Feeling the emptiness of the void that had settled around and enveloped him quickly fade away, Theodore stirred from unconsciousness. Surrounding him, he felt a viscous, cold, liquid slither all over him. Taking a deep breath, his lungs were quickly filled with water.
'Air! I need air!'
His eyes shot open. Reaching for his neck, he struggled desperately for a simple gasp of air, but was only left in despair. Looking in every direction, all he could see was a pitch darkness that stretched on forever. It was different from the empty void that was his soul which he had only just left, but at the same time, it filled him with the same, no even more dread than what that did.
In the middle of his struggle, Theo, just like before he entered his soul sea, could sense something. The pulsing of his blood through his veins, and the beating of his heart. And like before, his senses rapidly expanded. Inch by inch, he could feel the movement and flow of the water around him.
The range of his perception grew, and grew, and grew. Until suddenly, he felt something...else in the water.
Just like the blood in his body, he felt the blood of something else flowing. But, something felt, wrong. Compared to the amount of blood flowing in him, the amount of blood he felt in, whatever this was, nearly tripled his.
And its size only grew.
Every passing second revealed more, and more, and more of this creatures body. Soon, he felt the presence of another, and another, and another. Soon, dozens of these things were slowly making their way from deeper below.
'What are these things?' Theo thought.
As he desperately struggled to get away from whatever these things were, he finally felt the beating of a heart. Each thump felt like a rumble. As if something massive was striking something even more massive.
'No way! Don't tell me...' as if confirming his fears, the pulsing blood of all these creatures converged on that one, single, massive heart.
'Shit!'
Turning away and desperately paddling away, he swam as fast as he could through the viscous, pitch black waters, Faster, more desperately, he paddled, and paddled, and paddled. But no matter how fast he moved, it was too late.
The dozens of slithering creatures quickly surrounded him.
'Shit! Shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!'
In the blink of an eye, they closed in around him. And in the moments that followed, his theory of what these things truly were, was proven right.
'This thing is a damn spawn!'
Spawn were monsters that freely roamed the expanse of the otherworld, ygdrassil. These unholy creatures were worse than any monster, mythical evil or legendary existence ever born or contrived in human history.
And this spawn, the very first spawn was larger than anything he had ever heard of. From what he could sense, it was a giant larger than the small orphanage he called home for years. Its numerous limbs slithered around his body and squeezed tight.
The realization that he was trapped by a creature of such immense size caused his heart to race even faster than before. The instinct to escape kicked in and he thrashed around desperately, struggling against the constricting limbs, but no matter how hard he did struggle, he could do nothing.
He tried to scream, but in the depths of this black sea, he couldn't utter even a sound. All that happened as he did try, was his lungs quickly filling his lings.
Then finally, it began. First, his arms, pinned uselessly at his sides, turned numb, then the first sickening crack echoed. Starting from his ribs, to his arms, legs, spine, every bone in his body began giving way.
A wave of agony thicker than anything he had ever felt, even his awakening washed over him. Along with it, came a heat stronger than anything he had felt before, and at the same time that heat began concentrating somewhere within him.
But that sist matter to him, not right now.
'What do I do? How do I get out of this? Can I get out of this?'
He racked his brain for anything he could do, but the only plan he could come up with, was nothing. Nothing at all. The only thing he could do was lay there as his skull felt like it was about to burst under the pressure.
'Is this how I die? Hopelessly!... Pointlessly!... Pathetically!...'
Then came the blood as his broken bones pierced his skin, jotting out like jagged flagpoles. The tiny vessels in the whites of his eyes, transforming the whites of hem into cracked red mosaics.
His vision narrowed to a smeared tunnel, The world fractured into blurry, overlapping copies before finally, mercifully, going dark.
A final thought flickered.
'...Maria, I'm sorry.'
Then in the next moment, his skull yielded, popping open like a grape under a boot.
The creature's tentacles dragged his corpse through the viscous sea and down into the depths. And just like that, his trial, and current life, ended. That one, brief, unlucky first encounter with a spawn was all it took, to end his life.
Or was it?
Suddenly, in the depths, a brilliant flash of light emerged and suddenly time crawled backwards. Theo's corpse re-emerged, his body reformed, the dozens of tentacles released his body and returned to the depths and Theo fell back into what was, a deep slumber.
Once he reached this point, time slowed to a crawl, stopped entirely and began moving forward again.
Theo's eyes shot open, and before he could even think about what was going on, he raced in the opposite direction of whatever creature was below. He paddled and paddled as hard and fast as he could, and as he did, a strange heat permeated his body, filling him with strength and propelling him forward even faster.
Soon, rays of light permeated the surface of the viscous pitch black water and Theo emerged on the surface. Quickly looking round he noticed a beach in the distance and raced forward. Desperate to escape this death trap called he sea.
Reaching close enough that he could feel the sand on the soles of his feet, he stood and ran as fast as he could. He ran and ran until the waves of the black sea were nearly a mile behind him before falling to the ground utterly exhausted.