The Forest Elements

Chapter 1: "Every morning is a new beginning, but so is every evening."

Nathan Andrews awoke to the sounds of screaming and crying. He opened his eyes to the sight of a wooden ceiling and wooden walls. He appeared to be in a cabin. As he looked around him, he saw a small opening in one of the walls - a window.

He tried getting up from the bed, but as soon as he got on his feet, he fell to his knees. His legs felt weak, and he felt disoriented. The floor was moving like waves in the ocean to him. He decided to crawl over to the window and held himself up by grabbing on to the frame, as there was no glass. Nathan peered outside to see what the commotion was about.

People were running around, seemingly surrounding something, most of them trying to look at what was in the middle of the group. Others were running to one side with spears and torches. One man slowed down to see what was being surrounded. He shouted, "What the fuck?!" before joining the other men with torches and spears.

Another man approached the large group and told everyone to go home before another one gets caught. He instructed two of the women in the group to carry a body to a clinic. The group broke up and ran the opposite way of where the spearmen were headed. In the midst of it all, Nathan saw what everyone was surrounding: a human corpse with its face skinned and its legs severred.

No, wait, it wasn't a corpse. It was still wriggling and screaming, but by the looks of it, death wasn't far off. The two women carefully picked up the victim of some awful tragedy, one of them calmly saying, "Margaret, you're gonna be fine. We're taking you to the clinic, where we have medical supplies. We're gonna save you. We're going to save you."

Nathan, out of shock and fear, sunk back to the ground and crept under the bed to hide in the darkness. The commotion outside piped down as the group of people stormed off, eventually leaving Nathan in silence. He anxiously waited. For what, he wasn't sure. But he waited. Occasionally he would hear what he could only assume to be someone running past to help out the spearmen with whatever it was that they were doing.

After what felt like a lifetime, Nathan could hear approaching voices.

"-face off. Just the skin, seems like. You could see her eyeballs, unable to blink, just looking in all directions. Ugh, it's just - wow. That's gonna fuck me up forever."

"Wha'she doin' in Eden this time o' night? Everyone knows is'a deathwish."

"Alright, everyone. Quiet down, go home and check on your families. Make sure everyone's safe. We can't lose more than we already have."

It sounded like the spearmen, and they went by assumingly in their homes' direction. One of them, however, sounded like he was approaching the cabin Nathan was in. There were sounds coming from outside the door. It slowly opened before someone quickly shut it again. That someone shouted from outside, "Hey, so you're finally awake! There's no need to worry, we're not hostile! You probably have a lot of questions, all of which I'd like to try and answer! Uh... you understand English, right?"

Nathan hesitated for a while.

"Y-yeah... Who're you?"

"My name is Dwayne Thatcher. I'm part of the Council here. Basically, I'm one of the leaders, I guess. As for where you are, you're on a remote island called Anhoraks. I have no idea how you ended up here, but then again, none of us know how we got here."

"What... what day is it?"

"We don't know that either. None of us could be sure of the date when we showed up here, so we all collectively decided to start our own little date-and-time system. Right now it's year 14, day 29."

"You've all been stuck here for 14 years? Nobody has come to help you?"

"What're you talking about? There's no one out there to help us!"