Prologue

Pain. There was nothing but pain. Fire behind his eyes, leaping forth and cruising down the right side of his face. His eyes could not focus, seeing nothing but light and shadow. Shapes eluded him. A taste of bitter copper and earth swelled in his mouth. Heat, and a light wind that played across the exposed skin on his hands, bringing a cooling evaporation of sweat, or ragged pain to the insides of new wounds.

"Help me..." The words were barely a whisper in James' mouth. The pain seemed to crawl into his lungs, robbing him of the ability to breathe. The fire that had swelled in his head leapt to his voice. Attempting to swallow and clear the disturbance brought a raw, gritty sensation. What's going on, his stunned mind queried. What happening to me?

A voice, clear and unambiguous formed in his eardrums. Unlike the rush of blood and rapid heartbeats that were the only sound that he could comprehend, his mind could hear these words. They cut through the mist obscuring his thoughts, bringing consciousness to that one aspect of his fractured psyche.

"Are you just going to lie there?"

The question was crazy, nonsensical. He couldn't move. The slightest motion brought nothing but pain to every aspect of his senses. Willing his voice to come forth, James tried, desperately, to say some word in response.

It came out as a sob of agony, followed by a whimper.

"Ugh. Pathetic." The voice took on an aspect of reproach, tinged with a faint patina of amusement. "The least that you could do is acknowledge my presence."

James could not reply. The dust he inhaled into his nose forbade any action save a desperate racking cough. That too brought his pain to the fore. He lay there, pressed against the earth as he sprawled. How had he come to this, such pain? He couldn't remember, couldn't remember anything but pain.

He rotated his eyes in the direction he thought the voice had spoken from. The shapes still swam in his sight, seeming the shapes of a dog, of a man, a bird. They were all one and nothing, clouds and starlight points of ether. No sense and no meaning ascribed to any of them. Willing the straining muscles of his arm, he reached, trying to touch. The dirt shifted under his fingers as his hand inched forward. He contacted something, but in his condition he could not tell if it was stone, man, or nothing at all save the raw earth.

"I guess that will have to do." The voice seemed deep, as that one conscious portion of James' mind tried to make a pattern of it. No recognition came, but it seemed familiar, like many voices he had heard in his life and yet like none of them. With the sounds of his own body rushing in his ears it seemed as if the cry of a bird became intertwined with the mournful howls heard late at night; all reflected in the intonations of the words that came to his senses.

"You look to be alone, and to seek yourself, and what do you do?" The voice became light hearted, with a smile more heard than seen. "You find yourself, and the spirit that could guide you. Happy?"

James cried out again, his lips grinding the soil upon them further into his injuries. A twisted shard of metal from the braces he wore curled into his gum as he did so. Tears welled and spilled across his face, unnoticed by the skin that was already soaked with his sweat. The words this voice spoke made no sense. He hurt. Was this voice going to help him? What seeking? The final question welled up from somewhere dark inside. Was he dying?

The agony too much for him, James let loose a cry from somewhere deep in his soul. Trying to find comfort in something. In the inner recesses of his mind, a child's cry lurched forward to the center of his throat and poured forth in a desperate aching wail.

"Mom..."

The voice said nothing for a long time. James lay where he was, feeling his blood on his lips, the deep gashes in his face and hands. The aches and pains in every corner of his body took every bit of his thought. The patterns before his eyes swirled and grew darker.

"You are not a man. You are a child. A child should not seek out that which he is not ready to confront." The voice was stern. In a few pain-wracked breaths, James heard the final words of the voice in his mind, clear and precise. "One day, you will be ready to return to this place. When you do, know that I will await you." The words left no impression on his mind. He knew them, but they became locked away in the blackness that engulfed him.