The caves rumbling had gotten more unstable. It felt as through the entire cave was a monster gurgling to throw up at any moment. A large piece of rock cracked off of the ceiling and fell down only a few feet away from Yin. This was no longer a safe place - if it wasn't already obvious enough.
'What the hell is going on? This cave was completely stable just a second ago. The chances of it breaking down with such fast progress is nearly impossible.' Yin thought to himself as he ran over to the dead beasts body.
Although he knew that the cave was coming down on its self, he simply refused to believe that such an unnatural phenomenon could happen so fast. He wanted to believe that he at least a couple more minutes. In 20 seconds he cut off the hide of the Red-Bellied monkey's red belly. He disliked eating primate meat because he felt they were far too similar to humans, however, the hide on the belly of the Red-Bellied monkey was very much like a silk, fabric consistency. It was useful for making clothes.
After securing the hide, Yin walked back over to the engraving for a final look before leaving. He placed his hand on the wall once again.
'What are the true meaning behinds these words.' Yin thought to himself. His question was not to ascertain what these words meant in terms of their definition, but what drove someone to write them down; here, in the middle of nowhere.
As he turned around to leave, the ground below him suddenly started to crumble rapidly.
'Wha-?'
CRACK!
Before he could react, the floor below him completely collapsed in on itself out of nowhere and he fell down several feet, crashing down onto broken rocks and dust. He couldn't help but cough after breathing in some of the thick smoke that was everywhere in the air. He stood up and covered his face with his black cloak so that he could breath properly.
After a couple of seconds, the dust started to clear up and Yin removed the cloak from his face.
As his eyes opened, he quickly surveyed his entire surroundings. It seems he was in some sort of smaller cave. Its dimensions were 8 feet wide and 12 feet tall, quite small for a normal cave.
There were ultra-white crystals on the walls that lit up the entire cave like a torch. Yin initially thought they were pure salt crystals, but upon licking them he realized that they were a quartz crystal, which he had very little information about due to their insane rarity.
After looking around, he went back to the gaping hole he fell in and looked back up. It was a steep drop, there was no way he would be able to climb up again unless he had some sort of rope. However, there was no vegetation down here, so even if he wanted to; he wouldn't be able to get rope anytime soon.
He turned back around and starting to walk farther into the cave. After only about 40 feet the cave took a sharp turn. On turning the corner Yin saw that the cave ended right there. 10 feet after turning the corner there was a dead end, but that wasn't what was shocked Yin right now - no, not even close - what shocked him was the pedestal made of what looked to be pure quartz which was below some sort of a holograph.
A 3d, transparent; lightly black colored hand was pointed towards Yin and it had all fingers spread far out; like it wanted a high five or something.
As Yin slowly creeped closer he noticed that behind the pedestal, where the end of the cave was, there was the same engraving but to a much smaller scale as the one he had seen above; with the same words.
It looked like an absolute fairytale. How could a hand, a see-through one at that, be floating there. Looking to hover over a man-made pedestal of quartz, something that was known to be nearly impossible to break, bend, or even scratch.
It was all a bit too much to fathom, Yin didn't know what to do in this situation, but he walked up to the hand and met palms with it none the less. Why did he do this? Who knows, maybe he likes giving high-fives, maybe he was curious what would happen. None the less, he met palms with the floating arm.
For the first couple of seconds, nothing happened. All Yin felt was a weird pull coming from the arm that made him want to stick his palm there for a little while longer.
After a minute of nothing happening, the transparent arm suddenly whooshed into Yin's hand, moving quickly without making a sound. Yin's arm absorbed the transparent hand almost instantly as a tremor of electrifying pain jolted through his body.
Yin's breath was met by an assault of pain in his lungs, and each beat of his heart felt like a million needles shredding into his skin. It was indescribably excruciating. Yin quickly fell to his knees, then laid flat on his back. Black marks started to appear on his face and body that felt like lava rivers flowing across his face. The marks turned bright red as they heated up more and more, and even his eyes started to light up. His real eyes couldn't be seen any longer, replaced with two suns that threw bright light out of his eye sockets.
He opened his mouth to exclaim, scream in horrible agony, and as he did; light started to come out of his mouth as well as if he was throwing up light.
The red marks around his body burned and left marks on his clothes. All he could do was lay there and exclaim in the wraithing pain that came in waves and uncontrollably move his body.
The pain felt like it continued on for tens of minutes. Yin didn't pass out nor die, however, he almost felt as though he wanted to.
After what felt like several hours of pain, it all suddenly stopped. Yin's eyes flew open once again after so long, he could see again.
Looking around, he seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
Below him was dark-green grass and above him for miles was a stormy sky that made the daytime feel like night. It seemed he was in some sort of plains, where trees couldn't be see for miles. Heavy, cool winds attempted to blow him away but he kept his hold on the ground.
He didn't know what the hell was going on, but nothing felt truly real. He assumed this to be a dream, and that he had probably passed out from the excruciating pain.
His vision was not clear either, it all felt quite blurry and as though time moved in small snip its. One second he could hear the wind, and the next he would be looking at his hands; each movement having a small edit in between.
Looking into the distance, Yin could see a large group of people on what seemed to be horses going to war. It was all blurry, but he would occasionally see large bursts of light explode around them. Some light blue, some bright red. It almost looked like a fireworks show.
He could hear them yelling, but couldn't understand what they were saying from so far. He felt the thunderous wind push him around some more. It was powerful, but it felt fresh, cool, and soothing.
Then, Yin looked down at his hands. He suddenly was holding a tiny golden toothpick. Also, he immediately noticed his hands looking completely different. They were large, manly hands riddled with calluses.
He then looked up, and out of nowhere he was back to the real world. He could see the pedestal and the engraving once again. Looking down to his body, it seemed that the burning marks had disappeared everywhere except for his forearm. A black tattoo-like mark that looked like a circle inside of a circle existed on his wrist.
He noticed that it looked exactly similar to the one he had on his face, but he couldn't even pretend like he noticed it right now. He was far too shocked with what had just happened.
The hovering hand was gone. Everything was silent. Nothing.