When the sky shattered, I was having a fairly normal day. Hanging about at the university after a biology lecture, just across the street from my old high school, taking a moment every now and then to stop and smell the roses or admire the grafiti.
I quite liked the architecture on these old buildings, modeled after what you would expect to see on a medieval spanish castle. It did paint a contrast with the more modern buildings, having modern monumental monoliths of concrete next to walls of plastered murals. My next class was precisely in one of those modern blocks of concrete, in this case at the opposite end of the campus…
My relationship with calculus was akin to that between a man and an ex-girlfriend. The kind where both parties decided to cut it off, by sending a text to the other party explaining that they wanted to stay friends. Needless to say I had a small part of me that hated the class, but the majority of me was perfectly fine with it. I was always good at math, and the actual class was perfectly fine. What that little part of me always hated with a flaming vengeance, was the commute.
As previously stated, it was on the opposite side of campus, meaning that if my previous class took a tiny bit too long, I ended up in that awkward moment where you step in as the teacher is starting her lecture, and everyone looks at the door. So, you just kind of pretend nothing is out of the ordinary and walk to your seat, with everyone keeping their eyes on you as you cut across the classroom.
So there I was, rushing along, occasionally waving at the one or two people I recognized. You knew every kid in your grade back in highschool, but in the university you’d be lucky to know everyone in the same lecture as you. I didn't waste much time stopping to chat, though I really didn't have much time to waste at all. Luckily I knew this place like the back of my hand, since I was practically raised here, and going through all the shortcuts I knew got me there in the nick of time.
The class itself was normal and calculus so let's skip that thank you very much.
From there, a quick stroll to the library to unwind and maybe finish some homework. Taking out my laptop, I notice the sky seems very cloudy, not a hint of blue as far as the eye can see. Maybe it would be better to stay under the roof for now, since this was a tropical island made up of 50% mountain rainforest and 50% wetland, or in other words, it rains a lot.
Booting up my computer, I began to browse the internet randomly, jumping through the reference section of wikipedia for a place to start with my homework. I definitely didn't immediately get distracted by memes and videogames… definitely not.
Soon enough, my battery begins to fail and my PC goes into power saving mode. The glare from the sky outside makes the darkened screen difficult to read. Stepping outside the clouds seemed to have opened up a bit, giant cracks of sunlight shining through. That was what must have caused the glare.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
On the horizon, the light was noticeably redder. Strange, because it was still around midday and the sky should still be blue, not red like in the evening… and now it's becoming orange... and yellow, and green, and blue, indigo, and finally violet…
The blank sky was now covered in a spiderweb of cracks, all shining in a kaleidoscopic array of colors. To put it in a slightly clearer way, imagine seeing a rave from outside a cracked window, with all the lights shining through the cracks. It even came complete with a penetrating thrum, as the sky finally burst and the colors consumed everything…
I woke up with a start. The lights were out and I was laying in a strangely unfamiliar hallway. It seemed like the hallways in the older buildings in the school, but more… realistic. As if these walls were actually part of some palace from the middle ages. The hallway was lit via torchlight, small holes in the roof acting as ventilation. They weren't really that big, and any modern civil engineer would cringe at how inadequate they would be in the case of an actual fire, with their slight whistle as the wind blows through them...
Then I heard the buzzing.
A giant dragonfly appeared, its mouthparts spitting small gouts of flame. Its wings almost stretched from one side of the hallway to the other, and its “tail” swinging around like a scorpion.
I tried to stay calm, look at it and try to find an opening. That's what the main character does in these kinds of scenarios right? Well I couldn't do that. With my shaking hands I took my backpack off my back and held it in my arms. My strategy was simple, wait for it to get within reach, and mash its head to the wall.
Unfortunately, I miscalculated by a second, getting a good gout of flame on my arm before the dragonfly was hit by the backpack. It didn't seem to be dead yet, but its wings were crumpled like old newspaper and its abdomen area was bent in ways it was not supposed to bend.
Meanwhile my own arm was instantly beginning to redden and blister in the time it took the little bastard to reach the wall, and it hurt like a bitch. The nagging kind, since I could feel the excruciating pain, and that arm was basically unusable for now, but I could still stand instead of collapsing in agony, probably something to do with the fact that the cause of said pain is still in front of me…
“You little fucker”
Before the backpack could even finish coming down from the last swing, I brought it in for a finisher, smashing the things head into the wall with a satisfying crack… which sounded suspiciously loud and suspiciously different from the sound it made when I hit it the first time. Coming closer and opening the biggest pocket of the backpack, I saw tragedy.
My PC was broken into pieces, shattered on the remains of the bugs head. I would ask for a moment of silence, but that was when the pain hit and I collapsed in agony now that the thing that caused said agony was in no position to cause any more…
I was so busy thrashing about until I blacked out that I didn't notice the strange screens that appeared in front of me.