1 Witch Lady Grey

"I am disappointed in these arrivals," the melodic sigh and soft hand on my cheek causes me to awaken, sitting up from a stone bed, surrounded by yet more boulders and a red sky. A green eyed leathery old lady looks at me with intense scrutinisation, filling most of my vision, "Welcome to the Land of the Jinxed. Congratulations. You're dead."

"I'm what?" I inquire, looking down and gasping when I see that my skin is a light shade of sparkling metallic green, "I'm g-green... like an olive... am I dreaming?"

I blurt this quickly but when I look up, the witch lady is gone.

I gulp and watch her now squatting by another boulder to the right of me, next to a trickling waterfall. The witch lady awakens another lifeless body, chilling white and still as clay... that is, until the lady touches it - I mean her.

"Welcome to the land of the dead, little girl," as the lady speaks, the second girl sits up as her skin turns to a sky baby blue.

"I didn't forget!" the girl yells out while rubbing her eyes, "I didn't forget to do my chores... mama?" she opens her lids to inspect her surroundings and her jaw just drops.

I lean over to the girl with curly black hair as I whisper, "We're not on Earth. And this can't be a dream. It doesn't feel like one to me."

The girl is too scared to respond to me.

I watch as the witch lady goes to one more boulder with one more body.

A young man, perhaps the same age as us - he looks to be about 18.

"Awaken! Drool is disgusting on the Sacred Stones of Passing," the witch lady slaps this young man awake and he tumbles off his rock. His dead skin quickly turns... a normal skin tone. No rainbow colours.

"Who the hell are you...?" he gasps awake as he hides behind his side of the boulder.

"My name is Lady Grey," the witch lady twirls around in her feather dress to face all three of us, "You are three mortals with the worst luck. You all died, in one way or another. You are the Challengers. You are the Jinxed."

"This is nothing but a dream, this is just a lucid, really real dream," the girl next to me whispers this over and over to herself while she stares at her blue hands, trying desperately not to recognise how real this world was around us.

"Oh, believe me, little girl... this is more real than the Mortal Realm," Lady Grey clasps her fingers together, "This is the Land of the Jinxed. You three will challenge the Immortal Kings. Demons, to be precise. You three... are destined to k - to try. To try and kill them. I wish you the best of luck. Ta, ta!"

With her words, the boulders, the waterfall and the red sky disappear.

The three of us fall through space and time, abruptly thrust from the hands of Lady Grey, from the Sacred Stones of Passing... and we are thrust into the brutal and strange Land of the Jinxed.