I didn’t know what to do. In a crude way, this entire situation was something I had always been looking for. I wanted something to change, for the status quo to shift in an unpredictable way. Now that I’m here, though, I’m wondering if a lack of interest was the problem.

I watched as the Altum man began to weave his arms in complex patterns. A second set of ethereal arms formed behind him, allowing the alien to create hypnotic patterns with his hands that leave behind ghostly blue afterimages. He faced the black frame with confidence and authority.

Symbols hidden in the floor of the central platform began to glow a bright white color as an engraved array became visible throughout the room. This entire space was occupied by glowing lines and shimmering shapes.

I want to run. I want to leave this place and never come back. I was terrified, like an ant sitting in the palm of a human, completely at the mercy of forces far beyond myself. I realized that there was nothing I could do. I was powerless in the face of overwhelming alien might.

Everyone in the room was much the same. We had all been through so much, and we didn’t have any strength left. No one fought back, and no one tried to make an escape. There weren’t even any guards nearby, as they had all fled into the corridor.

I looked to the Altum man, Scalisth, I believe. Whatever he was doing was causing the entire area to become unstable. He was commanding the space itself to bend and warp in unnatural way. The most captivating part was that the world listened.

Now that I was observing him so closely, I realize that’s what I would call him: captivating. This one man held so much control over everything around him. He walked with the pride of a conqueror who had nothing left to fear from the world. Isn’t that what I’ve always wanted, in the end? Control?

Yes, that was it, I wanted control. If I could control my life things wouldn’t have turned out like this. I wouldn’t be some wage slave destined to work until she was dead. I wouldn’t be forced to be here because I apparently had alien parents. No, things would all be different if I was in control.

The room began to shake lightly as the ritual seemed near completion. Scalisth finished his dance by spreading his arms wide and shouting towards the portal in some unknown language. A single point of brilliant white light emerged in the center of the black metal frame. It was so bright I knew it would permanently damage my vision if I kept looking, but I stared at it, nonetheless.

The point then shook, and spiraling tendrils of dazzling light moved towards the edge of the metal surrounding it. The second the light met metal, the entire frame filled with that translucent blue light, writhing, and moving as if it were alive.

Suddenly, I heard a call. I felt a pull on all of my being to go forward and enter the pane of blue light. I couldn’t tell if others felt the same pull, but other people didn’t matter right now.

I felt the strain on my legs lessen as I slowly became weightless. The pull increased as my body left the ground, and I began accelerating towards the blue light.

I crossed the ten or so meters between the gate in seconds, increasing exponentially in speed as I went. Amidst my fixation on the blue light, I gained just enough lucidity to move my eyes to my side. In that split second, I saw the face of the Altum man who had performed this brilliant act. On his face was a huge, toothy grin, like none I had ever seen before.

That was the last thing I saw before everything turned white.

///

I don’t remember when I regained consciousness. One moment I was asleep, and the next I was fully lucid. Time was hard to quantify while within a white void, so I couldn’t tell if I had been suspended in the space for seconds or years.

It didn’t really matter either way. Something about my current state was eating away at me with an intense sensation of déjà vu. I had done this before, but I couldn’t remember when.

I began to feel part of myself lurch. I don’t know how, but I knew that I wasn’t truly moving. It wasn’t my physical being, but my spiritual one that was changing positions. I had an instinctual understanding that my body was in the same space while it was my mind that was changing.

I tried hard to remember this sensation. It was such a unique experience that it should’ve instantly made the connection. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in my right mind at the moment, and my thoughts felt distant and cloudy.

Just then, I remembered. I had done this once before in a dream. The separation of mind and body was the same. The only difference was that I was fully awake… technically. As if a switch had flipped, I began to feel the same falling sensation from my dream.

I was falling. The only difference was that this time I was fully awake and could tell that I was falling. My body finally caught up to my mind, and my senses became clear. Within the white void, a small speck of color filled the center of my vision. Within an instant, I saw the point stretch to encompass all of my vision.

I was up high. Really high. From what I could tell, I had just emerged from a layer of clouds and was hurtling towards the surface of the Earth. A mighty wind surged as I sped up, stretching the skin on my face and causing me a stinging pain.

I could see swathes of green, so I assumed I was near a forest or grassland.

“How the hell did I get up here?!”

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Instinctually, I spread my arms out to increase my air resistance and slow my fall. I felt a pressure hit my body as I slowed, but I was still travelling at insanely fast speeds. I tried to think of what to do but couldn’t think of anything else. It’s not exactly common to be hurtling through the sky without any personal flight equipment or even a parachute!

I spent a few too many seconds trying to remember articles or papers I had read about air resistance, and slowing a free fall, but couldn’t remember anything. Every second I wasted resulted in the ground becoming closer and closer.

“I need to take control of the situation,” I thought to myself. “Just like him.” I remembered the Altum man and his absolute confidence over his actions. Unfortunately for me, I was not an alien wizard, and would not be doing any magic to get out of this situation.

I was also scared. For the first time in this whole series of events, I was scared. Scared of dying, yes, but mainly scared of losing this newfound inspiration for living. Death didn’t really scare me much when I wasn’t truly living. Now that I had something to lose, however, the icy grips of death became an ever-present fear in my mind.

I looked down at the ground and estimated I was probably five or so kilometers above the ground, just based on the size of individual trees I could see. That left me with about a minute to find a solution to this.

I looked down at my body and saw that I was wearing a zipped-up gray jacket and grey sweatpants, which were both colored dark grey from sweat.

“Maybe I can use my jacket as a parachute,” I thought to myself. I reached my arms down to unzip them, the air fighting my arms the entire time. I ran the zipper down my body and the air instantly caught my jacket. This was not the good news I was looking for, as the jacket parachute immediately collapsed and was left flowing in the wind.

I grabbed the loose ends to try again, and it worked… somewhat. The air did catch the inner area of the jacket, but a powerful gust of wind pushed against me, sending me spinning in the air, out of control.

I became dizzy as I tried to reorient myself, the world spinning around me as I continued on my trajectory to the ground.

“Forty seconds left,” I thought to myself. I arrested control of my fall and managed to get my makeshift parachute to work slightly. I decided to look around one more time to see if I could find anything soft-ish to land in. I looked around and decided that there were no better alternatives than landing in the forest, hoping the trees would slow my fall enough that I don’t die on impact.

I began to tilt my body and head towards the forest when I noticed a shape below me. It was far away, likely a couple hundred meters below me. Whatever it was, it was big, really big.

It had the profile of a seagull, with a small body and large, flimsy wings. It was even white too, with a few colorful tail feathers sailing behind it. It didn’t seem to notice me, though, which might be for the best. I didn’t think it could stop my fall entirely, but maybe there was another option available.

Instead of going towards the forest like I planned, I shifted my body to fall towards the giant seagull. I watched and waited, trying to mask my approach as much as possible. Another five seconds passed as I flew at blinding speeds to meet the bird. My trajectory was spot-on, and I was currently on a collision course with its torso.

The giant seagull, which up close was closer to the size of a horse, didn’t detect me until the moment before impact. “I suppose that an arial creature as big as it wouldn’t expect any hostility from above it, would it?”

With the speed I had built up over my fall, I hit the bird like a freight train. I also felt like I got hit by a train, as I felt the breath leave my lungs.

I gasped for air, trying to regain my breath and reorient myself. Thankfully, I realized I landed squarely on the bird, and we were both travelling downwards together. I remembered from a physics class that our total energy had decreased on impact, and I was moving slower.

The problem was that the bird was no longer able to fly. It was understandable, as I wouldn’t be able to keep going as usual if I got hit by a car while walking. Still, my only hope for survival was that the bird could slow our joint descent enough to not kill me on impact.

The seagull, seemingly not happy at its attacker. Tried to twist in the air to dislodge me. I grabbed onto a bony protrusion and some feather to hold on, barely managing from flying away.

This act of defiance angered the bird more, as it tried to peck me with its beak. I craned my head to avoid getting headshot, but it still ended up getting my right shoulder. I winced in pain, but adrenaline kept me holding on.

I looked down and estimated that we only had about ten seconds before impact, and we were going much too fast. I shifted my weight and tried to forcibly open the bird’s wings.

The bird, likely also seeing the ground rapidly approach, helped spread its wings to absorb the energy of the fall. The shift in my center of mass on the bird caused it to veer to the side towards the rapidly approaching tree line.

A second before impact, I wrapped my legs around the bird’s body and put it between me and the trees. We hit the tree canopy, smashing through the thin upper branches like they weren’t even there. Our momentum carried us forward as we continued, the bird squawking in pain as it received impact after impact.

I also wasn’t doing too well, as I could feel every hit punch through the bird and into me. We crashed through to the lower level of branches, and I realized we had slowed tremendously. Unfortunately, the bird acted as a sacrifice to slow us down to this point, and it could take no more.

A bone in the bird’s wings cracked and it was swept out from under me. With nothing to protect me from the trees’ assault, I received cuts and bruises all along my body as I continued to fall.

Right before I hit the ground, I tucked into a ball and tried to let my legs take the brunt of the impact. I heard a crack as I flew through a bush and hit the ground. I lost my ability to stay into a ball, and my limbs flew around as my body twisted and turned from the impact.

With my last remaining strength, I held my arms to my head, covering it from the impact. I skipped along the ground for a few more meters before I slowly came to a half at the base of a tree.

Taking a breath, I found it hard to breathe. There was a piercing pain in my chest and my abdomen was throbbing from innumerable small impacts. I let out a pained groan and I let the tension fall from my body, going completely limp on the ground.

A few leaves and branches came tumbling beside me as they caught up to my landing zone. Other than that, the forest I had landed in was completely quiet. I couldn’t hear that, though, as the sound of rushing wind and the blood pumping in my body made it hard to focus.

I rolled over to my other side as I looked at my surroundings. I was sitting on the forest floor under massive columns of wood. The woodland giants towered over me and rose high into the sky. I looked up and saw a gap in the forest canopy, likely caused by my rapid descent through it.

My heart froze as I heard a sound to my right. Slowly, and with immense pain, I craned my head to the right. There, only a couple of meters from where I lay, was the bird. It was clearly in poor condition, but not as bad as I assumed it would be. It was honestly a miracle it was alive, all things considered.

The bird, which did look strikingly like a seagull from this distance, looked at me with pure rage and animalistic hate.

“Oh no. I’m fucked,” I thought to myself as I saw it begin to hobble slowly towards me.