The grass on his bare back was both sharp and comfortable. Like a feather pillow, he felt like the slightest movement would cause discomfort. His pale skin reflected the sun from above, and his boxers, covered in his favorite cartoon characters, were the only clothes on his body. Mikel wasn't sure how long he had been awake, but with the amount of force it took to close his dry eyes, he guessed hours.
His pained eyes struggled to gain focus. Tears leaked from them, a foggy liquid slowly traveling down his cheeks. An intense pain followed soon after, a burning deep inside his retina. With eyes like fire, he clenched his fists and willed himself to see. His bleeding eyes became engulfed by a shimmer of green light, then the pain subsided.
Mikel opened his eyes once again. Panic followed by wonder engulfed him. He didn't know where he was. The cabin he rented out for a nice night away from the city was gone, leaving behind nothing. Directly above his prone form was a maze of floating stone and dirt islands.
The shimmer of an impossibly clear stream of water shone into his eyes. The light was so bright, Mikel was forced to cover his eyes with his arm. That's when he noticed the truly odd situation. The water wasn't a stream, but a floating river of crystal-like water connecting the floating islands above.
His mouth opened in a shocked gasp, but a calming green light inundated him. He found all his worries and fears replaced by a sense of wonder and awe.
"Beautiful!" exclaimed Mikel without realizing.
He attempted to push himself off the ground, but only his arms could move. Firmly placing his palms on the grass next to him, he quickly realized his weight was nonsensically heavy. After what seemed an eternity, his arms dropped limply to his sides, a defeated sigh escaping his mouth.
The only movements Mikel could muster were slight head turns and arm functionality, but that did not hinder his amazement at the pure beauty the surroundings beheld.
His feet pointed towards a pristine forest of what looked to be crystal trees with vibrant pink and blue leaves. They shimmered with an ever-present beauty, an impossible evolutionary path. The grass around the forest looked as if frost had claimed it, covered with thin white crystals. Mikel drifted his eyes towards a particularly shiny tree. A tree made of diamonds.
"That's a diamond tree! That's easily worth millions back home!" he exclaimed, stuttering over the words.
His greed was unmatched at that moment. With a new sense of urgency, Mikel pushed his palms into the soft grass with such force the soil swallowed his fingers, and he launched himself off the ground.
He fell to the earth below with force, leaving a crater in his impact. Mikel cursed internally as a wave of dizziness overtook him. A violent nausea made its way into his gut, and he vomited a black ichor, painting the ground before him.
The weakness left his body with the ichor. With a new-found vigor, he ran towards the tree, but the crystallized grass stopped him dead in his tracks. Razor blades of greenery grew out of the ground. His feet were mangled. He screamed in agony, only for the familiar green light to inundate his body once again.
Mikel found himself back on the ground, the same place he had awoken earlier. Shooting up, he realized his feet were perfectly fine and unmarred. But the pain he felt was real. There was no doubt in his mind. Mikel walked slowly and carefully over to the crystal greenery, but there was no trace of blood on the safe grass or the crystal razors.
"What the hell?" he asked aloud.
He heard a somber chirp from a sapphire hawk perched on an emerald tree. The bird eyed him like a piece of meat, but he felt no danger. Mikel took a step forwards onto an area devoid of greenery, barely crossing the threshold into the crystal forest. His sense of danger exploded into a fury, then a crystal feather embedded into his forehead.
He awoke once again laying on the soft green grass. He clutched his forehead in a panic, but no blood was on his fingers. Only a migraine remained from where the feather struck. Locking eyes with the hawk, Mikel jumped into the air in a fury of rage.
"What the hell was that?" he shouted.
He had died; he felt it clear as day. The feather had torn into his frontal lobe. But he was alive, even after walking through the razors that called themselves grass left no mark after waking up again. Was he immortal?
While he shouted expletives at the murderous hawk, Mikel noticed a strange tattoo on his left wrist. Six black lines were drawn on him. They circled completely around his wrist like a bundle of bracelets. Only his left arm had these markings, neither his right arm nor anywhere else on his half naked body were any other tattoos.
"I don't remember getting any tattoos," he stated.
The hawk chirped again, this time showing its left ankle where two equally thick black lines were. The bird did a playful dance, then flew away in a burst of wind and crystal feathers.
"That bastard just did a hit-and-run!" he thought to himself.
He looked at the crystal grass once again, then decided on a course of action.
"I need some shoes."
After two hours of digging by hand, he found a suitable sized rock for his needs. After another nine long hours of banging rocks together, he finally had an axe. A crude axe, but still an axe.
Swinging his new tool at the only non-crystal tree around him, the head of the axe snapped loose from the crude handle and launched deep into the crystal forest. A sigh of despair escaped his lips. This would be a long day.
He used his new rock hammer to smash his way through the grass. He called it a hammer, but it was nothing more than a large rock placed firmly in his only pair of underpants. Mikel was now completely naked, making his way through a forest of blades, on a mission to retrieve his crude stone axe, all to cut down a stupid tree.
Walking over the crushed crystal grass caused cuts and bruises to form on his bare feet. A sharp pain flared in his right heel as a piece of grass he missed made its way deep into him. By instinct, Mikel jumped back, landing firmly on a piece of tall foliage, which shredded his torso.
He awoke again. His underwear now adorned his waist once again and his axe. That glorious tool that he dedicated nine hours shaping and sharpening, was firmly grasped in his right hand.
Swinging at the tree, he noticed his wrist once more. Only five tattoos remained, then Mikel got a frightful realization. Those were his lives. He had died again. The hawk killed him, then the foliage. Only five lives remained for him.
Mikel rose into a panic, only for a very familiar green light to inundate him once again. Calming his fear and giving him a new sense of vigor.
Mikel swung at the tree, but the bark was far too strong for his crude creation to cut. Despair and desperation overtook him, then it happened. A sense of strength overpowered his caution, veins burst all the way up his arms, a splash of crimson blood launched from his shredded limbs, and he swung his axe with all his might. An unfamiliar energy surged through Mikel's body and, with one clean swing, the tree fell.
Mikel's axe was glowing. A powerful and unyielding glow. A glow that seemed to challenge even the sun overhead. The energy inside him demanded the stars and sky to bow. A malevolent god-like energy that exuded control threatened to devour him, but he wouldn't let it!
He fought against the will of the energy with all his might. The axe grew hot, overwhelmingly so. Like holding a live flame in his fingers, he felt his skin seer and boil, but he wouldn't drop the axe. Something inside him was denying him the sweet relief of surrender, something cocky and arrogant.
A benevolent energy rose from within his soul to combat the malevolence of the rival energy. They clashed with such force his veins tore and burst. But he held on. He grasped the axe with every fiber of his being!
The energies continued their conflict for what seemed like days, but was only hours. The energies gained no ground. They constantly swirled around each other, waiting for a time to strike. Like a salivating lion waiting for the pack of gazelle to leave one behind.
Five agonizing hours of internal conflict left Mikel sore and bleeding. Crimson poured from his eyes and ears, his arms and legs were stained a deep red from internal bleeding. But his heart was still beating.
Mikel sat on the soft soil. His legs crossed and arms outstretched in a meditation pose he learned from old kung-fu movies. The energies were contained in his body. The axe that once hummed with power was now devoid of any such force.
Rising to his feet, he grew thirsty, immensely so. Mikel had not once felt the need to eat or drink since waking up in this strange land, nor had he felt the need to relieve himself in any manner. But this thirst he felt was like no other before it. Stretching his arms towards the lowest floating stream of water, he tried to cup some into his hand, but the water avoided him.
Grabbing his collection of sharper stones, he began carving a bowl from a piece of thicker bark. It was not a fast job, easily taking over half an hour, but his thirst did not allow him any breaks.
Snatching water from the stream was as easy as holding a cup under a faucet. The stream, which avoided his hand like the plague, seemed to have no issues with flowing right into the wooden bowl. The water crashed into the bowl and became inert from the rest of the stream.
The water touched by the bowl followed the wooden dish like its gravity had changed. Forming a straw with his lips, he drank the crystal clear water straight from the bowl, with no protest from the once active liquid.
Mikel's wounds were healed as soon as the water left his throat, a blue light covering his body. Tendrils of skin and muscle reconnected the sides of each cut. The bruises flickered from their dark shades through a variety of colors until they matched his skin and vanished. The internal bleeding in his limbs seemed to be washed away, like diluting a bowl of water with milk.
"Woo!" he shouted in excitement, all traces of soreness and fatigue gone in mere seconds. "I could get used to that!"
*****
Mikel dashed through the crystal trees in pursuit of his prey. His wooden clogs completely protecting his feet from the harsh ground. But the hawk was faster. Time and time again, he fell short in front of the bird's overwhelming speed.
"Dammit!" he shouted as he chucked his axe towards the bird.
Swinging swiftly to the side, the bird dodged his crude axe with a mocking chirp. Mikel had died twice more to this stupid bird. With only three lives remaining, he had to catch that stupid thing and get his lives back.
He infused his feet with the benevolent energy he named "virtus" and lept a dozen feet forwards, grasping at the bird's tail feather. A thick wing slapped him across the face. Sending him flying into the tree next to him. But he shielded himself in virtus, preventing any damage from the impact or subsequent sharp crystal death plants.
"Dammit!" he shouted again.
The mixture of the two energies, one named "virtus" and the other "maleus" created a new energy. An energy that was truly neutral, an intangible force that bent to his will. He called this energy "mana".
Out stretching his arm, the axe shot back into his grip from a distance away. Mikel spent weeks drinking from the stream and practicing his mana control while exploring the crystal forest. Summoning objects with mana was a relatively easy concept to grasp. He just needed to form a chain of mana between him and the axe, then imagine retracting that chain into his palm.
He attempted that on the Hawk earlier in the chase, but the bird's mana control was much stronger than his own. Every attempt was met with too much resistance. The axe, having no such resistance, was very easily retracted into his hand, no matter how far away his throw was.
Pushing the mana into a small pebble in his hand, he turned that small rock into a rocket. Launching it directly at the irritating Hawk. No matter how fast the Hawk was, a stone traveling well past the speed of sound, was more than enough to catch a crystal bird.
Slamming into the left wing, the impact resulted in a satisfying cracking sound. Like walking over weak ice, the wing covered in crystals shattered, leaving behind a feather interior. The crystal armor fell from the bird, causing the Hawk to lose balance and fall into the sharp razor grass.
Mikel wasted no time, chucking his axe directly into the bird's left wing, pinning it to the ground. He slammed punch after punch into the bird's armor, leaving massive cracks and blood from his knuckles behind. Crimson liquid streamed down Mikel's fists as he punched apart more and more armor, the bird chirping in fear the entire time. Then he finally crushed its skull with a particularly gruesome swing.
The euphoria of finishing off a prey that eluded him for so long was like no other. He felt as if his life was finally complete, but he knew it wasn't. Drinking more of his miracle juice from a wooden bottle at his hip healed all his new wounds and filled him with energy.
His victory walk could inspire poets of all ages. Mikel attributed his victory to those of Hercules and Perseus. His cocky euphoria no doubt having quite an effect on his decision-making. His tattooed wrist now had four black lines, confirming the first stage of his plan for survival as accomplished.
Mikel's temporary shelter was nowhere near sufficient, but with just one tree and a few large stones, his canopy hut was more than he could ask for. That night of sleep should have been glorious, a successful revenge, and an accomplished task would have given him sweet dreams. But the pain forced him out of his bliss.
He awoke to a pain like no other. Something was digging into his back. Mikel tried to move, but a suppressive force held him down.
"Human, how are you here?" a deep, guttural voice echoed in his mind.