The pain was the first thing.
Not that distant, abstract pain you read about in books. No. It was real, physical, stabbing pain, as if a truck had run me over and then backed up to finish me off. My head was spinning, the world whirling around me in a nauseating vortex, and for a moment I could only lie there, on the ground, wishing it would all end.
Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. Thinking hurt.
But the worst part was not knowing where I was, how I had gotten there, or why the ground beneath my cheek felt so rough and damp.
Focus, I ordered myself. Breathe. Open your eyes.
I did. And I wished I hadn't.
A monster.
That was the first word that crossed my mind. A humanoid monster, about eight feet tall, with grayish, scaly skin, long arms ending in black claws, and a deformed head with a mouth full of jagged teeth sticking out in all directions like rusty nails. Its eyes, two yellow slits with vertical pupils, stared right at me.
But there was something in its expression I didn't expect. It wasn't hunger. It wasn't ferocity. It was... confusion.
"Still... alive?" it growled, in a voice that sounded like stones grinding together.
Its confusion lasted only a second. Mine lasted longer. Because in that second, while its brain processed that the human it had run over, beaten, or whatever the hell it had done, was still breathing, my survival instinct finally managed to overcome the pain.
"Fuck," I whispered, my voice barely a hoarse thread.
And then, without thinking, without planning, without any dignity, I got up.
Or at least I tried. My legs trembled, my vision blurred for an instant, and for a moment I thought I was going to fall again. But I didn't fall. Because falling meant dying. And I, as mediocre and empty as my life had been, was not ready to die.
I ran.
It wasn't a heroic escape. It wasn't a warrior's strategic retreat. It was the desperate sprint of a coward who just wanted to live. My feet hit the ground without rhythm, my lungs burned, and I could hear behind me the roar of fury from the creature realizing its prey was trying to escape.
"DON'T RUN, HUMAN!" it bellowed, and the ground shook with its footsteps.
I ran through alleys I didn't know, dodging dumpsters and jumping over puddles of dirty water. The streets were empty, lit only by flickering streetlights that cast twisted shadows on the walls. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know if anyone else was in this damn place. I only knew that if I stopped, I died.
A dumpster flew through the air to my left, crashing against a wall with a metallic clang.
"I CAN SMELL YOU, HUMAN!" the demon's voice echoed, now mocking. "YOU CAN'T ESCAPE!"
I turned a corner so fast I almost lost my balance, and found myself in a maze of even narrower alleys. Rusty pipes hung from the walls, stacked wooden boxes created makeshift passageways, and on the ground... on the ground there was a hole.
A manhole.
Without a second thought, I lunged for it. My fingers scraped against the metal rim, lifting the cover with a strength I didn't know I had, and I let myself fall into the void.
The impact against the stagnant water was brutal. The cold stole my breath, the stench made me want to vomit, but the important thing was that I was alive. I crawled to the side, squeezing under a broken pipe, hiding among the darkness and filth.
Above, I heard the demon's footsteps. Heavy. Furious. Stopping right over the manhole.
"WHERE ARE YOU, HUMAN?" its voice boomed through the tunnel walls. "COME OUT OR I'LL RIP YOUR SPINE OUT THROUGH YOUR ASS!"
I held my breath. My heart was beating so hard I was sure it could be heard.
Silence.
Then, a roar.
It wasn't a normal roar. It was a roar of pure frustration, of uncontrollable rage, of a predator that had lost its prey. Up on the street, chaos began. I heard it smashing dumpsters, clawing at the walls, pounding the ground with its fists.
But it didn't come down.
It couldn't. Or it didn't want to. I don't know. And at that moment, I didn't care. I only cared about continuing to breathe, continuing to exist, continuing to live.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. Time lost meaning in that stinking darkness, with the distant echo of destruction above. Little by little, the noises faded. The roars became occasional growls, then silence.
Still, I waited.
I waited until my muscles stopped trembling. I waited until the cold became unbearable. I waited until the certainty that the demon was gone was stronger than the fear.
Then, and only then, I moved.
Getting out of the sewer was harder than getting in. My arms barely responded, my legs felt like jelly, and when I finally managed to drag myself back onto the street, what I saw left me breathless.
Destruction.
The alley I had fled through was unrecognizable. Smashed dumpsters, walls deeply gouged with claw marks, the pavement torn up in several places as if something had furiously dug into it. The demon had vented its rage on the place.
And I had been just a few meters away, hiding like a rat, while all this happened.
I let myself slump against a wall, trembling. Not from cold. From fear. From relief. From something I couldn't name.
"What... what the fuck was that?" I whispered, my voice breaking.
No one answered. Just the silence of the night, broken occasionally by the distant sound of a city I didn't know.
I looked at my hands. My poor human hands, trembling and dirty. Hands that couldn't wield a sword, that couldn't throw fireballs, that couldn't do anything except run and hide.
"You're a coward," I told myself, and it wasn't an insult. It was a fact. "A fucking coward."
But I was alive.
And as I stood up, staggering, ready to get away from that place before the demon returned, I noticed something strange. A sensation. Like a tingling at the base of my skull. As if someone, or something, was watching me from the shadows.
I looked around. There was nothing. Just darkness.
But the darkness... the darkness seemed to move.
I blinked, and everything returned to normal. They were just shadows. Normal shadows, cast by the flickering light of the streetlamps.
"You're losing your mind," I muttered, and started walking. "First monsters, now hallucinations. Great."