Kane sat on a rock feeling depressed. He hadn’t wanted to come on this damn camping trip. It was a cruel joke that his parents had forced him to come after what he had gone through. All he wanted to do was lie on his bed in grey haze until he felt a bit better… or maybe died.
Kane knew that lying around and moping was never the best solution to anything, but he just didn’t care. It wasn’t like anything really mattered now.
Once again, Kane’s mind drifted back to that day. It had been a routine check up at the doctor’s office. As a 23-year-old in good shape and with no family history of illness, the absolute worst Kane expected was a comment from his doctor about congestion from a recent cold.
He first noticed something was off when his doctor turned deathly quiet after examining his x-ray pictures. When Kane had questioned the doctor about his expression and demeanor, the doctor had calmly asked Kane to accompany him to the CAT scan room and return in 3 days when the results were ready.
The doctor was completely unresponsive to Kane’s nervous questioning, only insisting that it was crucial for him to return to the office in three days. Those days Kane had spent sleeplessly turning in bed. He had never seen Dr. Lemorris look so serious. For as long as he had known him Dr. Lemorris was a kindly and professional man.
His loving and understanding wife was the only comfort he had found…
With a start, Kane broke himself out of the memory. Constantly reliving it would only be more painful.
Sighing deeply, Kane acknowledged to himself that he should get up and see if his parents were done with dinner. After mustering up the motivation to stand up and move from the rock, Kane trudged back to camp.
However, when he reached the camp clearing, Kane paused. Was this the camp clearing?
It looked the same as what he remembered, there was an oddly bent tree in the corner that he remembered, a large rock with a noticeable streak of quartz, and numerous other small signs, but there was one major problem: there was not even the faintest sign of human life.
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He should have seen tents, a parked truck, a grill, and various other signs of life, but all he saw was an empty clearing. There were no crumbs, wrappers, or waste. Even the grass stood unbent and unruffled.
After standing confused for a moment, Kane concluded that he must have found a clearing that was eerily similar the one that his parents were staying in. It was simply impossible to remove signs of human life so thoroughly and completely, without even leaving a bent stalk of grass.
Still, it made no sense to him. Out of desire for seclusion, Kane had thoroughly explored the area around his family’s clearing and had seen no clearings of any kind. He hadn’t even been that far from the camp while he was sitting on the rock and brooding. There was just no way this checked out.
But after another few minutes, Kane simply shook his head and decided that this must have been an extremely improbable coincidence. He decided that he would retrace his steps to the rock he had been sitting on and use that as an anchor point to find the camp. Kane’s tired body rebelled at the idea of so much walking, but he reluctantly acknowledged that this was the only way he would get back to camp.
Plus, he was getting hungry.
When he arrived at the rock, a tired Kane once again noticed an oddity, and for the first time began to feel that something strange was happening to him. He saw a softly glowing orange-yellow stone sitting directly in his field of vision.
That certainly hadn’t been there before. What in the actual hell was happening to him today? Maybe he had fallen into a Coma while he was sitting at the rock, and this was all dream. But he felt so lucid…
Kane cautiously approached the glowing rock; it didn’t seem harmful in any way, in fact, the glow it emitted was soothing and pleasant. Just looking at it seemed to soothed him and began to ease away the bone-deep exhaustion.
Just what would happen if he touched it?
Kane reached forward, basking in the radiant warmth of the stone. It called to him, promising to fix his problems and soothe his pain. But just when he was about to touch it, a small voice in Kane’s mind spoke to him, telling him that this attraction to the rock was unusual, reminding him that he knew nothing about this strange rock and that it might be dangerous.
Kane jerked back, suddenly recognizing that his attraction to this stone was completely artificial.
But just when Kane was getting ahold of himself, the stone actually levitated into the God damned air and shot toward his hand. It touched his finger and a burning heat spread through his flesh.
“Hmm, Mortal it is impressive that you were able to reject my divine influence, despite your pathetic reaction time in attempting to dodge the divine node. Perhaps I have found an interesting specimen among this fodder.”