A human sat at a desk while light from a machine lit up his face. Yes. A human. Descendant of ape-like creatures or so I had read about... thought that was later... way later.
What? What's this rubbish that I'm spewing? Okay, I thought you would know but I guess I should start from the very start.
...
I had just completed my second trial, but my mind wasn't straight. My mind was numb. My body was numb. Dying hundreds of times will do that you, okay? You should trust me on that one at least.
Having just completed a trial and my will melted to a mush from being tested I was in no shape to continue. I needed a rest and badly.
But the problem was that I couldn't. The trial was completed but my body continued to burn from within. My skin was drying out as the invisible flame inside me continued to burn. My moisture was leaving me. My mucus was caking and flaking off.
I was in trouble. Unlike the other trials... it seemed like the third trial had an effect on my body itself. Did it hurt? No. I became so numb to pain that the burning didn't hurt at all compared to what I had experienced over and over.
Then what was the problem?
I was dying. My body still held onto the thought of living even though I wasn't thinking at all.
My body was set on autopilot and I was just a passenger.
The simple thought of "water" popped into my mind. Like I was in a sleep-deprived state, I was in no position to think clearly think at all. It was as if my whole mind was melted away and my thoughts were replaced by the most basic an primal instincts that a snail could have so I acted on it.
My body sensed it as I began to move.
Water.
I slid forward through the darkness of the mental world at a snail's pace. The orange behind me began to fade as I did. And a new colour appeared before me. Blue. Deep blue. Blue like the darkness of a fading sky. A path of blue lit up before me and lit the way as the darkness of the sky brightened to a similar blue.
I followed the path. Not knowing where it would take me and not even thinking about the next trial. The only thing that was on my mind was water.
Time passed. I think the air around me began to cool and moisten. But I didn't pay too much attention to that as I searched for water to quench my thirst and put out the burning flame inside me.
The thing is, I didn't notice at the time, but impurities were being burned from within me as black dust bellowed off my body as I moved.
But still. Only water was on my mind.
It didn't take long before I found it.
A pool of water the diameter of my body and nothing else.
I didn't wait, no I couldn't wait as I slid inside the pool.
Instantly, I felt the coolness of the water wrap around my body and hydrate it as the water sizzled from the heat of my body.
'Hah.' I thought as I felt the coolness flow against my foot. Slowly the soothing water moved up past my foot and onto my shell as I drifted downwards.
Downwards into a blue abyss.
'I'm going to drown.' I thought peacefully as I let the water pass over my eyes without even struggling. 'I'M GOING TO DROWN!' I thought as I continued began to panic and look upwards. I was dropping deeper by the second as panic began to set in.
In my numbed stupor I walked myself into a vertical column filled with water.
Using my foot, I tried to latch onto the walls that surround me. It didn't work as it just slipped off.
'Mucus.' I thought as I tried to create a sticky ball of mucus only to have it dissolved into the water.
I began to struggle as I tried to paddle my body upwards in a mad attempt to save myself. My heart pounding in my chest as I made my situation worse and worse with my struggle.
My vision was clouding and turning dark and my body tingle. I knew this feeling too well. I had felt it hundreds of times already.
'I'm dying.' I thought as I held my breath and continued to descend.
The deeper I went, the harder it got to hold my breath in. The deeper I went the harder my heart pounded. The deeper the darker my world grew.
...
'Think.' I told myself countless times over and over until I gave up and accepted my fate.
'I'm only in my mental world... there's no reason I would actually die right?' I thought in an attempt to fool myself of my fate.
Thinking that there was nothing else I could do. I did the only thing I hadn't tried.
I took a breath.
Instantly, I felt my body relax and my vision began to return to me. I guess my lineage's gills had somehow retained the ability to breathe in water? Or it may have been that I wasn't in a pool of water but some sort of breathable fluid.
Regardless, I was alive and well.
Well sort of.
I was still stuck with the problem that I was slowly drifting downwards without my control.
But that soon changed as the tube began to widen and bizarre windows of white began to appear.
'What are those?' I asked as if I was some sort of man-child screaming for no reason as I wiggled my body. Although I couldn't move upwards, I managed to shift myself towards one of the hazy portals of white.
And then I saw it.
A memory.
Surreal and definitely real. I saw myself sliding out of a white structure before dropping suddenly. I spiralled through the air towards a branch that was below me, but just before I was smashed to pieces, I transformed into a white mist before I collected myself again.
I knew that memory. I had lived through it.
Wiggling, I moved towards another white portal - another memory - as others passed me by.
It was a battle. Covered in white mist, I dodged towards the side before I caught a greyish blur between my jaws and bit down.
'The battle with the male Frostfang.' I thought to myself as I drifted downwards.
More and more windows of white appeared below me as I saw the familiar scenes. The betrayal, the adventuring team, the rescue, the migration...
Like I was moving back in time, I watched scenes unfold within the portals of white as I continued to watch my past pass quite literally before my eyes.
I felt old feelings return, but I quickly shook them off.
'I'm stronger and better now. I won't let my past drag me down.' I thought confidently as I watched scene after scene and reminisced.
...
Finally, I reached my earliest memory.
The memory of hatching. Attached to the underside of the leaf, hundreds of eggs glimmered in the sun. One particular egg was slightly bigger than the others and gleamed before it hatched and a tiny rainbow-shelled snail crawled out from it.
"Hello World!" he called out.
'Huh. I was such a tiny thing.' I thought to myself as I watched my own birth into the world. 'I've come so far...'
'Now what?' I questioned as I passed by my first memory. 'There shouldn't be any more right?' I questioned as I looked around.
'No it can't be.' I thought as I squinted below me.
Blending in with the cool blue of the water that surrounded me there was one more hazy window that was present.
And I dropped straight into it seconds later.
...