Chapter 1
-- Awakening --
"Hhhhnnnngg, eh!"
Deep within the depths of the Everfree Forest, where the tree canopy shed little to no light, and where the little woodland creatures dare not go for fear of their own survival; a murmuring could be heard. A moment later, a faint stirring could be heard as well, as if a lost timberwolf pup had found a precarious pile of the fallen fall leaves to roll around in. Then, the stirring grew, it began to emanate through the forest, calling to all that could hear that something was moving through the low-hanging vines, and brush.
"What the hell happened last night?" The creature asked through the darkness of the most shaded region of the forest. This creature's name was Folan, he was a grad student from the University of Maine, attending his fifth year by the end of the summer. As a final party before the end of the summer, he and his friends decided to throw one of the biggest they've ever had. That's the last thing that he could remember, and it was starting to drive him crazy.
Getting up, Folan tried to get on his -- hopefully -- good two legs; however, when he tried to put his weight on one of the limbs, the joint unceremoniously bent backward. After screaming his lungs out for the next twenty seconds, he leaned back and inspected the leg. Though, upon trying to grasp the broken appendage, another bout of screaming commenced as he realized he had no fingers to do so with.
"Okay! Okay, calm down!" Maybe it wasn't as bad as it felt, perhaps his hands were just paralyzed or asleep! Yeah, that's what it was, he must have slept on them the wrong way, and the feeling would return any second now.
However, instead of feeling returning to his fingers, he only became more acutely aware of the immense lack of any apparent feeling. Deciding that staying in a shady, mist-ridden forest that seemed entirely foreign to himself was a bad Idea, he chose to start crawling, as his legs wouldn't be of much help.
Aside from the thick numbness that enveloped the tips of his extremities, Folan found crawling to be astonishingly simple, as if walking on all fours was to be preferred by his body. Relenting to his curiosity, he moved to put weight on his injured leg; unsurprisingly, the limb once again bent in the exact opposite direction to which it was supposed to. Nonetheless, it seemed to be holding, so instead of putting all his weight on his feet, he shifted to place most of it on his forearms, and hands.
They too, bent out of place, he was starting to notice a theme. Getting a feel for his limbs, Folan moved with a purpose, putting one extremity after another. First, his right hand, then his left foot, then his left hand, then his right foot. Feeling like an infant learning to walk for the first time, He moved his legs faster, getting into a rhythm.
Still not being able to see, Folan soon found himself face-to-face with one of his most feared enemies; one so cruel and daunting that it could instill terror in the most intrepid of people. A tree. After spitting out the leaves of the overgrown vegetable, Folan made his way through the thicket, careful to swipe of the more thorny bushes out of his way with his numb hands, he would deal with the pain later.
As he made his way to an open clearing, enough light shown through the canopy for him to make out the remnants of a long-forgotten dirt path cutting straight through the forest. And through the darkness shown a dimly lit hole surrounded by splatters of white, yellow, and orange. It looks like he had found the way out.
He staggered forth with a new sense of excitement and desperation, getting to see more and more of the forest as he crawled, one thought kept ebbing at the edge of his mind. That he did not recognize this wooded area in the slightest. The woods in Maine are immense, but he would never go into a forest that he didn't know; inebriated, or not.
'What the hell is this place?' Thought Folan as he walked along the rough and disheveled path through the forest. "What the hell did I do last night?" He asked out loud, too far lost in his own train of thought to care for whatever overheard him. He was nearing the edge of the forest now, all the was between him and the outside, was the treeline. Pushing his way past the surprisingly rough patch of vines and shrubs; he stumbled through and saw the most beautiful sight that had ever grazed his half-drunken mind.
He was not on the border of a forest grotto like he had thought. Instead, he was on the edge of a cliff overlooking what seemed to be a lush countryside. The hills appeared to roll on for miles, topped with thick rows of trees laden with bright orange and red fruits ready to be harvested. Over the orchards, lay a wondrous town filled with buildings of all shapes and sizes converging at an other-worldly centerpiece. The castle stretched a mile into the sky, cutting the heavens to ribbons with each of its jagged crystalline spires. In the far distance, cut into the face of a mountain, rested an ivory city, shaded by the early morning's indigo miasma that drifted lazily over the horizon.
The world looked like it was shoved into a mix of a kaleidoscope, and an art museum. Never before had he seen so many vibrant colors in one place, nor were they mixed and matched so strangely.
He didn't have time to ponder, however. As he soon felt himself grow weightless. In his rush to escape the dark and concealing forest, he had accidentally stumbled right off the cliff's end. Looking down, the last thing that Folan caught sight of, was two round. hole-ridden, black chitinous appendages sticking out right where his arms should have been.
Then the ground came up to meet him, and all went black.