Chapter 4
Erin slowly opened her eyelids; they felt really heavy, like someone had placed a boulder on them. Her head pounded hard, and she instinctively placed two fingers on her temples as she groaned.
'I'm still alive,'
She thought as she got her bearings. She looked around her, and her jaw instantly dropped, she wasn't at the school, she wasn't at the library. She was at a different place entirely.
"Where the hell am I?" she asked, her voice shaky and her hand trembling.
The land was dry, completely dry, like a desert, except it didn't have the usual desert sand. The ground was completely black, as if scorched. It also had a mix of purple.
Erin stumbled back slowly, trying to assess the situation without freaking out. She looked up at the sky and immediately figured it out, she'd been transported to another planet.
Swirling in the sky was a purple haze, moving in circles like it had a mind of its own. This strange planet had three moons, each of them glowing a bright, blood-red hue, similar to the one that had covered the sky back at the library. Erin immediately deduced that wasn't a coincidence.
The planet had different stars, not the ones she grew up learning about. These ones were spiral-shaped, with little ripples escaping their glow. She could feel the heat coming from them because they were very close to the planet.
"Okay, don't panic, Erin," she tried to reassure herself, but that did nothing to ease the organ pounding hard in her chest.
She had just been transported to an unknown planet, through a pit of lava. That should have killed her. Instead, she was here.
Wait, the others.
She called out their names, but no one responded. Her voice only faded in the wind. It was dark on this strange planet; she could barely see.
Navigating her way through the mist and wind wouldn't be easy, but Erin had to try, she had to try and find the others.
On the other side of this weird place, Liam grunted loudly as he pushed himself off the ground. Without looking around, he could already tell that something was wrong. Placing his hand over his chest, he could feel his heart beating hard inside. He was scared. Fear wasn't his strongest suit, he rarely felt it. But today? Fear was all he could feel.
"I gotta call Dad," he whispered, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
"No… he won't pick up. He's too busy," he realized as he scrolled through his phone. He immediately started scrolling in the opposite direction, trying to call his driver, Mason.
His palms were sweaty, and they were shaking badly. The phone slipped from his hands, making a small thud on the ground. That small thud sent vibrations across the dry land, he felt it underneath his shoes and immediately froze.
"The hell…"
Liam stood still, trying not to move. He was trying to figure out how this was possible. Such underground vibrations could only be created when a seismic activity had just occurred, why would it happen because of a phone falling?
Eventually, the vibration subsided. He bent to pick up his phone, and that was when he noticed it, the sky. The same purple haze, the three blood moons, and the odd-looking stars. His mouth opened in total shock as he stumbled back in disbelief.
"How's this… this isn't…"
He realized that he wasn't on Earth anymore. Panic swirled within him as he fell to his knees. Picking up his phone, he scrambled through it until he eventually dialed his driver. The phone beeped.
"No signal? Fuck!"
He cursed as he threw his phone across and groaned in frustration. For someone as smart as Liam, he was terrible at assessing tough situations. He had expected to successfully place a call through to Earth, from a distant planet. That didn't say smart in any way.
"Goddammit!"
He kicked a small rock sitting in place on the dust, and it went flying a short distance, but then it paused mid-air, floating. It didn't land.
"Huh?" Liam couldn't believe what he was looking at. It was floating in place, like there was no gravity.
He looked around him, and that's when he saw it, big boulders and rocks, floating and rotating slowly. Tiny particles of rocks also followed them in similar motion. The air was dense, and he could feel tiny pricks on his skin. Whether it was fear or something else, he had no idea.
'That's not possible. Impossible geography. Physics doesn't work here. What is this place?' Liam wondered. He figured that he needed to find the others. He brushed purple dust from his knees as he looked around, trying to figure out where to go.
Jay had woken up a few minutes ago. At first, he thought this was a dream. "A very weird realistic dream," he called it. But as soon as his eyes darted toward the sky and its strange properties, he panicked. He was instantly convinced that he wasn't dreaming.
He was already on the move, trying to find his way back to the others. He had already figured that he was on another planet. Whatever that storm did, that lava pit, it must have transported him and the others to a different planet. But how was that possible? These were the questions running through his head as he maneuvered through the planet's fog.
Just then, a loud thud echoed from a distance to his right. Jayden's instincts became charged as he crouched on the floor.
"Hello?"
No answer. Just as he was about to call out again, he felt it, vibrations underground, like someone had planted booming speakers beneath his feet. The vibration lasted for about a minute before it subsided.
Where are the others?
Still crouched, he decided to check if anyone was close by.
"Liam!"
Nothing. He called again, this time louder. He received a response this time, just not the one he was expecting.
GROWL.
Jayden froze. That growl didn't sound like anything he'd ever heard. He tried finding the source of the sound but quickly advised himself against it.
He kept walking toward the direction of the earlier thud and bumped into something.
"Liam!" he exclaimed.
"Maybe next time, watch where you're going. And quit screaming my name. You're gonna attract whatever that was to us," Liam sneered.
"Wait… you heard it too?"
Liam didn't bother answering. He just glanced around before turning back to Jayden.
"Have you seen Erin or that Eira girl?"
"Nah. How did this happen?"
Before Liam could come up with a witty comeback, a figure appeared up ahead. It moved slowly toward them. Both of them froze. They wanted to see who or what it was, and they did.
"Erin?"
"What the fuck is going on?" Erin whispered, stomping her foot against the dust.
"You're asking me?" Liam fired back as he walked up to her.
"Yes, you're the genius!" Erin folded her arms casually as she took a step forward. Both of them stood close to each other, face to face, like they were in the middle of a rap battle.
"Well, you're the talkative. Start talking."
"All right, enough, you two. Arguing with each other won't help get us home," Jay managed to break off the argument before it escalated.
"Where is Eira, by the way?"
As if she had been waiting for the group to acknowledge her existence, Eira walked out from the mist. Unlike the rest, she looked calm, not the nervous freshman that had walked into detention like her life was over.
"We have to move. We can't stay here," she muttered casually.
"So now you're the expert in survival?" Liam scoffed.
"How are you even so calm?" Erin asked as she walked up to her.
"Because panicking won't help us survive what's coming…"
Before they could argue again, Erin glanced down at her arm. "Uh… what the hell is this?"
A faint glow pulsed under her skin, forming a strange geometric mark on her forearm. Jayden squinted, trying to understand what the hell he was looking at. Liam pulled back his sleeve, expecting to find something similar, but there was nothing. For some reason, this was a competition for him, everything was. Only Erin had this strange glowing mark.
"I..I don't understand, what is this?" Erin's worfd fumbled, panick surged through her body as she tried to keep it calm.
"Don't touch it.," Eira said quietly. "I don't think it's wise."
Erin was panicking internally and the pulse seemed to intensify, it was almost as of it was reacting to her state of unrest. 'What is this? Magic?'
"Where is here? And what was that lava thingy we went through?" she asked, still staring at the mark.
"I think it's a Rift, or some sort of portal," Eira answered, her eyes darting around the group in such a way that suggested she was hiding something. And she was.
The wind shifted instantly, carrying a low, distant howl. It wasn't the growl from before. This one was higher-pitched, and it seemed to come from more than one direction.
Eira looked toward the sound. "Let's get out of here..."