After decades, It was time for the Pygmy to learn what lay outside these walls.
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In the dead of night, the pygmy walked through the cold pathway of the caverns.
Named Eli, silent were his steps as he tried to stay as hidden as he possibly could.
"Those bastards actually want me to fight that thing... You're joking! I did not come this far to die to that... You know what it is; they simply lack ambition. Those lazy bastards can't see past this hellhole. Imagine actually fighting to protect this wasteland."
The man's voice whispered as he spoke to himself. Full of mockery and derision, a superior attitude could be heard in his voice. Though to anyone else watching, it looked like the mad mumbling of a crazy person.
Squeezing past crevices that only his small form could fit through, it seemed that he was following a map by memory, one completely unknown to any of the other hunters in the sanctum.
"The map said it should be somewhere here. A massive white gate etched from bone, it said."
He reminded himself.
For each step that he took, a comrade of his could be dying. Yet the further that he got, the more the guilt waned. If it was ever there in the first place.
Only one thing fuelled the young man. It was not the desire for freedom, the desire for strength, for companionship or even recognition. It was why he had tolerated so much disrespect from the sanctum as he grew up. Always the runt of the litter, picked on for his short stature and his desire to see the outside world.
After the first beating, he had learned to keep his mouth shut.
He would miss his hunting group. While he did not care much for Leri or Akel, Thorne was one of the few people to truly accept him. While he didn't entertain his true feelings about the sanctum, he was the closest thing to family that he had.
And the traitorous pygmy had betrayed him.
"It will all be worth it. I'll finally be free."
His mind briefly went to Silo, the newest addition to the group. After Silo's first hunt, he felt different. More quiet and much more subdued. Eli was sure to keep an eye on him; after all, you never know what could happen. Though within a few weeks, he slowly let his guard down.
Silo was the only person to listen to his rumblings, his feelings and his true thoughts. He had contemplated inviting Silo to accompany him to the outside world. But he simply did not trust him enough.
A spark of white reflected the light produced from his torch. A large marble archway that looked eerily like a massive vertebra of a creature.
He was here.
It was time to leave this hellhole and bask in the light.
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"No... This... This can't be it. THIS can't be..."
Eli's world was in complete pain. Suspended in the air, he was in the grips of a creature. Easily larger than any creature he had seen in the caverns, a black bird with a terribly large wingspan gripped his shoulders the moment he entered the surface world.
But it was not the imminent death that rattled his psyche; it was what he saw. With his body in the air, he was now facing the sky above. In the dark of night, this was the first time that Eli had ever seen stars. But this experience was defiled.
Beyond the night sky, on what he learned was the moon. Something was there.
That being.
"TAKE ME BACK! THORNE! SILO!..."
The pygmy shouted as his brain was assaulted with visions, knowledge and insights of madness. Blood poured from his eyes, ears and mouth as all his orifices bled.
And in that moment of death and terror, he finally looked away from the moon that gripped his soul and glanced at the creature that was now eating at his neck.
Pools of gold dripped from its eyes; eyes that emanated only one thing.
Sheer madness.
***
Thanks for reading.
The story of the pygmy is now done. Do you see any parallels with another character?
What the hell was happening? The moon? the madness? Just what realm was Aldric's first nightmare really in?
A reminder that Silo is the body that Aldric took over in the first nightmare.
Till the next one.