Thirty minutes before Avnar's awakening...
"Hey Sel, would you grab the trowel?"
"Sure thing grandpa!" Exclaimed a young girl around the age of seventeen. She had a brilliant smile on her face as she always did when with her family. She and her grandpa were tilling the soil to get ready for the planting in spring and thus needed a trowel to accomplish this.
(AN: I don't really know anything about farming or anything associated with it so I'm just going to leave it at that. I don't feel like making a fool out of myself today lol.)
The girl, beautifully named Selia, walked to retrieve the trowel from its resting place just inside their house. The day truly was a beautiful one and the girl reveled in the sun's rays, her hair shimmering like a thousand flawless diamonds. She was, in short, a romantic and was madly obsessed with the nature of the world and the emotion called love. The grandpa, not noticing his granddaughter's obsequious nature, gave into her requests for romance books and stories from the big cities, further fueling her romantic idealisms and desires.
Despite being in a near constant state of penury, the grandpa could still manage to scrounge up some change to buy these material commodities for his granddaughter. Selia, however, showed little concern or care for her and her grandpa's financial well-being.
Selia found the rusted trowel in its decrepit resting place by the shovels and glanced around the one roomed house, stopping at the crooked and holed roof. Five years ago she would not have given the house's constant state of disrepair a second glance but now, a slight look of distaste arose on her perfect face.
She walked out of the house with the trowel and smiled at her grandpa once again. The poor man's heart melted for what seemed to be the millionth time since Selia had been born. She was a solitary ray of light upon his life, livening him and giving him a purpose to get up in the morning. That smile which he would protect and cherish until the day he died.
Her grandpa proceeding with the tilling, Selia left to a copse of trees next to a pond not too far away from her grandfather's farm. She enjoyed coming to this sanctuary when she had nothing in particular to do and was in a romantic mood. Her mind wandered this way and that, manufacturing all sorts of realties in which she was in a state of perfect bliss. She had little clue however, that this idiotic and fluff-headed state of mind would be the exact thing that destroys her happiness in the end.
As she is walking she notices a pretty rock on the ground, sparkling in a multitude of colors and shining like a rainbow.
She bends to pick it up and is compressed into the dirt from an earthshaking crack in the sky. Dust flew in all directions as the shockwave passed at hypersonic speeds, bending trees and killing small animals.
Selia rose from the ground as quickly as she could, wheezing from loss of breath. She might have been fluff-headed but that did not mean she was dull. She knew danger when she came across it and knew that the sooner one ran away from that life-threatening danger the better.
She looked up towards where the sound came from and saw what seemed to be a meteor streaking towards the ground from a hole in the sky. Yes a hole. There was no telling what that hole led to, but there it was, with a beyond deadly meteor threatening to impact the ground in less than thirty seconds.
Thankfully though, the meteor was aimed towards a location to the west of her and her grandpa, in an uninhabited portion of the plains.
Realizing she was not in danger, she watched in awe as the meteor continued its trajectory towards the ground. At this point a loud symphonic roar emitted from the open hole in the sky, causing another sonic attack for all those in the nearby surroundings like Selia.
Seeing the air warping and distorting as the force got closer, she tried to run but to no avail. Selia was knocked to the ground again, this time harder than before. However, the damage done from the knockdown was incomparable to the damage done to her internals. Selia gasped in pain and clenched her head with her hands. She felt as if someone was inserting white-hot barbed nails into her brain with no reprieve. Fortunately, as soon as it started, it ended and the hole in the sky closed almost instantly.
Still in immense pain, Selia cast a mediocre healing spell in between breaths to stave off some of the pain. It worked and now that she felt a little better she got up off the ground only to see her grandfather already running toward her.
Her grandpa knew more magic than her so he must have healed before deciding to run to her. Although, he was still stumbling like a hundred year old man with extreme arthritis. He was obviously still injured but put his granddaughter's well-being over his own, healing himself the minimum amount needed for him to be able to move.
"Selia! Selia! Are you okay?!" Her grandpa cried in hysteria. His entire body was shaking and he looked like he could collapse at any moment. Blood could be seen leaking from all the seven orifices of his face. However, Selia's grandpa did not seem to notice any of this, his eyes only showing wild concern for his daughter bordering on primal instinct.
Another boom could be heard at this moment as the meteor finally pierced the earth. An enormous ball of fire expanded outward but was contained from spreading any further by a forcefield of some kind. The field shimmered when impacted by the explosive force emanating from the blast but showed no signs of breaking or collapsing. The earth rumbled as if it had been hit with a magnitude six earthquake but decreased in intensity as the meteoric impact lost its intensity. If the force field, or whatever it was, had not been there, then there would have been untold damage across the region, perhaps even destroying the small towns miles away from here.
(AN: the explosion is similar to a hydrogen bomb with an explosive yield of one megaton of TNT)
The grandpa granddaughter pair stared in absolute shock. Their minds were not present, all feasible and tangible thought gone in the presence of a literal world-shaking event. In all the mundaneness of their lives they never expected anything like this to happen, why would anyone? Such an event is an anomaly, a one in a billion chance!
At this point in time, the magical forcefield dissipated and the smoke that had been trapped inside the dome dispersed like a bubble that had been popped. The smoke climbed into the atmosphere and could no doubt be seen for tens of miles.
(AN: Forgot to mention, I live in the United States so I use the imperial system of measurement. Sorry if that bothers any of you.)
The surrounding villages were in chaos, some fear mongers even advocating this event as the beginning of the apocalypse. Needless to say the farmers in the surrounding region were packing up their belongings as well. Many houses had been destroyed or blown down by the shockwaves and earthquake and thus most had nothing left in the rural areas. They would come back to rebuild their farms and lost livelihood when the danger had passed and they had the means to rebuild. For now though, it was a mass migration to the towns and cities and even those places had sustained damage albeit minor.
Cognizance was gradually returning to the grandfather and granddaughter and they looked at each other, fear apparent in their eyes. This fear was a special kind of fear, one not usually seen within this technologically limited world. The fear of the unknown.
Shadows fell across the plains as ash and smoke from the impact scoured the heavens. They wondered in tandem what they should do now. Run? Hide? Accept their fates?
Their thought processes ran a narrow track, fear omnipresent with each neuron that fired.
"We should leave," Selia said trying to sound calm and collected but fear and distress permeated her voice all the same. It made her voice sound less how she meant it to sound and more like the frightened yelping of a wounded animal.
The grandfather agreed, "Yes, we need to run away from this calamity. I fear whatever or whoever caused this devastation did it for a reason. That meteor-" At this moment a shimmering could be seen from all around them. The light phenomenon steadily grew more tangible and many could see that it enveloped a wide expanse of land. At least 300 miles in diameter!
"Another force field?! The amount of magic power needed to construct such a large spell!" The grandfather was sputtering in disbelief, completely forgetting his fear once again in the face of this dazzling display of power.
An entire kingdom was engulfed in this newly created forcefield. Nobody new anything about what was occurring and the authoritative powers within the kingdom, while trying to calm the general populace, were also confused and in disarray.
"I'm going," the grandfather said with determination.
"Going where?" Selia asked in trepidation.
"To where it fell," he emphasized the word it. "We are trapped in here now, there is no escaping. I might as well see what it is. It should not be all that bad," he lied. He said so for Selia's benefit. He had little time to come up with a believable reason as to why he was to investigate and this was the result.
Selia was truly regretting her insouciance and obsequiousness towards her grandfather now. Ever since her parents had mysteriously disappeared, this man had taken care of her. He was not related by blood but he had basically adopted her. Thus, Selia had called him by the name of grandfather ever since she could remember.
He only told her about her parents disappearance and the fact that he was not her grandfather last year. She hadn't known because she had been two at the time this all had happened. When her grandfather told her, Selia had not cared in the slightest. She had always suspected that something was strange about her past as she could remember snippets and fuzzy images of a pair of people she thought were her parents. She had often speculated about what had happened to them and where they could have gone.
The only thing that slightly surprised her was finding out that her grandfather was not blood related. This led her to speculate more on where the rest of her family was. Had they all disappeared too? If so, where are they, where could they have gone? No one just disappears without a trace.
At the time, however, she had been to involved and obsessed with her romantic idealisms that she soon forgot of those questions and inquisitorial thoughts.
This whole situation kind of scared her, what with the meteoric impact and a giant forcefield that engulfed an entire country in a cage of shimmering purple light. That, coupled with her regret changed her mindset a small bit. She was resolved to help her grandfather in any way she could without wanting for anything. She was not quite determined they would figure out this situation like her grandfather was but she was willing to help and that's what counted.
"You're not going grandpa," she said in a firm and absolute voice, no fear to be found. "At least not without me."
The grandfather looked at her in blatant surprise. He had not expected such words to come out of her mouth. He had known her for well over a decade and knew her to be a bit cowardly. This was all overshadowed, in his eyes, by her radiant attitude and outlook on life that provided him with endless happiness. She was the sunshine that kept him alive and he couldn't let that special existence come to harm. What would he have to live for otherwise?
This change in demeanor truly surprised him and also scared him. If this event had already impacted her this much, how would she behave if their lives continued this downward spiral? Gods forbid she ends up like him. Then what? Where would they find their sources of happiness?