Chapter 2: A New World (1/2)
Zac slowly woke up, groggy and disoriented, finding himself face-first on the ground. Spitting out a few blades of grass and dusting himself off, he scrambled up and surveyed the surroundings, his body still aching from whatever had happened to him before. The glade looked the same with the few rocks and flowers, surrounded by stout leafy trees and dense shrubbery.
His first reaction was that luckily he had just passed out from the heat or exhaustion and woke up. There were some things that gave Zac the foreboding feeling that what had happened was more than just a heat-induced dream. First was the fact that he was currently staring up at two suns, only one of them being the familiar yellow.
He thought he was seeing double for a second, but shaking himself awake had no effect on what he saw. The sun was accompanied by a little brother. He felt something was a bit off with the original one as well though, seeming larger or more intense than he remembered. The other sun was a far smaller star that shone in a piercing aquamarine. It hovered close to the other celestial body and seemed to orbit it like a satellite.
The other unsettling sight was the pillar. A huge vortex of light and energy reached up towards the sky in the distance, like a grisly red claw reaching up from the ground. It pulsated in an eerie red glow that could only be called demonic. It looked like it was quite some distance away, but it was hard to tell. This pillar was the last thing Zac had seen before passing out, and it greeted him as he woke up as well.
A bestial roar snapped him out of his thoughts, refocusing him on the situation at hand.
“Hannah…” he muttered, a glint of determination in his eyes as he threw all these inexplicable events to the back of his mind. If this was all real, he needed to get back to the camp immediately. It seemed the crazy events he’d recently experienced were all real, he realized after looking around. The emotionless voice in the darkness had said something about making the wildlife more dangerous to “improve the challenge.” The roar he just heard could be a freaking tiger or bear for all he knew, which meant the others were in danger.
For a second he was even afraid that the others would jump in the car in a panic and leave him stranded here with whatever was roaring. Even though he didn’t know what was going on, burning anxiety was already consuming him and urging him to action. Not daring to wait any longer, he took off in a sprint toward the direction of the camp, unheeding of the unfamiliar sounds all around him or the prickly greenery aiming to slow him down.
The surroundings blurred around him as he thundered on through the forest like a runaway train. It was as though he had gotten ten shots of adrenaline, his legs pushing him forward at a breakneck pace. Something was off, as he felt that he was running even faster than Olympian athletes, and in complicated forest terrain at that.
The previously somewhat weighty axe in his hand seemed weightless and tore through any branch trying to impede his way with pinpoint accuracy. Zac had never felt as strong or fast as he did right now. The voice had said it upgraded wildlife, did his speed and power mean he was considered a part of that? He didn’t know whether to be happy with his improved physique, or whether to be pissed off the mysterious voice considered him an animal.
Finally, a few minutes after his mad dash started, he recognized a large boulder that a tree had somehow split and grown through, telling him the camp was just a few hundred meters away.
Readjusting his grip on the hatchet, he changed his course and ran straight toward the camp. Suddenly another of the otherworldly roars echoed through the forest, this time far closer than the others he’d tuned out on his way here. Panic turning into even greater speed, he barreled into the camp, a look of frenzy and fear on his face. Greeting him was the familiar sight of the camp; the gray Range Rover, the camper, and the few camping chairs were strewn about.