Everything...hurts…..From his legs to his skull, and even his eyes that phased in and out like an unfocused lens searching for a face. Double vision mixed with unparalleled agony that rippled through his bones and into his soul. Fingers dug into hard ghostly blue crystalline as he fought to live. Pulling himself along the rigid crystals all for a chance of survival. Just….pain….echoed out as the roar and whispers of terrified people scattered like cockroaches. Each one being silenced with a haunting screech. And all for what? Fame? Fortune? Lust? Idiots, the lot of them. And the boy was blinded by innocence.

Breaths hiccuped into a sad gurgle, and the gurgle turned his willpower to shattered glass, but he still struggled to crawl behind the large boulder only to realize it was the person who drug him into the cavern to begin with. “shit….” he coughed up some blood as a familiar aura appeared to him beckoning him. But his energy was gone, every muscle was mush, his energy sapped out of him like a leech. Then black….

“wake...up” the pain was still there but the voice had woken him. It was so familiar and so distant. Like dejavu but not quite the same. How long has it been he wandered to himself as he tried clearing his thoughts from the pain and the hunger that filled his soul. What was even more disturbing was that there was this eerie silence that was broken by whispers he couldn’t understand, but could hear, and the rare time a lone child's giggle. In and out of consciousness….Searching, but not wanting to die. “idiots….you’re an idiot…” he began talking to himself.

“You’re hearing things now…..and those damn. Shut up!” he hollered into the air as he stared at his broken leg, and thinning body. It just kept getting thinner and thinner until he was just bone and skin. “ahh….such cool air.” he gasped as he woke from a haze with the scent of fresh pure oxygenized, almost etherano air. Stand up the voices echoed and he smiled only to be swept by a gust of wind and thrown from the crystal rock he was on.

SPLASH! Water….? Finally something refreshing that felt good. The caressing feel of water was relaxing like being wrapped in a cozy blanket in the winter. Hands crawled up his body with hundreds of screaming and crying voices. They pulled at him as if he was food or something valuable. “HELP MEEEE” his boss's voice screamed when the mauled face and hands held his throat. “NO! Let me go” the boy screamed out as he flailed around throwing the hands off him, and began to swim towards the surface. Water spurted towards the sky as he crawled out, kicking the dead off of him with a looming glowing dragon above him, staring him down.

“How did I miss killing you child,” the dragon growled moving to step on the human boy only to stop as he opened his eyes. The color was that of the River Styx, damaged from the souls that swam there, the souls she would consume to live, and guard with her life. “You survived falling into the styx,” she scowled leaning down towards the boy, “Do you understand that the dead don’t rule the living. The River Styx is where dead with resentment end up when they die in these mountains.” he stared at the dragon lost and confused, “You want to live child.” she spoke deeply only to have the boy “die” and his soul released, and as a result she shackled it with the life force of the lost souls.

“I, Tiamat will raise you….to take care of my young,” she blew the ghostly blue-green smoke into the boy’s body. “Be Still……..” the dragon spoke as the magic circles arose. Her claws moved to the boy's body and dug into them. “Heart, lungs, soul, arteries and all. Shoulder at the ready Vital Organs on call,” she spoke as the ghostly energy inside of her entered the boy's body snapping his broken bones back into shape, repairing his injuries and injecting pieces of her essence inside of him, before closing it up, “Now sleep child…..for when you awaken, you will feel the most pain in your life”.”