further to something several people could walk abreast on. There began to appear green, quite like the mist, but as though it had solidified into small and blooming objects that reached towards the sun. As he trudged also there began to appear trees, and animals, and all sorts of life that he had never before observed. He barely noticed this all, and when he did, it was with cool, detached exhaustion. He had not the presence or the power to be captivated by any of the new developments in his condition. His mind had long since been dulled to the point of dead and mechanical compliance.
It was the longest journey he could imagine, so long it was without length. His entire existence was encompassed in the process of walking and climbing. Dust filled his eyes and his many wounds and covered his stinging throat. He stopped thinking and feeling pain, he stopped registering his existence. He stopped asking the burning question: who am I?
His journey ended abruptly when his toe caught on a creamy white object sticking out in the ground above him, and tripped for what seemed like the hundredth time. His chest impacted heavily on the pale brown dirt, and the bruises layered upon bruises burn with pain. He raised his head and opened his eyes and suddenly saw constructions of bone surrounding him. The carcasses of countless long dead creatures had been artfully woven and combined to form a gigantic town, completely devoid of all life. The décor seemed strangely fitting in this grim and barren city. Twisting monoliths constructed of the ribs of animals too gigantic to comprehend swirled upwards to a series of walkways, suspended high above the ground. He could have calculated how many years it took to build, or how they obtained the bones, what species they were, or even how they built this way. Unfortunately for science, he was too busy coughing to try any of this. Another bone had been sticking up from the ground, and it now lay underneath his chest. Blood splotched on the dirt in front of him, staining the earth with its redness.
Chest punctured, lacerated badly, mostly superficial, but the left lung is shot…he'll be gone soon if something drastic doesn't happen…He could hear the voice taking mental inventory of his injuries as he gasped for breath. The silver-haired man reached out a hand to retrieve the metal companion he had dragged from the pit, and he struggled to stand with its support. The world came in and out of focus as he stumbled forward, over walkways paved in the bodies of thousands of millennia old creatures. He could no longer take in air; his chest seemed full already no matter how hard he tried to inhale. His vision slowly seeped away as he came into a cave, his hands went numb and he could no longer hold the metal that kept him upright. His knees buckled and he toppled to the floor with his eyes slowly blacking over. He seemed to be observing his body at a distance as it fell, as though he weren't the one whose body was lying on the hard stone floor of the cave, with a pool of red slowly building around it. A fitting place to depart this life, he thought, in the city of death.
Get up you fool! Get up! The voice became shrill in its insistence. GET UP!
He closed his eyes and his body went limp. The world succumbed to the blackness creeping across his sight like ice creeping across a windowpane.
Okay, this is my first story, and reviews would be greatly, greatly appreciated.