Well, I say simpler -- but what was that blue light?

When the rat died, I felt an odd surge of warmth run through my body; it felt very good, as though I was soaking in warm water.

As I immersed myself in the pleasurable sensation, and considering the fact that I would need a better weapon, I walked up the the rat’s corpse and stomped on the base of one of its long claws.

Nothing happened.

Not letting this deter me, I continued stomping.

The misty light, which had morphed back into a foggy form, did something strange; it flashed with a brilliant light, and with a loud noise, the claw cleanly broke off at the base.

Picking it up and holding the rounded end, I decided, this will be my new weapon; for some reason, it sat comfortably in my grip, as though made for me.

I could hear the sounds of other rats approaching, this time from the tunnel behind me.

They were approaching rather quickly.

Because I had no idea where the blue light, that helped me, was coming from -- or how long it would last -- I knew that my best course of action would be to run; I needed to get away from this location while I still had the chance.

If worst came to worst, I could still fight; but that was only while the blue glow lasted.

I knew that without this anomaly, even a scratch by a claw or glancing impact by a tail, would kill me.

Quickly glancing around once more, I turned and sprinted for the exit.

It seems that I underestimated the abilities of the blue light, again, when I ran. My speed was almost as fast as the rock that I had thrown -- I barely managed to keep upright, to keep my direction fixed.

As I reached a distance, maybe near one hundred meters or so, down the passageway -- my speed began to decrease.

Looking around, I saw that there was a branching passageway nearby. Because I couldn’t hear any noises behind me, and felt that the light was about to disappear, I decided to turn.

Shortly, the branching passage narrowed and began the entrance to a small room. I entered it and sat against the cool stone wall; I knew that it would be best if I rested for a short time -- there didn’t seem to be any monstrous rats nearby.

Laying against the wall, I realized that I was much more tired than I had originally believed. All the muscles in my body were trembling uncontrollably, I could barely catch my breath.

Suddenly, the glow flickered, rapidly fading in and out.

With a soft pop, the glow finally disappeared, and an extreme pain lanced through my left hand. When I looked down, I saw that all my pores had expanded, looking like massive holes leading into the bloody interior of my hand. Blood surged, pooling and gathering for a second; before it began to pour out of the numerous holes -- the pain seemed to explosively move upwards, lancing up through my entire arm. With another pulse, my whole body felt like my nerves were slowly being pulled out.

My blood suddenly started to sizzle and steam, a disgusting smell filled my nose as the crimson fog rose into my face -- I curled up and clutched my hand to my chest, my shirt was rapidly stained.

As the pain got worse, I couldn’t focus on anything else.

Just as I felt like I was going to go crazy and gnaw my hand off, the agony suddenly stopped. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the pain vanished without a trace. There was a strange vacuum in my senses -- a terrifying feeling that I knew that I never wanted to experience ever again.

The crimson fog had condensed back into a liquid once it contacted the walls and floor. Blood began to pool under me, large droplets rolled down the walls and fell from the ceiling. Upon reaching the floor, they gathered together and merged into the main pool.

I was curled up, impatiently, worriedly, waiting to see if the pain would return. Gasping, barely managing to catch my breath. When nothing had changed for a while, I slowly began to count to one hundred, still braced and waiting -- but the pain didn’t return.

Gathering my courage, I looked down at the back of my hand.

What met my eyes was a strange symbol -- which looked as though it had been seared into my skin.

While looking at the symbol, I began to feel an overwhelming fatigue -- I was barely able to twitch a finger.

Without willing it, without my conscious control, my eyelids started to close. When I tried to fight the tiredness, my body wouldn’t respond to any commands -- not even a shiver.

I felt a deep feeling of relief that I had chosen not to stand my ground and fight.

If that pain had appeared during combat, I would have been slaughtered, let alone this weariness.

A wave of dizziness washed over me and my vision dimmed -- then blurred. My eyelids seemed to weigh more than the giant rat…I couldn’t even twitch them. Since I couldn’t stay awake any longer, no matter how much I tried, I decided to let my consciousness fade, I slept.

I didn’t dream.

After what seemed like both no time, and an eternity, I woke up. Prying my eyes open, I noticed that every muscle in my body was screaming -- my head pounded to the beat of an unseen drum.

It was possible that this was one of the drawbacks of using that blue light, power always came at a cost. I may have been wrong and this was all a result of falling through a thick stone ceiling and smashing into the ground hard enough to explode.

Even though I was in pain, I was happy to be alive.

From what I had seen, there didn’t seem to be any food or water in this cave system. I was curious as to how the rats could survive; though hunting other rats would allow me to survive. I could use them as both a source of food, and liquid.

I had barely managed to survive the attack from a single, powerful, rat; and then something made me start bleeding, before passing out. A symbol was burned into my skin.

After suffering all of this, I didn’t want to die from something as simple as dehydration or starvation.

So, I could hunt rats both for their meat, as well as their blood to drink -- to stave off dehydration. However, I could only kill rats that moved alone, and hopefully near a place where I could hide afterwards.

Of course, all of this depending on my ability to use the Blue Light again.

Sitting against the wall, I focused on the symbol on the back of my hand -- staring at it intently. I was Hoping that this would help me use it. I needed to be able to reliably cause the light to appear, to ensure my survival.

There was a strange feeling in my head, sort of like a pressure that wasn’t actually there -- a tingly warmth. So, I decided to see what happened if I metaphorically poked it; this experiment caused me to hear an odd buzzing in my ears. With a soft ‘pop’ sounding out behind my eyes, blue light oozed out of the symbol. As I watched it, the light moved like a liquid and coated my body; for some reason, this time it wasn’t a formless cloud.

My plan worked.

With a grin, I stopped focusing and the blue light sunk back into my hand.

Tensing up, I waited. But, after waiting several minutes, I didn’t feel any pain; which was a very good sign.

I pushed myself to my feet and walked out of the small room. When I arrived at the entrance to the room, I used the claw that I had recovered from the rat, to leave a scratch on the wall. I decided to leave a mark so that I could find this room again if I needed to; which seemed to be another ingrained habit.

Backtracking, I started my journey to where I first ‘entered’ the cave system. I was also curious if there was anything remaining of my first kill. I knew that this was highly unlikely, because of all the other rats that I had heard approaching.

As I moved back along the stone passage, I crept as stealthily as I could. I was sneaking because I didn’t want to accidentally draw the attention of a pack of rats.

By carefully leaving marks on any side passages or intersections that I passed, I managed to map a small section of of my new home.

I continued my journey to the room which I had labeled as the ‘center’.

After a few minutes of creeping along quietly, I neared my destination. But, I started to hear the noise of dragging tails and scratching claws.

Slowing my speed and reducing all noise as much as I could, I listened carefully.

Instead of directly approaching the noises, I decided to stay still and listen -- my hearing was more reliable than my sight in this dim environment.

I had decided to nickname these creatures: Crystal Rats.

Because I had trouble fighting a single Crystal Rat, let alone an entire pack, I decided to stay perfectly still and wait until they split up.

After what seemed like hours, the noises died down and it seems that the Crystal Rat pack had dispersed. Of course, I didn’t rush straight in -- in case the Crystal Rats were trying to lure me out.

Counting my heartbeats, accommodating for an increased heart rate, I waited for what I estimated was five minutes, before I started moving forwards again.

In front of me was the ‘central’ cavern.

Curiously, most of my blood which had been pooling in the crater, was gone. Though the stone itself  was stained a rusty, red.

Since my destination was the passage on the other side of the ‘center’ cavern, I carefully walked around, instead of through, the crater.

Something about the bloodstained hole filled me with an uncomfortable feeling.

Of course, this feeling was probably because of a trauma caused by exploding against the stone floor.

Entering the passageway, I noticed that it was exactly the same.

The tunnel was completely straight for the first few meters, until it split into numerous, branching, corridors; it was in this way that it differed from the opposite exit.

This cave was too labyrinthine in my opinion.

As usual, I left a mark on the wall when I had to turn at the first split, then I picked a direction to go. Unfortunately, I chose poorly. I heard the sounds of Crystal Rats coming from the path that I had chosen.

I was forced to sneak around again.

My brain is feeling overheated, and I am very stressed -- even after my nap in the hole in the floor--I was extremely mentally fatigued.

The passage split again, after a short distance.

Luckily though, the rats were further away than I thought, and the I hadn’t run into any enemies even after walking for quite a distance.

But the number of branching passages increased in frequency

I was beginning to suspect that this wasn’t a normal cave -- it was likely a maze, a labyrinth of inestimable size.

For some reason, this whole cave system seemed artificial -- I had no memories, but I still had knowledge.

Finally, I found the passages which the sound of Crystal Rats originated from. Because I was now close enough, I could hear that it was likely only two Crystal Rats walking around in strange patterns.

It was just in time too -- I was beginning to feel hungry.

Being as stealthy as I could, I slowly approached the room.

Ahead of me was my target -- a single Crystalline Rat; I waited, watching and calming myself.

Even though I watched it intently, the Crystal Rat didn’t notice me as I hid deep within the twilight-like darkness.

It was walking along slowly, sniffing around randomly or scratching at the walls. I waited calmly, not moving a single muscle.

I had to wait for it to get close enough for me to attack it.

The crystal claw was clutched tightly in my right hand; there were many things I needed to do: I needed to kill this rat as quickly and quietly as possible, I needed to make sure that its meat was edible, and lastly, I needed to see if I could drink its blood.

I also had a plan to collect some more bits of crystal, didn’t matter if they were whole or just shards; they seemed to resonate with me, or something within me.

They also seemed to react to the brand on the back of my hand, causing me to tingle when I was in close proximity to them -- even holding the claw was enough to cause a reaction.

Ahh, the time was finally right.

Jumping forwards, trying to avoid making sound as much as possible, I aimed the claw towards the back of the Crystal Rat’s head. I was attacking to instantly kill, if possible, by severing the spine. Without waiting for it to notice me, I activated the glow, hoping to boost my physical defence and explosive damage.

However, before the crystal in my hand managed to hit it, the Crystal Rat noticed me -- probably with some kind of sixth sense -- and turned around with a squeak.

Luckily, even though the rat was alerted, it couldn’t react quickly enough. It managed to turn its head and look at me.

My swing continued forwards, hitting the beady black eye of the rodent; directly impacting the eye that was the size of my fist.

With a disgusting ‘pop’ the eyeball exploded, the sharp crystal penetrated it incredibly easily. Blood, and some other strange fluid, gushed from the rapidly deflating remains of the eyeball.

My weapon continued forwards without pause, slicing through the orbital bone and into the brain.

Without a sound, the rat died -- the light in its remaining eye dimmed.

I again felt that strange surge of warmth flow through my body. This time I wasn’t panicking, and had only deployed the light for a very short time; I remembered to retract it as soon as my enemy died.

I felt no pain or weakness, the warmth seemed to make me feel stronger. Not only did I feel as though my energy was replenished, it also felt as though I had more energy than before.

I may have failed with my ambush but it was lucky for me that the eyeball was an easy target, because it was around the size of my fist and glowed very brightly -- this made it the best target for a beginner.

The Crystal Rat collapsed with a loud thump, its legs and tail twitched, thrashing slightly; which was only post-death muscular spasms.

I waited silently, not moving, in case more Crystal Rats came my way.

After I had finished waiting for what I felt was a sensible amount of time, I slowly relaxed my tightened muscles and slowly approached the Crystal Rat’s carcass. I carefully stabbed the claw into the corpse, and then slowly, carefully, pulled it down -- from between its front legs, down along the stomach, towards the back legs.

The crystal claw was incredibly sharp and took almost no effort to slice through the thick hide, parting the skin cleanly. I was being very careful, trying to keep the hide intact; my plan was to use it to make things that I may require -- such as a sheath for my claw, or clothing.

If I wasn’t so hungry, I would have spent more time trying to skin more of the Crystal Rat; however, for now I just sliced the skin open, then peeled it back, carefully removing the organs.

Of course, I wouldn’t eat the organs…I wasn’t that hungry; I cut some of the muscle from its legs and chest.

The hunger made it feel like my stomach was burning.

Now was the time to learn if the meat and blood was edible. I cut some of the muscle into a bite-sized chunk; I wasn’t being too careful, acting like a primitive because I was so starved.

Picking up the still-bleeding muscle -- I took a bite.

The taste of blood and raw meat filled my mouth -- a thick and primal taste. It wasn’t what I would call a pleasant taste, then again, I hadn’t eaten anything else -- that I remembered anyway; my first meal wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t terrible.

As I slowly chewed and then swallowed the meat, my body began to feel strange -- time seemed to slow down and I felt like there was something inflating inside me. I felt like I was going to explode, as though I being pumped full of lava; my bones started inflating -- my skin was bulging. My muscles were writhing like there were worms inside me.

With a terrible creaking and cracking, my bones also began to move and twist, distorting like my muscles.

It felt felt like my whole body was on fire, like I was going to explode.

The pain was steadily increasing, my skin felt way too tight and my organs were being rearranged -- it was like I was being forced to rapidly grow.

Laying against the cool stone wall helped me to feel at least a little bit of comfort, the coldness helped numb the agony.

Time passed, and slowly -- very slowly -- I felt the agony fading, starting to feel better.

I looked at the rat again as I wiped the tears from my eyes -- and the blood from my nose; the pain was almost intolerable.

With a sigh, I braced myself and slowly cut off some more meat. My muscles trembled involuntarily as I forced the meat closer and closer to my face -- I managed to open my mouth, forcing myself to take a bite.

Luckily, the pain was much less this time, I discovered that I could ignore it. However, to do this, I had to focus all of my attention on the taste and texture of the meat -- which was unpleasant, but not as bad as the pain.

I finally finished off a suitable portion of meat. I had one last thing to check, leaning forwards, I scooped up some of the partially congealed blood. With a deep sigh, I brought my cupped hands to my mouth, and drank some of it; the taste was metallic, and liquid was thick, filling my throat.

I felt like I was drowning.

My thirst was slated, but the blood also caused some pain -- luckily it wasn’t as bad as the first time I ate the meat; it also caused my blood to feel warm, my heartbeat slowed a little.

I wasn’t completely full, so all I could do was shut my eyes and eat more mouthfuls of meat, downed with gooey blood; ignoring the taste and the pain -- it actually wasn’t so bad. Either I was getting used to it, or I had built up a bit of resistance, because by the time I was full -- the food only caused a slight warmth to run through my blood and muscles.

However, I still had the queer feeling that I was too big for my skin, as though I was expanding from the inside out; I also felt like I was being compressed.

But, from what I could tell, my size hadn’t actually changed.

By the time that I was no longer thirsty, the blood had congealed, becoming so thick that it now resembled a soup -- I was both eating and drinking it, there were numerous solid lumps.

It made me feel quiet nauseous.

But I was finally sated.

It was time to go back to skinning the rat,  to start preparing to make some gear. By the time that my careful skinning was done, the passageway smelt like a slaughter house.

When I had finished, I separated the leather into sheets and laid them out onto the flat floor -- scraping the sharp edge of the claw over the hide, to prepare it; to be honest, I had no idea why I did this, but it felt like the correct thing to do.

Another Crystal Rat was rapidly approaching my location, I could hear the noise of its claws and tail scraping along the stone. I rolled up the leather and darted away, hiding in the shadow of a rock that protruded from the wall.

The Crystal Rat didn’t search around, it simply began to devour the remains of the dead Crystal Rat.

After preparing myself, I launched an ambush; this time my target was already distracted, so I managed to sever its spine in a single slash. The Crystal Rat hadn’t even discovered my presence before dying.

I again felt the now-familiar warmth run down my spine, the feeling of strength and energy were increasing -- it elevated the burning in my bones -- as the odd compression feeling that I had

Once the Crystal Rat stopped its post-death twitching, I walked over and began the difficult, delicate, task of skinning it. After I had separated, lay out, and scraping clean the skins; I cut up the meat and lay it on the floor as well -- after carefully clearing away any dust, or dirt.

Now it was time carve the crystal veins from the bones, and remove the claws. Apparently, the only think that can cut the strange bones or even the Crystal Rat’s crystal claws -- is the crystal itself…or if I stomped on them while wrapped in light.

Slowly, and with a terrible screeching noise, I managed to cut the crystals from the bones, and removed the claws. However, because of the amount of crystal from both rats, along with how close my hand was to them, made me start to itch -- something inside me started to pulse in a very uncomfortable way.

After carefully placing the crystals into a pile on one of the sheets of leather, I wrapped them up and placed them against the wall, tying the top with a length of rat tendon.

With a sigh, I lent back against the cold stone wall.

Now, I was faced with the difficult decision of whether I should just stay in a nearby room -- after dragging the eat corpses in as a food source -- or should I keep moving and hunt along the way. Staying in the room would allow me a safe place where I could safely, if not comfortably, live until the meat rotted.

I didn’t have to decide immediately, either way I had to wait for a little while; I needed to figure out how to utilize my blue light and strange symbol properly -- currently, I only had the slightest control over it.

From what I had experienced, this light increased my strength and provided me a form of armour, but I didn’t know how to reliably activate these effects without relying on instinct.

With a sigh, I grabbed the bag of crystals and walked to a nearby room, after placing it on the floor I went back out again and dragged the two rat corpses in after me.

Needing to rest, I lay against the wall and shut my eyes.

***

From what I could tell, it was only a short nap, and soon as I woke up -- I decided to practice using my glowing light.

Focusing my gaze on the brand on the back of my hand, I observed it closely, trying to decipher what it looked like -- the brand seemed to grow larger, filling the entirety of my vision. I could feel the same strange tingling pressure in my head as before; as my attention was pulled into my symbol, I felt a pressure inside my body, pulsing and flowing like a second bloodstream. At least it didn’t hurt me like eating the meat and drinking the blood.

The closer that the pulsing got to the brand on my hand, the stronger it became.

The complex lines of scars which made up the brand began to glow a deep sapphire blue, pulsing rhythmically; it was a different feeling than when I just played with the buzz deep in my brain -- the energy didn’t ooze out this time, it seemed to build up, like water behind a dam. Finally, the pressure reached an unspecified limit, and the energy was released -- there was a flash, and I was covered in the glowing misty light again, which automatically shaped itself into a glowing, partially transparent set of armour.

I felt like the energy in my body was draining out. However, when I stopped focusing my energy into the brand, the armour and energy drain both disappeared; after a short wait, hoping to recover, I followed the same steps and the armour reappeared. Judging how quickly this glowing armour consumed my energy -- both mental and physical -- I could keep the armour deployed for thirty or forty seconds.

After that time passed, my muscles started to ache and tremble uncontrollably, my head started pounding.

I knew instinctively that while I could keep it out longer, but I shouldn’t do so, except in the case of emergency. When I had my first fight, I had kept the light out for quite a length of time, which was why my muscles and bones hurt so badly after it wore off.

After discovering this, I started to keep the light armour out for as long as possible, allowing it to fade when I started having trouble breathing.

I suddenly felt extreme hunger, as though I hadn’t eaten anything for a very, very long time; I cut into one of the corpses, and ate the meat; luckily it didn’t hurt anymore -- a deep warmth spread through every millimetre of my body.

Because the food seemed to replenish the energy that I had used, I decided to practice again.

All I could currently do was summon the armour, or the glowing amorphous cloud. I have no idea what the difference between the two forms was. But, the armour seemed tougher than the cloud, taking some time to build up.

Maybe the armour form was for defence and the cloud could be used for offensive purposes.

Practicing the two styles of using my light for a while, I got bored with it, since it was all I could do until I learned more applications; I decided to try it out in real combat. Since I could maintain it for around thirty seconds or so, it should be enough for a one-on-one fight -- or possibly a two-on-one.

I knew that this may be a bad idea, but from what I had managed to understand my personality -- I enjoyed just going with the flow, instead of making long and complicated plans.

So, I marked the entrance of my room.

I walked over to one of the carcasses, starting to cut out a length of tendons and shaving off a sharp shard of bone.

Poking a hole in one of the bone shards, I made it into a needle, and threaded it with one of the tendon pieces; then I threaded it through the edges of one of the sheets of skin.

When I tightened the threads, pulling the edges together, forming it into a pouch. After admiring my handiwork, I placed the crystals into it, as well as some extra meat. I then used some more of the tendons, to turn it into a makeshift backpack.

Slinging the backpack over my shoulders, I stood up; the bag was lighter than I expected, even though there was quite a lot of meat and crystals inside it.

I walked slowly and stealthily out of the room.

It was time to begin some more exploration, and to kill some more Crystal Rats. Even though doing this could threaten my life, and cause me a lot of pain -- I didn’t feel scared.

While focusing on listening carefully, I walked down the passages, aiming for the ones from which the least amount of noise emerged. While exploring, I quickly managed to find a path which had only a few sounds coming from it.

Walking along my chosen pathway, I managed to find the room which the noises were coming from. Sneaking into the room, I saw a single Crystal Rat, as well as a number of much, much smaller rats -- the smaller ones were less than half the size of the large rats.

It seems that I may have snuck into a nest, or breeding ground. There were carcasses of other little rats around, some of which were being cannibalized their siblings.

Just rushing in would probably get me killed; so, I carefully cut the nearby wall, shaving off a sharp shard of stone. With my new piece of stone in hand, I began to focus on the feeling in my head -- I hadn’t deliberately used the light like this before, but I had the instinctual feeling that it was possible.

The light emerged from my hand and surrounded my body, it was the shapeless glowing cloud because I didn’t allow it to build up.

I switched the stone from my right hand, to my left -- I wasn’t sure if I could use the light with my hand that wasn’t branded. Holding the stone, I tried to surround it with the light -- imagining it surrounded, and trying to wrap the buzz in my head around the image.

With a feeling of my energy draining, the light extended and wrapped around the rock.

I aimed and threw the stone at the large Crystal Rat.

I felt slightly surprised that my plan worked so easily.

The stone flew rapidly through the air, but the light around it was slowly beginning to dim. Luckily, I used enough of the light, so by the time stone hit the Crystal Rat’s back -- it still had blue light surrounding it.

The rock shot through the Crystal Rat’s tough hide, and deep into the large body.

But then something happened that I didn’t expect: once the stone it reached half way through the rat, the it detonated. Luckily, the explosion severed its spine, perforating the internal organs with numerous shards of stone and bone.

The fight went much better than I had expected.

I felt encouraged as I realized that it seemed possible for me to survive in this cave system, as long as I was careful and ambushed the  Crystal Rats -- I was only a weak human, trying to survive against large and powerful Monsters, when not using the light.

Since I managed to kill the large one, it was time to take out the babies.

I began running towards them while my light was still active, and for some reason, everything seemed to slow down.

Swinging my claw, I started to slaughter the little rats.

Every time I killed them, I felt the the familiar warm surge than seeped through my body -- it was rather pleasurable and fairly addictive, like soaking in a warm bath while having a very good massage.

I barely managed to keep my light deployed for the required length of time, just long enough to kill all of the baby rats. But I did notice that whenever one of those surges penetrated me, my light would flicker and then become slightly brighter than before.

After carefully observing it, I could see that this brightness was permanent -- after everything in the room was dead…the light appeared to have been increased by 10% or so.

This successful operation had finally shown me the way which I could  survive -- though I really needed to train, and fully figure out how I could use it to the best of my capabilities.

My light was the source of my survival.

Now, the next step -- which was at the moment, far in the future, is to find the exit to these caves. The final step, of course, is to find other people. Well, the final, final step, is to find our who I am and where I am from -- and why I am here.

Feeling exhausted, I sat down and leaned against the wall, rapidly falling asleep.

While that strange light allowed me to fight, to survive, it used up a lot of my energy; so whenever I activated it for a while, I would get tired and hungry.

Sleeping in enemy territory made me worried, but I couldn’t constantly stay awake, and I was fairly sure that I would wake up if enemies approached. If I chose not to sleep, I wouldn’t be able to fight, and I would die much more quickly.

Luckily, nothing happened and I woke up fine.

After I woke up, I harvested the crystals from the corpses, followed by a breakfast of raw meat and partially coagulated blood.

I decided that it was time to start exploring again.

***

This was my life for -- well, I have no idea how long.

All I could do was explore, hunt, eat, sleep, and practice with my light.

By now, I could keep it active for several minutes and not have to fall asleep straight after.

Finally, the day came that when I killed a rat, and I no longer felt the surge of warmth and energy. By this point, I was fairly certain that I had depopulated a large section of the caves.

By now, I could keep my light active almost indefinitely, and I had managed to kill a group of fifty rats at once -- it seemed to be an army that they had gathered to stop me.

Following a crazy gut feeling, I decided to go back and explore the first passage that I had entered after I woke up…so long ago.

So I traced the marks that I had left behind on my travels, and finally returned to the room with the crater. This time, I had no issue with the crater, jumping over it without any problems -- it seems that I had gotten over my trauma.

At the passage entrance, I found the marks that I had left on the stone walls so long ago. Since I managed to figure out my food and hydration problems, all I could do was explore.

Then, it happened.

--I was practicing with my light, but didn’t have it armour form, I was working on transferring it onto random rocks or my crystal claw weapon.

Because I wasn’t focusing and had gotten too full of myself, I didn’t even hear the Crystal Rat approaching behind me until it was too late.

I felt a searing pain and my left arm suddenly went numb.

There was an odd ‘thud’ noise and I looked down.

--Why was my arm on the ground?

Everything seemed to slow down.

But, unlike when I was using my light, my body didn’t speed up to match my slowed perception -- when I finally managed to turn and look back, I saw a Crystal Rat glaring at me and another claw ripping through the air.

The Crystal Rat’s target was now my face, instead of the back of my head -- the sharp crystal swung through the air and straight towards my eyes.

The claw glinted in the soft light.

It was beautiful.

The dim lighting reflected, refracted, around the edges and insides of the crystal.

These useless thoughts spun through my head in a seemingly infinitely extended second.

The claw got larger and larger in my view…and then it hit me.

Everything went black.