Seagulls flew overhead. A boy, just woke on the beach, watch them, mezmerised. He was dazed and very confused.

“Where am I?”

He sat and enjoyed the ocean. He couldn’t remember how he got there, but he didn’t really think about it.

The seagulls soared in the sky. Like vultures they circle above him, but they meant no threat.

He walked along the beach. Something was sticking out of the sand. The object captured his curiosity, and he ventured over. Sam tried to pull it out.

It didn’t budge.

He pulled much harder, using all his strength. It sprung free violently, gleaming in the light, it was a sword. Upon drawing the sword some part within him awakened.



----------------------------

He met a strange girl. She was collecting seashells.

“What is your name?” asked the girl gentley.

“I can’t remember.” The boy replied.

“Then you are Sam. It is my fathers name. He died
a long, long, time ago. But you must go to the nearest town, observe, and continue to the castle.

You have a special fate. Inbetween you and the nearest town lays the evil forest. The creatures there are evil, but they were not always. Further instruction will be given when you reach the castle. Just keep traveling east for now. Farewell, Sam.”


----------------------------


Sam set out into the nearby forest, with the girl’s advice in mind. She had used words of caution for not everyone who ventured through that forest comes back out. Also the girl had said he would find a town on the other side of the dark forest.

He was fearless. The sword filled him with a great confidence.

Upon entering the forest all sound faded, as if the trees wanted to block out noise. Bright red eyes shone from far away. Sam walked straight through the dense path. The forest was very omnescent, it seemed to loom over him and taunt him. The swords luster faded with the light.

The trees seemed to whisper among themselves.

As he is walked he spied a huddled over figure.

“Are you alright sir?”

The thing jolted, as if startled. The dark figure turned, it’s face disfigured, it’s eyes cat like, it’s body poised.

It leapt out towards Sam shortly after hearing the noise, raising a thick branch over its head like a spear. With one quick, seemingly natural jab of the sword, it was dead.

Upon closer inspection from Sam, the monster looked vaguely human, but warped and twisted out of proportion.

Sam proceeded more warily after the occurance with the beast. Fear picked at his mind. The forest was getting more dense. On the ground a small dog was laying, Sam wearily picked it up and looked at its face.

It was alright. Just a dog, not a demon. It looked sickly.

The dog looked very badly hurt, one leg was mangled, the other looked to be bitten off at the joint. Surely whatever did this would come back to finish it off. Sam decided to take it with him.

The dog whimpered as he walked with it in his hands.

The forest sounds made Sam uneasy. At first small, and far away, a particular sound kept getting louder, as if it was making its way toward him.

At long last Sam made his way out of the woods. He viewed an inferno of flame, all of the houses on fire. The village was burning. The dead were everywhere. Sam couldn’t bear it, he looked away. He traveled for what he guessed was about a day, for the sun dissapeared, reapered, and was now on it’s descent.

Sam’s perception of time was very vague.

A huge wall, grey, looming on the horizon seemed to threaten him. As he journied it grew bigger, and bigger, getting closer and closer.

Most of the people he passed were either dead or dying, except for one strange man.

The man sat on the stump of a tree, at the top of a hill. He watched sam with a silly grin on his face.

“What a fool,” Sam thought.

After he walked past the man, Sam turned back to make sure he wasn’t sneaking up on him to mug him or anything.

The man had disapeared.
The huge geometric shape of a castle wall loomed above.

There was a field of black dust near the wall. It was from those monsters that fall apart.

A watchman called out to him, and Sam waved back.

Sam set the dog down and holds his hands up, a sign of submission.
Four gaurds rode out on horses, stopped fifty feet away, and then talked amongst themselves. Then one roared,

“ENTER.”

They rode back.


Sam picked up the dog, and walked through the gate, which shut as soon as he gets through.

He was greeted by two very official looking men carrying large swords. They started walking towards the main tower without a word. Sam followed them.

Upon entering the castle Sam was greeted by a thin and very wiry man who had dark decieving eyes and a thin beard. He looked to be under great stress. A crown was placed on his head.

“This must be the King,” Sam said.

“And this must be our savior.” He replied.

He was a very grave man who looks to have aged greatly with the recent events. He explained to Sam the situation of the island.

“You see Sam, something terrible happened on this island just recently. A frightful red moon appeared in our sky, like a curse, slowly descending upon our land. It crashed to the ground, and evil issued forth from it. A great beast emerged from the moon, and curse seemed to fall on our land. People began to act strange, the ones that lived near where the moon fell.

We sent messengers to those towns but they never came back. Evil monsters started to issue forth from that place. We locked our gates when a nereby town was attacked. Many were slaughtered.

Our god, the Ocean, in the form of a whale appeared beached on the shore. It said to a nearby fisherman to wait for the dreamer, for he will wake us from our nightmare.

You are the dreamer. You must find the Flute of Awakening to wake the Ocean.”

  Sam nodded as if this were just another everyday task.   
    A man walked into the room, and took Sam into the armory to prepare for his journey west. Chain mail was given to him along with a very dull very blunt sword.
    Outside the sky was in turmoil, tortured by tides of evil power from the east. It also looked angry, and tortured, a foreshadow of what the land to the east had become.
    Sam wasn’t given a map, only a compass that pointed east. He thought this was strange.
    The King bid him farewell.

 “Follow that compass; you will know when you are close to the moon when everything you see is dead. The flute lies there.”
    Sam quickly set out. As he walked villagers looked at him. He didn’t look back once as he left the gate. 

In Sam’s mind, all the days blurred into one extended moment. Time didn’t seem to be relevant. As he traveled, he met no more villages or settlements at all. Only black burned houses or fields. The very land looked as if it had died and moved on, leaving only a shell of it’s former self behind.
    Sam used the sword many times. It looked very heavy, but it felt very light in his hands.

    A black figure crawled toward Sam as he walked. It looked feeble and weak, a human form, horribly mutilated. Parts of its flesh looked like it had bite marks.
    Sam took a closer look and saw where the marks were coming from.     The monster had been chewing away at its own foot, a disgusting spectacle.  It noticed Sam and glared directly at him.
    Sam was filled with dread upon the sight of its face:  Sorrowful, yet angry and uncontrollable. Like a maggot, it swarmed toward Sam. He was just food.
    Sam swung his sword, aiming at its neck, and the head crumbled off like a charcoal briquette.

The body didn’t stop moving, though. It trashed about on the ground with no eyes to see with.
    Sam moved on without feeling pity or remorse or particularly anything for the creature.   The sun appeared and reappeared. That is all he recognized.
    There was no night and no day.
    He never stopped moving, but never grew tired.  The land grew ever blacker.

    A giant shape loomed in the distance; red eyes glowed in the dark. Sam took no heed.
    The black creatures attacked often, but Sam defeated them deftly and without mistake.
    The shape grew bigger and bigger until it filled the sky. The bigger it grew,  in his eyes, the bigger the dread grew in his heart.
    The black creatures swarmed around the shape, mindlessly worshipping the figure of evil. Sam cut them down like stalks of wheat.
    The shape was a dark reddish black like a rotten egg.
Sam was at the foot of the structure.
    It loomed above him taunting him.
    He jabbed his sword into its side, and it slid through easily.
    A wave of hot air rushed out to meet him, and he fell over; the world spins.  A sulphuric smell fills his mouth and his nose.  He is overwhelmed.

The air was heavy with dread. It made his eyes water, but he stood up and stabbed again, this time cutting a bigger opening.
    The black creatures noticed this, and they swarmed toward him.  But they took no heed of Sam, they were trying to get inside the moon.
   
    Sam pushed them away and climbed in himself.  Being inside was overwhelming. The air felt heavy on his his shoulders, and the feeling of an evil presence was overwhelming.

The first thing he noticed about the inside of the structure
    A dark shape lurked around Sam, circling him.  It laughed and roared.

“GET OUT CHILD ELSE I WILL DESTROY YOU. THIS ISLAND MUST NOT CHANGE.”  A giant eye rested amid the cloud of evil. 

“YOU SEE MY WEAKNESS, YES? ATTACK ME!!”
    Sam stood up but was knocked back down.
    The great cloud was laughing at him. It battered him around, knocking him with fists unseen.
    “STAY DOWN.”
    Sam stood once more, throwing all his weight into his thrust, he stabbed the eye.
    “HAHA FOOL!!!”  The shadow didn’t seem to be hurt at all.
   
    Sam was instead thrown into another world for a couple of seconds. He was floating in an ocean, gripping a log.  Why have I not eaten? He wondered.
    “GET OUT!”
    The pain returned... and so did the shadow.
    “DID YOU SEE? YOU ARE NOT PART OF THIS WORLD!”
    Sam was in a slouch against the wall. Where was his sword?
Gleaming in the Shadow’s hand was the glistening steel.  Quietly,  the sword glided into Sam.  But Sam... or something deep in Sam that was just awakening... felt no pain, or rather, decided to ignore it.
This tactic proved true. The sword was back in his hands.  Sam’s smile gleamed.

It seems that Sam began to realize that the physical rules of this island were very loose indeed.
    “NO! GO BACK! GO BACK!”
    Sam ran at the dark figure and dove at it, clutching at its center.  As he thought, his hands found a hard surface.  He pulled.  Hard.
    The Shadow screamed.
    A blue flute popped out into Sam’s hands. It filled him with strength.
    “NO! MY WORLD! YOU MUSTN'T TOUCH THAT, BOY!”
    Sam looked into its eye and and blew on the flute as hard as he could.  And everything froze....and the flute fell apart, with it, all his senses faded to black, the last glimpse he caught of the island was the shadows figure writhing.


Reality slapped him in the face. The smell of salt filled his nose. The sun’s bright rays stung his eyes. Wind shattered his ears. Rough wood rubbing his hands. A river of awareness swept his sense of self back into his body.

It had been a dream.

He opened his eyes to a world of blue. He was looking straight into the depths of the ocean. Something glimmered in the deep, falling down. Instinctively he grabbed for it, but it was gone.

A huge dark shadow swam passed where it fell, and looked straight up at him with white eyes.

It left.

Had his adventure been entirely unreal?

But it felt so real, but it could not have been real. So he dove into the ocean. He swam as deep as he could.

He had completely lossed his grip on reality and he went crazy. He thought he was dreaming once more.

Completely reckless, he felt that the ocean was pulling him down, beckoning to him.


His body longed for air, but he ignored it, he just kept swimming down, down down...

His vision was fuzzy very fuzzy. And as he swam he lost it completely. His mind was elsewhere, his body seemed to drift apart, screaming, without oxygen.


But he just kept swimming.
Nothing is real, nothing is real, nothing is real, he swam downward further.

A whale was circling him, trying to push him up to the surface to save him.

It felt like his life was floating upward as his body sunk downward.

He died, thinking he would wake from a dream.