[sup][sub][right]Beat.[/right][/sub][/sup] [indent][indent][indent][indent][sup]Beat.[/sup][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent] [sub]Ring.[/sub] Floating? Perhaps not. It was a feeling hard to place a finger upon, where complete and utter silence became the loudest thing one could feel, where the consuming and wretched hermetic darkness was all the light that would reach one’s eyes. Perhaps it was like being in a tunnel burrowed below a mountain, unlit and featureless, with one’s body teetering between the edge of a hole and the safety of solid ground behind: that moment’s hesitation, the primal instinct and feeling of vertigo that accompanied standing at the precipice. In a poetic sense, she was experiencing that very feeling. It was chillingly cold, impossibly so despite the Valley’s viscid fever of a temperature. Her body felt immaterial—light, yet painfully numb and stiff at the same time. Every rapid breath was a desperate and short clawing for vital life-giving oxygen. And the sound… [b][indent]Beat. Beat.[/indent][/b] [b][indent][right]Beat. Beat. Beat.[/right][/indent][/b] [b]Ring.[/b] It was if a bell tone was constantly ringing in her ears, accompanied by the sound of her own heart. She couldn’t stand it. Damn it all, damn it to oblivion. Oblivion? The girl realized something odd. Where was she? What was happening? She felt a pressure coming from all sides, her consciousness finally flickered back into coherence. There was the creaking of wood straining, and the pain. So much pain all over her body, the prickling cold of numbness. She had felt this once before, once upon a death when her vital fluids were exsanguinated from her body by some creature of the dark. “[i][sub][sub][sub]I need[/sub] you down. Don’t[/sub] stay there[/sub][/i],” a voice played in her mind, clear and sweet, a lovely and nostalgic whisper—yet, it was also a desperate plea entirely unfitting of its chime, like a single out-of-tune note in a beautiful instrumental piece. For an instant, what little light there was in the foggy morass was indelibly blinding. Oblivion’s eyes snapped open and visual information began to pour through every crevice of her mind, at first seeming impossible to withstand, but then coherence continued to build. She was raised from the ground, suspended in the air from a tree by wire-like vines. The tree’s vines had her strung like a broken marionette, one arm stretched toward the sky, another lifted to the horizon, her legs bent at odd angles. She was pale and her body was numb, and she struggled to take in any breath. She recalled the voice’s plea and grit her teeth. Oblivion knew she had to survive this test, to stay intact and as whole as possible. She willed her muscles to activity, managing to free one arm from the vines. Where the plants had contacted her flesh were what looked like tiny bite marks, blood seeped from them. Oblivion took a few more gasps of air as she swiftly unsheathed her blade, the need to escape fully consuming her mind, the primal instinct to survive coursing its draught of energy through her veins to empower her. The tree [i]screamed[/i] as she cut the vines, one by one she freed herself from the hellish bindings until… weightlessness. For a moment she felt as if she were afloat, until the ground rapidly overcame her vision. Mercifully, the ground here was soft. The raven-haired woman sunk into the ground as if it were a bed of down. So she survived, for now. She willed her body to flip itself over, lest she waste the effort getting away from the clutches of the leeching tree by suffocating face down in the mud. But, that was all she could muster. Weariness overcame her as the adrenaline faded away. Tired… So tired. Her eyes rolled to gaze upon the striations upon her wrists, then to behold the tree she had been latched to. Singularly amongst the others around it, that tree had life. [i]Her life[/i]. Just how had she got into this situation? A pathetic and resigning laugh escaped her lips. If anyone were there, they would have thought it more a cough, perhaps a raspy sigh. Only Oblivion would have been able to discern such a pitiful sound as a laugh. She had been in this same forest of fog for fate knows how long, subsisting from the life to be found within and walking forward to wherever she may end up. There was food to be had, there, in the form of strange bulbs that sprouted from the ground. She ignored the fact that they looked like human eyes, complete with a root that looked like a nerve, she ignored their vile flavor and the urge to vomit from the moment she bit into one. They certainly weren’t poisonous. The fog never lifted, it obscured the vision and befuddled the mind, she needed a way to know she wasn’t walking in circles. While she could live off of the eye stalks and drink of the water, there was always [i]something[/i] watching, preying upon her just beyond sight waiting for her to make too much noise. It had killed her once, when she dared to try and sing her songs and lift her spirits. She still remembered it, the feeling of being drained dry, unable to move or even plea for it to stop. So, she kept moving in silence. The trees there were soft as wet pulp, a mere stroke of a finger upon them would remove entire inches of rotten wood from the trunk. So she marked, and marked, and marked upon the trees with arrows. Until she came upon the one tree. She remembered the curiosity of its sight. Unlike the others, it was brown instead of black. Unlike the others, it had foilage. Unlike the others, no eye stalks grew about its base. As they say, curiosity killed the cat. She laughed once again, this time slightly louder. A twig snapped in the distance, still just beyond vision. [i]It[/i] moved, the thing she called [i]The Silencer[/i], for it reacted to the sound of voice. Oblivion had once took the liberty of experimenting with it, stomping about and making noise to no effect, only to the sound of her voice did it approach. This time, an actual sigh. Moments passed as she lay, her body numb, but kept warm and uncomfortable by the dense humidity. Eventually, she was able to reach into her bag. Meat was what she needed at that moment. From the leather bag she produced a single strip of dried beef, sure to be worth more than a house full of gold in this land of oblivion and forgotten memories. The taste, the texture, everything of the beef was immaculate. But more importantly, it nourished her in a way no other food of this land could. She took in a deep breath and felt the corners of her lips curl upward. For now, she would live. To what end, she knew not, but she would be able to move forward. Perhaps she would even escape the all-encompassing fog. - - – – – — — — ——— ♦ ——— — — — – – – - - Hours had passed, at least what would be hours if time had but a semblance of meaning. Oblivion continued onward once more in silence, her vigor renewed. The same could not be said of her morale, however… A corner of her mind begged and pleaded for her to speak to herself, to assure herself that she still had a voice, to maintain those important songs that she inherently knew the importance of. But she knew that to do so would mean certain death, and with death would come true oblivion… Eventually, at least. A long sigh escaped her lips, and with it more crackling of twigs, perhaps accompanied by a baleful chuckle of an inhuman creature. Oblivion marked another tree and continued to trod onward through the dirt and fog, cautious that the forest would not swallow her alive again. [i]Now then... 'Princess'... What should I do today? Then again, what else is there other than to walk endlessly through this mire?[/i]