A light flashes through the abyss; cold and sinister, his reality dawns. Lying at the base of the enormous boulder, his lip split, blood now crusted upon his face and bare chest crackles with his movements, as a furious wind whips dust from the ground. It swarms en masse clinging to his eyes like chalk and tastes of bitter fruit before burning his flesh.
His screams are endless echoes, reverberating through the abysmal land, but they are insignificant in the bellows of a beast. The burning pain continues until he’s mute with it. Silence corrupting all else, the loam of the earth transforms into a smothering fog, so dense and heavy it pushes him down to the ground with excruciating weight.
Confused, but camouflaged for a moment from the predatory threat he instinctually feels creeping up from behind, he hurriedly crawls away from the sounds of the rolling rock, his knees and hands lacerated with each movement by the jagged ground beneath him.
Blind and unguided, but continuing forward, the pain from the lacerations becomes unbearable; he muffles his cries, as something like glass penetrates his hands and knees. Before he can react, the landscape before him descends sharply forcing his weight into his shoulders until he tumbles uncontrollably into a ravine.
The ground now wet and thick, he’s landed at the edge of a dark broad river. A foul stench soon follows. But the reverberations from the horde drawing near, sends rocks and earth from the ledge above that gives way to a shuttering landslide behind him. Terrified, he throws himself into the water.