He had been going too fast, and when he saw those weird cosplayers in the middle of the street, he couldn't stop in time. So he decided to swerve around them, hence his current predicament. Were his treads failing him? The car couldn't stop sliding, yet he could feel and hear the result of the rough road rubbing against his tires.

The sirens were loud in the distance. He couldn't but thank whatever watched over the earth that there were no other cars on the road this late in the night. He wrestled with his wheel, doing his best to stop the skidding. Why was the police guy still blaring his damn sirens, couldn't he see Rafe was trying his best to stop the crush?

He ignored the sirens for now, a vice grip on the wheel and all his considerable lower body strength focused on the brakes. He didn't crush into the rails, and all that skidding was well worth it. 

“...shiiiit… did I just perform my first real life drift? Is that what a drift feels like?”

His heart was pumping like crazy.

The knocking on the passenger side window woke him from his revelry. He winced when he noticed the one and only officer of the law in little old Crosshill town. With an imperceptible sigh, he rolled down the window, trying to mimick that charming smile that little sophomore bastard had. He almost swore that little shit must have used that same smile to get to Sandra. And the whole team had known he wanted her back, he'd told them as much.

“Rafael Kingsley…” the man almost whispered the name, but Rafe heard him. “What has gotten into you of late? I was just on the way to your home after receiving reports of some kind of party, and then I find you in the middle of a suicide attempt?”

Suicide attempt? Rafe inwardly scoffed. It was those weirdos in the middle of the street, and they hadn't even reacted when he hooted. And that damn party…

“Come on, mister Anderson. It was those weirdos back there who…”

He couldn't believe his eyes. Sure, it was a little dark now, but he'd seen them clear as day. There had been two women dressed in some weird shit he couldn't quite recall. Then what he could only hope was a man built like an oak and dressed in medieval knights armour. It had been so clear, even the greenish gems behind them that he suspected were part of some prop they were carrying around to liven up their nerdy pictures or whatever. 

Officer Anderson turned around to scan the street as well, and he turned back to Rafe with a skeptical look.

“Let me smell your breath kid.”

And before Rafe could react the man had leaned forward and sniffed his open mouth, open in disbelief over what he couldn't see. 

There was no way the weirdos had escaped. There was nothing but the road for as far as the eye could see. On the one side was an ascending cliff, and on the other a rail that protected cars and pedestrians from falling into a descending cliff. There was really nowhere to go on this stretch of hill, that Rafe knew of.

“Jesus Christ, kid! What the hell is going on with you? Why the hell did you kids even throw a party tonight? You lost, again! Your team has crashed out of the tournament, for all I'm aware.”

Rafe still couldn't get his mind off the life like hallucinations he'd just seen. He hadn't cared about the women's clothing, because they were beautiful, he could admit. That make up made them look otherworldly, maybe he could get some for Sandra. Their faces gleamed, their eyes shone, one the blue of the ocean, and their pupils were gigantic, the most elaborate contacts he'd ever seen.

 But now he could remember one wearing what looked like a sword. What was in those drinks, he couldn't help but wonder. When had a little smoke ever flown him so high?

“I'm going to be telling your aunt about this, you hear me?”

This finally got his attention. He frowned at the man, wondering why he was so obsessed with the damn woman. If he loved her so much, why hadn't he asked her out when she was still here.

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He scoffed. “Yeah, maybe you'll get lucky and she won't ignore your call this time. She probably knows it's you too. She is just not interested.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She is not interested in you!” he screamed.

The officer took a step back, looking at him with wide eyes. Yeah, Rafe thought smugly, I know. He didn't know what he knew, but he knew it was important. He should be happy he knew what he knew, but…

“She is not interested…” he said in a small voice. “Not in you, in me, in this damn hill. She's like them, they just left me here.”

By the end, his sight had gone blurry, his head too heavy that his chin now rested on his chest. He heard the officer sigh, then head over and pat him on the head.

“She will come back champ. She stayed in this place twenty five years, it's her home.”

It was her home, Rafe thought, until he'd showed up and somehow drove her from it. It didn't even surprise him she'd left. He only wished he'd known why. He'd tried so hard to be a good guest, because he wasn't going to stay here forever. At least he wasn't supposed to.

“I think I'll be keeping your car for a while, until I can get in touch with any adults in charge of you…”

Yeah, Rafe wasn't holding his breath. He'd get his car back in a week or two, after the officer gave up on trying to contact his family. Now he had the problem of having to get back home on foot somehow.

Only, did he want to go back home to that damn ghost house? It was isolated, even for a place as isolated as Crosshill town, and it was big and there was no one there but him. Well, no one most nights. Tonight, he'd left Charlie sucking Sandra's face in his own bedroom.

That little shit! He didn't have the concept of team work in him. Sure he had more skill in basketball, and maybe he even had hopes of going pro one day, but he was the reason the team had lost the whole year. If Rafe had been on that court…

What would he have done? He sighed loudly. The guy is one year younger, and he stole my number. Because he is better. The only reason Rafe would ever play was because he was reliable, predictable. He knew the rules and all the basics, and almost nothing else. His play style was boring, even he would admit to himself. Now that same guy stole his girl even as he watched.

He watched the officer chain his car. He couldn't afford to witness anymore, he'd lost too much in one night. He heard the officer's car start, but he didn't turn.

Unconsciously, his feet led him to that place he'd seen the hallucinations. He didn't know how he knew they'd been here, he just knew. There was nothing there now. The rumbling of the engine receded. Rafe sighed, and turned around to start the trek home. No one was going to help him clean the stupid house, after all.

A green light flashed in front of him. Tracing it's path, he found that it was coming from behind him, from that same spot. He gulped, nervous for some unknown reason.

He turned at once, searching each and every part of the street frantically. There was nothing. He sighed. Why the hell was he seeing things?

He turned around, and walked straight into two otherworldly beautiful women and a giant in a suit of armour.

He didn't immediately walk into them. He walked into the bright green gem light. He would have stopped then but for his momentum. The next thing he knew he was stuck in what he could only describe as an invisible curtain. It was the same as bumbling in a bunch of cloth, although it seemed thicker and more viscous. And he couldn't move backwards even if he tried. 

It was painless, at first. And then it felt like his whole body was on fire,and there were worms moving around and biting him with the tiniest mandibles , and his head was pounding, and his body was torn into a thousand pieces, and the smallest bit of an electric shock, only it was perennial, and… 

He landed on rough ground on all fours. It was rough and hot, and even the palm of his hands was scratched and charred. His jeans were torn around the knees, and his knees smarted.

He was breathing rough, and he could still feel echoes of that internal pain, like he'd been roasted from the inside. He heard a gasp and a shout that could only be a warning. He opened his eyes and stared into two shocked faces. They would have been three if the giant didn't have a helmet covering his face, he was sure.

They were really pretty, those women. One had flowing lilac hair and matching eyes and the other had the most beautiful blue hair. 

Something flashed red in the corner of his vision, and that was the only reason he took his eyes off the group. There was a blue screen in front of him, like a computer screen with an outdated user interface, although it was flashing red for some reason.

‘Ding’ You have entered the Sailam dungeon.

‘Warning! Warning! Warning!

User: Rafael Kingsley

Race: Human

Status: Marked for tutorial

Warning: Your level is too low for this dungeon. You are advised to exit it at your earliest convenience.’

There were more messages too, from what he could see, but something distracted him. He had only looked away from the triad in front of him for a fraction of a second, but one was already gone.

And she was approaching him. The woman with the lilac hair and matching eyes, and he couldn't follow her movements with his eyes. His heartbeat skyrocketed, and it wasn't in anticipation. 

He didn't even get to feel pain, but he was able to follow her last movement. She set her feet, then lifted one off the ground in an impossible show of flexibility. The leg kept climbing up and up, and then it descended. 

The first thing he noticed when he came to was that he couldn't feel the pain, or much of anything really. Then the pain of being in that curtain, but this time it was magnified.

His eyes, or at least one of them, were not working. His eye sight was red. It was all red. He turned his sight to his left somehow, to the blue screen that was still blaring out warnings. This time the warning seemed different though.

‘Warning! Warning! Warning!

Dying status effect applied.’

He was dying. He'd suspected it, but it was much harder to come to grips with. It didn't matter though. He was sure the pain of being stuck in that thick invisible curtain had lasted longer than it had before. He was sure. Dying wouldn't be too bad, if it could save him from this and the pain he was sure to go through should the pain in his head start to be felt.

‘Ding’ You have entered the Sailam dung...

‘Ding’ conditions met:

Low level user critically injured in a high level challenge. 

User has been invited to the skyholm legacy trial. 

Would you like to accept. Y/N