Celestial Cascade

Death is Just the Beginning

Lightning snaked across the weeping sky. Their tears a heavy veil shrouding the endless forest below. Flickering flashes revealed a great obelisk of dark rock blending into the grey background. Thunder ripped through the air, once, twice, thrice. The lofty visage of the winding mountain flickered in and out of existence with every flash, like a ghastly illusion.

Dagger in hand, he climbed swiftly up the rock slope, his makeshift coat, made from the hide of some beast, fluttered in synchrony with his shoulder-length unkempt black hair. Some ways behind him a hulking stone monster chased after him, looking like a boulder cracked open.

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

Right leg, left arm. Left leg, right arm. The familiar rhythm thudded in his heart, and like a vine upon its everpresent trunk and branches he crept and coiled. Like clockwork yet everytime heart-wrenching, he ran from a twisted Beast, 'twasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last.

He expertly climbed up the wet rock, slithering as it may, through the trials of his endless hell, he and running were inseparable entities. Twisting up the rock just as it twisted away, he was abound to the spire of the slumbering behemoth beneath him that pierced the night. 'Twasn't the brightest of ideas- though earths attracting demand would be pulling him to his destination 'stead of his death, his fragile mortality would shatter under the intensity, the slope was just too steep. Still he snaked higher into the dim air with an almost-feralty, a siren seeked him at the top, and it's call wasn't something he could resist, hell, something told him it wasn't something to resist. It was a candlelight he yearned for, a candlelight he needed. Its shadow burned fiercely in his heart, a faint fragment calling to be whole once more.

Laying his gaze upon its magnificence sealed his presumptions true, a lone golden-white flame that flared like a small solar simulacrum. It was his chance, his salvation, and he'd be damned if he didn't grasp it close. Few away from it the steady revolving flame shuddered and flew right into him, into his heart, and blazed furiously. Flying right over the spire, a flightless bird, he matched its fury with a mighty roar, melding into the weaving lightning and booming thunder. He felt like he stood atop life itself, before everything flew by him. Just as his burning soul brushed the sky he dropped right back down, hurling down slithering, insidious rock.

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

His body moved before his mind could, enforced by lingering flame he rolled and jumped and twisted over the speeding ground. With all the recklessness of a newborn fire he streaked down the world like an insignificant meteor. All it would have taken was a single misstep, the slightest of mistakes, a split second lapse in movement, and his burning body would fade to sparks, and those to eternal nothingness. But he didn't, sure he was hurting and bruised and cut, but he walked not but ran the tightrope with perfection, or maybe luck. God knew. But all he knew was running the edge, and fire.

And so he did, he ran and he flew, before rolling and running and jumping. Hither and tither. He didn't stop, he couldn't stop. The stone Beast from before followed him still, this time curled up, as if having wiped away the cracks and returning to its origin. It had a much easier time rolling idly down the slope, the very thing slithering to it's advantage, insidious it was after all. Moreover,

It wasn't alone.

One more, two more, four, six, ten. Other boulder Beasts, other beings of nightmare, dyed the rainbow of horror. A landslide of death clawed their way to him, more waiting at the forest ahead no doubt, 'twas like a fever dream vomited up by the lord of hell themselves. But it wasn't, he knew, it was a hellish reality and he hadn't the choice to leave. Only survive.