Chapter 2: Unknown Lands

A sound came to me. Something crashing in the distance. The smell of salt flooded my nose before it turned into a sudden sour and fish-like smell. Death.

I took in a deep breath of it all. I wasn't dead, I could still hear my heart beating, pulsing through my head. I was alive. I had survived the shipwreck and the man.

Shipwreck?

Man?

My eyes shot open, my cheek still lying on the sandy ground. In front of me, I could see what could've easily been mistaken for a dark purple, lumpy towel. But I knew what it was, and by how still he was, the knife poking out of the top of a head-shaped lump, and the dark spot that soaked the surrounding area, I knew I had taken the man's life. I hadn't ever taken a life before, I was just a simple man from Dallas.

Dallas.

I looked around at the rest of my surroundings. The sun was now high in the sky, its heat radiating on me. Blood soaked everything and the mess of dozens of bodies lay all around. Buzzards swarmed the bodies, more than I could count. They were pulling off pieces of flesh - the red, fatty meat stretching before breaking off with a sickening snap. This was real, it hadn't been a dream, this was reality. This man had killed these people. I looked back at the lumpy towel then at the knife. I grabbed it in one hand and pulled hard. I squeezed my eyes shut, expecting blood to squirt out but instead, it only trickled slowly out of the fatal wound.

I wanted to feel bad about what I had done, ‘to take a life was to condemn the soul’ was what my Ma' had always taught me. But a soul wasn't real, and this man had tried to kill me like he had done to all of the other people.

All for what?

The image of the tornado-like thing coming down from the sky came back to my mind. I pushed it away, it had only been my imagination, hysterics from the shipwreck.

The thought of the shipwreck brought my attention to it. There was wood everywhere and the sail was still stuck in the ground. Wood. A sail.

The sun was hot, baking even. But it wasn't as hot as Texas ever got. And I could feel the big, sharp grains on my cheek that weren’t even on the coastal beach. I picked them off one by one and flicked them onto the ground.

Where the hell am I?

“Hello, Traveler!”

My whole body jolted as the voice came to me. I looked all around, scanning my surroundings for where it had come from but saw no one.

“Welcome, to the land of Gandria!”

The voice, I realized, was coming from my mind. Not just that, but the voice didn't quite sound human. It had a feminine tone, yet there was a clipped, robotic way it spoke. Just then, big words came over my vision that read:

Quests Attained:

Unknown Lands:

You have found yourself in an unknown land known as Gandria. Explore to discover how you arrived at your mysterious destination.

How I arrived? I know how the hell I arrived, I arrived on a ship! Isn’t that obvious?

The damn ship, it was made of wood. Dammit, no ship that size would be made out of wood. Not to mention the robed man, the weird sand, and now this text appearing in my vision.

I'm going crazy. That has to be it, I'm a freaking nut.

But even as the thought came to me, it rang hollow. It can't be that, I won't allow it to be that!

I put my hands to my face, trying to figure out something that it could be. My hand touched dried blood on my cheek. Going further up, I rubbed something new on my cheek bone. It was thin but there was a slight bump. Running my hands over it, I realized it was a small scar that ran evenly under my eye along my cheek. It had to be from a deep scratch, one enough to hurt and surely be remembered. But as much as I tried to dig through my foggy memory - cars, bottles, cutting vegetables - I couldn't come up with anything that might've caused it. My stomach churned as it hit me then, the knife in my hands, the one I used to kill the man lying just a few feet from me. It had been used against me as well, it had scratched my cheek.

And he had shot something out of his hands at me.

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My eyes looked down at my shoulder where the blast had hit me. The white, unbuttoned button-up I had apparently been wearing was in tatters. The tears started by my nipple and ran off in several directions across my shoulder - as if I had been hit by a lightning bolt - and where my skin showed was scar tissue that was a few shades off from my normal skin tone. But that no longer mattered to me as I stared at my chest.

There was an object that seemed to be made of polished gold, sticking about a quarter inch out of the middle of my chest, right where my sternum was. The gold object was in the shape of an eye with the very middle of it letting out a faint blue glow.

I touched the outside of the object, feeling just how smooth it was and confirming it was made of solid gold. I trailed my finger to the middle and touched the blue light and felt a sudden jolt of energy as it touched the source of the light, a small orb. How the hell did this get here?

Looking at it, it couldn't have been launched into my chest from the shipwreck, hell, it didn't even seem to be surgically placed as the skin around the object looked completely undisturbed. As if the object had always been in my chest, letting out its small, blue light.

A buzzard cawed and I watched as the entire swarm took flight, flying off across the beach away from me, going onward to scavenge for another meal. Yet, they left the people here only partially consumed, and they had left so suddenly.

I didn't like the feeling I was getting. Everything suddenly felt so silent, the only thing keeping me company being the crashing waves of the ocean.

Something in the forest tree line appeared, it was small but when I squinted I saw it was on two legs. It had to be the reason all of the birds left so quickly. I tried to search my brain for an animal that stood on two legs but all I could think of was a monkey.

As it got closer, though, I was certain that thing was no monkey. It was short, perhaps only a foot or two tall even with it standing. It wore brown rags as if it stole them from a peasant who lived in a stone-age kingdom. It hobbled over toward the broken corpses, and as it did I could now see its face. It had a crooked, gnarled nose and had ashen gray skin. Its lips were jagged and scarred and its eyes were a deep purple.

What the hell are you?

Just then, my vision grew blurry and then words showed up in front of me that read:

Hedren:

A small little fellow who reigns from the goblin family of creatures. They may be small but they're nasty!

The text disappeared and the world came back to me. The creature was in the same spot as it had been prior to whatever the hell had just happened. Not like it had simply stood still, but as if it hadn't moved - hadn't even taken a breath - during those few seconds.

I stared at the creature, the “hedren”, and gripped my knife as it began to rummage through the corpses, taking whatever was left of them. Whatever had just happened to me, it had told me one thing imprtant, to watch out for this little guy. It went quickly from body to body but seemed to not find anything of note.

I stood there, still as I could be, hoping it wouldn't notice me. It was to no avail, after the hedren finished its search on one of the many bodies, it locked eyes with me and its gnarled mouth grew into a snarl. Without warning, it reached into a small pocket.

Though it was tiny, the thing was damn quick. I barely had any time to react as it leaped across the sands and just before it got to me, it pulled out the object from its pocket: a large, pointed piece of glass.

I threw my arm up and felt a sharp pain as the glass dagger sliced through my forearm. Before I had time to truly process what was happening, the hedren went for a stab. With my unequipped hand, I grabbed its hand just in time before it pierced my stomach. It tried to struggle but it was far too weak and I easily pulled its arm away. With its free hand, it struck out at me and I saw at that moment it had sharp-looking claws. The claws dug into my chest — a shallow but painful wound.

“Damn you!” I yelled into its face as I forced my knife into the hedren's neck. It let out a gurgled howl and then tried to step backward, unable to do so due to me still holding its arm. I pulled the knife out and crimson red spewed all over my white shirt. I let go of the creature and it fell onto its side, holding the wound with one arm as it tried to crawl away.

It was no use. I had clearly hit an artery and the creature was much too small to handle that much blood loss. In moments, the creature stopped moving, its body lying in the jagged sand. I realized then I had used this same knife to kill two living things in the span of a day.

I looked over to my first kill and saw the man still lying there. I went over to the man's body and looked down past the golden, glowing blue eye in my chest to the hooded robe he wore.

Just then, the light blinked out. As I touched the cold metal, I saw the scratch on my arm from the hedren was now a scar, and the scratches on my chest were gone. Yet, the blood from them was still there.

I pushed my many questions away and began to pull on the dead man's arms. I didn’t like what I was about to do but I needed better clothes than just my tattered remains of my button-up and black pants.

Slowly, I managed to pull his dead-weight arms out of the robe and as I pulled on it one final time, the body shifted and rolled on its back. His dead eyes stared at me blankly and I stammered back with a yelp and then let out a cry of pain as one of the sharp grains of sand cut into my foot.

Once again, the glow of the object in my chest came. I stared at the dead man's shoes. I began to put the robe on and it nearly felt like it was pulling itself onto my arms as if it wanted to be put on.

Nearly. Robes didn't do that.

Then, I knelt down and quickly pulled his shoes off, his feet heavy and limp. Looking at the shoes, they looked too small but I had to try. To my delight, they came on with ease, fitting quite snugly.

I looked toward the tree line. Wherever I was, I knew I had to find civilization if I wanted answers. I began to step toward it, my feet now insulated from the beach's sharp grains. As I began my trek, I heard the waves crashing behind me. Over time, the waves would begin to take in the bodies, two of which I had caused.

I had to do it, if I didn't kill them, they would've killed me.

The thought made me feel better. But the memory of killing them wasn't what truly haunted me, it was the fact that I knew, deep down, I'd have to kill again. I felt a bit ill at the thought. Yet, I knew I'd do it if it meant getting back home.

Wherever home was.