---------------------------------- Present Day:
I felt the wind whipping at my clothes as I was falling through the air. It was due to this that I realised that the floor in my memory shattered because the geode did too. I twisted in the air and was only met with more blackness until in flash of light, I fell through an opening, which burned my eyes.
The room was huge, if you could call it a room. The geode, dome, whatever it was called, glittered with millions of jewels that littered the walls and ceiling, each a different colour than the one before it. Reds, blues, greens, yellows, purples, pinks, and every colour under the sun were there. Green moss and grass grew from the ground, and there were large bodies of water that resembled a lake, each connected by a flowing river that ended and started with a waterfall from each end of the dome.
My awe didn't last long, however, as I crashed into one of those large bodies of water. The cold water sent shocks up my body, making my muscles tingle with a mixture of relaxation and the searing pain from earlier.
I flailed in the water, trying to figure out my bearings. I looked for the light of the gigantic cavern and swam towards it. As I broke through the surface, my body screamed to get out from the ache of pain, so I decided to float towards the edge and rest on the bank of the lake-sized pool. My muscles relaxed, and my eyelids became heavier than lead.
"No... I need... to... stay awake..." I groaned and tried to keep my eyes open but to no avail, and my lids shut like a trapdoor, and I entered sleep immediately.
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I woke up to the calm lapping of water at my waist, and while still hurting, I could at the very least move my body now. I stumbled a little as I got up to my feet.
I looked around, and my breath was taken for the second time as I gazed in awe at the magnitude of the inside of the geode. Each crystal hummed with a sense of power, and the moss and grass were soft enough to be considered a bed, which I knew well since I'd just slept on it.
I stumbled around, clueless as to what I should do. Lingering doubt and a subtle hint of fear boiled in the pit of my stomach as, without success, I frantically looked for an exit.
After what seemed like hours, I slid down a small tree and collected my thoughts about this place: There was no obvious exit, something was sustaining life down here, the water was fresh and potable, food was scarce but the few trees that were dotted around had fruits growing off them and there was an eerie presence down here, indescribable in nature but still present.
I took one more look around and then spotted the hole I'd fallen through in the ceiling. I chuckled as I thought about myself falling through it, and then I thought about my initial drop.
It then hit me.
Why am I actually alive? I thought, a sense of doubt in my mind, ready to plague my thoughts into a downward spiral.
I must have fallen at least 10 floors... the hole I saw outside the geode was too big to only be a couple floors... right?
I pondered on this thought for a moment before letting it drift into the other endless questions I already had in my mind. "I'm sure there's a logical reason," I mumbled to myself as I rested my head against the tree.
After resting for a few hours, I went back to exploring and the eerie presence I'd felt earlier began to claw its way up my stomach and made its way into my throat, threatening to choke me to death. My eyes widened, and I crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath. "What the... f-" my voice cut off as I coughed.
I could almost see the trail of energy this presence exuded coming from behind the second waterfall, and I felt drawn towards it, like I was craving the sensation of this overwhelming power.
Slowly, I crawled towards the waterfall and stood up onto my feet. My legs trembled under the pressure that was attempting to make me kneel, and I stepped through the waterfall only to find myself in another rather large cavern.
There was a dim light cast inside this cave. I noted that the light was from an invisible and unknown source as I made my way deeper inside. The once overwhelming pressure had lessened but had been replaced with an icy grip at my insides, which felt like I was in the snowy lands of the Ycecliff region.
How can those snakes live in this kind of cold?! I thought about the Serpentine that lived in the Northen region of Ycecliff, a snowy land filled with glaciers and wastelands of ice and, of course, snow.
It was during this thought that I unknowingly reached the source of the icy chill. And what I saw was not what I expected, but that made it all the more confusing and awe-inspiring.
On a pedastal in the centre, basked in the light of whatever was casting it, sat a bracelet made of silver with a design that sparked my curiosity. It was shaped like a snake that was slithering around and biting its own tail. I raised a brow at this rather... eccentric, design.
Vines hung from the 15-foot ceiling and draped across the floor, moss clung to the walls and the cracked pedastal, which held the bracelet. Small crevices spindled along the walls and loose chunks of rock rested on the floor, which I deduced were the pieces that filled the crevices prior to the splitting.
I walked closer to the pedastal, my senses exploded, and became overwhelmed as the bracelet called to me and a cold shiver dug its way up my spine in a forceful manner. I held back the urge to wretch as bile rose quicker than I'd imagined to my mouth.
I leaned against the wall of the cave for support and looked at the pedastal one more time. I stared at the bracelet, fear crept in, and it stared back. My eyes quivered, I tried to peel them away from the strange and ominous object, but I failed in a contest of willpower against its force.
Almost against my will, I tentatively stepped forward towards the pedastal and reached out for the bracelet. As my hand was only a few inches away from the bracelet, it shook and trembled at my hands' presence, its shiny silver material began to audibly hum, and I tried retracting my hand.
But it was too late...
The bracelet jumped off the pedastal and rushed at my hand. It began to shrink in size until it was the size of a ring, and it slid cleanly onto my middle finger. What I felt next was most likely the most painful and exciting sensation I'd ever felt.
My brain began to burn in pain while knowledge of things I'd never seen or even heard of implanted itself into my hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory, and burned the images into my retinas.
I cried out in agony and clawed at my face and head, leaving scratch marks along my cheeks. The dried blood left from my previously removed nails crumbled, and they began bleeding again as I continued to claw at my head.
However, among all this pain, a feeling of delight and ecstasy washed over me as all this knowledge flashed before me and began making sense. It was so clear, as easy to remember as my name, and this filled me with something I thought I'd never have... a god complex! I felt like an omniscient being, only with a few minor differences, those being that this knowledge wasn't everything in the universe... and I wasn't a God.
The balance of pain and ecstasy mixed to make me look like a crazy masochist as I laughed and cried in agony simultaneously. Soon my brain couldn't handle much more of the exotic mixture of emotions and my vision began to get blurry, the pedastal split into two versions, then four, then eight and I could sense my consciousness slipping from my grasp as if I were drunk on the verge of blacking out.
Then, the raging emotions reached a crescendo, and the world went black.
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