It wasn’t too difficult getting out of the cave. The cave that reached from the main cavern went straight out into the outdoors. The issues that followed, however, felt endless.

Oakley’s first test was to somehow find somewhere to hide before the beings he had heard, roaring on their way over to the site of the attack, arrived.

Oakley hesitated for but a moment as he left the cave, just to make sure the beings weren’t in within his eyesight; only then did he sprint for the cover of the closest trees.

The area around the cave was littered in trees. The lair was located within the center of a forest. Oakley had no idea how large the forest was, but he only cared about catching up to Paerilith and getting himself home.

Luckily, Oakley had time to duck behind a bush and watch through the branches as the two beasts that landed near the mouth of the cave rushed in urgently.

As had been his fear, the creatures resembled a striking similarity to the felled dragon in the cave he had just emerged from. He decided it was best if he didn’t wait around to be spotted when they finally decided to re-emerge from the cave. He picked the direction with the quickest route away from the cave and just ran. He had no clue which direction he was meant to be running in, nor did he feel like he had the time to stop and look for Paerilith’s tracks to follow. Oakley just kept his sights on the next tree in front of him and then the one after that, over and over again.

It was night-time, as Oakley began his run through the forest, and it was the longest night he could remember suffering through. He only knew of the bare basics when it came to survival- leftover skills from summer camps as a child. He didn’t think the skills would ever be useful, what with Earth having modern homes and no reason to go out into the woods alone.

Oakley was no longer certain if he was even still on Earth. He had two working theories in his mind. He continued to think them over as something to keep his mind occupied and distracted, instead of spiraling into a panic.

His first idea was that he had somehow travelled through time. Perhaps the fairy tales of dragons and knights and magic were all true, humanity had just lived past those days and turned them into myth.

His second idea was the one he was more worried about. The possibility that he wasn’t on Earth at all anymore. That way, he would know a grand total of zero things about this new place. Where he was, how to navigate, whether physics worked in the same way. Clearly dragons existed- but what else did?

Oakley was still clinging onto the scrap of hope he had that this was all some elaborate dream. As each tree passed him by and the night grew colder, that hope began to fade- and there were a lot of trees.

Once he felt that he had put enough distance between him and the cave of angry -or dead- dragons, Oakley decided to bed down until sunrise. It wasn’t unbearably cold, but it was at least warmer than many British nights. He still had the items that he had stolen from the hoard, clutched within his hands. It was too dark, so he would need to inspect them properly when the morning came around. Some were too large to fit in his pockets, so Oakley just held tightly onto whatever he had grabbed and tried to get comfortable, lying down beside a tree, to sleep.

The first thing that Oakley felt, when he woke up that morning, was disappointment. He had kept his eyes closed, hoping that he would be waking from a dream- though he could feel the irritating knots of the tree pressing against his upright back.

Opening his eyes to the remainder of the forest and not to the fields he’d hoped he fell asleep in, beside his daughter’s favorite tree, all Oakley could feel was the sinking disappointment that threatened to pull him under. He looked down, saddened at not being back at home with his family, with no clue as to how to get back to them, and saw the collection of trinkets he’d picked up from the hoard.

Had Oakley known more about dragons in the myths they told on Earth, he would have been more apprehensive about the items resting on his lap. Instead, he knew nothing of curses and magical effects, so all he saw was the opportunity to get some money in this new world and use that money to try and track down Paerilith.

He hadn’t been able to pick up much from the hoard, but he was sure it was worth a pretty penny. The first item he looked at, setting the rest down on the ground by his side, was an ornately decorated golden necklace. It had the tiniest and most elaborately carved detailing all over the main piece of the necklace. It was a locket, though he couldn’t work out how to open it at a first glance. He didn’t want to break it with his prying, so he slipped the gold chain around his neck and picked up the glass bottle. It had a glass stopper placed in the top of it, fastened by a metal clasp. Inside, was a misty blue liquid. The bottle was bulbous, reminding Oakley of the kinds of glass bottles he would see in science experiments on television. The liquid, if anything, looked like Gatorade to him. He knew better than to drink an unknown substance, however, but if he had to go much longer without eating or drinking- he would have to reconsider his stance on drinking the liquid.

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Finally, Oakley picked up the collection of coins he’d managed to grab. He hoped that they might give some insight into the land he was in, but he could see that these coins wouldn’t be much help with that. Some were clearly older than the others, some shaped differently, some decorated in various fashions. Oakley could see that they were all made out of metal, some gold, some silver and some looked like brass.

There were a couple other kinds of metals, but Oakley didn’t know enough about them to have a chance at guessing. Some coins were cut into squares, others into circles with holes in them. He would need to find someone he could trust to help sort through them with him. His problem there was that he knew nobody at all here.

Oakley sighed, pocketing the coins and standing up to stretch out his aching bones. He wasn’t too old, so he wasn’t that used to having a bad back, but his sleep had been, understandably, dreadful.

Oakley looked around as he stretched, trying to remember which way he had been walking. He didn’t care which direction he was moving, as long as he didn’t end up back at the cave. He decided that he would restart his hunt for Paerilith once he’d found out where he was.

Now that Oakley could see around him, he knew that this place couldn’t possibly be on Earth. The scenery looked normal, with grass growing tall and unkempt, and trees rising up above him. If his eyes lingered for too long, however, he started to notice the things that would stand out back on Earth.

A horse was grazing a good few trees away. Oakley could only see its hindquarters from the angle he was walking at, but he didn’t want to startle it anyway, so he slowed down and tried to walk quietly. No matter his efforts, the horse looked up and back at Oakley, proving that it was no horse at all, but a unicorn.

It was at that moment that Oakley decided he was definitely in a coma of some sort. He must have been hit by lightning during the rainstorm and was suffering in hospital because of it. He could barely accept that dragons were real, but unicorns as well? It just felt too neat, too much like a fairy tale.

Oakley was still thinking this as the unicorn scampered off. He thought it was likely scared off by him, until the ground shuddered. It had spotted something far scarier than him, and coming in their direction. The ground shook again and Oakley took the hint to begin running, too.

Every time Oakley looked over in the direction of the stomping, he could only see trees. From the sound and feeling of the shudders, Oakley had thought the beast would be close behind, but he could only ever see trees all around.

The creature roared and Oakley turned to look up at it. He hadn’t spotted it because he’d been looking for something on the ground. The creature he saw was on the ground, but tall enough to feel like it was moving through the trees, too.

Made out of wood, like twisting bark, carved into a living being, Oakley saw something that resembled what could best be described as a dinosaur. Its two base feet were planted in the ground, but uprooted at each step. It had tendrils of grasping branches for arms and a head with deep, sunken shadows for eyes. Oakley had no idea if it had seen him, but he figured it had already been chasing him. Now that he knew what was chasing him, though he didn’t know what it was, he continued to run with renewed vigor. He was able to look out for it properly as he darted through the trees, trying to get away from a moving tree. He wondered what dinosaur-based trees even ate, as he ran, but he figured he didn’t want to find out.

Tiring of running and realizing he wasn’t going to outpace the dinosaur, Oakley dodged behind a larger tree trunk, cowering behind it and hoping the dinosaur would lose track of him for long enough for him to escape.

The beast thundered past, barely even hesitating as it lost sight of its quarry. Oakley wondered if he was even the prey for this beast after all, or simply a distraction on the way to a greater goal.

Oakley waited by that tree for a little longer, to catch his breath, and felt his throat scratching in desperation. He would need to drink sooner or later. The glass bottle in his coat pocket taunted him slightly. Perhaps, he would need to drink at least a little bit of it. He didn’t want to starve of dehydration. He’d rather succumb to some strange magical potion than to dehydration. He didn’t even know if it was going to be bad for him.

By the time the break had ended, Oakley held the glass bottle in his hands, temptation winning over his mind. He needed something to quench his thirst. Anything.

Oakley undid the clasp and pulled the glass stopper away from the bottle opening. He could smell a strange salty smell, like seawater, enter his nostrils.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” He said to himself as he closed his lips around the rim of the bottle and took a swig of the mystery liquid.

Oakley took two deep gulps before re-stoppering the bottle. He couldn’t waste all of it. He didn’t know how long he had to walk and didn’t want to run out before he reached wherever he was going.

For the rest of that day, the next day and into the night that followed, Oakley walked in as straight of a direction as he could. He took a mental note of the strange occurrences within the forest. They may not have been strange to those in this world, but to him- from Earth- they ranged from magical to horrifying. All manner of creatures crept just out of sight. Close enough to tease at his peripherals, but never in full-view.

Finally, as he was trying to bed down for that third night since arriving in this strange place, he heard a growl. It was low, rumbling away in the throat of some disgruntled animal. Then Oakley heard another and another, until four separate growls have joined the first. A harmony of hostility. Tired enough to be concerned about passing out anyway, Oakley looked over to see what was creating the noise.

He'd been surrounded by dogs. Rabid dogs. Almost at the size of wolves, but without a speck of fur on their bodies. They didn’t even appear to have skin, their muscles working away in full view.

Oakley didn’t hesitate this time. The dogs looked ready to shred him to pieces. The one he was eyeing was drooling slightly. Oakley made up his mind in an instant.

He ran.