For the First Time

The Cavern of Secrets holds much more than you can imagine. Once a forbidden place, the ban on entrance has been released...yet, is it a good idea to enter?

Once a great battle had been fought in this cavern, against a dark beast that had once - and still might - dwell here. No one knows where he disappeared to, but there are rumours...

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For the First Time
IP: 70.29.76.93
Posted on March 6, 2014 at 04:06:02 AM by Maaka

Normally it's so quiet in here, in this space here behind my eyes. It's empty and open and I can think. Everything that happens echoes clearly, bouncing back a thousand times louder, a thousand times brighter. Flashes of light on a blank canvas. Explosions of sound in the stillness. Normally it's so quiet in here that it's impossible for me to miss a single thing, but now...but now something's wrong. My beautiful blank slate is all filled up with a terrible buzzing, and I feel like I can't see anything, can't hear anything.

I'm moving forward, that much is certain. In fact, I haven't been able to stop moving forward since I caught that first whiff of musk on the breeze. A deep, earthy scent that sent warning lights flaring up in my mind. A deep, earthy, all-too-familiar scent that went dragging up old memories and old feelings that I'd though I'd killed long ago. It was the scent of another wolf, something I hadn't detected once in the past three years. I first came across it a few miles back, and I've been unable to stop my legs from moving since. It's like the musk lit a panic inside of me, and that panic has been burning on and on, telling me to run and run and run.

The only trouble is, the further I run, the worse my situation becomes. As I continue my (flight) travels south, I encounter more and more distinctive (warnings) scents, meaning thalt I'm only moving farther and farther into the territory of other wolves. They're all around me now. Countless bodies. Countless individuals. The farther my paws take me, the stronger the scents become. It would only make sense to stop now and turn around, to head back up north where I belong, where I've been safe for so long, but try as I might I cannot force my body to be still. Fear has taken over entirely now.

I can only continue to tear through the forest, heedless of the twigs clinging to my sandy coat, of the clumps of mud gathering on my forelegs. My amber eyes dart from side to side in their usual scanning patterns, but instead of drawing in detail, instead of carefully calculating and measuring everything around me, they see nothing but shifting specters in the shadows of the undergrowth; paranoia made real. My heart beats hard in my chest, thud thud thudding in rhythm with my rushed pawsteps. My lungs work hard to keep up, drawing in more and more of the damned scents around me, fueling the fear burning in my poor clouded mind. It only drives me forward. Run boy, run, Gotta get away, gotta get away. I close my eyes as I run, feeling the low-hanging branches of trees and the errant ends of smaller bushes rake against my features. I give my head a violent shake, as if to clear the repeating mantra from my thoughts: gotta get away gotta get away gotta g-

Suddenly my feet are gone and I am falling, tumbling head over tail down a steep embankment. I twist my torso around wildly, trying to regain some control, scrabbling desperately at the loamy soil with my forelegs, trying to find some purchase. I succeed in altering my course only so much as to send myself into the path of a lone-standing tree, clinging just as desperately as I to the steep slope. It connects with my rib cage just below my right shoulder with a dense thud and I let out a yelp that is equal parts pain and surprise. I squeeze my eyes shut against the dull throbbing that is rapidly spreading throughout my right flank, by my descent is not quite over. The bark of the tree that had temporarily, if violently, stopped my fail, is very smooth, and my own weight begins to pull me again down the embankment. I dig furiously with my forelegs, but the ground before me is soft and only churns into a muddy mess between my paws; I am able to only slightly slow my fall. As my form continues to slide along, I feel the terrain beneath me gradually begin to change from the dense sponginess of the forest floor to bare rock. Then, without warning, there is nothing beneath me at all and I am falling once more, this time through the open air. I only just have time to glimpse the rocky ground rushing up to meet me before my body collides with the unforgiving surface. My head cracks mercilessly against the earth and my vision wavers, growing steadily dimmer as the pain spreads down my neck and into my back.

The only thing I can see before me appears to be the mouth of a cave. I try, using all of my strength, to haul myself toward the dark opening, thinking that the cave might provide me some degree of shelter, but I find myself unable to command my limbs. My strength seems to have deserted me completely. I can muster only a pitiful whine before the darkness threatening at the edges of my vision moves in and takes over completely.

(Sorry about the lack of HTML. I'm working on it!)

Replies:

Play on Love - By Hestia March 6, 2014 at 06:29:39 AM

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