"Huff.. huff.." the boy breathed hard as he stood stock still, facing down hell itself.. the beast was hurtling itself towards him, moving it's large legs in a horrific unison as it dashed.
"Shit.. I need to move.." he told himself. But his legs wouldn't move.. Fear had frozen him to the spot.
A second later he came to his senses, but the monster was only twenty feet away. The boy hurled himself to the side as he saw it leap towards him. It slammed into the invisible barrier and bounced off unharmed, though visibly dazed.
He took the opportunity to run.. run away.. run anywhere but right next to the thing.
"What can I do?... what can I do?..." he thought as he put one foot in front of the other. There was little to do.. No weapons, no hiding places, nowhere to run... The cloak wasn't helping things. It threatened to trip him as he ran, and so he took it off..
"Snap!" The turtle faced monster clamped it's jaws hard.. it was angry. That much was clear. It stood like a demon in the grey landscape of the bleak world.. For all he knew it was.
The boy stopped near the cliff edge.. He contemplated jumping off. Maybe he would have luck again and fall in a river? A lake??? Anything was better than being ripped to shreds by that thing right? Right???...
He unclasped his cloak and threw it down on the ground. It lay in a crumpled pile amidst the stone and dirt. The monster dashed forward again, and he only had a few seconds to decide what to do..
Doing what any prey would do.. he opted for what had saved him the first time: to jump out of the way of it's charge... It was clearly slow in turning. That much was certain from how he had outrun the clearly fast beast in the forest. It needed time to turn it's massive frame.. and he could at least by some time while he worked out a plan...
Again he waited.. and waited.. if he had tried to jump out of the way too early it would surely turn and catch him in a heartbeat.. he needed to wait until it was mid leap at least.. he needed to be able to see the reflection of the dim light off it's massive black eye.. to smell the blood and flesh of the dead woman stuck to it's grey skin and turtle face..
"Now!" He said to himself, and dove to the right. It worked.. the creature had to stop itself from jumping straight off the cliff..
He ran full force to the other side of the clearing, near the path. The boy painted as he stood leaning on the invisible barrier. "Okay.. what now.. what now..."
And so he studied the creature. He had to push back the fear, the anger, the disgust.. and focus.. focus on surviving by any means necessary. He learned some valuable things in the few minutes of life and death struggle:
One, he was weak.. and slow.. and got tired very easy. He hated that...
Two, it was no fluke.. the creature really did struggle with turning quickly. Hence the leaping charge..
And three, it had poor eyesight... He figured this last one out on accident when it had flopped in the dirt near the barrier, and kicked up a cloud of dust and dirt...
It wasn't very thick, and the boy could easily see the turtle monster, but he noticed that it spun around wildly and sniffed the air loudly.. It couldn't see him..
Then the idea started to form.. slowly.. it was dangerous, but he didn't think there was any other way out...
"Ok.. ok.... I can do this.. I can do this" he told himself as he ran. The boy stopped at the edge of the cliff and began to prepare. He had mere seconds before the monster was on him again..
He picked up the cloak and formed a small pile of dirt before backing right up to the edge of the cliff. He gripped the cloak tight as he waited, and waited... the seconds seemed to last forever as time stood still. He could pick apart every movement of the behemoth.. every small twitch in it's eye and hand as it longed to see him dead..
The time wasn't right... it was ten feet away but not yet... let it come...
He gripped harder and when it was maybe 8 feet away he swung the cloak harder, sending a cloud of dust towards the beast. It raised it's arms to block it but it was too late, it was blinded.. at least for the moment..
He then yelled as loud as he could, "come get me!" Then balled up the cloak and threw it off the cliff as he dove out of the way.
"Please.. please.." he thought to himself as he tumbled on the ground. He heard a couple loud snaps and guttural shrieks from the monster and heard it's feed pound the earth before it lept off the cliff, reaching towards where his voice was and the balled up cloak that was beginning to fall over the side.
It grasped the cloak and in a moment of realization yelled loud.. so loud the boy had to clasp his hands over his ears.. then it fell... and he looked over the side to see it's grey form disappear into the fog..
Moments later a loud thud echoed from below, and he kept his eyes on the fog for a moment.. just a moment.. as if the beast would come leaping back up.. as if the fight wasn't over.. but it never came.. and the silence returned just as surely as the sky remained cloudy..
And he screamed out... guttural... instinctual... carrying with it all the raw dear and adrenaline.. the triumph and the pain.. He let it out as he pounded his fists into the ground..
He rolled over and lay on his back, looking at the sky.. the endless grey clouds drifted aimlessly.. His rest was interrupted by a loud sound coming from the middle of the clearing.
He shot up, and turned to see something rising out of the ground. The low rumble continued for a minute or so as a stone pedestal, about as tall as his shoulders, came into view.
The boy stood warily at a distance. He waited for a while, unsure as to whether the pedestal was a good thing., or a bad thing... The way his luck had been since waking up, it was probably a bad thing.
But curiosity took hold... he had to know what was on it.. It looked like something was carved on the top of the square surface.
"If I approach carefully it should be ok..." he thought. He stepped slowly then, keeping his body positioned such that if he had to, he could take off in an instant.
But nothing happened.. and as he approached he noticed there were some words carved into the grey stone. The boy stopped a foot away and began to read,
"The way has opened.. The second level awaits.. Place your hand on the pedestal.."
The boy hesitated before placing his small hand on the cool surface of the stone. Nothing happened.. and he was about to take his hand off when a voice resounded in his head:
"Subject Name: Ward... Human... 11 years old... status: ????... Transporting to level 2..."
He was stunned by a blinding light and he felt intense vertigo. The only thought that went through his mind through the whole experience was, "my name... my name is Ward..."
...
Ward landed hard on the ground. The whole nauseating experience of being transported lasted only a few seconds.. though the after effects would linger quite a deal longer than that...
The first of which made him vomit all over the ground...
He couldn't help but feel better though. He had something.. something for all the hell he had been through. A name.. HIS OWN name... "One piece at a time I guess" he told himself as he rose. The air was cool, and the sky grey.. The only difference from where he was before was that the land around him was a wide open plain.
Trees and hills dotted the landscape, and the ground was a mixture of dead grass and dry dirt..
Over the crest of a large hill he saw something different, something that made him move quickly: smoke... Someone was burning a fire... and someone meant answers, guidance, maybe even some food and water... So Ward went...