In the dark, we stumble.  We wander aimlessly until something appears to interrupt the nothingness.  The void is peaceful and quiet, it does not bring harm, but nor does it provide quiet.  The unknown, or rather the absence of conflict is foreign.  The trust we build up for the senses becomes an invisible arrow.

Confidence is the torch we carry into the night, but sometimes it is more important to learn than to seek.

My steps were filled with the crunch of gravel.  The sound was rare in the wilderness that we came to inhabit, but it was not prohibitively so.  I had stepped over a lip, and wandered into a patch of the stuff.  I simply longed for shelter, the hideaway that my friends and I had built up.  At this point, I would have accepted anything.  The night had deepened and the moon was new.

Warmth.  The sound of people.  A feature of the land.  I would follow any number of these things until they became familiar to me, but all I found was numbness.

I began to dip into a fugue.  Memories played over and over.  My sense of time degraded, and I took my surroundings for granted.

Hours passed, and the sound of gravel had become a brutal disappointment.  I knew I was pushing my luck.  I was lost.  With every step, it would be harder for people to find me.  I was stubborn though, and I wanted to prove to the wilderness that it wouldn’t beat me.

I take pride in resilience.  In making a situation work for me.  Always have, and always will.

However, on that day, when the first light of dawn appeared on the horizon, a better part of me was condemned.  The dreams of the forest - of a path that wound between trees, boulders and hills - evaporated.  Everything I thought was real seized and crumbled to the ground.

A field of debris emerged.  Black grit that extended as far as the eye could see.  There were hills and peaks, but they were coated in the stuff.  Like a foul tar that stuck to everything.

No.  Debris?  Refuse?  That was too kind for what leaked through the window to my soul.  Trash is diverse.  Even the most war torn places in the world will retain some characteristics of the land.

I am faced with a desert.  The worst type of place to find yourself lost or stranded.  Even then, there was an ominous presence in the back of my mind, warning me that there was more to it.

Eventually I figured it out.  When lighting struck, and formed rivers of fire from the sky.  When level ground began to dissolve, and lava carved out it’s own landscape.  When pumice shattered like glass, swept up in tornados.  When ice erupted down the mountain sides like runaway trains.  When the air began to kill me mid stride, and moisture began to leech from the ground.

No, this wasn’t some god punishing me for their amusement.  This was my mistake.  I’d delved deep into the draconian plains.  The home of sorcerers, dungeons, and dragons.  The land of pure destructive energy.

I had done this during the final week before storm season, when all the magic in imaginary - the spirits, relics, tech, everything - went wild.  A testament to a forgotten era, and a challenge to all of civilization.

The fear was constant.  After the squalls, I didn’t trust any form of shelter to last.  I did however take advantage of them for as long as I could.  Eventually my luck began to improve, and the shells that I used survived more often than not.

That’s not to say I’d ever be immune to the elements.  My clothes...

You might wonder how I managed to survive all that.  I find it ironic, but it’s one of the greatest concerns of our world.

Souls cannot die.  It’s like, one of the fundamental laws of the universe.  No matter how much abuse an entity takes, their mind, body and spirit will always regenerate.

Immortal?  Sounds fun?  Ha!  Hahaha!  No.  We are not immune to abuse, intent, trauma, or loss.  A person who faces despair or the desolation of their homeland will never be able to depart from that.  Death by natural causes?

Yeah no, we tend to not succumb to ailments.  If the heart is broken; If the body is reduced to ash on the wind; if the spirit is broken and sucked from the person, they still live.

And the most precious thing?  We are reborn.  Yep, from infancy, to adulthood to sagacity, we get to experience life many times over.

When we do reach the end of our lifespans, the situation in the one that gives birth to us.

A soul that is reborn with a curse upon them can adopt that curse as a part of their identity.  In most cases, these curses can be accommodated or pacified, but the spirits become rebellious if they aren’t.

Demons are the ones who feed on familiars.  The ones who feed on despair sooner than see it exorcised.  And no, you can’t kill a demon either.

Lighting cracks somewhere along the base of the mountain and I straighten up.  No more time for existentialism.  I’ve got to get out of this pit.