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It's dark.
...
You feel your body lying sideways on cold, hard brick-like tiles.
...
Your head hurts.. You feel numb.
...
It takes you a few seconds to realise you aren't dreaming. Your stomach contracts in realization-- you can't see anything, but you quickly and panickily scramble assuming a long-sitting rest position, knees lifted.
You feel you are completely naked.
Your heart beats fast. What the fuck is going on.
Your side feels cold and sore. The air feels heavy.
You listen carefully.
...
It's completely silent.
...
The sore feeling from laying on your side subsides.
You can feel there's... something in your right shoulder. It feels odd.
You try to look down at it, despite being unable to see anything, raising your left hand from the ground to touch it.
...
Your fingertips feel a hard.. oval shape engraved into your right shoulder's flesh. You widen your eyes in surprise as you feel it. It feels odd-- A sudden, overwhelming, uncomfortable tickling feeling fills your stomach-- You feel weightless and senseless at the same time-- It terrifies you. Adrenaline kicks in, but then...
Teal light fades in around you- no, ..from you. It's... soothing. It illuminates dimly around you. You feel as if you are in an empty void... Senseless.
You look down yourself.
You're floating. Your body has turned faintly translucent, your.. skin difficult to see.. It's like the edges of your body has been replaced with a very faint teal outline, and everything between the outline is like a misty fog. At the center of your body, you can see the source of the light. A clear, beautiful, bright teal orb. It burns a black flame. The flame burns slowly.
You look up again. You look around you. What is going on..? This is so.. strange.
...
There's just.. nothing here... It's just.. empty void.
...
You feel uneasy. There's no sound or anything that gives you a sense of direction. You try to call out;
"Hello..?"
But nothing comes out. You hold your throat in surprise. You can't feel anything. It's like the outlines of your hand and throat collide, but the senses aren't there there.
...
How do you get out of here? Is this even real? Why does it seem so real...
...
This is.. this is scary.
You look down yourself again.
The beautiful orb shines brightly still. You put your hands over your stomach, but you can't reach it.
You look at it in awe for awhile. It's.. indescribable.
...
You blink and turn your attention to your shoulder. There is a notable oval there, like the one you felt before. You reach your left hand up to touch it...
You feel a sucking sensation from within-- the teal light fades, as does your strange outlined skin. A painful headache reemerges, the heavy atmosphere and cold hard floor is felt again across your back and your head. Your senses are back. It's dark, but its different than the darkness you were in before. It was like a void, like a dream. This feels like reality... and it's cold.
Still, you have no idea where you are. You can't remember anything.. your head also hurts a ton, especially the back. You realise you are lying on the floor again, now on your back. You lie across a few big, crude but smooth tiles, with coarse material between them. Small little bits of rubble annoy your skin. Stone, dirt, gravel or something. Are you underground?
You blink a few times. You try to get up again, stars appear in your eyes, you put a hand at your head. Damn, this hurts! You must have passed out and hit your head after touching that oval thing.
You suddenly hear a noise.
*scrrrrrrrrrrr*
...
What the hell was that.
...
Something slid across the floor briefly. Ahead and to the right. It sends chills down your spine.
...
You crawl back, away from it. Adrenaline kicks in.
You hit a wall-- it hurts your head, but you don't pay attention to that. You use it to get up on your feet.
Your skin feels cold from laying on the floor. Your back is covered in annoying pieces of rubble and your feet feel the cold floor, too.
...
Whatever that was, you do not want to be in here anymore.
You make your way left, away from where you think you heard the noise. You feel across the wall and use it as a guide to step away. The wall consists of larger tiles, similar to the floor, but denser. They feel like smooth stone.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
...
You hear a noise again.
*skrnkl.. skrnkl.. skrnkl*
It sounds like.. something light, and hollow walked across the floor slowly.
It was further away this time.
Your heart pounds. Your head spins from the headache.
You keep going.
...
Eventually, you hit a corner.
You stand there for a bit, breathing carefully to slowly calm down, and continue forward.
...
You hear noises again, far away, startling you.
...
They don't seem to be coming toward you.
You regain your composure and your senses. You need to get out of here.
Hands on the new wall, you feel along it as you move ahead slowly, shuffling your feet ahead one at a time, hoping only you can hear your movement. Everything hurts, but the cold temperature helps numb the pain a little. Your feet feel stiff and irritated from the floor.
You keep going.
...
A series of metal bars appear in front of you, extending from the wall. A prison cell? They sting a little to touch. They are very coarse. Maybe they're rusty.
You blindly feel lower and higher to no avail. Through the bars, you feel the wall continues.
You lightly use the bars as a guide like the wall, moving right to see where they take you.
After taking a couple steps, the bars stop. You move to the other side of the last bar, and move back to the wall in the other direction. You reach the wall. It seems the bars just extended from the wall.
You continue.
...
Shortly after, you accidentally kick your shin into the corner of an object on the floor-- it makes a loud noise. You squint in pain.
You hold onto your shin and try not to cry in pain, feeling the dent in your leg and subtle bleeding.
You look around you, hoping no one.. or.. nothing heard you...
…
You can still hear noises around you.. are they getting closer? Your heart beats faster. You have to hurry.
You bring your attention to the object, quickly trying to feel what your shin hit.
It seems to be the edge of some sort of a crude bed-like furniture. You feel some coarse, prickly sheet on the bed. Maybe you can use this as clothing.
You pull at it-- but to your terror you feel something was laying on it at the end, and pulling at it caused it to fly off-- your heart skips a beat, and you widen your eyes expecting the worst-- *CLINK, CLANK-CLANK.* -- it echoes loudly.
You stand in complete shock, for exactly one second, before bolting off in the direction in front of you.
You run straight into another set of metal bars-- *BANGGG* -- hitting your head, dropping the sheet, falling on your back.
You get up again quickly to manoeuvre outside of it, panicking wildly, once again bolting straight ahead of you in the darkness, full of adrenaline.
You hear noises sliding, shuffling and clickling over the floor-- rattles and coarse screeches. They are close. You glimpse a dark silhouette in front of you, rattling and screeching at you. You scream in panic, running around it, hoping to find the opposite end--- you see a dim light, a wooden-like door at the end, and you speed up to run for it.
You feel something hard grabbing your feet.
You SQUEAL in terror, jumping up and feeling your entire body quake, barely managing to keep yourself running.
Getting closer and closer to the door-- you suddenly feel a sharp pain at the side of your ribs. Warm fluid drips down your side, along your legs, hitting your feet-- you keep going. There is nothing else on your mind other than "keep going".
You crash into the door, finally, entering, seeing the area is dimly lit in a greyish light, before closing it behind you quickly, looking for something to block it with while panting excessively, but unable to find anything. Your chest hurts, you feel out of shape and weak.
You start to get teary, crying a little in pure frustration and overloaded by excessive emotions. You sit down against the door, crying loudly, overwhelmed, overloaded. Hoping nothing comes for you.
...
You cry and cry, it turning into sobs after awhile-- overcome by fear and worried if you are going to face whatever that was at any second. You feel despair, hoping to just die quickly and painlessly. But there is no noise behind you. You feel so scared. Is it coming? Are they coming?
...
After some time, you clear your eyes and throat, sniffling, and look in front of you.
...
The room you are in is small, with a grey stone brick tiled wall, hefty stone tile flooring featuring a slightly raised circular podium engraving, about as big as your left to right elbow if you held your arms out. On the walls, there are three fountain-like wall sculptures, each containing a hole. The fountain sculptures all look different, but they all have a hole at the same height, where water would normally come out. The floor beneath them have lowered spots for water to flow ahead of you, behind the stone circle, probably into a sewer of some sort.
It seems like this area is some sort of really over the top ancient bathroom, you guess people would just do their business on the ground here, but it seems completely unused if you overlook the naturally worn out-ness of everything else you've seen - or well, felt - so far.
...
Your curiosity gets the better of you. You sniffle, and make your way up to stand again.
You didn't think about it before, but there is an unnatural dim grey light in here, seemingly just filling the room, making everything in here somewhat visible. The shadows on the wall sculptures seem to indicate the light comes from the center of the room-- or at least the place where the circle engraving is. You sit down on your knees, to look at it better. There are some letters on it.
You can't really make out what it says, it seems foreign. You feel the letters denting out from the circle. The center of the circle seems to have a series of lines twirling toward the center, where a ball with a flame appears. The circle podium doesn't look out of the ordinary in any way other than that.
Turning your attention to the fountains, they doesn't reveal anything either. It is hard to make out any details with the limited lightning, but it seems you can't block the light that does somehow emanate from above the podium.
You try to step on it, almost expecting something to happen.
...
You notice your shoulder shining. The engraving in your right shoulder. The oval shape.
You look at it for a bit, before touching it with the fingertips of your left hand again. This time, your can see your vision fade to black, as the familiar tickling sensation fills your stomach.
You are back in the dreamy void.
You adjust to the senseless, uncomfortable weightlessness once more, and look at your outlined skin. You look down. The orb shines teal beautifully still.
What is this place? Why are you here? Why cant you remember anything from before you woke up in that dark room?
Before you can ponder over these questions, you notice a distinct, small red icon, floating close to you. It has flashing, changing letters with it. They keep changing between two words. You realise you can read what they say. They flash between.. "Warning". "Bleeding". "Warning".. It has a red line that goes down to your side. There is also a golden icon, appearing in front of you.
You follow the red line, down to the place where you felt the sharp pain earlier. The red icon and its red line moves according to where you look, to stay in your view.
Your eyes widen as you realise there's something telling you you are bleeding. You try to reach out to the icon, but colliding with it causes it to disappear, retracting toward your injury, with a red label fading away, saying "Dismissed" where the icon used to be.
The golden icon remains. It has a label under it.. "Shrine". You reach toward it, and it emits a flash-- the label changes; "Activated", and the icon disappears.
This place.. it must be something that is helping you. But, you need to return to stop the bleeding. How do you return? Do you just put your fingertips on your shoulder? You try doing so, worried about the bleeding.
The void fades away, and a faintly teal-lighted room appears.
Your senses return, and they are painful as hell. You are on your back. Your body hurts. You feel really cold..
Right! The bleeding!
You look to your side. You are lying in a puddle of blood. Oh god. There is blood everywhere.
You immediately press your hand to your side. You can't possibly survive this much blood loss. "You idiot!" you cough out. "How could you not notice you were bleeding!"
You think to yourself: Did I pass out? Do I pass out from going between the.. void and reality?
You still can't believe any of this is happening.
Am I gonna die?
You grunt in pain, uncomfortable from the headache and being smeared in your own blood. You feel weak...
Hah... well, there's not much for it. You've had quite the odd experience. You chuckle a little. It's all been so absurd it makes you audibly laugh.
You tilt your head a bit, looking toward the podium.
The lightning has changed. But there is also something new.
Three glowing orbs have appeared in the fountains where there used to be holes.
--#0#--