The air is hot and dry. The small hovel, having become slightly smaller, is filled with rocks and chunks of soil that have fallen off the roots above Adam.
Groaning, Adam slowly comes to, confused at first as to why he is in such a dark room. He spits out the dust that has made its way into his mouth and sits up. The top of his hair brushes the short ceiling above him. Adam's heart pounds in his chest, and he starts to hyperventilate.
That is his first mistake as Adam chokes on rather large chunks of dirt he inhales. Coughing out what feels like his left lung, Adam starts to calm his breathing.
"Where am I?" Adam questions himself, his voice coming out in hoarse scratches. The brief memories from before he passed out take their time to return to him. Scratching more dirt out from behind his ear, his pulse slowly drops to its regular pace. Remembering the direction of the entrance, Adam rolls onto his stomach and crawls towards the covered opening.
'Why is it so goddamn dark in here,' he cursed to himself. 'Actually, what time is it? I can't have been out long. It was around sunset last I remember.'
His head is pounding, and what tastes like dried blood coats his upper lip. Pulling his body forward from his elbows, Adam rams his head into a thick root.
"Gah!" he lets out in anger and pain.
'I must have gotten turned around when the ground shook. This hovel isn't that big; the entrance has to be behind me.'
Turning himself back around again, Adam pushes himself forward on his knees. He does not want to bring his head into the search again. After a second of crawling, the ground beneath him starts to slope upwards. Reaching hands up, Adam feels what he thinks is bark. It has the same texture as the trees he touched earlier.
Following the curve of the bark, Adam's fingers trace to the line between the bark and the dirt. The tree he found refuge under must have collapsed.
'How was I not crushed by the roots tipping over with the trunk?' Adam did not know whether to feel relieved or lucky, but his situation is not any better regardless. Rising to his knees, Adam pushed the tree with whatever force he could muster; the tree did not budge.
Panic ebbing its way back into his mind, Adam sat down with back to the entrance.
"Alright, Adam, what are your options?" Talking to himself always helped Adam, especially after his sister left him.
"Well, you could give up now and finish what you started." A voice in the back of his mind responded.
Adam smacked himself. He was already in the dark; he did not need to have more dark thoughts. Adam did not want to give up. Everyone had already left him, so he chose to not abandon himself.
Following that moment of, weak, but reassuring self-confidence, Adam realized he only had one option left. His fingers, still weak and covered in sores from pulling himself against the wind, reached out to find a small root. After grasping around his surroundings for a few seconds, Adam's hands wrapped around a root roughly the width of his finger. His fingers stung as he tightened his grip on the small piece of wood.
The root felt dry and dead; Adam could not believe his luck.
'Alive wood was much more expensive back home, so it must be much stronger,' he reasoned.
He began to pull on the root, hoping it would just be a stick lodged in the ground. He was not that fortunate, but he could feel the root give way as he continued to pull on it. Adam hoped that it would give before more skin on his fingers was lost.
After a few tense moments, Adam felt the root slacken, and he fell onto his back without his handhold fastened into the ground. Chuckling to himself, Adam was shocked at the pleasure he felt in the moment.
'Why am I so happy? I'm trapped in a hole and I have no idea where I am.' Adam thought, the pain in his hands pulsing.
He didn't care. After spending several lamentable years alone, Adam was content to have a blithe experience.
Pushing those bleak thoughts to the back of his mind, he sat back up and did his best to picture what he was holding. The room was still too dark to see anything, but Adam figured the torn-off root was about 2 feet long. Satisfied with his brand new tool, he worked back to the entrance and began digging into the dirt next to the tree.
The tree had compacted the ground that it had fallen on top of, making it difficult to pull off the wall. Adam wasn't too worried about running out of space to store the loose soil, but he did not feel like digging for hours.
At first, Adam stabbed the root into the wall trying to dislodge any large chunks. Unfortunately, he did not make a lot of progress this way. So, Adam took to scraping the sharp end of the root against the wall.
Now he was getting closer to the surface. There was still no light coming in, but Adam believed he had found where the tree started to curve upwards. The opening was wide enough for his head to fit, and deeper than his elbow. Suddenly, he felt the stick get buried as the ground collapsed on top of it. Scared of losing his new companion, Adam yanked his tool back.
He could hear the dirt sliding down the slope he was on, so he set the stick under his knee and began pulling large swathes of ground out of his hole. It just kept coming; Adam thought he was pulling the entire surface down with him. However, soon after the dirt's advance began, light broke through a small crack at the end of Adam's tunnel.
"Yes!" Adam screamed, rejoicing in his fruitful efforts.
Abandoning the stick altogether, Adam reached and dug with both hands. Somehow, the dirt caking onto his fingers lessened his pain. He doubled his efforts, letting his lungs fill with the new, fresh air. His eyes struggled to adjust to the light, but he welcomed it all the same.
The hole doubled in size, then tripled, and soon Adam was able to fit his whole body into it. Reaching his right arm out of the exit, he felt the surface for the first time since he'd been down there. Excitedly, he reached around for a good handle and used it to pull himself closer to freedom.
He could hear the wind blowing, albeit far weaker than it was the last time he heard it. His mind was racing; he had no idea what he was going to do once he was out, but he just wanted to leave that godforsaken pit.
And finally, after pulling and pulling, he freed himself. His knees felt weak as they made contact with grass; nonetheless, he pushed himself off the ground and stood up to his full height.
Looking around, he couldn't help but feel his excitement leave him. His smile dropped faster than his heart. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
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Looking around, the man could not recognize his surroundings. The mighty Drakian Forest lay shattered before him. Had it not been for what he witnessed the night before, it would have seemed like a sign from whatever divine being was left.
Trees, hundreds of years old, lay toppled. Rolling hills flattened and all small vegetation within eyesight was decimated.
'An entire region, gone in seconds,' the man thought gruffly.
Shaking, whether in rage or disbelief, he walked through the ruins of the once lush and great woodland. Trees the size of buildings lay stripped of branches, their barks charred. The smaller trees weren't so fortunate. Some were snapped in half, the skinny trunks all that's left to remember of their beginnings. Others were thrown from the earth, leaving large divots where they had taken root.
The man had forgotten how long he had been walking. Time seemed neither slow nor fast as he took in the devastation. He could not hear a single bird, the ever abundant poddles were gone, and even the insects seemed to have been erased.
In dumbstruck awe, the man climbed on top of one of the larger felled trees. Looking around, he could see for miles, a feat only capable in the Oglenic Plains.
'This is absurd.'
"I should have stopped him. Why did I ever believe his lies?" The man thought aloud, hoping to console himself.
His self-reflection was cut short when he heard a shout to his left. Shocked that anything survived, he quickly stood up and looked in the direction of the voice. Squinting his eyes to see better in the bright daylight, he saw a dirty hand break the ground next to a fallen tree.
Not knowing what to do, the man watched the hand become an arm, and then a head soon appeared into view. The rest of the thing surfaced from the ground, and the man was in utter disbelief to have come across another human.
"Is this a sign, Doran?" The man said, looking up at the sky.
Gathering his thoughts, the man hopped off the log and started his walk to the stranger. It did not take him long with much of the flora gone. He could now distinguish the stranger's features, figuring that the stranger was a boy, probably fourteen marks old.
"Hey kid," the man called out when he got closer.
The young boy turned to face him, the man's silver eyes met the boy's golden gaze; bringing shivers down the man's back. He had seen eyes like those not too long ago.
"Awful place to find yourself napping. What are you doing out here?" The man questioned the boy.
"Where is here, exactly?" The boy solemnly responded, his voice sounding dry and weak.
The man watched the boy for a moment, then responded, "Not like 'here' exists anymore. You're not from these parts, are you?"
The boy looked around, seemingly taking in the air around him. After a moment, the boy faced the man and looked up at him. The man could not help but to think how lifeless those eyes looked. Somehow, the boy continued to surprise the man, as his cold tone reached the mans ears.
"No, I may not even be from this world."