2 - Imagination

As the monstrous snake was buffeted by screaming winds, and Will slept fitfully, night terrors haunting his every dream, seismic changes occurred across the misshapen face of the world.

And misshapen is exactly what the world has become, twisted and warped by the terrible impact of unspeakable creatures. Only the Gods know what manner of creatures landed in the far West of Abre, but whatever did land there, landed hard.

Molten fragments of rock were sent hurtling out of the atmosphere from the impact alone. Glowing fragments of stone exploded like fireworks in the upper atmosphere, raining down fire and magma. And that was just the beginning.

The brutal explosion set off a chain reaction beneath the world's surface, mangling continents as seas rose and retreated. Volcanos poured out fire and fury endlessly, creating land and islands anew, eventually, it began to rain fire from clouds of ash.

Finally, after the first few days of unadulterated chaos, some unseen divine force intervened. Stifling the raging tides and plugging the mountains of fire. Too little. Too late.

The damage was done, and the world would never be the same again. When the land was in upheaval, although an exact number is impossible to find, it is estimated that over 40% of the population perished. And that's being generous.

The remaining few are left to cower in Cities that have become inescapable prisons, praying that the walls won't collapse in around them, buried alive by their own safe harbour.

3 days after the first impact, Will, one of those lucky few still clinging to life, woke up.

-

With some difficulty, Will pried his groggy eyes open. 'Huh?' he thought dumbly.

Even after all that difficulty, when he opened his eyes there was no difference. The darkness was absolute and stifling. He couldn't even see his own hand in front of his face.

Feeling around in the dark, he felt a smooth wooden floor beneath him, the old wood worn with age and use.

Almost immediately, an intense hunger pang struck him, his stomach felt like it was tied in a knot, leaving him little choice but to investigate his surroundings and look for food.

Crawling blindly along the floor, Will groped aimlessly in front of him, searching desperately for some source of food or light, preferably both.

Not long after his search began, he came across a clue as to where he was. As he was crawling along the ground, his knee struck a small, hollow wooden cone. When he picked it up, he noticed a broken string at one end.

'This feels like a child's toy,' He figured, since he had played with something similar as a kid. You could while away a couple of hours boredom free trying to get the little ball to land in the cone. And there was plenty of boredom-filled hours to spare… Were. There were plenty of hours to spare.

'Not anymore clearly,' he thought glumly, his chest ached like a heavy weight was pressed against it, it was suffocating whenever he thought about what happened to his village.

Shifting his train of thought, he made his best guess as to where he was, 'I must be in somebodies house, perhaps the snake managed to miss one of them when it landed. Now I just have to pray they have some food,'

Perhaps it was ironic that he was praying at a time like this, but Will neither noticed nor cared. He simply crawled along to one wall of the small wooden house and worked his way around the edge of the building.

Eventually, he found something, wincing when his toe struck a table leg, the ring of a metal canister falling felt like an angel's song. Immediately, he knew what had made the sound.

Groping along the tabletop, his hand finally grasped the cold metal handle of a lamp that had been knocked over. He let out a small cheer and fumbled at the clasp of the lamp, his fingers numb and uncooperative.

Finally managing to get it open, a strong sulphurous smell wafted out of the open lamp. 'It looks like there's enough fuel to last me a while,' Will noted, closing the lamp quickly so that no more of the smell would escape. It wasn't exactly pleasant and would waste vital fuel.

Fumbling around the table beside the lamp, his hand eventually brushed against a small wooden box with intricate engravings on its smooth surface.

Opening it, he reached inside and pulled out a small flower, which he brought up to the lamp. Opening the lamp again before quickly placing the flower inside. The familiar task was frustratingly difficult in the darkness. Will was deathly afraid of knocking the lamp off the table or damaging the flower.

Thankfully, everything worked as it was supposed to and almost immediately, the flower began to glow a bright purple, almost blinding Will from the sudden change in light.

After his eyes had adjusted slightly, he peered curiously at the little flower in the glass canister that was glowing brilliantly. Never before had he truly understood just how precious a lamp could be.

Staring blankly at the glowing flower, he was brought back to his childhood, when his father took them hunting and brought a similar lamp with them. At the time, his dad explained how the flower worked, but he was probably too preoccupied playing with an arrow or something to pay attention.

Sighing, Will left the lamp on the table and began to investigate the inside of the house, or what was left of it anyway.

Now that light was shed on the building, it was easy to see that it was barely standing. One entire wall was missing, the gap being plugged by dark blue scales that shimmered slightly as the purple light passed over them.

Luckily, the missing wall and subsequent portion of the house contained the bedrooms and not the parlour or Will would genuinely have been up shit's creek.

Making his way over to a tall cupboard in the corner of the room, Will almost gasped when he opened it, shocked to see so much dried food in one place. From what he could tell, there was at least an entire deer's worth of jerky in there, maybe more.

'I wonder who lived here, they must have had kids and hunted a lot, so that narrows it down slightly. There are only a few families in the village I can think of that fit that description, I wonder if they're still alive somewhere in here…' Will turned slowly to look at the ruined wall where the bedrooms had once been.

'Unlikely.' He thought glumly.

He grabbed a few slices of cured meat, wolfing them down without care for what it was or the inevitable sickness that would come from eating too fast on an empty stomach.

And although he would have liked to eat everything in the cupboard in one sitting, reason stopped him. He didn't know how long he'd be trapped here, and he didn't know whether he'd be able to find any food when he got out.

While it may be painful, he knew that being miserly with the little food he had was absolutely vital if he wanted to survive. It would be depressing to survive everything he had, just to starve.

Which, to be fair, he wasn't even sure he wanted to survive. Was surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland even worth the hassle? He wasn't sure. But he would definitely like to have the option to choose either way.

Going through the rest of the house, he found a few bare essentials, some bread that had gone incredibly mouldy and a large basin of water hanging above the fireplace.

Presumably, this was used as a bath or for washing clothes, so there was quite a lot of it. That didn't necessarily mean he wanted to drink it, however. Drinking dirty clothes water was pretty low on his bucket list.

Laying everything out on the table, he made a mental list of everything he had found.

"Cured meat – hopefully enough to last me 40-ish days if I eat sparingly and don't use up much energy by moving around.

Water basin- A much more pressing issue since it can only last me for about three weeks if the water is even drinkable that is.

Lamp- I will need to use it sparingly if I don't want to run out of light entirely at some random or inconvenient moment.

Flint and fire-starting tools- Lighting a fire in here would be suicide but they are nice to have.

A skinning knife- hopefully I won't need it."

These were the most important thing he found, each and every one was a vital cog in the machine of survival. And seeing them all laid out in front of him really put into perspective just how bad his situation was.

He may have survived the initial 'Impact' as the snake called it, but that didn't mean he was safe, far from it.

'At most I have three weeks before I need to find water so I will need to start investigating outside soon,' Will decided.

"I don't think that's a good idea. The world outside is not hospitable to you right now." The eery voice of the snake hissed in the back of his head.

"Shit! Did I say that out loud?" Will almost shouted, taken aback by the suddenness of the impromptu communication.

"No, I can read your surface thoughts, and even some deeper ones if I try hard enough." The snake replied, sounding almost smug.

'I'm starting to like this snake less and less,' Will thought

"I know," the snake interjected.

"Stop doing that!" Will cursed.

"I can't, since I communicate through your mind, it's only natural that I will be able to read it to a certain extent." The snake explained.

Perhaps what annoyed Will most was that, in a vacuum, this explanation did make some semblance of sense. And he was having trouble refuting it. Especially when literally any response he could think of would be countered.

Seeing no quick solution, and since he didn't really have room to negotiate, he moved on to more pressing matters. "You said I wouldn't survive outside," he said slowly.

"Yes, you would die embarrassingly fast. The volcanic winter has yet to pass, and boiling ash is falling from the sky even as we speak."

"Volcanic winter?" Will echoed dumbly.

Although voices in your head shouldn't be able to sigh, he was pretty sure the snake managed it. I'll explain later, the point is that right now, nothing out there is living.

"Except you," Will finished.

"Except me," the snake agreed. And a whole host of things far scarier than me.

Will wasn't sure he believed that was possible, but something must have caused the massive shockwave and ensuing storm. And since he saw the snake's landing first-hand, he was sure it wasn't the culprit. Something bigger, much bigger had to be responsible.

Struggling to comprehend the sheer scale of a creature capable of such a thing, Will closed his eyes and tried to picture the world outside as it currently was.

He saw trees stripped bare of their leaves by gale force winds, ripped out of the ground at odd angles. He saw a world blanketed by black snow that kept falling, wherever the ash landed the ground beneath was scorched by the heat. And finally, he saw the desolate ruins of a village, buried in ash while an enormous snake coiled around the last house remaining.

This wasn't some innate ability of his and simply involved him using his imagination, which was vital to pass the time in a place as rural as this.

Whenever he would get particularly bored, he would imagine a great imperial knight coming to teach him how to fight and slay dragons. Or perhaps a famous adventure would unearth his great talent and bring him to explore the world.

"I could teach you to slay dragons." A quiet voice hissed.

"I thought I told you not to read my thoughts!" Will hissed right back.

"I thought I told you that was impossible." The snake replied calmly.

"Agh, just… whatever," Will shook his head in defeat, "How can you train me to kill something that isn't real?" He asked, like he was talking to a child.

"Who said dragons aren't real?" The snake replied, sounding slightly surprised… for a snake anyway.

"Me."

"Did you know giant snakes that fall from the sky existed before last week?" The giant snake that fell from the sky asked.

"No," Will admitted.

"Then believe me when I say dragons are real and plenty more besides them." The snake finished.

"Even if I accept that they are real, that doesn't explain how you expect me to kill one. I mean, look at me," Will complained, gesturing to his skinny, tanned arms and his legs covered in bruises from his many falls in the forest. He wasn't exactly intimidating or gallant. Thoroughly un-knightly.

"I agree, you couldn't kill one right now. But with my help… things could be different." The snake hissed temptingly.

Will frowned, thinking it over. In the end, he decided that even if the snake was lying. It would be more fun to listen to what it had to say than spend the foreseeable future in a dark room doing nothing.

That being said, there was a little voice in the back of his head asking a rather vital question. 'Why is the snake helping me? What alien motivation could it have?'