The Land of Gods and Beasts

Prologue

The Unknown

The first thing of this world that greeted me was unforgiving cold.

Nipping ruthlessly at my skin as my nerves began functioning. A shiver shook my body, the movement foreign and odd. My fingers twitched, and the discomfort of pins and needles caused a groan deep in my throat. I tried to move my fingers to ease the discomfort, but they refused to obey. Confused, I tried again with no luck. I couldn't move at all.

There was something pressing down hard on every part of my body. My chest, my legs, my arms. Something that was cold, and damp, and flooding my nose. I could hear something digging, a trickle of water, and critters crawling about. And I think, I think I could hear something moving above me.

Above me.

Realization and panic crashed over me at the same time.

Dirt.

Instinct made me gasp, and dirt flooded my mouth and lungs. I choked, I gagged. Things in the dirt were moving about in my mouth and throat and all around me, in me. Revulsion and nausea flooded through me and though I could not move, my body tried and tried to jerk.

Buried.

Trapped

Oh, gods.

My body screamed at me to cough as agony ripped through my lungs and cries tore through my throat. Any blood that had pumped through my body drained leaving me dizzy, colder, freezing. Lungs contracted and ripped and I thought death was going to claim me before life had even killed me, but I didn't cough. I clamped my mouth shut. Sowed them together with resolve.

If I coughed, more dirt would flood my lungs and then it would only be worse. So I made my lungs be still and tried my hardest to calm the quaking in my bones. But unadulterated fear seeped into every pore of my body and choked me harder than the dirt ever could.

This body does not need air, this body does not need air.

The voice was vicious, ravenous. I believed the cruel voice, even as fear was a vice that tried to take control of my mind. And though the truth of the words offered some relief from my growing panic, they did nothing to soothe the agony in my lungs. Sobs wracked my chest, hissing through nostrils that couldn't suck the oxygen back in.

Time passed, and no relief came from the pain, my body betraying my demands to move.

There was nothing I could do, I tried and tried to move but I didn't even gain an inch. Dirt only settled into a concrete cage with the passage of time.

For a horrifying moment, I wondered if this body was rotting. I wondered if I even did find a way to dig myself out, if my flesh would be rotting and only more agony would await. If my fingers would only be bones and my face nothing more than peeling flesh. A scream bubbled in my throat, only to be stopped and muffled by an unforgiving gag of dirt.

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.

Who did this to me? Who could be this cruel? Why?

Every inch of my body shook in despair as time continued to pass and the pain only became worse. And I knew I was crying even if the tears had no where to escape to. I cried because of the agony I was in. I cried for who I might of once been. And I cried because someone hated me so much that they put me in this place. Someone did this to me, and I didn't even know why.

I couldn't help thinking about how unfair it was that I was trapped here, in agony, with no memories of my own. I would never escape, I would rot here, if I hadn't already. I would die, or even worse, I would be trapped here forever. I began silently begging, begging any god or creature or devil there was out there.