I woke up feeling completely burnt as if I hadn’t slept at all. The alarm blaring did not help things. I was rather sore since I fell asleep weirdly on the couch and tried my best to stretch. I got up slowly, holding my back trying to make it easier. I made my way to my fridge and got out the last of my milk and grabbed the cereal on the counter and poured the last bits of both in a bowl and took it back to my couch. I turned on the TV to see if anything interesting was going on in the world. I could only assume more doom and gloom. I did need reality though to break me from that trance. Get my thoughts away from that dream. I still just can’t get over the fact of how real it felt. Whatever that was, it seriously has provoked some anxiety.

The news came on and talked about the usual crimes, daily governmental votings happening, and other local news. I was about to turn it off when a breaking weather alert showed up and took command. The meteorologist seemed a bit preoccupied as his segment aired. He turned back toward the camera, placing a finger against his ear and nodding.

“We have some breaking weather news to share with you all watching. This is not a watch, this is a warning. There seems to be some odd biometric changes in the atmosphere and reports have come in from other countries of massive earthquakes and strange day and night cycling,” he began. A few pictures came up in small boxes of dark cities, destruction, and some other things my mind was struggling to comprehend. Am I dreaming again? This can’t be right…

I turned the TV off and just shoveled my cereal down my throat. A shower is what I need. Somewhere warm and peaceful I can just relax. I quickly washed out my bowl and got a change of clothes from the top of my dresser. I went into the bathroom and got into the shower, simply letting the water flow over me. While I tried to meditate, I felt it. Feint but it was there. A quake. That sensation of the earth moving beneath me. We are not on a fault line. This can’t… this shouldn’t be able to happen. I desperately tried to just forget everything, to find a peaceful place in my head where I can be away from this nonsense. What in the actual hell is going on?!

An hour flew by as I just wrinkled in the shower trying to do my damndest to keep calm. What I had was a premonition. It had to have been. So what happens when I go into work today? Will it happen? Can I avoid this mess if I don’t go in? I furiously scrubbed my head with my towel as I felt a migraine pounding. If this is fate… it is going to happen no matter what. Do I simply accept my fate?

Without a care I got dressed and returned to my couch, realizing something. It is too dark. I looked at my clock on my wall, squinting to see it in the darkness. There was some light coming from my faded curtains. I went over and opened one, taking a look outside. It was night. It can’t be night. There is no way it is night. I finally surrendered to this wild fate when I felt another, slightly stronger quake. My job be damned for the moment.

I took a seat on my couch, holding my head in my hands, just trying to let things fall into place. I had a dream seeing my death, and the death of the world it seemed. Now there are quakes happening everywhere and somehow time isn’t… working? What can I even begin to believe? I am an uneducated, unskilled laborer who had to leave school after my parents passed. I only know work. My job. I am not ready for this.

There was a dark, dark feeling deep inside me. This is for the best maybe? Dying could solve all of my strife. Perhaps this terror happening is a blessing in disguise. I felt a tear fall, then followed by another, and soon I was completely swelled by emotion. No! I don’t want to die! I want to live!

Suddenly, like my dream, there was a quake I had never felt. Anything and everything began to fall around me. Small things off the dresser, the clock off the wall, and anything not secured. It didn’t take long for the TV to collapse to the floor, my windows to begin to crack and shatter and the walls to crumble. Like a horror movie, the quake intensified and I couldn’t move. I curled up on the couch hoping this would end. It never did and much to my fear, the roof came down on me with such force, it was all over. I could have sworn in the last moment of life, I saw a bright light. That hoax might just have some actual meaning, the light at the end of the tunnel. That guiding flame and I the moth on my way to it.

***

I supposed that was it. The end of my story. I was born, I worked, and then I died. A simple life. A cold stillness took over my senses. A bleak darkness and silence that I had never known became everything about my being. I could laugh. One day I was just following the motions, and in an instant, I saw the end and it happened. Was this some strange karma catching up to me? Something I did in the past finally catching up to me? Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter now. I paid the due, and so apparently did the world. Were we overdue for a reckoning? Why do I even care at this point? What’s done is done.

A feeling washed over me. A strange… warmth? I opened my eyes and couldn’t believe it. I saw it. Like a taunting smile, there it was, bright as day and right above me. A Star. And there was another by it, and more around it, and they all stretched as far as I could see. What in the world is this? I tried to move but my body was in so much pain I couldn’t begin to comprehend it until I began to fumble about.

From my peripherals, I could see rubble and darkness. I tried to focus as my vision came and went. Like a newborn trying to walk or talk, I continued to try and move or yell. If this is the afterlife, I was lied to. There is no paradise, and if this is hell, it is cold. An extremely unnatural chill was in the air. Bit by bit as I fought against myself, I was able to move a few muscles, then a few more, and I began to get feeling back. With each movement I could feel my body creak and muscles tear as if they were unstretchable. I fought with all my might to finally get to a sitting position and crack my neck before I looked at the absolute devastation around. If this was my home, it wasn’t anymore.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

As far as I could see there was darkness. A few small sparks of fires were the only illumination. I seemed able to see a decent distance regardless of this overbearing dark. I had to take a second to really grasp what I was seeing. Trees were splintered into large chunks… but those pieces were suspended in such a way that the original shape was there, but floating. Large chunks of land also seemed to hover a distance above the ground and even by me, small dust particles and tiny debris just were suspended in the air, moving ever so slightly in a breeze I couldn’t feel.

Not a single building stood that I could see and the roads around my complex were unrecognizable. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell if this was even my home, if not for the general shape of the destruction and a few personal possessions I could make out. I looked at my person. I saw the destruction around me… but what about inside me?

My clothing was torn so bad I thought it was a part of popular fashion. My arms were bruised and cut, same as my legs. A feeling of weakness took over as I saw how thin I had gotten. I tried to look down a bit to inspect my wounds when a strange nebula-like strands fell around my head. I panicked and looked around, as those strands followed my movement. I took a hold of some… holding it. Is this… my hair?! It felt foreign and light. Without thinking, I yanked on it to confirm with that sudden pain. It was my hair. I saw a piece of glass near my side and I took it. I had to confirm what I am.

My eyes glew. There was a faint light about them and it overshadowed the rest of what had been happening. My eyes were alight. They had a brightness! This isn’t natural! None of this is?! What in the world is going on?! I felt my heart race, my body tremble. My mind raced around without direction trying to get a hold of any part of reality that could ground me. There were none to be found. I am in this fantasy world against my will and now it seems I have a lot to discover.

Without warning, I began to float up slightly in the air, along with anything around me. I could hear some sort of distorted crackling followed by a sudden flash. A force sent me tumbling back to the ground, uncomfortably rolling and bashing across debris. For the first time since any of this nonsense began, I heard something I could figure out. A scream. A human cry for help. My body seemed to get riled up and something within ignited. A feeling of protecting, to be a shield, rose up and completely took my mind elsewhere. I may be in a foreign world full of mystery, but if someone is out there I could talk to, perhaps it would all get better.

I mustered the power to stand, stumbling about as my head was dizzy and my aches and pains intensified. From where that burst came from and then the scream I could see a small crack of light just there a few yards from me. I then could make out a strange shadowy figure with scattered light orbs around its silhouette. I then could see the body of the voice I heard. A girl was hazardously staggering, trying to flee that monster. I looked around for anything I could, and almost laughably, a pipe from my apartment lay there. I took it, feeling that the heroism inside boiled over. A simple step at a time turned to a light jog and before I knew it, I was sprinting at that shadow. I had never fought anything in my life. There had never been a moment I cared for another. Not once can I even remember interacting with another person. Yet here I am, charging at some unknown entity to protect someone I don’t even know, risking my life to protect another.

I slammed into it, expecting to go right through, but there was substance to the beast. I reeled back, making a crackling noise and turning toward me. Three strange lights near its ‘head’ looked directly at me. A light also seemed to be at every joint in the monster’s body. It came at me, flailing its arms. I took the blows with the pipe and felt the weight behind its attack. It was hard to fight on these broken apartment remnants. The girl seemed horrified equally at the monster as well as me. She ran away without a word and I took the chance to break some distance between us. I was barefoot and beginning to feel the scrapes and cuts from everything underfoot. I moved out to the more grassy parts. The once green blades now a dulled gray. The beast followed me slowly, making the same crackling noises as if communicating something. I took a swing, hitting a darker part of its body. The blow did nothing and I felt a ringing in my arms and then my head as if I just struck a brick wall. With no other choice, I fell back again, trying to comprehend not only the fact I can’t fight, but now I am fighting some indestructible shadow. What do I even do?

My only thought was to try and attack those lights. Could they be its weakness? I played a few video games back in the day and guessed with my intuition. I took another attack from its slowly flailing arms and got a counter in when it stopped, landing a critical blow to its right elbow. There was a glass shattering sound, followed by a burst of light. That limb fell limp as the light faded. The figure looked down and began to coddle its fallen limb. I was mesmerized by its pain. It was not just some monster, there was substance to its mind. Intelligence was there, if primal. But I can’t be sympathetic to this thing. It is either me or it. I landed a second blow, just too high from its other elbow but as it returned its attention to me, I crippled it right knee. It crumpled to the floor and I didn’t want the thing to suffer if it truly had feelings. I ended it with a heavy slam of the pipe to its head. All of its light went out and the figure dispersed like dust in the wind.

“Over here?!” I heard another voice.

“Y-yes!” the same voice that screamed earlier responded to the first. I turned to look at who they were. My thought was correct and the same girl from before stood with another. Much like me, the new person had nebula-like hair and glowing eyes. She held a long staff and was in a simple white robe. I couldn’t get a word out as my exhaustion and adrenaline wore off and the consequences of my actions took hold. I collapsed first to a knee before the weight of my agony took me to the ground. I groaned in pain as the two came rushing to me.

“My name is Mylia,” the robed woman said. Her hands glowed with a warm light and that light engulfed my body. I felt my fatigue waiver and my small cuts closed. “There is much to explain.” The woman looked around. “But not here. A battle threatens our world and we are the hope. We are Star Seekers.”