Losing it. Third draft

My first recollection of my visit was the sensation of something cold and horribly smelling. That is, I woke up in a pile of my half dried vomit, parts of it sticking to my face.

"Ugh..." After a long time of simply sitting there in the pile of regurgitated food I wised up and tried to sit away from it. "Wha...?" I asked nobody, my face feeling sun burnt and pieces of my skin peeling off. I rubbed the vomit out of my eyes, the horrible twang of whatever I had eaten still in my mouth. A long piece of dead skin clung to the mess and as I rubbed my head more came off, followed by extreme pain. From what I could tell, this tiny patch of forest was open to the sun and I had been lying there half dead for a long time. A long time.

My voice was partially cracked from disuse and I wondered how I was still alive. It occurred to me that maybe the vomit had driven away any predators who could have gone after my half dead carcass. I slowly stood up to get a better look at the woodsy area I was in. "Where am I?" I asked myself, feeling off on my feet. I slowly sat back down, feeling it best to not pass out again. Darkness and odd off colors of the forest around me swam in front of my vision and I tried to piece together what had happened. Detroit. A car. Fast food. A package. These few words slowly blurred past my mind and I quit after the last one brought forth an unusual flare of pain. A nice burning sensation, complete with a song billowing forth.

"I don't want to set the world... on... fire..." Bubbled from my lips and I stood up again in an effort to keep from going idle. My vision swam and I ignored it this time, taking a step forward. As they say, hind sight is 20/20. I took a step in the vomit, slipping in a bit of inner slickness. I fell on my side and looked around as if anyone would care that I was stranded out here and fell. I glared at the pile of yellow and green vomit, my one and only companion so far that I could recognize. My foot had flattened it out. I tried to will it on fire and was slightly sad as I revealed that waking up here had not bless me with pyrokinetic capabilities. I continued staring at half dried pile, intrigued with how fresh and how old it seemed at the same time.

After a long while I managed to tear my gaze away to look at the woods, still singing. (I have but only one... de...sire...) I figured I was mangling the words, but I didn't really care. I didn't recognize a single tree. Not a leaf on these trees seemed in the very least familiar and the odd bright colored leaves may have been hinting that it was fall or nearing so, the pinks and the reds and the lack of vibrant green hinting as such. My head ached trying to figure this out. It had been spring last time I checked and a few days before my birthday at that. I suddenly wanted cake.

I looked back at the vomit and for a brief moment my eyes traced an outline of something buried in it. I looked away, craning my head up as I did so to observe how far the sun was up above the horizon. I couldn't see the blasted orb and I knew that it was only a time besides noon. I looked back at the vomit in frustration, my eyes tracing the outline yet again. In anger and in the hopelessness that was starting to sink in, I kicked the pile and the tip of the pair of tennis shoes I was wearing split open and the tip of my toe cut itself upon a rather large knife.

As you can imagine I started screaming in pain, though I suppose the sight was rather comical as I hopped around on one foot trying to reach the knife stuck in my shoe with the other. I pulled the knife out, though not without trouble. I looked at the knife, my confusion and headache not getting in the way of my attempt to commit it to memory.

The knife was about a foot with a few inches to spare and when I finally got over my squeamishness and wiped off the blood and the vomit from it I observed an odd lightning bolt engraved on the center of it's nine inch long, inch wide obsidian blade. The hilt itself was brown and leather based. I stared at it uncomprehendingly for a long time before a few memories drifted through my head.

"Merry Christmas!" A festive chorus from faces of family and friends. Their happy overjoyed faces matched the atmosphere to the point that I had to comment on it.

"What is this, a Hallmark card?" I joked, then my smile slid a little as I caught the faintest trace of unhappiness within my dad's face. My mom thought it was a good joke and tugged me into a hug, my 17 year old self still happy that his mom liked him. After a long moment of seeing if anybody else would laugh I decided to give it up, turning my gaze towards the tree ornamentally filled to the brim. My face broke into a big smile at everyone.

"Now Mark, you know the drill here." My dad said, nodding. "As the youngest here you get to open your presents first." And of course this thrilled me despite my knowledge of how the system was governed.

My memory slowly faded to the next week when I received my present from one of my friends a week late. It had conveniently arrived at a time where nobody as home but myself and having knowledge of who it came from I supposed that perhaps this was how my friend intended for me to receive it. It was the knife that I held in my hand, sharp as ever.

My mind drifted back to the unfortunate present and I looked down at my shoe and my toe, one revealing the other. I pushed the rubber in my shoe back together as best I could. I was happy, or at least experiencing an emotion close to happiness over knowing where the knife had come from. I decided to ignore how the knife got into the vomit.

I gingerly rubbed my hand down my sides to get off whatever blood I had missed when I had first cleaned the blade. My hands found my pockets, or more specifically a rather large bulge in one of them. "Now what's this?" My voice cracked and I coughed a little. I pulled out a long piece of leather and something clicked in my head. The knife slid into the leather and stopped it from cutting anything. I smiled, glad to have figured something out.

Deep in a ruined castle, the entrance blocked by heavy rocks and only a tiny side entrance available for the few who dwelled there, a silver pegasus began to give a report. She began with a salute and a swallow of water from a nearby pitcher to calm her nerves. "Sir!" She saluted again, nervous.

A shadowy figure, nodded at her slowly, a bemused smirk dwelling on his equine face. "I trust that he was there as I described?" He lounged on a throne of quartz, the one light in the room shining from directly behind him. He licked his lips.

She gulped again and tried her best to school her features. "Yes Sir. He is heading this way as of my last sighting of him." She looked around, the room suddenly devoid of any others besides her and the shadowed one.

His dark purple eyes glinted almost gem like, his horn glowing a faint lavender and his eyes seemingly multifaceted. "Good. I trust that he will find the ruins and be in place for our little... ritual?" Inwardly he laughed at the terrified pegasus.

She nodded. "I don't understand... sir. What part does he have?" She kept her eyes off of him.

He drew in a long breath, the hiss echoing through the room. "That is not of your concern, Silverstream." He spoke the name like half of an insult, the hiss of promised pain clear.

Silverstream shook her head slightly. "And what do you want me to do when it starts?" She saw a table half hidden in the dim lighting. She traced a long sharp surgical tool and shivered slightly.

He followed her gaze. He grinned, and his teeth were an odd shade of yellow. "I want you to watch what happens here. If anything goes wrong you know what to do."

She tore her gaze from his bad hygiene, and nodded at the ground. Run like mad and don't let anything catch you was what she had been instructed to do. Hang back and observe what happens. "Yes sir."

I had been walking for a long time. I knew this because my body was soaked in sweat and my legs felt like they had melted in the forest humidity. My bloodied hands from the many times I had slipped whilst marking trees were just another strong piece of supporting evidence for a claim that I had been walking for a long time.

But despite this, or maybe even because of this, I was making no progress. The road that I had been on and had been leading to Detroit was still not there. And back tracking would only lead me back to the vomit that I had woken up in, the bitter chunks. I needed to get to the road to find Detroit. I drive a red car. My name is Mark. My medicine is not on me. I have a large slowly bleeding lump on my head and I have a knife. It subtly occurred to me that perhaps my thoughts were decaying in complexity.

My stomach ached. This was how I knew I was hungry, and I knew that feeling to not be a foreign concept though trying to figure out how I knew that brought only nausea and a brain splitting headache. I was also thirsty, though that was more of a supposition than anything I could come up with any recognizable proof for. My arms hurt from carrying around the small weight of the knife. My heart pounded and I felt like I was the last living thing on the planet.

At no time did I feel like I was alone. There was a cold terrible certainty that not only was I being followed and being watched, the things following me were not human and were capable of flitting out of sight with as much ease as it took me to curse them. They were mocking me, I was sure of it. If they were even there, that is. I was almost certain that I was dreaming up the gremlins that I would occasionally see on the side of my path and that there was nobody there when I stopped to carve a long scratch in a tree with the knife.

My vision was swimming enough that it didn't matter and my headache had decided to go and upgrade itself to a category five tornado. The migraine made everything hurt and every step became a labor of forced love and not so forced hatred. I still wished I was a pyrokinetic, the foliage the new face of evil and an agent of my demise.

On my first night I realized that I wasn't on earth anymore. That, or someone had carved a massive face on the moon since the last time I had checked. Which, as I had been in spring and it was now fall might be possible. At any rate I was either on another planet or I had time traveled to a time where the moon was carved up. Neither of these possibilities made me feel any better of my chances of getting out of this forsaken forest.

The griffon lazed about, smirking at nothing in particular. Her gaze was trained on another griffon, this one maybe decidedly handsome in terms of avian based races. The male griffon nodded at her.

The female spoke. "It is time?" She clacked her front talons in a patternless manner on the floor.

"It is indeed time for you to go, Gilda. Remember, act as if nothing is changed and stay in Ponyville. It is imperative that you intervene if necessary." He nodded at her, his beak twisting in an odd attempt at a smile.

Gilda grimaced at the other griffon. "Keep trying with the smile, Dweeb." She smiled lightly, her insult in good nature.

The other griffon frowned and almost pouted, his face not quite designed for that action. "Are you still going to call me that? My name is Ivan and I thought you swore to me..."

She cut him off, her lack of respect clear. "Yeah yeah, oath of loyalty. Doesn't mean respect, moron."

He huffed at her. "Fine... just don't make..." He fumbled with his word choice. "Just go do your job." He clutched his head.

Gilda raised an eye brow at him, shaking her head and turning to walk away. "Good luck with your part of the deal."

Ivan nodded. "Get out of my office." He said in goodnatured humor.

She walked out without another word.

I jerked back the knife and swung it at the tree, my means of meaning the mark as that action. The knife bounced off, the inertia of it forcing it to cut into my left arm. "I hate trees." I decided, clutching my arm with my other arm and dropping the knife. The blood trickled out despite my efforts and I gulped, looking around for anything to help. I looked up to the sky to appeal to the golden orb that hung there. Nothing happened, it's inanimate form just going on with it's purpose and and scattering sunshine and maybe a little happiness across the land. I looked at my sweat streaked shirt, the blue fabric making a sacrifice at the blade of my knife and leaving me bare chested.

I looked almost skeletal and I stopped to observe myself. Every breath was visible and my ribs poked out, leaving me to wonder just how long I had sat there baking in the sun. I sighed, taking the shirt and trying to slice it up for bandages. I went through about three quarters of the shirt before I finally had the length and the width just right for making a bandage.

I was light headed again and every motion brought back a swarm of nausea. In idle thought I wondered just how I had lived this long without water and I looked to the horizon in earnest awe at nothing. My eyes were unfocused and for a long time all I saw was a haze of green and blue and red. I remained there, struggling to stay awake.

After a long time my vision cleared up and I caught what was unmistakeably stone. And hewed stone, crafted and carefully placed to form the foundation for something. In my addled state I believed that water must be there and my logic as I look back on it still seems sound. They wouldn't build something somewhere that didn't have a steady source of water.

"Water." I rasped, pushing myself forward despite the ache and complain of my muscles and the odd flaming feeling from my toe. After I had cut myself by kicking the knife it had decided to swell up. And turn green. Which wasn't a good color like blue or yellow. I shook my head and wished I hadn't; my brain felt like it had rattled around in my skull. I took a step forward, and then another. I pushed myself to walk, going far past empty on my energy. I managed a slow trudge. If I had adequate water in my body I would've started crying when I realized the crumbling ruin I saw was uphill. As it was, I sniffled at the thought of it.

"Sir. It has appeared to have stopped moving. Should I fetch it?" Silverstream asked, her form streaked with a bit of sweat from the effort it took to evade the paranoid human's gaze. She shook slightly, realizing that she hadn't landed before going into the chamber. She froze in fear and hit the ground.

The shadowed pony stood up slowly, glowering at the pegasus. "I did not give you permission to fly in my presence." He floated more than he walked over to her with his hooves not making a sound on the cold rough hewn floors.

She gulped down a sob and hung her head, shaking slightly. "I'm sorry sir."

The shadow pony brought up his left front hoof and sent it whistling through the air to meet the silver pegasus's face. She flinched away by reflex and it caught the tip of her nose.

The air filled with an awkward crunch and her head filled with it as well. She fell to the ground, her wings wrapped over her head protectively as was first instinct. Blood slowly trickled through her wings and with the path checked as a course for the flow, her wings became sticky with the stuff. And then it started dripping. Every drip for a single instance seemed to slowly bubble against the ground for her and she stopped clutching just to watch, enthralled in the sight. She didn't care that she was feeling light headed or that her lack of respect was a great risk for her continued survival, she just stared at the phenomenon. The crimson tide slowly stretched out from the tiny drops to a small puddle about the diameter of a hoof. She slowly blinked, her eyes dull.

Another hoof smashing into her face shook her from her contemplation. "Idiot." The shadow pony huffed. "Don't stare at the blood or you'll get entranced again." He shook his head at her and cast a quick spell to heal her. Naturally, he made it as excruciating as possible.

She screamed in pain at her bones knitting at an accelerated rate. Her echoing scream brought a smile to his face. He enveloped her wing in his magic and forced her to mop it up. "The others soon come to behold the ritual. If the sacrifice does not come then of course you should go after him." He snorted at her. "Honestly, if you want to save the world you should use a little more common sense."

She nodded limply at him. "Yes sir..." Her voice was as dull and flat as she imagined the rest of her life being.

I sat in the roots of a tree fulfilling a fantasy I had had for the past few days. Never mind the fact that the plant I was chewing on was bright toxic blue, it was filled with juicy succulent rich water. I had the oddest feeling that I had seen this plant before but I also had the feeling that I really didn't care because it was water. I breathed out a long sigh of relief and for the first time since I had awakened I felt that my life wasn't hanging in the balance.

And on my contentment my guard slipped and I willingly gave over to my temptation to sleep. After all, it's not like there was someone after me.

The first thing I heard was the sound of flesh tearing. The first thing I smelled was ash and burning flesh. The acrid taint filled my lungs with every gasping breath and with every exhale I craved fresh air. I opened my eyes and a tiny gust of wind buried hot ash into my eyes and I furiously blinked them, tears falling from the new found pain. All I could feel was a low cold, just about the same feeling you get if you sleep on a room with the fan on for too long. And all I could hear was the disconsolating sound of crunching snow.

I opened my eyes again and tried to stand up. My eyes shot wide as my center of balance lurched forward and planted my arms firmly in the soft powder ahead of me. It crunched like snow. I looked straight ahead of me and took in the odd sight. A single ragged and torn white flag flapped in a non existent breeze. I ignored my balance issues to continue stating. For a long moment I thought the red spatter wrapping across it was a stylistic choice, perhaps made to display military superiority or some other idea. After that thought I took in the sheer irregularity of the red and how it did not cover the single emblem in the center that consisted of three circles. It was a tattered bloodstained flag.

The battlefield, and that was what it appeared to me as being, was coated in equal parts of ash and snow. Thousands of feathers littered the valley. I did not recognize any of the plumages but i still felt profound sorrow pver how many great birds had lost their lives. I turned my head and caught a similarly tattered and mutilated flag hanging above what I identified as my side of the valley. Three bloody triangle emblazoned in what almost felt like a mockery.

A large snow flake fell down in front of me and melted in a pile of ash. I staggered to my feet, immensely curious as to the origin of all of the ash. I slowly crawled to the edge of the hill and looked down. Moving blurs filled the bottom of the ash coated crevasse. Armor coated the forms and with each slam against each other an agonizing scraping of metal on metal screamed into the sky like an unwilling baby and at the same time sounded like nails on a chalk board.

I watched them battle it out for another long while before an eerie presence filled the air. Every hair on my body filled with an electric charge and by an alien reflex I stared to the sky. A massive energy ball, the sheer force of it contorting and twisting the air with its slow spiral flew through the air like a specter of death. All combat below the flags stopped to look up at it. The forces parted like a zipper, frenzied screams giving me the idea that whatever that was it was not nice. A few broken bodies could only stare up at it. I could only stare as it flew below me towards the doomed souls. There was a massive explosion and a reverse shock wave almost tore me off of my feet. Where once broken and battered soldiers lay injured there was only an ash cloud slowly rising above the valley. It settled around me.

Silverstream swallowed back her fear and continued watching the slumbering human. Its face was far too eerily similar to her own for comfort. She brought a wing tip up to the side of its face. It didn't stir. She nodded and grabbed on to its tattered mockery of a short. The cloth tore as she pulled at it. She let out a frustrated growl under her breath and grabbed a near bye rock. Hoping against hope that she wasn't about to kill the necessary sacrifice, she brought the stone down on his head. He stopped moving and fell still. Her eyes shot wide at this reaction and she hurriedly pressed her ear to his chest.

For a fraction of a second she thought she couldn't hear a heart beat. Profound sadness and fear welled up in her. This was only temporary and soon she caught a low slow heart beat. She sighed in relief and straining with her wings she barely managed to bring the thing on her back. A distinct feeling of humiliation filled her at being forced to be a simple carrying pony. Her wings felt crushed beneath its surprisingly light weight.

"Well. I guess you aren't going to hear me. But if you can, I just want to offer an apology for delivering you to your murder." She shook her head and looked at the ground to where, chewed to a fine pulp, a recognizable blue plant rested. Her eyes shot wide again and she stepped around it. She looked back at the biped on her back and caught a fine blue drool coming from its mouth. "Idiot."

She began walking back up to the crumbling keep.
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