THE OBELISKIt rose from the ground seamlessly, like a bone of black protruding from the flesh of the earth. Odd symbols covered each face of the pillar and they seemed to pulse with light. Longclaw looked at it and felt fascination bloom within him. Around him the world spun out of focus until everything felt flat. He stared again at the obelisk. (Precipice had taught him caution.) He leaned in. (Caution, wariness, never trust what you don't know.) He let his forehead sink against the cold stone. (Longclaw was never a obedient pupil.)
A jolt of electricity shot through him and then, he was falling.
The swamp. He heard the song of cicadas all around him. He saw fireflies bobbing in the air. He turned, and he saw It. He saw the same pillar of black smooth stone. It looked vulgar, the way it stood. The lights on the runes seemed to pulse brighter, then dimmer, brighter and dimmer. Longclaw could feel his breathing hitch, his heart thudding, his vision close in. He felt like he was on a hunt. He was chasing it - with his eyes, with his soul - faster, and faster and faster. But not fast enough. No matter how he ran, he could not reach the obelisk. It stood on the horizon unmoving. He felt...it was not pain, but it was a churning, a gnawing on his insides that felt wrong. Like rot festering on wood. It ate at him. He could not look away. He was still running.
His vision narrowed until he saw nothing but the obelisk and the path to it. He ran. He chased it. The rot spread. As he got closer, he felt as if something had changed. As if, in getting closer and closer to the obelisk meant he had to give something up. When Longclaw looked down, his legs were no longer white. They were wispy, black, billowing like smoke, barely retaining the ir shape. He could see bone. His bone.
If I continue I am lost.
The buck stood still in the darkness. Behind him was the familiar embrace of the swamp. Ahead of him was unknown, the putrid black of the obelisk and the glow of its symbols. (Do not chase your dreams too far, Burning Bush had once warned.) He looked behind him and recalled his friends, his family. (You have the bad habit of going one step too far.) He loved the swamp. He did. He really did. (One day, you might not come back.) Longclaw took one step. Then another. He was walking, and then he was running. He sprinted towards the obelisk. He felt the things fall from him, things that tied him down, things that weighed him down. He felt light. He ran faster than ever before and when he reached the obelisk, he pressed his forehead to it reverently. (Longclaw was never an obedient pupil.)
He fell through the obelisk into complete darkness. There was nothing there at all. He walked forward, endlessly, through the twisting shadows and dark mist.