Everchanging - Prologue
Five days. He had been digging for five days straight, leaving breaks for only drink and nourishment when necessary. Numerous blisters covered a majority of his paw, but he never stopped. He couldn't stop, not since he was so close. The excitement was what drove him, feeding him the strength and will to continue despite the countless near-death experiences he endured, ranging from deadly pitfalls to accidental cave-ins. Through preserverence and just plain stubbornness he overcame those obsticles and pushed as hard as his feeble body would allow, all for the chance of glory, for fame.
The thought made him smile, and he continued to dig.
His arm's were tiring but he dared not to stop, only adding extra vigor in his swings as the dirt flew up like dust, clinging to his perspired fur. The image of a sonar screen continued to flash in his mind, creating a picture of what looked to be a treasure chest approximately fifty meters underground. He messed up the trajectory three times prior to his current excavation, but he was sure that the current path was the path to victory. He triple checked the math, so there were no miscalculations that he was aware of. Everything looked good, and he had a gut feeling that his current path was a winner.
It was about another hour before anything exciting happened. He had been stuck on a thick layer of rock for the past thirty minutes, but the moment he broke through he was greeted with a bright light illuminating from below. Since he was digging down he had to be careful; there wasn't much room for him to recover if there happened to be another pitfall. But through the cracks of the dirt and rock he noticed the light, and his face turned into that of a giddy schoolgirl. There were maybe two more swings of his pickaxe before the ground crumbled beneath him, and having a similar experience like this before, he landed on his rump that would only cause a minor bruise rather than a feeble limb that would surely end up in a broken something. The sudden pain elicted an audible groan from him before making an attempt to stand, his hands groping blindly for the handle of the pickaxe laying next to him.
There it was, shining brightly right before his eyes. It looked like a medieval chest, only it had a mixture of dark blue and black colors adorning the outside of it rather than traditional wood. The other peculiar thing that stuck out to him was the spikes protruding through the top that turned outward, looking like horns littered across the top of the thing. It made it look demonic, almost. Evil.
He walked forward with tentative steps, letting his pick drop idly to his side. His mouth was agape in shock and awe, and a goofy grin spread across his face as the sudden turn of events processed in his mind. There it was, the treasure he worked so tediously to acquire, sitting rigid and motionless in all its glory directly in front of him. His greedy paws acted as though they had a mind of their own, and he quickly found himself grasping the cold metal edge of the chest and tugging upwards.
Nothing happened. The thing just stuck there, firmly lodged into the ground and lid completely sealed. He tried again, with a little bit more force, but yielded the same result. Frustration overtook him and he retracted his hands back to his side, but he found himself unable to remove his hands from the chest. Again, he pulled his hands back toward him but they stayed glued to the metal frame, like the skin and fur were melted into the material.
Panic erupted inside of him and he tugged, feeling the skin of his paws blend into the metal glowering in front of him. The more he pulled the more the skin ripped away from his body, staying glued to the chest in front of him, almost like some sort of sick torture. He let out an exhasperated whimper and slid to his knees, totally succumbing to the pain being inflicted to him. It was like the chest was acid, slowly but surely melting his skin and fur like a hot knife on butter. The blood oozed out and onto the ground, along with random chunks of his skin and fur, and landed together in a heap before him. Howls of pain replaced the pitiful whimpers, and his bloodcurdeling screams reverberated throughout the small cavern he was trapped in.
Bone was showing, now, and before he could even utter another hoarse scream his body was thrown upwards, his paws now detatching from his quivering body. He was airborn, by what he didn't know, and ended up landing on two of the bigger spikes that adorned the top of the chest. It pierced through him, one on his right breast and the other next to his heart. Breaths became ragged and limbs became limp. His body was burning, so hot that he only felt numbess instead of pain. His mind was in a state of overdrive, too much information flooding in at once, making it impossible for him to comprehend anything but panic and the fact that his skin was slowly sliding off his body. Blackness egulfed the sides of his vision and he just lay there, fur and skin slowly melting off his skeleton with the sickest of sounds echoing around him, harmonizing with his screams and groans.
A small cackling emitted from underneath him before the blackness took him and carried him away, leaving only a skeleton behind as evidence of what took place. The same cackling returned, only magnified tenfold, and stopped only to utter a chant, the demonic voice protruding from out of thin air. Upon his words the chest illuminated brighter and brighter until the light emitting was as white as snow. His voice was deep and breathy, almost like he was out of breath. He said, "By the power vested in me, I offer this petty corpse laying atop of the demon alter to the spirit of Skeletron. Infest, my lord! Power this vessel! Infect the world with this curse!"
The bright white light vanished in an instant, piercing red eyes being the only thing left visible within the pitch black darkness.