1 Chapter 1

Particles of dust settled on the ground, even as the various creatures of the woodlands scurried about in the dark of the night. The ambient noises of the woods were strangely absent. That could be attributed to the deep crater that was still smoking from prior impact. And then all of the sudden, a voice rang out with a rather loud groan.

"Urgghhh… what the… heck… hit me?"

The person seemed quite bemused, judging by their tone of voice.

"I'd say it definitely wasn't anyyyyyy…" The vague figure, shadowed by the night, sat up and raised obscured hands to their face… And was now busy staring slack jawed, even as they waved their hands in shock, "What?" Then they saw the rest of their area, "What the heck? Why am I lying on the dirt? And where the heck is this?"

Even with the limited moonlight flitting through the canopies, it revealed a vague and shadowed figure with a small build. With smooth locks of hair as white as snow, and with skin that was just as pale, the male –for he was indeed a male- had taken to just looking at his surroundings, jaw agape.

"Whaaaaaa- urk!"

His arising panic was cut off by a splitting headache.

"GUH!!"

And suddenly, he was hit by a barrage of memories. Memories that were not his own, he knew, because in those memories, in those thousands of years of experience, he saw in each and every one of them… that he had skeletal hands.

After a few moments of just acclimatizing to the sudden barrage of information, the memories settled in his head, and then he suddenly remembered,

"Oh gosh, was that a skeleto-."

Before he could even begin to truly panic the heck out, he was hit by yet another barrage of memories… again.

"urk."

But this this time, he knew, somehow, that they were his own. Probably because there was a deep seated sense of familiarity there, unlike the previous memories, where he felt like he was only an observer, an outsider looking in. This time however, whenever he saw a particular memory, it would invoke a feeling of familiarity that was quite calming and relaxing. This feeling, in turn, caused him to finally snap out of his trance, and he looked around his immediate vicinity, seeing nothing but trees, trees, trees, and more trees… and then he looked down at where he was sitting.

"… ok, now I am officially freaked out." His voice came out in quite a deadpan.

And indeed, for now he could see that he was sitting in the middle of a relatively deep crater, at the edge of a deep gouge on the dirt. And he could barely see the point of impact through the shredded trees and the settling debris, debris which were floating out and about in the air.

As he made his observations, he finally had enough strength to stand, and so he moved out of the crater gingerly. He climbed out and stood at its edges, looking at around. His first thought was,

'This is a really weird forest.'

Because what he saw was that he was in some kind of place where it seemed autumn was going on full blast. Like, every tree canopy was in various shades of the fall, but still retaining all of their leaves, somehow. Though even then, there was also a surplus of falling leaves, kinda looked like red and yellow flakes from afar.

But that wasn't what was weird, no, what was highly unusual about it was that even the very grasses themselves were red. How weird could that be?

Nonetheless, as he looked around and around, he realized that he was very utterly lost. He didn't know where he was, and he didn't know his way around. None of his two memories indicated anything of such phenomena happening naturally, though he hadn't finished dealing with them quite yet, and he was still reeling from the shock of having two sets of memories, both quite different from each other, he knew for sure that it was going to be hard coming to terms with it.

Suddenly, a thought came to mind,

'Maybe this forest was artificially made? Then if so, who in their right minds would even do such a thing? Let alone think of it… and for that matter, how?'

He let the thought sit in the forefront of his mind as he sat down and leaned back onto a nearby tree. After a few more moments of mulling on other idle thought of such similar nature, he decided to them be, for now and instead stood up from his idle position.

"Ok, that's enough rest for now," he muttered to himself, "let's what we can find here."

And so he began to trek through the red forest, passing red trees and red bushes and red grass and red… everything… really.

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After a relatively long hour of journeying, he heard the faint sounds of a distant stream.

'Ah, there must be a river somewhere near here!'

He strained his ears to try and pick up the sound again, and the bubbling of water reached his ears from his left. He immediately headed in said direction, and after a few minutes of more walking,

Lo and Behold! Water!

'Ah! Great timing, I am getting rather thirsty… and hungry too. My poor stomach, ow."

He gave a rub to his poor grumbling stomach.

"I wonder if I can scrounge something up…"

After consuming a great deal of water, and finally ridding himself of the nagging thirst, he set his sights into ridding himself next of the accursed hunger. That said, after a few minutes of foraging in the undergrowth, he had to admit that scavenging was a way more harder than he thought it would be. Oh sure, you see plenty of fruits and berries from lots of plants and bushes, but after you collect them, you don't have a way to know if they were poisonous or not. It was really hard to tell which was which, and he didn't fancy getting poisoned anytime soon, so he left them alone for now. Instead, he went looking for something to distract himself.

As he rested by the brook, he began contemplating on his dual memories. One set, the longer one, featured a setting in what looked like a snow covered town... under the ground… how the heck did that even work anyway? And what looked like humanoid monsters, mostly, with the occasional randomness. But that wasn't all, in these memories, the days kept going on for a time, and then they would skip. Going from one happenstance to another, one memory detailed something like a cave in, another was escorting a blurry figure of indescribable gender, and yet another was crying over a scarf. And then his head started to get fuzzy after that, so he didn't push it, he'd let them come whenever they wanted to come.

But the other set of memories were different, they were more complete, so to say. He could remember doing things, like interacting with people, or watching shows on the telly. But just like the previous memories, they were all blurry, and the people were indistinct, he could see them but whenever he tried to focus on their faces, he would only get static. But he just knew that these memories were his, he knew that these were the original. If that was so, then why were those unfamiliar memories inside his head too?

As he was contemplating his circumstances, he chanced on looking through a gap in the canopies, the trees above him were thick and almost covered the sky, but the particular position he was situated gave him a clear view of the sky through the thick canopy.

And then he saw the moon,

…

"WHAT!?"

He immediately fell over.

As he propped himself back up, he looked back to the sky again. He needed to ensure that he wasn't just high on something and hallucinating badly, he needed to see if the moon was really broken.

"What the heck happened to the moon? Why the heck is it broken? This most definitely is not my home, I don't think there is anywhere in my memories that says the moon has been broken. I don't even want to know what has the power and the ways to break the moon like that.

Further thoughts were cut off as a loud rustle sounded,

*CRASH!*

And then a loud crash sounded out. He was immediately on alert, and he strained his ears to locate where the disturbance came from

…

'There!'

He spun to his right, just in time to see a large, black, savage looking beast fresh out of a horror movie. It looked like some kind of mutant werewolf, covered in bone plates and spikes. It was a fearsome creature to behold, and the glaring crimson eyes didn't help either. But what truly terrified him however, was that the creature wasn't alone, it was accompanied by what looked to be its pack, and, there were six in total, if you included the first beast. Totally nothing that he could take by his lonesome. He didn't think he could handle even one of those creatures, let alone six of them!

He was suddenly snapped out of his thoughts when the beast at the forefront let out a low, menacing growl. The sound alone chilled him to the bones. He needed to flee, NOW!

So he turned tail and ran.

And the beasts gave immediate chase.

Jumping, ducking, rolling, and squeezing through obstacles, the terrified teen ran deeper into the forest, all the while being chased through the undergrowth by –most probably- murderous and terrifying beasts. He ran on and on and on, until he came to a dead end, a wall of dirt stretched up far above what he could see, thick trees blocked the way through left and right, and the only way was backwards. This was quickly denied to him, as the beasts caught up with and blocked the only available exit… well, at least he now knew that they were at least capable of a little intelligence. But that didn't help now, what he needed was a way out, or barring that, a way to defeat the six creatures that wanted to make him their next meal. Though he doubted he doubted his chances on the latter. Looking from left to right, he slowly backed away, even as the creatures were slowly inching forwards.

Then suddenly, the leading beast let a huge rumbling roar,

"GRRROOOAAAAAARR!!!"

And it made a sudden lunge for him, but despite his surprise and terror, he managed to duck under its assault. The surprised beast keeled ass over tea kettle to smack the earthen wall across it. While he was busy being amazed by his successful dodge, he didn't noticed until it was too late before another beast was already within a feet of him, huge claws up and ready to slam down. He barely had time for his eyes to widen before the claw descended in a vertical slash. He closed his eyes in stark terror, and shouted out in desperation,

"NO!! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!"

A sudden burst of arcane energy emerged from the immobile teen. Every creature, and object, in the immediate vicinity was blasted away.

But seeing as his eyes were closed, he didn't know it.

And ever so slowly, he opened his eyes. He cringed in fear, fully expecting to have been horribly mutilated, at the very least, if not dead. Instead, he opened his eyes to behold the sight of a man-made clearing, with a shallow crater originating from his position. Some of the trees had been toppled by what seemed like an invincible force, the area looked like something had blown away everything from the epicenter, namely, him. He risked a glance around, standing from his tucked position to get a better view of the newly made clearing and didn't see any of the creatures.

He cast one last furtive glance at the scene of devastation before he fled.

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He ran and ran and ran till he couldn't run anymore, he was in a state of full blown panic, and his calm was in shambles.

But even the adrenaline couldn't keep him running forever, and so he waned. Coming upon a brook, though this one different from the riverbank from earlier, he saw that its' source, apparently, was a huge opening on a nearby cliff. As he neared the miniature waterfall, he could see that the water coming out of the opening was being caught by a natural basin directly below the source itself. He debated for a few moments on whether to drink from it or not, and immediately, he became aware of his haggard breathing and his parched throat. One urge was prevalent in his thirst-addled mind; he needed to quench his thirst, and quick!

'Aw to hell with it!' That was his thought, before he dunked his head in and took a great gulp.

And then there were a few moments of silence…

…

… before he emerged from the basin with a great big gasp.

"HAAHHHH!!"

'Wow that was really refreshing!! And mighty delicious to boot!!'

As he shook his head, it caused his wet locks to swish around and splat across his face. He swiped them away even as he took in the area that he now found himself in. Now that he was looking around, and just resting in general, he pondered –again- on the strange circumstances, and the strange world, which he found himself in.

'Best to just deal with it in the morning', he decided.

And so he sought out a few trees that he could climb, and sleep on. Even if they were not suitable for sleeping, then at the very least they were secure. Deciding that he needed rest now more than ever, he chose the tallest one, with the thickest canopy of branches and leaves, and clambered up its thick trunk. He reached to the lowest hanging branch for leverage upwards, and he swung up to the thicker branches. He kept to the lower heights even as he clambered around, and upon reaching a decent spot, where he probably could lay comfortably and not fall off, he broke off a few branches and arranged them in a way that acted as a support so at to make a bedding that was, at least, minimally comfortable. He looked out to see that dusk was nearing, and so he settled down to sleep.

As the embrace of sleep claimed him, he let himself feel the aches and twinges of his everything for the last time before he let out one last quite mumble, as he fell into a dreamless slumber.

" i'm so friggin tired…"

He was just glad that he could rest now.