Book.1 - Part2. - becoming nothing

"In times of struggle I question my mortality, no one ever knows when they will die, and so I wonder if those struggle-some moments will be the end of me. I deny death and I accept it all in the same breath. I battle between thinking it will simply be easier to die with certainty, then to continue to wonder if I am at my lifes end. These are all momentary thoughts that always end in my inability to give up on myself, yet never is it an easy choice."

I stared at the time passing. My time piece had stopped working after I crashed days ago but I still relied on the passing minutes it displayed to provide me with some sense of reliable reality. Only 7 minutes had gone by since the Jambar's sprawling attack. The realization that what felt like an eternity had actually only been a few minutes confused me to no end. In that time I hadn't stopped running. I hadn't slowed in any way. I could not be forced to give into the pounding fatigue. 

My sprinting attempt at escape led me to a very dense area in the jungle. There was a different type of vegetation present now, plants that seemed to react to my presence, some literally moving out of the way when I came upon them. The trees grew differently here, they grew into each other and their trunks were so thick and heavy that they couldn't hold themselves up, they'd toppled over themselves yet continued to grow in ways I'd never seen a tree grow before. In what little thought I had to lend I wondered if they were something else entirely.

For just a moment I'd tripped and almost lost my footing, forcing my vision down, directly at the ground before up again. I was so disoriented from exhaustion that I could barely see what was in front of me, but what I could see, clearly enough, blocked the sky above me.

It was the silhouette of a most gigantic tree. It was impossibly grown by a base that possessed a thousand giant roots that plunged into the ground like pipes at a sewer factory. The roots were so large and wildly proportioned that they fell over other each and grew into themselves. At their ends the roots separated even more reaching out like fingers grabbing in every direction, ripping and digging themselves into the ground as if life depended on it. The massive tree was so tall that the end of its height was lost in the clouds.

I quickly crawled into a dark cave-like formation created inside the tree's rooted base and concealed myself into absence.

Now I laid, hidden in that small murky cave. 

I covered myself in mud I'd pulled from the walls in an attempt at masking my scent.

Doubled over, I applied pressure to the wound on my lower torso, trying to stop the bleeding. My free hand shakily held my hand cannon. I'd propped it between a couple of rocks to help steady my hindered aim. If anything came into the cave, I would not waste any time using these last 3 bullets to take it the fuck out!

I tried to force my teeth together. I bit down on a thick piece of wood, it helped to dull the sound of my gasping breath while I attempted to suppress the wrecking agony of my wounds. My adrenaline was too high, sending every inch of my body into compulsive shakes, but I remained as quiet as humanly possible.

Suddenly, in full force they came! Thousands of the vile Jambars! They sounded like a hurricane ravishing through the jungle.

For a long while they searched for me frantically. I could see through the small cave entrance how they tormented the lush jungle. A blinding amount of foliage was struck from its roots. A storm of leaves filled my vision of the jungle, falling together, they were rushed to an early death on the ancient canvas floor.

Finally, the sounds quieted as the evil Jambars vanished back into the jungle's mysterious foliage. A very specific kind of somber energy that I'd never experienced before became present. It took the place of the deadly creatures, as if the jungle itself mourned. For the time being, the Jambars seemed to have lost me. I emitted no sigh of relief and no sense of accomplishment found its way into my thoughts. I was alive. And for now, that was enough.
 

To be continued...