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Did I say those words out loud? Or did they just echo around my head?
The forest shakes silently, and I receive no discernible answers.
“Interesting. There are no gods here.”
I pivot, looking up at the bright, star-speckled sky. There are far more stars than I remember.
“Or at least none who would come forward?”
I stride through the clearing, arms outstretched as though challenging my masters. The corner of my grim prison pulses violet and red, its black stone maddening to most mortals. Skeletons cover the hard rock I once considered my tomb.
I scream at the sky.
“There was a time when you humored my existence! Now you alienate me, after leaving me buried all this time?”
I pace back and forth, expecting to hear them speak anew. But I realize that I will receive no such grace. The gods are either dead or silenced. They’ve abandoned me, leaving me to carry on the same directives without input.
But that doesn’t seem right.
Perhaps their silence is the challenge. Perhaps I’m meant to look beyond the surface and find them in the minutiae.
But then, I try to remember my time below ground. It is vague and hazy, filled with indiscernible shapes and loud noises. I’m not sure if I was sleeping, or if I was hunting. I see myself reaching out, trying to grapple with my memories, and they slip through my claws like mist.
There are elements of my memories that now feel fantastic to me, amidst the haze and the ambiguity. Perhaps the time before my sealing was all a dream. Perhaps I’ve always been buried, slumbering, not hunting, beneath the surface.
My stomach grumbles, and I realize that this mortal form needs sustenance, too.
A small suru stumbles through the forest, its lithe form poured into by the blackness of my prison. It glows and pulses deliciously red, and I can see its every illuminated vein, nourished by the corruption. To them, it might be an aberration, but I think it’s beautiful.
It peers up at me in curiosity, and I stare back.
I lick my lips. Perhaps the gods do provide after all.
Before the suru can come to its senses, I take advantage, leaping into action. With a simple swat, the suru is rendered dead, struck clean of its power. It falls harmlessly to the ground with a thud, and I begin to rip into its mangy, corrupted form.
The suru look and taste different than what I remember. They seem hardier, and there are more horns to eat around… more gristle to spit out. The act of eating it is not pleasant to me.
I don’t know if I like this change. I hope other aspects of the realm have remained consistent with my recollections, whether those spring from memories or dreams.
Leaving the corpse in disappointment, I smell the air, trying to peel my stomach from the delicious cries of mourning and violence. The scents of animals are far less enticing than my mission on the horizon, but this form is frail and neglected. Before I can undertake my true mission, I must first prepare my mortal body.
Finally catching a whiff of something lingering on the winds, I hunch down, then claw my way through the forests, rushing past lakes and roads, under sweeping branches, and across chasms and burrows. What I’m dashing toward, I’m not certain. It’s pure instinct.
Then I reach another clearing, obscuring myself behind the brambles. Their red and rust-colored hides are different than I remember, their wide, swooping horns almost more intimidating, but I still take in the familiar scent.
They are taura. And they are still delicious.
At first, I check for mortals who might be watching their pens and pastures. Then I realize that they couldn’t stop me even if they tried and that I’m the beast they tell horror stories about.
I dip and dive forward through the bushes, leaping toward a taura before it can think to protest. The others scramble and panic, but they’ll have their turn, too.
I take my fangs to their udders and bite down, greedily slurping down their milk. As my body grows in strength, so do my memories.
I’ve been awake before, not too long ago. I saw the realm in a similar state, where the gods had long since abandoned it, preferring to watch its ruination from afar.
Biting down deeper, then devouring the entirety of the organ, I remember reaping a being not far from here. The pastures were far more primitive then, and I didn’t see the same interior light pooling out from within the buildings.
Sadly, the same wickedness does not permeate through the air here. In fact, probing deeper, I feel nothing at all… no darkness, no light.
