Devon awoke, feeling the sun on his face. He sat up, and looked around, more than a little bewildered. He seemed to be in a small clearing within a forest. What had happened the night before? He remembered drinking at the party, and then... He must've drank too much. Never before had he been so drunk that he blacked out. He reached for his phone, but his pocket was empty. He checked his back pocket for his wallet. It wasn't there either.

"Shit." he mumbled to himself.

He then remembered setting his phone and wallet down in his car... THE CAR! The heart attack! No, no it wasn't a heart attack. The events of the previous night were coming back to him. The pain, the red light. What the hell happened to him? He looked around again. He had absolutely no idea where he was. He didn't just black out from drinking though, that he knew. Something... weird, had happened to him.

"Ok Devon, don't freak out. Do. Not. Freak. Out..." he paused for a second.

"IM FREAKING OUT!" Devon stood, and started pacing.

"Ok." He took a deep breath. "I can't be far from civilization. There's no way I could have made it that far... in whatever state I was in. Something weird happened. Maybe I was drugged, or roofied or something. That has to be it." He stopped, and thought for a moment. "I've never heard of a roofie doing that to someone though. Ahhhh what the hell?!" None of it made sense. Not to mention he couldn't ever imagine someone from the office doing anything like that to him.

Devon hadn't ever been bothered by much in his life. He stayed in his lane, and avoided needless conflict. This, however, bothered him a great deal. He had to figure out what the hell happened to him. But first, he needed to know where he was, and find a way back to his apartment. Without a phone, however, this would be tough.

Just then, a loud screeching came from above. Devon looked up, and saw a bird flying far above him. It didn't look like any bird he had seen before. And it looked rather large for a bird. Devon couldn't make out many details, but he still found it to be strange. The bird appeared to be looking at him. Though, from that distance he couldn't be sure. He shrugged, and decided to get back to thinking about how to get home.

Devon noted the positioning of the sun. But he didn't really know how to use that to his advantage. After all, he'd never even been camping before, let alone in an actual position to need the sun's help like this. Plus he had no idea what direction he came from to begin with. He had no clue how to get home. Eventually, Devon decided to just pick a direction, and hope he wasn't making a terrible mistake.

But before he took a step, Devon noticed something. Smoke was rising up in front of his eyes. He looked down and saw that it was coming from the center of his chest. Well that's odd, he thought. He quickly unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt, revealing his chest. Yep, it was smoking. Devon started to feel his chest heat up. It got hotter and hotter. Devon was about to start panicking. But before he could, an intense heat and pressure grew inside him. The feeling was so quick and intense that Devon's mouth shot open in a silent scream. Then Devon, an ordinary young man from Chicago, suddenly burst into flames.

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It happened in the blink of an eye. Flames shot from every inch of his body, out of every poor of his skin. He could feel the flames burning him from the inside out, and then back from the outside in. It was the most intense pain he had ever felt, and never in his life could he have imagined that such a pain was even possible.

Devon grabbed his head, screaming in agony. A sound no man on Earth had ever heard. He dropped and began writhing on the ground. Unable to think, unable to act, he was a slave to the fire. It dragged his body across the ground, setting the grass and bushes alight as he rolled. The flames leaped from his body across the nearby trees and bushes, setting the forest ablaze. The fire shot from Devon's body even further. It was as if his body was ground zero for a constant explosion. Streaming fire out in all directions with such force that it began to bend the trees in a continuous blast. A constant explosion of flames that scorched the very ground he rolled on. All he could see was red. All he could feel was pain. And then, nothing.

"Dammit!" Lavernias said, picking himself up off the floor of his study.

"Why in the hell didn't that work?"

He was only slightly singed from the minor explosion, a rather common occurrence with someone who regularly attempts forgotten spells. Lavernias, of course, was one of the only mages with this issue, however. He stared at his ritual circle, deep in thought. His face was mostly black now, but he managed to retain most of both of his eyebrows.

He had just attempted to cast the spell he thought he had deciphered from the three pages he had found in the Aufarine Forest. Of course he would day that HE found them, instead of telling people what had actually happened. He knew most people already saw him as an absolute lunatic, and he didn't want to give them anymore fuel for their childish insults. Although at the current moment, he had much more pressing matters of concern.

"I don't believe I mistranslated any of the runes. So what in the hell went wrong?" He sat back down at his desk, still contemplating what had just happened.

"That should have opened up a portal to the spirit realm. I definitely had the correct ingredients. Although the amounts weren't specific in the pages. But still..." Lavernias may have been eccentric. But he was never one to cut corners when it came to spellcasting.

"Ah well." He said, writing down the notes of the failed spell attempt.

"I'll have to do some more research I suppose." He didn't mind this. Research was a favorite pastime of his, as with all wizards really. The one thing they all had in common, was the love, or rather the craving, for knowledge. This would arguably be considered the main driving factor of becoming a mage.

Just then, Lavernias heard a sound come from far off in the distance, with a faint rumbling following it. He looked up from his desk, confused, and went to the window. Suddenly a loud BOOM came from far into the Aufarine Forest, followed by an intense blast wave that shook Lavernias' entire house, knocking him to the ground. The explosion echoed throughout the air, slowly fading. Lavernias got to his knees.

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!"