I wake up and my mind is bleary, foggy, and all sorts of ways and to the piercing beam of light shining through the blinds strikes in the right location and it feels like an icepick through my eye. I think I hear a storm siren outside of my room slowly rising in pitch.

My roommate is still asleep breathing softly with his legs up against the wall. Weird. I winced at the piercing noise of the siren as it slowly got louder and louder, building to a wailing scream. I glance down at my clock on the windowsill and read aloud to myself “6:45 AM” why in the world did I wake up this early.

My train of thought is interrupted when I hear that droning, piercing, devilish wail that insists on waking me up from my beauty sleep. My roommate is still sleeping, legs up on the wall, and is that drool coming out of his mouth? God. I swear that guy never wakes up no matter what. I once tripped with my clean dishes coming back into this room and they spilled and crashed everywhere. The sound was deafening. He didn’t even twitch.

I slide off my bunk down to the floor where my dirty old slippers have been rotting away and slip them on my feet. I make my way over to the bathroom and take a sip, swish it, spit it, and then look up at myself. Eye bags hang from my eyes, they’re my staple, the dirty blonde hair resting just above my eyebrows seems to have a mind of its own. Blue eyes stare back at me creased with wrinkles that I am too young to have and filled with a tired dull flame that most college students seem to carry around like a weight over their shoulders.

I pull out my toothbrush and grin, there is no better feeling than brushing your teeth in the morning and getting that sharp minty breath. I glance down at my phone and see that my professor canceled my 8 AM. YES! My feet pitter and patter as I do a little jig in the bathroom. The best news that I could hear this morning was what my professor just delivered to me. I finished brushing my teeth and put away my dob kit and went back into my room to put some clothes on. I grabbed my backpack and keys, put on my watch, and headed out the door.

Spring is amazing, the fresh clean air after the rain showers as well as the nipping winds that blow my hair around make me feel alive. I bypass Nollen Hall and Moore Hall, the nicest dorms on campus, I even heard that Moore dorms have their own living rooms. I get to the intersection of the road and my path and cross over, the cafeteria peaks out just over the trees as I get a good view of where I will be eating my eggs and bacon. God. Nothing could get better than bacon. Bacon on toast, bacon on pancakes, bacon on pizza, bacon on salads, you just cannot go wrong. In my two years on this campus the highlight of my week is the heavenly scent of crunchy delightful bacon.

I get to the cafeteria and scan in. I hurry on over to the line for bacon and my mouth is practically a waterfall at this point. The thought of the crunchy yet juicy bacon occupies my mind, in my hurry to get to the bacon I remembered the dastardliest, gut-wrenching bit of news that I could get this morning. On Wednesday they don’t serve bacon, I open my phone glance down and see in big white mocking letters: Wednesday. Something breaks inside of me. The will to continue with the day is shattered and my resolve weakens. The bones in my body turn to soup, I am but a limp noodle floating around without the sweet delights of bacon. Sighing, I get in line and scoop some wet eggs onto my plate and some dry pancakes and go sit down. The food enters my mouth, but it feels like ash compared to the wonderfulness of bacon.

My phones pulled up to my emails and I start reading through them. Work. More work. Amazone deals. Nigerian Prince. All the same stuff every time. The sweet refreshing taste of cranberry juice hits my tongue and gullet as I take a sip. This stuff is the best; between apple and cranberry juice I am on team berry all day.

Without my 8 AM my day feels empty, what am I even supposed to do with my day? As I am thinking someone plops down on the other side of the table. I look away from my phone and up at this newcomer. I grin as I see it is Zac, he has got this weird habit of looking at you from behind his glasses and scrunching up his nose real high. Kind of makes him look like a pig.

“Zac, they have no bacon!” I whined.

“Magnus, we have been over this a million times bacon is not that good.”

My hand goes over my heart and my face turns white.

“How dare you speak blasphemy about such a sacred food. Bacon is a gift from the gods.”

All he does is roll his eyes.

“Did you hear about those weird power outages in Northern Ukraine? They seem to be connected to some inter planetary magnetic pulse, but they cannot seem to find where it is coming from. Hundreds of people just gone out of the blue and all the.”

A little bit about Zac, this man is always up to date on everything I swear he always has the news on no matter what he is doing. Sleeping, the news; eating, the news; in class, the news. It never ends, but sometimes it's a bit much. He has been looking into these weird power outages that happen all around the globe, always ending up with a couple of people missing.

“You know Zac that sounds super interesting and all but let's get back to this bacon thing.”

Zac just shakes his head and mutters something about me being a pigheaded, stubborn, bacon loving freak. I mean, he’s not wrong but I won’t ever let him know that. Just then the building shakes and the lights flicker. Dust falls from the ceiling and coats my arms in a thin layer of gray. As I glance down at them, I see that they’re getting a bit thin, I got to start hitting the gym more I grumble.

The building continues to shake and at this point the tables start to rattle, and my food is sliding around everywhere. Then all goes quiet, everything stops moving and the only noises are empty cups slowly coming to a halt.

“What in the world was that?”

Zac looks at me with wide eyes and a fearful expression on his face.

“Magnus do you think that it's the same stuff that is happening in Ukraine, Baghdad, and practically everywhere else in the world.”

I glance around and something is missing from the atmosphere, the quiet whirring of the AC, the turning of the slushy machine, as well as the electric grills that always seem to be sizzling. Most importantly, the lights aren’t turning back on. I would’ve thought that the college had something as a backup, but I guess not. Cheap ass college.

“Zac I am sure that it’s not like that at all its probably just some freak accident with the power lines.”

“What in the world magnus? It's a clear bright beautiful day and you’re saying that it’s some freak accident? Are you crazy?”

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At this point Zac is wringing his hands and a sheen of sweat has built up. Let me tell you Zac is not the fittest of people, always being made fun of for his skinny build, but it really takes something to rattle him.

“Calm down there is no way that it’s anything more than an accident. I mean look at the people around us.”

I look up and see people quietly whispering to each other and trying to check their phones. I reach down to look at mine and it won’t turn on. The thing must be dead. I looked around and asked Zac.

“Can you check your phone to see if it’s working?”

He glances down and turns on his phone, yet nothing appears on the screen. A dark void laughing back at us showing our uneasy expressions.

“Magnus, I don’t know if this place is safe anymore.”

I look at him and roll my eyes confident that there is nothing to be worried about.

“Zac, nothing is happening it’s most definitely just a power outage caused by some water spill or something.”

Suddenly, a crack fills the silence of the cafeteria, and a shimmering dark portal seems to bisect the middle of the dining hall. The outsides crackles with a dark energy that seems to lick around it like a flame.

An invisible force picks me up by my chest and drags me towards the portal. I try to grab onto anything but as I scrabble and try to find purchase on a chair or a table, I find nothing. It's as if all the chairs are conveniently a centimeter outside of my grasp. As I stare into the eye of the portal I see a glimpse of a massive eye, a behemoth of life, a deep pool of red with flecks of gold, I freeze in place, but as soon as I notice it disappears into the gloom. As soon as it disappeared, I too vanished into the glowing disk of darkness against my own will.

Briefly I glimpse a terrifying creature of leviathan proportions in the distance, taller than mountains and broader than lakes. It creaks as it moves its spindly appendages. More leviathans linger in the background, roaring, shrieking and trilling.

All it takes is a second to take this in and then the pain starts. The horrifying, gut-wrenching, whining pain that seems to drill into every part of my body at once and turn me inside out. My mind shatters and is put back together in seconds. My legs contort and my arms are splayed out and I catch a glimpse of my tormentor. A massive creature who dwarfs the leviathans in the distance. His red eyes flecked with gold stare back at me.

I too stared right back at the creature unwilling to bend to his torment. My eyes creased in pain and my body trembling, but I refuse to give in to this devilish being. All I could think about was the horrible pain.

After a while my mind goes blank, I start to not feel anything, all I can sense is a dark space within my head. As I look inwards in this haven I see a dark lump floating in the air. It seems to be pitted with scars and empty, it almost looks like a lump of coal.

I try reaching out with my thoughts but nothing, the lump of coal just sits there. I try to prod it with my mental fingers, but they seem to pass through. I had no clue how I had gotten to this place and no clue as to what was happening outside of my body. All I knew was that this was a reprieve from the all-consuming pain that existed outside of this place.

Suddenly, I see a mote of light float from somewhere into the dark floating sphere and the area around where it touches light up. Not for long though as the light seeps away almost as if the solid sphere is consuming it.

My vision gets jarred back to what I am experiencing, and my mind is awash in new pain, all I could hold onto was that image of the mote of light touching the little floating sphere.

I open my eyes and out of the corner of my eye I see a golden portal shimmer open, and a figure clad in white and golden armor from head-to-toe steps out.

“Vile demon you shall not have what you please from these mere mortals” the figure shouts.

The figure is glowing now, and a ball of light starts to form in his hands.

I soon noticed the others around me floating in the air as if suspended by a string. I'm hoping against all hope that Zac is not stranded here with me, tormented in this violent hell. Just as I think that I notice him stuck in place just like me, unconscious with drool coming out of his mouth. He looks like a speck of dust in comparison to this monster's eye. I imagine I must look the same.

The monster then groans, and a deep base trilling starts. My head is whipped back from the force of the sound and my ears screech and begin to bleed.

“Valanor, what shall you do to me, the accords prevent such interference from the realms above.” The demons voice echoes like nails on a chalkboard.

“Mal’zak, the accords also prevent ravaging planets who lack the ability to even perform first order magic. Much less a magicless sphere like tera.” His voice rings with a sound of tenor a clear pitch.

My chest yearns with the silent hope that this figure of light will save me and Zac from this living hell that we have found ourselves in.

The ball of light in the hands of Valanor has been steadily growing since he began his conversation with this monster, and it seems that it is beginning to destabilize. Flashes of red and orange are being emitted from the center of the yellow sphere.

Just then I catch a glimpse of how gargantuan this monster really is, his serpentine body extends till it disappears into the gloom and two massive legs pierce into the stone beneath him. Spikes piercing the clouds flow down his spine. The wings are the scary part. They dwarf his already leviathan-like body. Bright red, tipped with spines, and glowing with what looks like glyphs. My mind goes blank at the size of this creature.

Valanor shouts “Let them go and return them to their proper place Mal’Zak. Do not make me interfere.”

I could faint with how happy I was to hear that single sentence. But confused at how a man no larger than me could do anything to a creature of this size. My brain fried at this point from fear, pain, confusion, and stress begins to panic.

“No” the demons voice echoes screeching of metal tearing on my ears.

A fresh breeze brushes over me, and I see Valanor’s hand held out towards us, his fingers glowing with light. Somehow a momentary calm falls over me and I watch as the next scenes play out. Almost dazed at what begins to unfold.

Valanor vanished and appeared above the head of the monster and slammed the ball into the scaled snout. A blinding flash encompasses my vision and then I see the monster standing there unphased. Scorch marks on his snout but seemingly grinning. A disgusting snarl fills his face.

The monster snarls and Valanor disappears, flung into the ground cratering the area around him. No movement by the monster, no indication that anything happened besides a slight glow of the leftmost glyph on his wings.

My hopes fall and I glance over at Zac to see him awake with fear in his eyes as he recognizes what just happened. The best bet that we had to being saved was just pancaked by an enormous flying dragon. My thoughts seem to flicker and fade as the attention of the enormous dragon is back on us. Seemingly out of nowhere a beam launches from the crater and strikes the beast in the eye.

A shaking roar of fury resounds as Mal’Zak launches up and disappears into the sky. A dark blur moving about the clouds circling us as its wings begin to glow. This time not just one glyph but hundreds of them light up. All I could think was how could something so gargantuan move so quickly.

We begin to fall as whatever magic was holding us suspended was cut short. My heart lurches into my mouth as we begin a freefall. The terrifying idea that this may be my last moment lances through my mind.

Just then Valanor teleports in front of me and snatches me from the air. He then teleports once more and places me on the floor. Before I could turn around and thank him, he was gone. One by one, I could see him teleporting around and placing us on the ground.

He appears back in front of us and glances up seeing the glowing clouds with the dark shape of the dragon circling above us. His wings were softly glowing and building in intensity leaking a radioactive blue color.

Valanor quickly pulls out some chalk and sketches a complex shape on the floor and presses his hand into the middle. A light seeps out from where his hand was placed and follows the lines drawn on the floor. As soon as all the lines were lit, a portal arc rises from the floor almost melting out of the ground in a reverse fashion.

Valanor turns around and looks at us “Get in you worthless whelps if you want to live or choose to stay with the dragon and his spell that is about to come crashing down on us” the anger evident in his voice.

Before I could think of what was happening, I was pushed into the portal by the press of bodies behind me.