Kiro and Raven: Chosen Hero

Prologue: 7,000 years ago in Frema

My steady breathing deepens with each intake. Exhaling a stream of warm air bellows out like the breath of a monster. It slides around me the only thing keeping my cheeks from losing feeling like the rest of my body has. I can't even touch the fiery power that use to dwell deep in the pit of my belly, it's too cold and getting colder by the second. Head bobbing, eyes flickering up and down, I can feel the sweet kiss of sleep. It's said that when freezing you warm up suddenly and pass out. I fear that the warmth is coming quicker than anticipated. Fighting hard against sleep, it's even more difficult since I'm numb with intense boredom. The endless days and nights have stopped, there's no sensation of time passing me by. Just the freezing cold, and empty darkness.

Shifting my neck upwards, I can feel everything moving along with it. My back, legs, arms, they all scream with the sudden shock of movement. Bones groaning and sliding painfully in their frozen joints. It feels unnatural like swimming through oil, not made any easier by the substance that has me trapped.

Bronze metallic brown wood shifts as I move, fleshy and bark-like, biting my flesh like thousands of ants. It groans a touch, then slips even further over my own skin, like a cursed armor. Unrelenting, and determined to absorb me.

The prison I find myself in has a name. We call it, The Tree of Life. It's a wickedly evil plant that has taken over most of my body. I can't feel my torso, or half my chest because of the liquidated solid bark.

A fresh breeze suddenly whips into a frenzy around me, drawing my blue raven hair to the side. Metallic green leaves rustle hypnotically in a dance that reflects the light given off from the solemn silver moon above. Its rays softly floating down the small hole high above caress my cheeks in motherly tenderness. I lean upwards wanting to reach out and touch the moon like I did when I flew the sky above... It's the only constant I have here, it vanishes to appear day after day. It will be the only thing that will continue until these painful weeks, turn to torturous months, then lengthy years, and endless decades. Until my nearly immortal body becomes fodder for this damn tree.

I snort, crazy laughter bubbling up my chest and into the crackling air. It is an irony! A complete catastrophe that an immortal is being eaten by The Tree of Life! For it created my own creators.

According to myths, The Tree of Life was created by the Gods and Goddesses who were bored with their immortality and had nothing to entertain themselves but the constant fighting and bickering between them all. For some strange reason, they cannot individually create life because of the ruling of One God. But, it doesn't say that they all couldn't put forth their energies to create something. With the idea of a Goddess, she invoked the will of the other gods and gave birth to a magical entity that was to create balance in all the worlds. So the gods used their flesh to create suns and the goddesses planets. The main goddess, thus birthed a seed for each of them to plant in the goddesses' soils and bloom in the light of the gods. It became known as The Tree of Life.

The Tree settled upon the planets thus birthed her own life. The First Mortals, Plants. However, the plants were unable to reproduce on their own, so to help them bloom the Tree created the Second Mortals, Insects. With the two mortals now born, they flourished and spread to all sides of their planets.

There became a problem, for there was chaos between the two Mortals, no balance, and the two had war with one another. That is when the Third mortals were born, Herbivores and Insectivores. Deer for trees and high brush, rabbits for grass and flowers, anteaters for ants. Once again balance took place until another problem arose. The First and Second mortals could not reproduce fast enough to compete with the steadily multiplying Third Mortals. To bring about balance, the Tree devoured the Third Mortals to create their second self. From deer, wolves were born. Snakes and birds for mice and rabbits. She even created decomposers to help with the cycle of life and death. These were the Fourth Mortals. With all Four Mortals, true peace and harmony were created.