Einar (First Draft)- Chapter 7

The sun was high in the sky as Einar awoke with a start. He glanced up at it and felt pain flash through his eyes, as he hadn't used them for centuries. His right eye seemed to be adjusting faster to the light, and as his pupil turned to a needle-thin slit he closed his other eye and looked down. His legs were still trapped in ice, and as he moved them to free himself he felt the ache of unused limbs shoot through his body. He managed to stumble out of it and fell to the ground, only managing to pull his arms forward and stop his face from hitting the ground at the last second. The skin on his hands felt raw and burning as pain shot through them. As he looked in front of him, he noticed the stone heart mere inches from his face. It seemed like it had finally stopped running.

Einar could see the massive dent that his axe had made in it, and saw other small cracks along it, as if it could not handle the pressure of the ice after it had been broken. He turned over on his back, where at least his weight was distributed more evenly. He felt relieved enough to laugh, but it changed into an uncontrollable cough as his lungs started up in full swing once more. He hurt all over, but he was glad to be alive. He almost felt happy as the voice started up again. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” it said. “I've been so bored with no one to make fun of. Don't try to talk a lot right now, I'm still trying to fix the damage that being frozen has left us. It'll take a lot of energy, so you might as well make yourself useful and try to find something to eat.”

Einar sat up and properly looked around him for the first time. There was no more ice and snow around him, except for the pathetic excuse of a glacier that lay behind him. There were no plants either. Come to think of it, there was nothing but barren rock. Groaning loudly as he got up, he tried to make his legs remember how to move and headed to a hill nearby to try and get a good look around. It took longer than he would've liked to admit, but the pain in his legs was nothing compared to the dismay that hit him when he finally reached the top of the hill. Looking out for miles in every direction, he could see no signs of life, as if nature itself had abandoned the place decades ago.

Everything was barren, cracked ground, devoid of water and scorched in some places. In one valley, he noticed a mass of rubble and burnt metal. Hopefully, desperately, he started to hobble to it as fast as he could. When he finally reached it, he noticed even the stone and metal used in building it had been shattered by some amazing force. He tried to search through it as best as he could, but his arms were in no state to pick up heavy objects just yet. Eventually he found some metal cylinders in the rubble that looked hollow inside. “I'm pretty sure they've got food inside,” the voice said. “I think they were called Beans or something like that.”

“I've never heard of a food called beans,” Einar said.

“No, I'm pretty sure putting food in metal like that is called Beans. I think I saw one of these metal things with writing saying Beans on it once.”

Einar picked up a sharp piece of wreckage and a Beans, and cut through the top to reveal things that looked like tiny brown sausages in some sort of a sauce. He picked up one of these, hoped that they were still edible and stuck it in his mouth. It didn't taste like a sausage, but it didn't taste bad either. As he continued to eat them, he could feel his strength slowly coming back to him, felt his muscles gain their old strength back and his skin harden a bit. “Are you making my skin into scales again?” he asked between mouthfuls of the brown things. “No, I'm trying to make it look like your normal skin this time. I can only imagine how much harder it'll be for us to get food if our whole skin is scaly.”

Satisfied with this answer, Einar turned his thoughts towards the future. If the whole world was like this, what would he do? Wander the earth eating from Beans and living out the rest of his days alone with this pesky dragon soul? Besides, there was also he possibility that the one who made the portals was dead, lost in the eternity of time. Turning this thought over and over in his mind, Einar concluded that a being with that much power would probably be unable to die. That meant that he might be able to find him somewhere, but it would be hard to take vengeance on something that could not be killed. Then again, the gods have had ways of punishing immortals. Wasn't there something with an immortal snake, eagle or even tying someone to a magical goat? He didn't know where he would find something like that, and decided to handle that problem when he got to it. He finished his Beans and laid down on a large flat piece of rubble. He lay there for a few hours, content to just bask in the sunlight and let himself heal.

After a few hours, he sat up and looked around the rubble again. Setting all of the Beans he could find aside, he began to look for some sort of weapon. His axe had been shattered when he defeated that thing, and he couldn't get far without some form of defense. Eventually, he found a sharp shard of metal, larger than the one he had used to open the Beans. He took both of these scraps of metal, stuck them into his belt and tried to find a place to carry the food. Eventually he managed to stuff two into his belt, leaving two more on the ground. He couldn't let it go to waste and he couldn't just carry it in his hands, so he started on his second can of the day.

The shadows had begun to grow fairly long when Einar finally got up. He looked around him, decided it didn't really matter what direction he went in and set off walking. After an hour or two or walking through the featureless and barren land, he heard a noise like a large piece of cloth being torn as a massive portal opened up about a quarter of a mile away from him. It was only several feet above the air, and stayed there like a gaping hole as big as a house, punched through the universe itself. Einar felt a rush of anger, excitement and fear all at once. “See? I knew he was alive! He's let his guard down, now is our chance to strike!” Einar exclaimed into the evening, as much to the dragon as to himself. Pulling out the larger of the two scraps of metal, he charged towards the portal. However, this one seemed different. Instead of spewing out items and monsters, this one seemed to be pulling the ground towards it, breaking up the dry earth and sucking it up in huge chunks.

As Einar ran towards it, he began to experience his old feelings of vengeance, joy at finally avenging his village, and at the same time he couldn't help but fear this being's power. He grabbed on to one of the chunks of dirt that was being drawn towards the portal, and leaped off of it in through the rift. As he sped past the other acquired bits, he felt a rush that he had never felt before. He was so close to completing his quest, he could feel it. And just like that, he smashed his head into a slower-moving chunk of rock. As he lost consciousness again, he felt himself begin to fall again. He tried to grasp for the other boulders and earth that had been sucked in, but it was too late. He felt his eyes begin to close, and all he could see was black once again as the rushing sound of the portal began to fade away.