Escape from Harrizel Read Online Free PDF

nose perched high, sucking in air for
reserves. I try to wriggle free but can’t move. My heart thumps
rapidly, racing.
    I’m drowning.
    The gooey liquid is going to suck me down,
and it’s here, I know, that I’m going to die. Just as I start
seeping under, grabbing the last bit of breath, the burning starts
to fade.
    I stop moving.
    The eroded skin on my hands and arms start
to cool, the wounds suddenly repairing themselves. My body relayers
the missing muscle, fat and skin until they are fully restored.
Able to snatch my hand easier than expected, I turn it over.
Healed. No gaping charred holes. No sizzling to the bone. Taking a
deep breath, I submerge myself completely, rolling around in the
liquid blue as the cooling sensation washes over the skin on my
face and scalp, reconstructing it. I come back up for air and find
it easier to move. In fact, the substance is no longer sticky, but
closer to the texture of water, silky and fluid.
    Dragging myself from the puddle, I rest in a
patch of dirt and grass at the foot of a mammoth tree, one—like
most others—more suitable for a giant than a human. With my left
cheek resting on the damp grass, my fingers sink high into the cool
dirt above my head. I could stay like this forever. Never moving.
Never leaving to discover other horrors that await me in this
nightmare. But I’ve only just started. I haven’t put enough
distance between myself and… whatever those things were.
    I have to keep going.
    With every ounce of strength I can muster, I
peel myself from the ground. My legs wobble, unsure of the weight
they carry, but I force them on, faster and faster.
    Just keep going . Keep
moving .
    Swiping hanging ivy and clamoring over low
branches that cut across my knees, I fall to the dirt a few times,
tripping over hidden roots, but I get back up, pushing forward, always pushing forward.
    Just a bit further . You’re almost
there .
    Except it’s not me this time. It’s someone
else, or something else inside my head. Even if my legs
can’t carry me much farther, this feeling, this intuition leads me like a compass. There’s something ahead. Something
important I have to find.
    I trudge forward, sweat pouring down my
body, grazing over my limbs like drizzling rain. I swipe my brow
with my forearm and my upper lip with my finger. I’m soaked. My
hands are black with dirt and my hair sits matted to my neck and
back. Heavy pounding threatens to explode my chest as my legs
barely stumble on, about to give out.
    But then I round the cluster of trees and
come across something odd.
    Just ahead, in the middle of a natural
clearing, a collection of broken walls remain, cathedral-sized and
overgrown in a wild nest of ivy. The stone fragments sit close to
one another, a few disappearing into the treetop canopy above, but
most are broken at the lower branches. Ivy drapes between them and
covers each like fabric. At their base, yellow cobblestones swim in
overgrown grass like sinking ships, dotting the clearing with a
losing battle on the sea.
    I fall to my knees.
    I know this place.
    Nearly incapable of moving, I manage to
crawl, dragging myself over pools of ivy. The ground pads my
swollen palms and knees but they still throb, screaming for rest. I
can’t stop now—I need to know what this place is… what it was .
    I plant my elbows into the ground like
stakes, lugging myself closer to the first broken remain. It stands
over ten feet tall with chips of stone blown away, moss, ivy and
dirt working to clog the holes and mend the jagged edges. There’s
another wall some ways back and another up ahead, lying adjacent to
the ruin on my left. It must have been a room. I scan my brain,
searching this image, searching for what it might have looked like but there’s nothing.
    This needs a more thorough investigation
than crawling. If only I didn’t ache so badly, if only I’d just
discovered this beyond the first few trees. I ignore the throbbing
in my limbs, the pounding in my