Risen

“Get up!” a voice shouted amongst a sea of screams. “You need to get moving! It’s not safe here. We are under attack.”

My thoughts began to race as I gasped to consciousness. My body ached, my skin itched, and it felt like I had the world's worst sunburn. I looked around as panicked people were running in all directions. Immediately around me were mangled corpses ripped apart and the ground was saturated in blood. “What is going on?”

“Get out of here!” the voice said again as what looked like a mix between a bat and a leech fluttered around my shoulder and in front of my face. This creature appeared to have a slimy leech-like body about a third of a meter long, a pair of bat-like wings, and a maw of lamprey teeth. Around the maw were six eyes and it didn’t have any arms or legs. “Run!” it shouted at me.

I jolted to my feet, scared of the creature in front of me. Then I heard a shriek to my side. As I turned to see what new horror I was hearing, I saw what appeared to be a long scaly lizard with wings crash down into a crowd of scrambling people, then whip its head around while spewing fire and incinerating dozens of people. It had a body that was about twelve meters long, a pair of taloned feet, a pair of great wings, a horned head with teeth about as long as my arm, and a tail that ended in a cluster of spines. It was a Wyvern!

I began to run through the waist high grass in the opposite direction of the Wyvern. I was in what appeared to be rolling, grassy plains. Thankfully, in the direction I was already heading, there was a tree line about a half kilometer from me. “This is either a wonderful or terrible idea.” I said to myself. If that Wyvern starts a forest fire, it could be the end of me, but it is the only cover I’ve seen on these open plains.

As I reached the tree line, I took cover behind a tree while I caught my breath. My lungs were on fire and I needed to figure out if that Wyvern was going to turn this into a terrible idea. I lifted my head after a few breaths and saw the Wyvern taking off again, this time with people grasped in its talons. I also noticed what appeared to be a massive vortex, about twenty stories tall and just as wide. It looked like someone tipped a whirlpool over on its side. It consisted of blue and white swirling lights and instead of sucking stuff up like a vortex, people were coming out of it in droves, tightly packed, shoulder to shoulder.

How could I have missed that massive thing? It must have been behind me when I came to.

Why are people still coming out of it with the Wyvern? Why don’t they go back? Then I realized that the people coming out weren’t panicking until about fifty meters from the vortex. They were coming out of it in a zombie-like daze, then as they were coming out of that daze, they were seeing what was happening and starting to panic and couldn’t turn back with the crowd of people behind them.

There must be thousands of people and they just keep coming. How many have already died? How many were going to die?

My knees gave out and I collapsed against the tree as I started to hyperventilate.

“What are you doing?! You can’t stop here!” The leech-bat flew in front of my face again.

“Holy dragon shit!!”

“Yes! That is what you will be if you stop here. Run!” the creature yelled at me.

‘Is this creature what is speaking to me?’ I thought as I rapidly looked around me to see if anyone else was talking to me, but everyone remotely close to me was either running into the woods or stopping at trees to catch their breaths like I had.

“Yes, I’m speaking to you. Now get up and run!”

‘Wait, I didn’t say that out loud. I didn’t see the creature use its mouth like it was forming words. It just had its mouth open and panting. Is it communicating telepathically?’

“This isn’t the time for this. RUN!”

I got up and headed deeper into the woods. As I did, I heard a continuous rumble and felt faint tremors in the ground, slowing me down from the instability.

“The astral gate is collapsing, I can sense it. That means the creature will start hunting as there are fewer people grouped up. It will go for the ones out in the open first. You have until it comes for those that came to the forest.”

“Wait, who are you? What are you? What is an astral gate? Why is there a Wyvern here? Why are we appearing here? Why am I here? Where is here?”

“You need to focus. I don’t know how far that creature is behind us. We may have time for your questions once we get through this.”

“You’re right.” I need to focus on surviving this first. If I don’t, it’s all a moot point anyway.

I began to move with haste as the rumbling came to an end. As I was heading deeper into the woods, I began to hear some shouting and saw a rather muscular looking man, who stood about two meters tall, waving people into a large crack in the ground. They must have found a cave to bunker down into! I began to head in that direction.

“No, not that way! See all of those people? There are too many grouping up. The creature has been going after groups. They will be found and killed in there.”

“Good point. Let’s keep going then.”

Despite the mountain of a Human now shouting directly at me and waving me over, I continued deeper into the woods. After some time, my legs gave out and I collapsed, my legs throbbing from exhaustion. I lay there a moment gasping for air.

“Do you hear that?”

“The Wyvern? No, I can’t hear it anymore or the screams.”

“Shh! No, listen.”

I forced my breathing to slow so I could listen better. Then I heard what sounded like an echo of a stream or brook. Then the noise was overshadowed by a loud crash followed by screams and the whooshing sound gale force winds.

“Well there is the Wyvern and screams you were missing. It must have found that cave of people. We need to hurry and find the stream. It will probably be an underground stream so look for cracks or cave openings.”

I could begin to smell smoke in the air. The Wyvern must have started a fire nearby.

I frantically searched for where we were hearing the stream from.

“Over here, I found it! Jump in and I’ll attach myself to you.”

As I was running over, I thought to myself ‘how is a leech with wings supposed to attach itself to me? It doesn’t have any arms or legs. Will it use its wings?’

I was about three meters from the hole that the leech-bat was hovering by when I heard a whooshing followed by the cracks of tree trunks next to me. ‘It’s the Wyvern! It’s found me!’

I dove for the crack in the ground and as I did the leech-bat bit into my shoulder with a sharp pain that immediately went away, followed by a loud inhale behind me, a cold rush of water as I plunged into the subterranean stream about a meter down into the cave. Then I heard a loud whistling gale as the water began to boil around me.

Thankfully this was a relatively fast moving stream and I was quickly carried away from the cave entrance and the Wyvern. That being said it was now pitch black and I began to tumble through the stream as I bumped into unseen walls, floors, and ceilings. I quickly lost all orientation. Then I lost my breath as my chest got slammed into a rock and I breathed in boiling water. Then everything went black as I slammed my head into another rock.