Rorrim

Let's Begin

I opened my eyes. Fog rolled through the skeletal forest. A dim light oozed through the moss-clad branches of the trees, obscuring more than it revealed. An unfelt breeze stirred the fog to currents. Small rivulets and eddies slowly churned, elevating to the ethereal plane as much as descending to the infernal. Wanting to look around and get a better view of my surroundings, I tried to stand up. Incredible pain shot through my head and coursed a path down my spine, spreading throughout my body. All my muscles tensed, my back arched, trying to pull away from the tree, trying to escape the inferno that threatened to seize control but remained pinned there by the center of my chest. A howl ravaged my throat. I forced my body to relax, lening once again to rest against the tree. The pain stopped. I tried to look down to see what was pinning me there. A new wave of similar agony objected to the action . I readily obliged.

Cautiously , I tried to move my arms. I grimaced, baring my teeth in a primeval snarl. The pain was there but this was a different sort. This pain was the pain of a muscle pushed to the level of human endurance, somewhat debilitating yes, but not foreign or unmanageable. My whole arm squealed, metal grinding metal, as I stiffly forced it to slide up my body carefully probing for what pinned me to the tree. My fingers followed the curve of the breastplate occasionally dipping into dents and finding that, in two seperate places, the plate had been completely shorn through. I kept searching with my gloved fingers until I found what I desired. A spike, placed through the point just below my sternum, was what fixed me to the tree so firmly.

Slowly, I moved my hand higher wanting to figure out what it was that fixed my head to the tree. I was fairly certain what I would find, but I feared it nonetheless. My hand came into view, creeping up towards my forehead. The hand was clad in a blood-rusted bronze gauntlet that was pitted and scarred. It had thimble-like caps on the fingertips and thin bronze plates that hinged at the joints of the fingers and at the wrist and then led back to another plate that covered the forearm. Each of the hinges was covered and clogged within by a thick film of dusty, gritty ash. The hand reached my forehead

This spike was pressed through the center of my forehead. This one was different from the first. Where the first spike had a large rounded head pressed firmly into me, the head itself had not pierced the skin. Only the shaft had gone through my flesh. The head of this spike was that of a four-point star pressed solidly against my forehead. Near the end of each of these extending points was a smaller spike, on the underside, facing inward and piercing through the skin and into the bone of my skull. Two of the points went straight up and down the first reaching up to almost touch my hairline, the second coming down almost to the bridge of my nose. The others went out to the sides; they lined up perfectly with the outside corners of both my eyes. Each of the vertical points was about an inch and a half long and the horizontal was two inches. Oddly, neither the spike through my head nor the spike through my chest actually hurt by themselves. It was only when I moved that I experienced any pain at all period.

I pulled a small knife from its sheath at my side and, slowly and carefully, slid it behind my head trying to find where it connected with the tree, intending to lever it off when I found the spot. Surprisingly, when I encountered resistance, it was not the firm denial of steel that met the blade but rather, the reluctant consent of a dull knife cutting cold butter. Even with this comparative lack of resistance, I struggled because of the awkward position and the pain caused by the motion. When I finally slid the blade through what it was that held me back, my neck slumped forward, my muscles utterly exhausted from clenching against the pain.

The armor that I was wearing clearly had been left to weather for a great time. Having once been a brilliant bronze, it had been reduced to little more than pitted bloodrust. The same thing that had happened to the gloves, apparently, had also happened to the rest of the armor. The spike through my chest though appeared to be made of burnished steel. The head was close to a full two inches in diameter and not rusted at all. I then discovered that it was actually driven clear through the armor, head and all was also firmly against my skin like the one through my head. My arms fell to my side protesting the action of freeing my head .

Grudgingly, not really wanting to, I reached for the sword lying by my side, forcing my arms to work, refusing to stay trapped to this tree. Similarly to my head, I forced the sword down my back ignoring, to the best of my abilities, the new waves of pain. The resistance of this spike was more desperate, being forced apart but not willing to. I struggled for several minutes, sawing and pushing at what I thought was the spike. When, at last, I freed myself from the tree, I turned around wishing to examine the tips of the spikes. To my great surprise, they weren't to be found. There were no marks on the tree.

Confused, I yanked off the rusted gauntlets and felt for the nub of the head spike that I was sure would be there. I ran my hands through the close cropped hair on the back of my head. There, in the back where the nub should have been, was a small metal plate, some three or four inches wide, that seamlessly melded with my scalp. Pulling off my breastplate, it practically fell off by itself, and heaving my chainmail shirt and tunic over my head, I reached around my back to find a similar, but larger, plate of metal there. The most curious part about it was that it warped and conformed to my movements as good as my own skin.

I shivered. Not only from the cold miasma of the fog, but also from the fact that I could find no reason why I should be alive. Slowly, I got to my feet. I reached for my armor only to find that, on contact, it turned to dust. Clinging to my sword and dagger, brutally aware of my own defencelessness, I awkwardly crept toward where, to the best of my knowledge, the sun should have been, leaning heavily on my sword for support. Each of the trees that I passed seemed to be hiding a hideous ghoul or crazed grimling.

I realized, not having been able to see sooner due to the thickness of the fog and the weariness that clouded my mind, that I was climbing a hill. Determined to reach the summit, I pressed on desperately despite the fatigue that sapped at my strength. I reached the top and gazed outward. Having risen above the level of the fog, I could see for miles the tops of trees. Occasionally the fog and treetops were broken by a hillock similar to the one that I was standing on. In the distance, between the largest of the surrounding hillocks, the sun rose. A large, greasy, ball of iridescent red fire that took the cool darkness of the fog and seared it away leaving behind only the scragg of dead trees in an unending procession that reached to the horizon.