The young man gave a gasping breath as he awoke, covered in a cold sweat. He shivered as he stood, a continuous howling wind tugging at his ragged clothes.
"Where... am I?" the man asked. His senses gave him no clues. The world around him was what one could charitably call a hellscape: the land was mostly flat, with the occasional hill, plateau and rocky outcropping, and colored a red so deep it reminded him of a dying star. The only sounds were the crackling of fire that had no discernible source no matter which way he turned, and the ever present wind that even now threatened to freeze him where he stood. The man wondered at his misfortune to have awoken in such a place, and that thought led him to a sudden, even more frightening realization.
"Who am I?" The question was more a whimper, a quiet thing that the wind nearly snatched from his own ears. Some semblance of a memory told him to check his pockets, and that he may be able to determine something from the clues within. When he had turned out his pant pockets, he discovered a small leather wallet, which had no currency of any kind save for some kind of copper coin with the image of a laughing face mask on one side, and a set of small tough paper cards. The cards declared "Meal Saver Plan! Join Friendly's membership plan at your admin's office on campus for a year long discount!", but held no information other than that. The man's shoulders sagged as he realized that he was alone, lost, and an amnesiac. With no food or water, the man knew he had at most a week to live. Despite the crushing feeling of hopelessness, something in his breast told him that he couldn't simply give in. He looked around him, searching for some kind of abnormality in the unchanging landscape, and after a moment, he realized that what passed for the sky in this place (there were no clouds, no sun and no stars in the strange orange black dome that sat above him almost mockingly) was brighter far to his left. With nothing better to go on, the man squared his shoulders, set his eyes on the horizon, and began to walk.
Nothing had changed.
The man saw the world around him passing normally, and he could mark his footprints in the dusty film that settled over the stone behind him, but other than that there was no indication that he had gotten anywhere. Though he had no way of keeping time in this ageless place, he knew that his legs were aching enough that he had to have been walking for a couple hours, minimum. He turned around briefly, walking backwards to observe what he had passed. A few dry lake beds, the remains of what at one point had been a forest, something that looked vaguely like the ruins of a high wall, pounded to a three foot stub and so much dust that stretched for miles in both directions. A sad affair, all told, but the man sighed, knowing that he wasn't any better off than the world around him right now. And as he turned back, he realized his luck must be much, much worse.
Without his notice, the light had become quite bright, and he realized that the luminescence had not come from above, but below. The world ended in front of him, a massive drop of more than a thousand feet under him, where he had carelessly walked off the edge. As time resumed its journey around him, the man went to scream as he plummeted, but again the howling wind stole his voice away. His panicked eyes began to sweep the landscape, searching for some impossible thing to save him from his death at the hands of gravity.
Far and away, nearly double the distance he traveled, he noted first a set of what looked like doors. Before that, and between him and the odd non-sequitur in the landscape was a land awash in a strange golden glow. What appeared to be a collection of buildings resembling a city clawed its way up over the landscape in the middle ground, and seemed to be emanating the light from somewhere within. Directly in front of where his fall would put him, a deep black lake sat, its depths, though unseen, were a much more inviting sight than the orange ground that was less than a minute away now. Sighing in defeat, the man took solace in the fact that, if nothing else, he had tried. Even if his death was more due to clumsiness than anything, at least he had put in the effort. And that was enough.
The wind whistled in his ears for a moment more, then with a sudden jolt, everything went black.
A sound, like the clicking of some massive clock.
A grinding, sickening crunch.
Darkness once more.
Whispers, a hissing like dry leaves rustling over hard ground. The world focused for a moment, revealing a swirling darkness that slowly filtered down into... something.
A stone shimmered into existence, then liquefied, reshaping into the form of a small horse with wings and a horn. An illusion. Gone in an instant.
A trickling noise, then silence. Even the wind was gone. A shimmer, a flash of light, and an object formed. First a long stick, then a cane, a small clasp with a length of silk behind it. Each appeared for a moment, then was gone.
A clear, tinkling bell sounded. Then, agony blended color and sound, already suffering nerves burned and shriveling under the onslaught. Blessed darkness once again.
"Ugh..." the man groaned, a low guttural keening that dragged out for nearly a minute. With unsteady and blood encrusted hands, he dragged himself upright, surveying his predicament. His clothes were gone, only the last vestige of his decency covering his pubic area. He twisted and turned with renewed vigor as the previous... segment of time... returned to him. He stood with urgency and stared, mouth agape at the sheer cliff face before him. The wall was practically flat, with no way to determine if the two landmasses had ever been on the same level. He turned his stupefied gaze to his body, searching for some kind of blemish, any sort of injury the fall might have incurred. He found nothing but crusted blood stains and small pieces of cloth until he turned to check his back, where he saw some large black stain had imprinted into his skin. He couldn't find where it ended because his head couldn't turn far enough, and when he tried to rub it off with his thumb, nothing happened. Deciding that if it wasn't painful it wasn't worth the effort, the man filed it away for later.
Turning from the cliff face, the man spotted the lake he remembered from his fall. Feeling particularly parched, he set off again.
Space must be distorted, the man decided. Despite being in clear view, the lake took him nearly another few hours to reach. It wasn't even all that impressive a lake, all told. It was about a mile in diameter, and black as pitch. The man took cautious steps down the gentle slope leading to the water's edge, unsure if he should be wary of its depths. However, with the recent fall to his "death" in mind, he decided it was worth it, regardless of what it led to, if only to continue this journey that he seemed to have undertaken.
The water was cool and crisp on his fingers as he dipped a hand into it. He cupped his hands and lifted some away, surprised to find that when it was away from the main body, the water became a sparkling crystal, little flakes of something that looked like diamonds hovering in its depths. Probably not drinkable, so he put his hands back down. Strangely enough, now he wasn't thirsty, though he chalked that up to where he was and what he had recently experienced. Sudden death followed by rebirth was often an appetite killer.
Slipping his feet in first, the man eased himself into the water, then took a breath and dunked his head in. Opening his eyes, he found that just beneath the surface, the whole of the lake was a giant sparkling gem. Water so clear it glistened extended for untold leagues downward, beckoning him to come in. The man obliged, diving fully beneath the surface. The water was bracing but not chilly, and the man found his worries fading as he dove further. Despite the depths, he didn't feel the urge to breathe, but he hesitated from going further, a feeling of unease sweeping over him. He should be struggling for air by now, but he felt nothing in his chest. The idea set off a flare of panic and he swam for the surface.
The top of the lake was as black as before, but as he swam up, the man noticed that small tendrils of darkness were oozing down into the clear part of the lake. As he swam desperately for the surface, his legs became tangled in the tentacles and he was forced to continue by pulling himself up along the tendrils with his hands. Then, dread consumed him as his hand was stopped where the darkness should have parted to reveal the sky. With impotent rage and fear strangling his mind, the man pounded on the now glass-like surface of the lake. Merely by instinct, he took a breath to scream and was consumed by pain. Phantom screams echoed in his head, mocking reverberations of the scream he had meant to loose. The world swam, black and white merging and pulling apart in a dizzying display as every nerve in his body lit up in agony. Through the pain, he felt a rush of something in his head, and a series of images appeared.
A crown, rusted and burned black, with a single shimmering pearl in its base.
A dog with three heads standing before a gathering of smaller creatures that resembled goats.
A red hand bleeding black blood, the fingers slowly turning white.
A hoof, white as a cloud, reaching down to touch something.
Then a voice like thunder shattered the visions. It speech was garbled and raw, not in a language the man recognized, but it was angry, and its message was clear. You don't belong here. Then, the man's vision narrowed to a pin prick of light, and he felt himself fade again.
This time when he came to, the man immediately leapt to his feet, his sudden return to life not quite as jarring this time. He was thrown off kilter once again though as he realized that the lake was gone. He stood at the center of a massive crater, a lake bed that had suddenly found itself empty and dry. He grasped his hair in frustration and confusion, letting out an equal parts angry and despairing growl. Confusion and curiosity eventually won over the others when he discovered that the black mark on his back had been joined by two more. His forearms were now covered in stylized inky tendrils, much like the ones that were reaching down into the lake. His poking, prodding and pinching revealed no change in his arms save for the new markings, and he felt no different than before his second untimely demise. Finding nothing to dwell on, the man simply shook his head in mild irritation at the unyielding mystery of this place and began to climb out of the lake bed.
After what felt like a small eternity, he finally crested the edge of the lake bed and turned to the horizon again. The door he had seen was still there, sitting in the background like some strange sticker plastered on a painting of a sunset. Before it sat the ruined city, its walls still giving off the ethereal light which had drawn him over the cliff in the first place. With no other forms of guidance in sight, the man set off towards the crumbling buildings.
Something was wrong. While the lake had taken longer than expected to get to, the city seemed to stay ever in the distance, taunting the man with its secrets and the mysterious light. Spurred on by his frustration and determined to discover what lay within the ruins, the man sped up.
After an hour, he began to jog.
When almost a day had passed, he ran.
When he lost track of time, he sprinted.
When his legs gave out, he flew.
When he blinked, it was gone. He soared now over a collection of floating islands, pieces of the world falling away and rising above in tandem. A sweet music sang through the air beside him, a ghostly tinkling like bells from behind a wall, a muted sort of effervescence that suffused the world around him. The man's eyes twinkled as he dipped and circled the islands, running his hand over their sandy surfaces and rocky undersides. The tinkling grew louder, now a tolling bell high in a tower that hovered at the edge of the horizon. As he watched, the bell told once, twice, then began to rust. The rust flaked away and the bell became dust, the tower fading from immaculate white to a wretched grey, cracking and tumbling to the ground far below. As the tower collapsed, it revealed behind it a palace, the source of the original song, the tinkling bell which still played, muted within its walls but clear as day at the same time.
The man alighted on the palace steps and jogged along at a steady pace, his wings rustling as he took the steps two at a time. Within the palace were countless paintings of proud looking faces, plates of gold and silver holding expensive pottery and statuettes. The man ignored them all, hustling through the halls as the sound of bells grew ever clearer. Finally, after passing through a courtyard filled with greenery, he came to a throne room, and the bells reached a crescendo. With steady feet, he climbed the dais on which the throne sat, a simple white marble chair. From its height came the loudest of bells, the sound emanating from a crown of white silver and embedded with gold and rubies. The light from the windows grew harsher as the man approached the throne, reaching for the crown as he did. Just as his fingers brushed the circlet, the light and bells reached their zenith simultaneously, and the world began to vaporize, the light eating away at reality itself as the bells rung the atoms from the sky. The man's hand clasped down on the crown at the last moment, and then all faded to black once again.
The man woke seated this time, his head lazily rising from its perch on his hand. Taking in his surroundings, he deduced that he was somewhere in the ruins, the crumbling walls of an ancient hut slowly decaying around him while the uniform orange black of the sky was visible through holes in the roof. While he wasn't sure how what seemed like a fever dream had brought him here, he felt it better to simply accept it for what it was and move on. He looked down and found himself in an old wooden chair, its weak and withering body creaking as he shifted. What at one point might have been a red pillow separated him from the wood, and gold vine inlays left small indents in his arms as he stood.
Walking outside, the man stood before a courtyard, or perhaps a market place. A fountain sat in the middle of a series of stones forming concentric circles out to the edge of the open space, its ancient water source still managing to send water spilling through the cracks in its base. Curiously, the man approached the fountain and leaned over it. The weathered face of a beleaguered human stared back, though there were some oddly alien characteristics to it. His eyes were hard and searching as he looked himself over, their glowing, icy blue a stark contrast to his ashen pale skin. His hair was dark brown, almost black, and above it hovered a circlet of black flames, a single pearl at its base. The man thought back to his dream and where he awoke, turning back to face the ruins again.
They were gone.
The city had vanished again, this time replaced by a single arched gateway through which a narrow path proceeded. Turning back to the fountain, he found it restored to pristine condition, and also the only thing left of the world before. Gone was the cliff he had fallen from, the lake bed and the many leagues he had traveled to the city ruins. Now there were only floating islands, and far away - so close to the horizon it should have been indistinct and yet the man could see it clearly- was the castle, its ivory towers gleaming in the orange light.
For a moment, the man heard the tinkling sound of a single bell, and a flash of light came from just beyond the courtyard.
Unnerved but smiling, the man turned to the archway and began to walk the path. The walkway was narrow, wide enough only for himself and one other, and it wound through the sky world like a confused serpent, sometimes coiling back onto itself, until finally in the distance there sat the black doors. With a deep breath, the man steadied himself, and began the journey.
