God of Monsters

Prologue

There was a drip that echoed around the baron cave. It was the drip that he forced himself to focus on; that he forced himself to count between the seconds before there was another. It was all he could do to ignore it, to block out the sounds that seeped through the stone. There was no light, no warmth, no life that reached these dark caves. For so long there has only been him, and pain. Pain thrived in this place, and with it, fear.

Iron scraped over stone as he shifted his weight, his eyes never leaving the bead of water that struggled to hold on to the jagged rock that hung overhead. If only he could move a little further, he'd try to catch it between his dry lips. Instead, he counted, and counted until his mind was numb and his ears deaf to everything else around him.

Time did not exist, time was forever, and forever he had been here. Away from the warmth of the sun, of the light of day.

His breath was a wet rattle with every rise and fall of his chest. The taste of copper remained on his tongue, either from his cracked lips or his last visit. He could not remember–did not want to remember. All that existed was the drip of water and the suffocating scent of fear.

A rat scurried through the shadows of the cave across from him, sniffing along the uneven floors. He watched it, moving his legs so the manacles scraped in hopes of keeping it away. It would not be the first time one had tried to eat at his flesh. No, some of the scars that covered him had been from the pests. There was a time before when he had let them do it in hopes that it could end his suffering. He knew now that there was no end to this, no way out. Sometimes, his mind told him that he didn't want a way out, that he was comfortable and familiar with how he lived now. There were other times when his mind tried to force him to remember a time before, a time where there had been yellow light and blue skies. A trick no doubt, because there was nothing before this.

Here is where time began and ended.