Falling through the sky isn't as fun as it may sound. His eyes where wide open as he plummeted through the air, his heart hammering in his chest. He was screaming in terror and disbelief as the wind whipped him around like a giant would a child's toy. Rain stung his body and face as he fell without any ability to control anything about his perilous descent . Brief periods of white flashes as lightning streaking in-between clouds revealed a black sea of craggy and angry looking clouds the size of mountains in every direction. The sonic boom of every bolt of lightning making his ears ache with a ferocity he had never experienced before. A purple light filled his vision as a spiderweb of lightning spiraled out from above him like a beautiful and deadly kaleidoscope. In the center of the display sat a large sphere of pure white. Carters head spun and from the quick series of events that had happened in the last few seconds. Carter burst through the black cloud cover like a comet, streaking towards a rapidly expanding and approaching mountain range. "What the fuck is going on" he shouted into the rain and lightning filled sky, wishing for everything to pause for a second so he could process anything at all. His wishes where not met as the mountain rushed up to meet him like an outstretched spear of rock. A moment before impacting the hard rock everything went black and Carter knew no more.

Carters eyes shoot open to find darkness. Pure pitch black darkness. "What was that, and where am I?" Carter thought perplexed. Looking around all he could see was darkness in every direction. All carter could feel was cold hard stone under his body. "Am I dead?" He felt his body for any damage. There was not a single scratch on him, at least from what Cart could feel. All his clothes where gone and he was as naked as the day he was born. Carter shakily stood up, a sudden burst of vertigo reminding him about the recent plunge he had undertaken. He fell to the side arms flailing, falling against a rock wall. Carter leaned stayed like that until the spell of dizziness passed and then slowly pushed away from the solid rock wall. "well if I am then fuck me, because this sucks" Carter croaked out. He stretched his arm out and felt the cool rock wall come into contact. He looked around to try to spot anything, anything at all. All Carter could see was varying shades of black in every direction. The solid wall of darkness had an ethereal quality to it, almost seeming to shift and sway as if there where things moving around in it. Almost looking like living specters.

Carter started walking with his fingers trailing along the wall of rock. His footfalls where echoing around making it seem like there was another person walking up to him. Carter stopped walking and listened, all he could hear was his heart hammering in his ear. Blackness swirling around him, his mind conjuring faces of monsters and phantoms. He started walking again but was looking around him with panic rising inside of him. The wall of blackness was alive with movement and shifting blackness. His breath catching in his throat and cold sweat beaded on his forehead. Carter started to slowly run with his fingers brushing against the wall. The sound of running was reverberating in his ear and he could swear there was someone just behind him. He picked up the pace until he was running at full tilt. All he could think about was a hand reaching out and grabbing his throat, his mind clouding over in panic. A sudden cold prickling along the back of his neck made him spin around to try and protect himself, arms flailing against the blackness, when his feet tripped over themselves. Carter rolled and skidded into a pile of tangled limbs and terrified gasps. He waited there, breath ragged, with his eyes screwed shut and teeth clenched as he waited for the blow to fall. Carter stayed like that for a while until his breath started to return to normal and the panic clouding his mind cleared away slowly like a dam with a hole in the wall. He flopped onto his back looking up into the blackness not for the first time that day and wandered what he had done to be in the situation he is in now. With a loud sigh Carter climbed once again to his feet and stretched his arm out and found the rock wall he had been following.

He walked on for what must have been a few hours, time difficult to gauge in pitch blackness, until he saw a tiny pinprick of light in the distance. He sucked in a sharp breath and knuckled his eyes and looked again seeing the pinprick of light remaining. He quickly starts walking again, a bit of a spring in his step and the darkness completely forgotten. Eventually the light started getting bigger and he could see that he was in a tunnel of sorts, rough rock in every direction.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Carters breath caught in his chest as he emerged out of the tunnel onto a outcropping where he could see the cavern below. Bright light stinging his eyes, he blinked away the pain and looked around the rugby pitch sized cavern below. Bright white light streamed from giant cyan speckled crystals set into the ceiling about 10 stories from the floor, light up a veritable forest filling the cavern. There was a babbling brook meandered through the cavern, disappearing into the rock walls. Carter was flabbergasted, mouth hanging open, eyes wide, taking in he beautiful vista. Not believing what he was seeing Carter just stood there for a good while, slowly drinking in all the details he could. Strangely the forest was filled with shades of crimson and silver instead of greens and browns. The forest was strangely silent, almost as if there were no living things below the canopy. Roughly in the center of the forest there looked to be a clearing of sorts, with a twinkling of light in middle. Carter decided that he needed to take a closer look, he saw a ramp leading down into the forest depths below and started walking. "Let's hope it's not full of man eating wolves or something" Carter said to himself.

The ramp ran along the perimeter of the cavern at a comfortable incline, so Carter could walk look at his surroundings when walking down. The crimson canopy was almost within reach when Carter accidentally kicked a stone over the edge of the ramp. The forest erupted in a cacophony of squawking and squeeking. Multicolored birds burst from the foliage, flapping and racing around in the air, forming a sort of hurricane of birds. Carter looked on in wonder at this, his jaw hanging open at the sight of thousands of birds flying. The noise reverberating around the cavern forming almost a solid wall of sound.

Carter carried on walking, his mind full of wonder at the birds. He descended further into the forest and discovered that the trees where standing almost 40 meters in height, making the cavern deeper than he originally thought. The trees had long thick silvery trunks terminating in a generous canopy of crimson red leaves. " Holy shit, these trees are massive, reminds me of boababs back home." He casts his eyes down in thought of home. "How did i get here? Wherever the hell here is". No answer was forthcoming so Carter decided to keep on walking.

The ramp finally wound it's way down to floor level. Carter stepped off the ramp and his bare feet found soft crimson padding underneath. He bent down to examine the foliage and found what appeared to be clumps of moss in amongst a collection of a grassy plant, growing flat on the ground and yet had a surprising springiness to it. He picked a blade of the "grass" and found that it was actually a bit more of a fern than a grass. He straightened, dropped the frond and looked around again at his surroundings. He saw the birds circling overhead in between the gaps in the canopy. Carter placed a hand on the tree trunk and found it cool to the touch, almost like metal would. " Is this tree made of metal? How would something like that even be possible?".

Carter took his hand away and decided to walk in the direction of the sparkling clearing he had seen earlier. He walked for a good 10 minutes before seeing a light flash through a gap in the trees. He went towards it and gasped as he walked aaround a tree trunk and found himself in a clearing and in the centre of the clearing was a multifaceted and glittering high wingback throne. Carter walked up to the throne slowly, the throne appeared to be made up of a diamond like substance, except the throne was pulsing with light. Almost like a slow explosion , the light would start at the base of the throne and pulsate towards the top. Carter was staring at the throne when he realized that the pulses where in exact accord with his own heartbeat. His eyes widened as his hand slowly started to stretch towards the diamond surface without his control. He couldn't help himself and as his hand made contact with the throne, his head shot back and his eyes rolled into his head as a blinding pain lanced through Carters body like a lightning bolt and rooted him in place. As soon as the pain receded Carter collapsed into a heap on the ground, unconscious.