Hello everyone!
If you've made it this far, then thank you very much. Not sure who's reading, but I would appreciate any comments for motivation since i've been feeling down a bit lately!
Remember, in a way, all of this is a prologue, and the real events will start soon!.
Thank you.
Your favorite (or not) author,
- ItismeindeedsoObey.
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"Ah...." A head-piercing headache throbbed in his head, his forehead creasing in pain as Xin slowly opened his remaining eye that had not popped out of strain from what he had experienced.
A convulsion of awareness. A scrape of thought like a rusted gear grinding against itself.
Xin coughed, a dry, low rattle in his throat, thick and phlegmy as if he had swallowed a mouthful of gravel without a drop of water.
His tongue was coated in something bitter and metallic. He gagged quietly, pressing a hand to his mouth, his fingers trembling slowly from the hot cuts he felt on his hand.
They hadn't healed.
He spat thickly onto the dirt, but the taste lingered, or perhaps it was in his head. Was there a difference anymore at this point?
His thoughts were fogged, melted down to formless abstractions, his dizzy head slightly lifted. He tried to hold onto a single thread of thought, but it kept slipping.
Every time he tried to remember where he had come from—or even who he was. Frustration boiled inside him. His thoughts had kept looping in his head until he had felt sick. Extremely so. He couldn't even bear to pretend to be fine, he wasn't
".... W.... hat happ... ened?" he muttered sickly. He gently touched his temple, expecting blood, maybe a shard of his skull that may have pierced his skin.
Yet, instead he felt heat. Extremely unnatural levels of heat. If there was an infrared camera, it would have shown signatures of white from the sheer level of heat.
His brain was boiling. Not physically, but mentally. As if his brain was working overtime without a stop in the background. However, what frightened him the most was that his mind felt empty.
For the first time in his life, he did not have a single thought in his mind.
He blinked slowly, taking reality around him.
He slowly sat up looking at everything in disbelief as if it were a dream, his joints cracking in protest. His breathing was quite steady. Injuries? Unhealed, but weirdly there was no pain.
Strangely, his mind was empty.... but quite clear. His gaze drifted toward the monument again—that god-like statue, that unknowable thing that held a black star in its cradle of hands.
Badump.
He felt a strange reaction towards the statue, and stood staring at it for a few moments before deciding to avert his gaze.
Yet as he tried to look away, he panicked inwardly when his eye wouldn't move a single inch.
However, contrary to the previous resistance he had shown, he blinked once, and decided to follow the flow.
He had realized that resistance and denial would be of no good for his current situation, and future ones. It would be foolish to continue using such a mentality.
He breathed in and out.
Now that his mind was clear, he could attempt to think properly. He closed his eyes gently, as if slowly pulling his thoughts that were in jeopardy slowly into one point, steady yet slowly.
He gently imagined as if he was pulling them to one spot, his mind's temperature slightly decreasing. Beads of sweat accumulated on his forehead and slid down his neck, however he continued breathing in out, albeit his breaths were shallow.
Finally, he opened his eyes slowly indifferently, judging his previous self.
He had adopted a sarcastic persona previously, not because of it being his true personality, but rather because he had been tying to fool himself into denying the reality he was in.
However, he now had to accept it, the situation, location... wherever the fuck he was. He needed to think rationally, even if this place didn't follow logic. He could get accustomed to its own logic. No, he needed to get accustomed to its logic if he wanted to survive.
He didn't believe in supernatural, he believed in logic. In reality. Even supernatural could be explained by science. It was that our current level and understanding did not reach that point yet.
Xin grit his teeth and pulled his gaze away with effort, neck muscles twitching. He staggered sideways, breath heaving, one boot torn open and leaking blood into the earth beneath.
The pain grounded him slightly, dull. Like pain through a pillow, yet he managed to calm himself down.
He narrowed his eye in contemplation, his thoughts whirling as he daringly looked back to the odd statue. Only one eye was functioning, and he felt something still sticky and hot flowing down the empty hole that had been once his right eye.
"Heh, they seem to have something against my eyes or something" He remarked, chuckling hollowly.
With a sigh, he tore the sleeve of his shirt, careful not to tear the whole shirt by accident, before he tied his right eye with it diagnolly, forming an eye patch.
He observed the rest of his body and judged that his body seemed to be fine other than the now mild headache, his eye that he lost, and the scratches around his body.
His broken toe was dislocated in reality, and he was able to walk with it, albeit barely.
He took the first few steps to change, and his main goal currently was to escape. He needed to investigate where he was, and decided to test a few things.
He had a good head on his shoulders, his experience back on earth was not for naught. He turned his gaze schrunichinizing the first evidence that may help his investigation, the statue.
His feet walked before his mind had registered, and he slwoly strolled to the statue that was not too far away. He was around four feet away from the state that sized in the thousands of feet before he suddenly halted.
Drip. Drip.
Two drops of blood fell from his nostril entrances, his head looking down to the two drops, before his eyes widened to their extreme, his pupils turning into pinpoints, and jumped back.
Something was off with his blood flow. He had felt something warm gathering at his ears, mouth, his eye, and two other places he wouldn't mention.
All his body holes were about to leak blood. Thankfully, he had moved at the last moment from the spot where he felt his inevitable death would be.
His strained eyes soon returned to normal, before he ignored them, his eyes scanning the location around him as if looking for something.
His drafting eyes didn't scan for long, his sharp sight landing on a stone that seemed to embody neither a small nor large size.
Gathering himself, he indifferently walked to the stone, and tried to carry it, in which he was succesfull. Carefully weighing it with his two hands, he shifted his gaze to the statue, and with a grunt, he threw the stone near the statue.
He carefully observed for any reaction. If the rock cracked or shattered, that would mean that coming near the statue simulated some type of heavy gravity that crusehd anything near.
If not, that would mean one out of two things. Either it wasn't gravity, the statue didn't affect inanimate objects... or that it simply didn't come near anything 'related' to his location.
He observed for one... two... three... no reactions.
"Huh, so no reactions it is" He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, as he thought about it attentively. If this was back on earth, scientists would have rushed here, running scans using all their odd and complex devices and instruments.
Sadly, Xin didn't have access to any of these materials.
After some thorough thought, he arrived at an idea that didn't seem to be too far fetched in this location that defied all laws.
"Perhaps... is time and space warping near the statue... ?" He raised an eyebrow in interest at the thought, a mocking smirk adorning his lips. Truly, the location seemed to contain unhidden secrets.
Now that he could think properly, he decided to stop running away from his doubts, and decided to investigate more on his deaths, how he is able to return, where he is, w why, and what his purpose here is exactly.
Running away? Perhaps at first the thought had crossed his mind, but now he was completely sure, he wouldn't escape even if he had the chance.
This place was too interesting for him to do so. He would uncover all the secrets of where he was, and nothing could stop him.
"First off however, why is the sky still dark? Am I missing something?" He mused in contemplation.
"Its either I passed out too long or...." He looked back to the statue with his head tilted to the back.
"The time here has something up with it" he concluded.
Well, eitherway, it seemed he had all the time of the world. He wasn't hungry either or thirsty, which he connected to being in a realm for gravestones. It seemed that he didn't feel those emotions except if he was somewhere suitable to feel them.
The dead never felt hunger.
And it seemed that he would neither despite being a live creature.
"Sigh... I could really make use of those cigs back on earth" he sighed in exasperation before he looked back to the statue in captivation. As far as he could see, the statue seemed to pierce through the sky and reach the celestial bodies.
The artist sure had some taste.
As he was pondering his next actions, Xin looked to the spot he had thrown the stone, before his thought process froze.
Written across his face was confusion and stupor, his expression blank, before he blinked twice. His thoughts were organized but... there seemed something off?
"I thought I threw the stone over there?"
The stone was no longer where he remembered it landing. It now sat several feet to the left, nestled neatly where his foot had been before he first approached the statue.
"...Did I miss?"
That didn't make sense. He was sure he'd thrown it toward the statue, not away from it. He retraced the motion in his mind—shoulders shifting, weight centered, release timed perfectly.
He turned around slowly.
The blood he had spat earlier... it was gone. So was the thick, gravelly glob he had wiped from his mouth. Even the faint smudge of his own bootprint in the dusty soil had vanished.
He was stuck in a time loop.