The dream had been ripped away from him to be thrown into an unwelcoming awakening into reality. Garron shifted slightly within the crumbling straw pallet he had awoken on top of, seeking strength in his right arm to rake over where the pain trumpeted loudest. Every muscle ached tremendously and the sleep from his viridian eyes had been difficult to shake. An attempt in sitting up failed, causing a wake of straw dust to cloud around him and the hateful protest of crunching straw and strained wood to whine beneath him when his back anchored the pallet once more. He hurt. He hurt badly. The sheer pain from his abdomen nearly sent Garron into the swirling abyss of dreams once more.
He would have welcomed that graciously…
Garron struggled to breath, and each pull of air felt like a Skavian dagger thrust deeply into his lungs. Otherwise accommodating body failed the Son of Winter, laying helplessly atop his uncomfortable pallet. The swirling emerald and sapphire of his eyes hungered for some sort of hope to focus as he lay dormant. Rich rustic aromas of a fire had smuggled the atmosphere, causing his already shallow breathing to depart, and the entrancing crackle of wood burning somewhat hypnotized Garron like a warm and inviting campfire roaring on the Peregrine Reach. It reminded him of traveling to Salvar with his mother as a child. He had to be inside some sort of structure with the way sound echoed, he kept telling himself, trying to find some hope of reality to grasp a hold of, keeping his mind from submitting to conscienceless reprieve.
His large hand struggled to pull away from his abdomen wet through bandages that felt like soiled ancient gauze. The smell of corruption lightly wafting with the aroma of aged wood, lichen stone and a sweet smell he recognized but couldn’t quite remember. The warm slick viscosity of what he felt between his fingers told the story of the agonizing wound his body lay dormant from. Garron hated to be unable to control his own body, but the choice has long drifted away.
“What is that familiar sweet smell that tugs at my nostrils,” Garron whispered to himself, trying to fit the puzzle piece into the correct place within his memories. ‘That damnable cave I ducked in to to escape that torrential thunderstorm only to be thrust into a swirling vortex of chaos. Where not a damn thing made a bit of sense…’
At that moment it struck Garron full on, and the feelings he drowned from midst that dreadful cave came rushing back. His sun-kissed skin began to prickle. His chest tightened as breathing deepened more so. Stomach stirred like a streaming cauldron worried by an impatience witch. ‘Trying to get out of that cave is the last thing I remember…’
The sweet smell lingering strengthened while he was lost in his thoughts, and a strange scraping sound that resonated much like hollow iron over stone in an enclosed limitation drew near. Slow and determined it grew a higher pitch. Each struggled breath Garron attempted to reel in swelled. ‘What is that…’ His nerves flared unto their fraying when the cloud of straw snuffed out any oxygen around his large frame. He attempted to summon a burst of energy left to his nearly depleted, rattled and broken body. He crashed onto cold stone under his full weight.
Garron scrambled to find his feet. Clouded vision restricted a viable exit. Skirmish to the opposite direction of eerie sounds was all left to him. Adrenaline raged and the blood poured out of his abdomen so much so that the increased heart rate was felt in his eyelids. When his right foot planted into the solid terrain for escape, an unshakable snag…
