Arrival

His mind throbbing from a piercing headache, Elroy Cairns slowly rose to conciousness.

'Where am I? What happened? I can't seem to feel anything.'

As he tried to open his eyes, he realized that something seemed to be terribly wrong: his eyes, no matter how hard he was trying, did not seem to open. However, a sudden flash of pain interrupted his efforts as some memories appeared to him.

'I see, the last thing I remember is the bus going off the road. For now, just focus on opening your eyes, you won't be able to do anything otherwise'.

Gathering his focus, Elroy once again tried to open his eyes. This time, perhaps because he was focusing his entire being on this simple task, something clicked. Although he still couldn't feel a thing, at least he had regained his vision. But this wasn't all good news either.

What he saw could only be described as a grayscale, an incredibly blurry and somewhat distorted one at that. From what he could make out of his surroundings, he appeared to be inside some kind of cave floating some two meters off the ground.

Feeling a slight pull behind him, Elroy tried to turn around which resulted in his field of vision panning around the room. Locating a tunnel to his right, he then focused on the source of the pull and was immediately surprised.

On a rough stone pillar sat a small orb that appeared to be made of glass. However, it wasn't the orb itself that surprised him, but rather the fact that it was the only thing that appeared to not be affected by the blurriness of his vision. Looking at it, he could see small clouds rotating slowly around an iridescent spark at the center of the orb. These clouds seemed to gain in substance as small wisps of fog entered the orb. Tracing the origin of the wisps, they were coming from the ground all around the room.

Looking back to the tunnel he had spotted, Elroy also noticed something: he did not appear to have a body or anything similar to one. Somewhat distressed by this realization, he wanted to move towards the tunnel but wasn't sure it was going to be possible. To his surprise, despite his lack of a body, his will to move towards the tunnel had brought him closer to it.

Continuing in this fashion, he then explored the tunnel which came to an end some thirty meters away. Although he had spotted some crevices on the side of the tunnel, perhaps large enough for a child to fit in, there didn't appear to be any other rooms than the one he came from. At the end of the tunnel, Elroy emerged in a small clearing in a forest. When he wished to go beyond the entrance and explore the surrounding area, the slight pull he had felt coming from the orb turned into a strong attraction that rooted him in place, preventing him from going further.

After struggling for some time against this force, he could only relent and head back to the room with the orb through the tunnel where he then continued to observe the orb for some time. From what he could see, the clouds within were slowly filling up the orb as wisps of fog entered it. Additionally, a portion of the wisps were directed towards the central spark which then absorbed the fog while marginally growing brighter. His vision also improved slightly whenever the spark absorbed the fog.

Feeling a slight tremor, Elroy's vision snapped towards the entrance of the tunnel as a rabbit stepped inside. Observing it, he saw that wisps of fog like the ones in the orb room were rising from the ground around the rabbit before heading down the tunnel. As if to confirm it, Elroy followed along those wisps and saw that they were indeed heading towards the orb and being absorbed by it. Going back to the rabbit, it just seemed to be wandering about the entrance of the tunnel before freezing in place. Spotting a wolf closeby in the clearing, Elroy had an inkling of what was about to happen.

The wolf suddenly dashed at the rabbit before clamping down on its neck, breaking it. At that same time, a larger burst of fog rose from the ground before heading down the tunnel which Elroy didnt fail to notice. As he examined the wolf in interest, it seemed to be bigger by around half a size than any wolf he had ever seen. From the ground around it rose more fog than had been from the rabbit previously. It then started to sniff around before growling in the direction of the tunnel and leaving.

'So this fog seems to be connected to living things huh? Being released slowly around them and in a burst upon death, the amount looks like it differs depending on the being concerned as well. But then why is the orb different? Why does the fog rise around it too?'

Going back to the orb, Elroy started to ponder before a seemingly crazy idea started to take place in his mind.

'It couldn't be alive, right?'

But as he looked at the spark inside the orb, and how it grew brighter by absorbing the fog while his vision was getting marginally better, a sinking feeling gradually came to him.

'Oh no...'

If he could sigh, Elroy would have definitely let out a depressed sigh.

[...]

After spending some time partially coming to terms with his situation, he once again started to examine the orb and the fog rising about the room. A closer examination of how the fog seemed to suggest that the fog rose cyclically from the ground whenever the clouds in the orb finished a rotation.

'There's gotta be a way for this to go faster, it is way too slow as it is now if I wish to see properly in the near future.'

Focusing him-self on making the clouds rotate faster inside the orb, nothing seemed to happen at first except the spark filickering more brightly. But then, as if something had clicked, the clouds suddenly started to accelerate around the orb. This acceleration gradually came to a stop as the clouds achieved a speed of about three times faster than previously. Confirming his idea, the fog around the room started to appear at about three times the previous rate before being absorbed by the orb. What made him most rejoice was that the spark absorbed three times more fog than before, thereby improving his vision faster.

'So I was right, the clouds turning affect this fog that comes from the earth.'

Before he could experiment any further, a feeling as if someone had just stomped on his heart overcame Elroy before being replaced with nervousness. Vision snapping to the entrance of the tunnel, some excitement started to mix in the nervousness.

Other humans, two men to be precise.

He was immediately perplexed by their choice of clothing as it definitely wasn't any style he was used to seeing previously to this. The man on the left seemed to wear some light leather armor and boots and had some knives strapped to the thighs. He held a shortbow and wore a quiver containing arrows which sat almost horizontally at the back of his waist. The other man seemed to wear a slightly heavier variant of the leather armor accompanied by some metallic plates. He held a saber in one hand and a rounded shield in the other.

The two men seemed to tense, proceeding carefully inside of the tunnel silently. The one with the shield had taken the front while the other was a slight distance behind him. With each step the two took, Elroy's nervousness seemed to grow for reasons beyond him. As they proceeded along the tunnel, the two men visibly grew more nervous and came to a stop around ten meters in.

"This isn't normal", the warrior said, "We should have already been attacked by now, this isn't like the other times Reid, I don't like it."

'They seem to speak English around here, but what does he mean attacked?' thought Elroy.

"Keep going carefully Lloyd, I have your back. There should be some ahead in any case" replied the rogue.

They started to move once again, although slightly slower and more methodically checking the sides of the tunnel. Elroy's nervousness continued to rise as they delved deeped into the tunnel, soon approaching to the twenty meter mark, while he pondered what they had meant during the short exchange he overheard.

'Apparently, they are used to this place which could be good news. However what do they think is here, I haven't seen anything that could attack a man in here.'

His nervousness continued to grow and slowly turned to fear as they came to the twenty meter mark. He started to panic as he could not understand why he was feeling such a fear for no obvious reason.