(2) - The Room with A Million Bottles

"Good, you are awake... Welcome Adam Porter to the Dungeon..."

Adam spun, confused as hell. The voice echoed off the coarse stone. It mingled with the soft crackling of the torches on the wall.

He saw it, rather, 'him'.. A tall figure dressed in some renaissance fair get up. The person moved forward, their blue eyes and blonde hair strange.. almost inhuman..

He instinctively backed away.

"No need to be afraid. Not of me anyway.. The dungeon will give you much to fear... And much to overcome..."

Adam blinked twice and responded a moment later with, "umm.. are you some serial killer bro? Where the hell is this? Your basement??

Why don't you let me out you creep.."

He clenched his fists. He had never been in a fight before but he wasn't going to get tortured and murdered in some cosplayer's basement without struggling at least..

The person stopped and cocked his head. He seemed amused somewhat, as if Adam were a small puppy trying it's best to seem intimidating.

"You would do well not to interrupt me and listen.."

"Piss off creep" Adam said, not listening. He marched up to the door across the room, keeping an eye on the tall man.

As he moved to open the door he realized something.. It had been deep in the back of his mind since he woke up: "Why am I uninjured?"

The blinding flash of headlights in the winter night sprung forth from his memories. The spinning, spinning of his car and the plunge into darkness as the driver side crumpled like a piece of paper on impact.

He shivered.

"Let's get out of this basement first..." he told himself, "The rest can wait.. I bet my sister is worried sick right about now.. Hell, how long have I been out...

And what happened to me while I was asleep?"

He glanced over his shoulder at the strange man and shivered again. "Probably nothing good..."

The man made no attempt to stop him from opening the door. He made no attempt to yell out, or pull a gun, or anything threatening at all...

Something about that made him all the more creepier..

Adam expected it to play out like some horror movie: wake up in some strange basement after an accident: get tortured by some psycho and die... But no, the man just stood in the middle of the room watching him with all the patience in the world.

As he opened the door it creaked loudly on old hinges. Through the doorway he saw a massive room, lit by some unseen white light.

His jaw dropped as he took in the scene before him... It must have been miles upon miles of it: bottles...

Small white bottles with cork stoppers sat on the ground close together, making up large square lots. There was enough space between the lots to walk but not much else..

These square lots of thousands upon thousands of bottles dotted the landscape all around.

High overhead a similar stone ceiling sat, with the wall extending off into the distance well out of sight.

He stepped in and turned around, he heard the man say "Well, I tried to help you... Now pick one... Choose Wisely..."

Then the door slammed shut. He dashed forward to open it in a panic but it was locked.

"What is actually happening on this day?" He said, rubbing his temples.

He was logical, and considered himself smart, but nothing in his short 23 year experience on planet earth had prepared him for this moment. Whatever 'this moment' was..

"I crashed.. and blacked out.. so... this clearly isn't someone's basement. An underground place like this... it's nothing I've ever heard of or seen..."

He looked around and tried to wrap his head around it. The sea of bottles was nauseating to look at.. and for some reason the room smelled mildly of cinnamon...

"The only explanation would be a coma right? Something like this could only exist in a dream..."

He felt himself spiraling, he felt his sanity being tugged at hard.. He snapped himself out of it..

"No need to worry about that.. What do I know??"

He tried to remember what the strange man had said, "a dungeon? Pick one bottle?.. Damn, I probably should have paid more attention to what he had to say.."

He regretted running away so fast then. The one person he had encountered that could give him answers was behind a locked door he couldn't open.

"Pick a bottle..."

He looked around more closely, stepping up to one of the large square lots. He kneeled down and picked up one of the small white bottles.

He shook it, hearing the 'swishing' sound of some liquid inside. Uncorking it, he looked in the small opening and saw some dark red liquid inside. It smelled like cherries..

He corked it and put it down, confused..

"But only pick one? What does that mean? Do I have to drink it??"

He shrugged and stood up..

After a while of searching around and walking here and there, he made some discoveries:

The first was that all of the bottles contained something different, but they were all liquid.. some had liquor, others juice, while some had no smell or color at all..

He wasn't sure how he was supposed to pick one. There was no indication anywhere as to what the liquid was or what would happen if he were to drink one.

Quite frankly, he wasn't sure if he wanted to find out.. Maybe it was some kind of drug. Maybe that person was just waiting for him to get knocked out so they could torture him.. he wasn't sure... But clearly he wasn't going anywhere.

No matter how far he walked, he couldn't see an end in sight.

Ten minutes... twenty... he picked a direction and stuck with it for a while. He must have walked a mile yet the landscape didn't budge: bottles... only bottles...

Tired, he sat down on the hard stone floor. "Fuck it.. I'll drink one.."

He picked out one that didn't smell like pickle juice or vinegar. It was a yellowish liquid that smelled like apples and spice.. So he drank it.

Immediately it quenched his thirst and he discerned it was indeed Apple cider.

"Delicious.." he thought. His heart beat fast though as he waited for something to happen.. to feel woozy and pass out or to die on the spot.

But something much worse happened...

The world shifted around him. He found himself in a large circular stone room with a wide corridor cut in the stone ahead. Below, a large red rug sat snugly on the ground. All around, the same torches as before lit up the area.

He was alone, and the smell of cinnamon still lingered..

"What?" He thought to himself, feeling nauseous.. It was like being in VR and suddenly jumping from one scene to the next.

He recoiled again as a transparent blue menu popped up in front of him like some RPG:

[Acquired Core Skill: Spring-Like]

Adam read the plain white words and felt his brain hurt. "Can we just not??? Can I just have my coma and sleep?? Why am I getting dragged into some weird dream about a dungeon and now getting 'skills'???"

He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. When he opened them again, sure enough, the menu was still there. No matter where he turned it was right in front of him. Eventually he reached out and touched it, feeling nothing but air. Only when his fingers reached it did it disappear.

He stood in silence for a moment before he decided to walk down the corridor, seeing as there was nowhere else to go.

It was cold, and he instinctively reached up to pull his jacket tighter around him but stopped. He wasn't wearing his jacket..

In fact, he wasn't wearing any of the clothes he had been wearing before. He had been so concerned with his surroundings he had failed to notice that his own clothing had changed..

He had some brown tunic and pants on, in a style he could only describe as 'medieval'... His shoes too were some plain leather boots, the likes of which would have cost a pretty penny at a shoe store.

"Weird..." he thought, but didn't dwell on it. It certainly wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened that day.

The corridor was long and his footsteps echoed loudly as he moved. All the while the dim torches left long shadows ahead, so that he couldn't quite make out how much further he had to go...

Or what lay ahead in the shadows...

After a few minutes of walking though he could see a light in the distance.. it looked like an orange glow that shifted ever so slightly.

As he grew closer he realized that it was a decent sized bonfire in the middle of another circular room..

Not just that, there were three other people sitting on logs around the fire.

As he grew closer yet he could make out two men and a woman. The distinct sound of conversation reached his ears though he couldn't make out what was being said.

Cautiously he stepped into the room and watched as the men and the woman turned to look at him. They were all wearing the same get up as he was, and he could tell they were just as confused as he was.

One of the men stood up first, stepping forward. He was tall and well built, and had a shaved head. His tan skin and chiseled jaw coupled with dark eyes and thick eyebrows would make anyone intimidated..

But his smile was warm and genuine as he spoke up, "Aah the last one! Finally!"