Lokelani could still feel the heat of the molten rocks, remnants of the inferno, and smell the stench of burning flesh biting into her nose. Her whole body hurt, every fiber of it rejecting her survival. Her innards were a mess, and her head was spinning and aching.

Yet all she could do while lying there was laugh. It was long and raspy since her lungs were scorched, but it had a hearty tone.

She had done it, she had survived. Survived against the stone-melting fire breath of a fucking winged T. rex.

Now that she thought about it, it looked more like an oversized crocodile. But it was way too big. She didn't know what to best describe it as.

"I didn't know these existed. Did I uncover some secret species or something?"

But that couldn't be it. It didn't explain the strange sensation she felt and grasped when she entered the circle carved into the ground.

She sat up—

"Ouhouhouh!"

Only to instantly regret it. Her body was still nearly dead, after all.

Fried by a lizard. That was an experience she didn't feel the need to repeat anytime soon. Or at least that's how it was supposed to be.

It felt weird to her. She was supposed to fear death, yet when she went through her memories of the 'fight,' she only remembered pure bliss. Like taking drugs. Well, she never took drugs, but that's what she imagined it to be.

Even if it felt good in a way, she probably should still try not to do something similar again. For health and stuff.

But before even thinking about running or fighting, she'd need to recover her body. How? She didn't know. But she had a feeling, and more than really knowing what she was doing exactly, she tried to feel the alien sensation, or rather 'power,' from before. While it didn't make her win or even come close to hurting the lizard, it worked wonders in restoring and regenerating her burned-away body.

A healing ability?

No. It rather felt like she was reanimating the already lost flesh and then pushing life back into it.

But what otherworldly power would be able to do such a thing?

Then it hit her.

It was in her own words. If she wasn't in the world, planet, or whatever she used to call home anymore, then there could be something—power, energy, or anything really—that was responsible for this.

Well, she once heard about the tunnel effect, where a quantum particle is able to pass through something it shouldn't be able to pass... or something like that. She didn't really remember anymore what exactly she was taught in physics class, but the fact that theoretically anybody could suddenly disappear and reappear somewhere else had piqued her interest at that time, if only a little.

But that was really unlikely, no? What was the chance of that happening to something as large as her whole body, including clothing?

Clothing.

She only noticed now that she was butt naked. Well, no wonder. If those flames could melt rock, they could evaporate clothing. Great.

So she sat there, nearly dead, her whole body aching and butt naked in who knows where.

Not her greatest day, to be sure.

But she wouldn't let it dissuade her.

A good horse jumps only when it must. And right now, she really needed to do that. No avoiding any obstacles here.

She could already feel the 'power' starting to pool inside her, ready to use. Just a bit longer, a bit more. And when she was ready, she let it flow out.

First, it swirled around her heart, then spread out toward her navel. She could feel the cold wave travel across her body, and after it was gone, it was replaced by the usual warmth of life. Only now could she really appreciate this feeling of living. Now that she knew what death felt like.

She didn't exactly know why, but purely by instinct, she knew that this weird power was 'death,' in a way. It wasn't like something dead, rotten. More like the affinity, the very essence of death that she could consciously control.

And there was something else as well. After the cold came the warmth, and that was the exact opposite. Of course, everyone with common sense understands that warmth is the opposite of coldness, but this wasn't the point here. It was the affinity. If the previous cold was 'death,' then this warmth was 'life.'

'Death' reconstructs the body and 'life' mends it. It breathes life back into the dead matter, so to speak.

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It was more complicated than that, but Lokelani couldn't understand anything beyond that. Too complex.

Well, no point in wasting time here, she thought and stood up, now that her body was as good as new, aside from the burns and bruises she got before she entered the circle.

She looked around.

She was in a rather small cave, or what was left of it. Strangely enough, the cave didn't seem too damaged. From the tracks of destruction, she could see that the lizard didn't get far into it, even though it was able to melt the stone as if it were mere ice before. Something was special about these walls. Not only because they weren't melted or even as much as damaged. Similar to the circle, there was something about them that put Lokelani off. They felt as if they breathed, as if they were alive.

Ton of bullshit. Stones that can breathe. She hit her head, that's what happened.

But she knew about the many stories of reincarnation, or the various religions that had some sort of reincarnation and afterlife thing. Normally, she didn't believe such things really existed, but then again, here she was, in a place she didn't know, blah blah blah.

So this was a dream? That's what you'd think in such a situation. But never did she dream and then question herself if it was a dream. Normally in that case, you'd be lucid dreaming. And lucid dreaming meant you were aware that your real body was asleep, which Lokelani was not.

Second option: Virtual reality of some kind. Neurotechnology wasn't that far away, and surely there were companies and whatnot that had some secret, non-public stuff going on. But would they abduct someone to test this stuff? Were they able to alter memories, and she just forgot that she willingly participated in such an experiment? Probably unlikely, but more likely than the tunnel-effect thing.

And lastly, and what she hoped not to be the case, was something beyond the things humans knew. Something like magic, gods, and reincarnation. Was she being judged for not believing in a certain deity or something similar? Or was she in a world with full-blown magic and some crazed antagonistic wizard created a tear in space that pulled her away from her apartment and brought upon her this predicament?

And a predicament it was! She slowly began to feel her empty stomach complain about the lack of food. When she thought about it, she endured the lizard's fire for quite a while, and she ran from it for quite a while as well. And how long was she unconscious before that? A day or two? A week? Longer? All she could do was judge by the emptiness in her stomach...

Growl.

Quite some time, apparently.

But not long enough for her to starve to death or anything like that. Blessing in disguise.

With that much clear, she obviously needed to find food. Food. In such a cave? Were there any mushrooms or fungus that were edible? A quick scan of her surroundings revealed what she would have expected from a fantasy setting:

A glorious nothing.

Could have guessed, if things like this lizard are the casual predator in this area. Not an environment for a mundane thing such as fungus, huh?

If she didn't find anything, she would die, and that wouldn't do. She would find something to eat, or she would find the exit to escape this miserable place.

Minutes later, and her hope had turned into fear.

There was literally nothing here. In the cave she had found the circle in, there was a side room with some books in a language she couldn't read. The place seemed old, and any food that once was there had fallen to dust long ago. The cave itself was a little better. While there were no books, there were at least living beings: a human, a lizard, and nightmarish abominations of five-legged ghouls. Or six-legged. Or really any number of legs, if you could even call the long extensions from their bodies so.

Lokelani stood atop a small overpass, watching a group of three abominations below. They were eerie, unmoving as if frozen in time. They had long bodies, around one or two meters in length. Their heads were just misshapen spheres of rotten flesh, their bodies a composition of bloody black skin and splintered, rock-like bones. They had no eyes, but maws that made up for that in size. Round these were, with teeth around the opening in irregular patterns, as if some of them were brutally ripped out. Their limbs ended in single or sometimes double claws, that stooped or sometimes dug into the floor.

These were sharp and dangerous, and she didn't want to get to know them too closely.

But she had no choice. She was hungry and wasn't in the mood to die, trying to level that lizard. These seemed far more reasonable. And she needed to hurry. Her vision was growing darker, and her body was growing heavier. It was getting harder to explore, and anywhere she went, for hours on end, she was met with a dead end or these abominations.

She had to eat, and she had to advance further. If she could kill one of these, she could...

She nearly gagged even thinking about it.

No choice, she told herself, and grabbed a nearby stone, round and half the size of her palms. She carefully slid down the overpass onto the same level as the abominations. They were called Ktera, she had learned from the books, since while she couldn't read them, as in understanding the language, she could make out the letters. They were similar and just slightly different from the ones she used in life, or well, the early part of her life. It took her a while to recognize some letters. Y, v, and x were particularly hard to decipher since, rather than their own letter, they were a combination of the others making it up.

But back to the Ktera.

She had already experimented with some strategies to be able to actually slay one. When she had appeared in this place, she had seen them in action and knew they were dangerous. She didn't know how strong exactly they were since she hadn't taken too much notice of it rather than running for her life.

She needed to single one of them out. They appeared not to hear any sound, nor see any light. A reasonable choice of evolution in a cave such as this. Then she needed an escape route. She didn't want to handle one of those, however she'd manage it when the others were around. Too much of a risk.

Laying traps, she found, was virtually impossible in this surrounding. But she could lay an ambush.

So she just needed to get one of them to follow her, and one alone. She had tried to lure one of them with sound, literally screamed at them. She was pretty confident that having only one awake would be rather easy.

And so she took aim and threw the stone.

And it hit the target, dead eye. Time slowed down when Lokelani focused on what happened next. It twitched, and in the split of a second, she knew it worked. She'd be able to handle one of them somehow. Now she just needed to run away and then get a surprise attack.

But that changed when the stone hit the ground.

Suddenly the other two twitched as well.

There was no slow, shocking moment where the foes would slowly turn their heads to the protagonist. There were just three living nightmares instantly and mindlessly charging their prey.

And that prey had that shock moment until she noticed that maybe she should move.

Well, fuck.