Chapter 1: Nature's Beauty.
Local photographer Elwood travels the world and takes pictures of the local wildlife and nature’s beauty. He makes a good bit of money selling them for a price on the internet. One day, as he’s traveling through, he’s about to come across something wondrous…
“Just keep still ya beautiful thing,” Elwood whispered as he adjusted the zoom and focus on his camera. He had his sight trained on a gorgeous Mountain Bird, slowly pushing down on the button until a satisfying click! was heard. “This oughta get a couple of bucks for a bird lover,” Elwood announced proudly as he got up from his kneeled position.
Elwood took a glance at his watch, noting that it was 4:26 PM…”Eh, I still got time. A couple more wouldn’t hurt.” he said as he started to move through the forest.
Every so often, the nature-loving man would stop and take pictures of the beauty the forest had to offer. However, a forest is like a blooming thorned rose, it looks beautiful, but it can be harmful if handled the wrong way. The photographer had seen his fair share of danger such as being chased up a tree by tigers, monkeys throwing things at him for being in their territory, and there was even a time he was almost mauled by a bear.
The photographer was taking a picture of a beautiful rock formation cascading into a waterfall when he heard a loud boom. He looked up just as a drop of water had hit his nose and was soon followed by a slow downpour.
“It was nice while it lasted,” Elwood commented as he quickly put away his camera. “And the weatherman said it wasn’t going to rain!” The human complained as he ran back where he came from, he was trying to get to his van that he parked outside of the forest.
He ran through the forest, stepping into puddles and narrowly dodging the occasional woodland creature that was also trying to get out of the rain.
The rain started to pour harder, causing the photographer to cuss under his breath as this would be bad for not only him but also his equipment. The man frantically looked around for shelter, anything that can get him out of the weather, when he soon spotted a cave. “Oh thank God,” Elwood said with a smile, running in to get out of the rain. Quickly, he took out his flashlight from his backpack and shined it around to make sure there was no bear in the cave.
“Why did it have to rain?” Elwood asked silently as he walked a little further into the cave, his curiosity was soon caught when he saw beautiful gems embedded in the cave walls. His curiosity grew as he followed the trail to a large open space filled with glyphs and runes. The human’s eyes widened in excitement before beginning to take his equipment out. “This is a damn rarity, holy crap, did I just stumble upon some ruins?” He asked out loud as he started setting up photographic lighting and double checked the AA batteries to make sure there was plenty of juice. He was clearly very excited about this lucky discovery.
After getting everything set up, aiming the camera and correcting the focus. He looks through the camera’s screen and notices something weird, the runes and glyphs were starting to glow. Wondering in curiosity, he looks over at the stones. Before the poor cameraman could voice his opinion, he was blinded by a bright colorful flash of light.
Elwood groaned as his subconscious returned. He hissed out in pain as a powerful throb rushed through his head. His vision finally cleared. “H-huh?” Was the very first thing he asked when he noticed he was in a vast cave filled to the brim with all sorts of colorful stones, but what made him become fully awake... Was the corpse that was laying against the wall.
Seeing it made him fall backwards and against the opposite wall. “W-what?!” he exclaimed, he frantically looked around the cave, noticing a lack of the glyphs and its runes gone from their original position.
The corpse in question was a skeleton of some kind of reptile, bigger than the usual size. Judging by its remains, it had been in this cave for quite a long time.
“Maybe it was the light... Yeah, it has to be. Maybe a bolt of lightning and the light flashed first before I could hear the sound, Yeah...” He synced himself up. As he glanced around, he realized he was no longer hearing the sound of rain, no thunder, just eerily peaceful silence. He walks on over to the light stands and notices they were knocked down. He leans down to flip the switch, but the light never turned on. "Great, I must have broken them when I was startled by the light," Elwood said before checking his camera, thankfully it was still working despite the blinding flash. “Then what...” He began, his confusion only growing bigger by the minute. The poor photographer was scared and paranoid now due to the ambiance being different, especially the smell.
Putting away his small equipment in his traveler’s pack. He made his way out of the cave, only to be surprised once again. The forest from before was vastly different, there was no storm in sight nor any remains of its rain. Only a bright glowing moon glowing in the sky greeted his eyes, this in return only sent the poor photographer into more paranoia.
“Why is the sky a lot more… purple?” He turns the camera on and checks its power to see it was currently at three bars. He turns it around to have it pointed at himself.
“This is Elwood, nature photographer. I don’t know what the bloody hell just happened or how I ended up somewhere else, I mean take a look at this,” He said before turning the camera to toward the moon. “I know the moon isn't supposed to be bigger than this or why it suddenly has craters in the shape of a dragon unicorn?" he said before shaking his head. "You’re seeing this, right future me?” If he ever gets home, he will be reviewing this footage to make sure he wasn't going crazy.
A lot of wondering is what he did, completely lost in a forest completely alien to him. He couldn’t recognize anything, nor could he find any similarities that would help him find his way back, even his phone didn’t help him especially when he paid for good service.
The sound of crickets chirping were helping his nerves and calming himself down. “Dammit,” He mattered. It was becoming a little futile to travel now especially with his surroundings being different. “I think it would be time to set up a temporary camp until the sun returns,” Elwood said as he pulled out his phone to check the time, it read 10:13 PM. “....Have I really been in this forest for six hours?” he asked in disbelief.
He traveled and searched until he found an opening between two trees that were perfect and close enough for a hammock to be hung high to minimize the chances of any wild creatures from getting to him. With it setup and his slightly empty backpack used as a pillow, the nature photographer went to sleep.
The morning came and with it the dreaded light that would soon wake up our nature fanatic. Elwood stretches his arms over his head with a soft groan. “...Jeez, that was the most peaceful rest I’ve ever had, not even a single mosquito... Just another list of weirdness so far..” He said as he rubbed the crust out of his eyes. “Right… Let’s get some bearings here..” He said as he carefully got out of his hammock.
Once he had everything neatly put away and triple checking his equipment, he started climbing the tree to the top of the forest. Once at the top, he had to blink his eyes at what he saw. “A volcano… A damn volcano!” He said with dread. There was a time in his life he almost died just trying to take a picture of lava before it started coming right at him. Elwood reaches up to touch a scar he had gotten when some of the lava ash hit him in the face, it was a great pain in his life. “I still remember when I dropped my camera when that damn stuff hit me... The thing cost me a good fifty bucks too...” Elwood said as he shook the memory off his mind.
Taking another glance around, he saw a village off in the distance. Elwood narrowed his eyes as he saw something flying around, but he couldn’t make out the details. “It’s a first, at least I can ask for directions, maybe I'm on the other side of the mountain or something…”
With a goal in mind, he climbed down and head in the direction of the village.
Moving through foliage and ducking under branches, he eventually arrives at the edge of the forest. The photographer blinks in confusion when he notices something off; in the distance is some sort of flying city with rainbows that flowed as if made of liquid, the place reminded him of that old Hercules movie he watched as a kid.
Taking out his camera and turning it on, he looks through it and uses the zoom option to get a closer look. “Holy… T-the moon and the differently colored sky from last night was different, but this?” he whispered to himself as he took a photo of the strange sight. He directs the camera over to the second village, the sight made his mouth go agape. ”D-dragons?” he stuttered. He blinked once, twice, shook his head, then blinked a third time. “T-that can’t be right...”, and yet no matter how many times he lowered his camera and looked through it. He had to back away and take a moment to calm his rapidly beating heart. “O-ok... let’s… see what the hell just happened... I went to a cave to take shelter from the rain, I came across some sort of collection of gems, woke up to see a skeleton, then the strange sight of the moon and everything not being the same... “ He mumbled to himself as he traced his steps in his mind.
“Usually when I get lost, I just turned around and follow the same path I took, but with everything suddenly being different...” He shook his head in fear. “I mean... This really can’t be a different world, but I know this isn’t a dream, everything's too… real...”
He looks over his mental list of options. “I can either live in this forest and possibly starve... Or I can go in to get answers and possibly be eaten by dragons.” He said, both options promised possibly death or harm.
“Oh, and what are you little one?”
Elwood froze where he stood when he heard a voice behind him, he slowly turned around to see yellow scaled dragoness with a pink mane, she had two curved horns. Instead of scaled wings, she had angelic wings. The photographer’s eyes shrunk into dots before suddenly darting into the woods.
“Wait! Where are you going?” The dragoness replied, but her soft voice was barely heard by Elwood.