The Arrival

Brand awoke to severe pain once again running through his chest. But this time it was much worse. Without thinking he stuffed the tooth of the Giganotosaurus as far as he could in the pocket of the pants he'd fallen asleep in with his left hand and clutched at his chest with his right. It felt like his chest was on fire. Getting up from the bed he took a couple steps then fell to his knees. Grimacing, his whole body started getting hot and his breathing sped up.

All of a sudden the room around him started to catch on fire and melt at the same time. Unsure of what he was seeing was real, the pain now covering all of Brand's body let him know that he wasn't dreaming. Maybe he was hallucinating from the pain? Then, as if to answer his doubts, the whole house started to violently shake. "What is happening!" Brand screamed in his head. Still clutching his chest, Brand felt like he might black out from the pain when abruptly the pain vanished.

Not having time to feel relieved Brand suddenly felt like some powerful force had grabbed him and lifted him from the floor. Now floating in the air, Brand watched helplessly as the home he had hoped he could build some kind of a life in was disintegrated before his eyes. The once shabby looking house now looked like what can only be described as a smoking crater. Tears started welling up in Brand's eyes and the only comfort he could take was that his foster parents had both been out of the house working when whatever this was happened.

Still floating in the air, Brand started to feel a slight pressure on his back. It was almost as if someone had taken the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner and stuck it to his back. The pressure began to grow stronger and stronger and it felt as though his entire body was going to be sucked into a hole no wider than a quarter.

Finally it felt like his body succumbed to the pressure and Brand felt like he had been sucked up a garden hose. Flying backwards, the world around him disappeared and all he saw was bright colors and lights flashing all around him. He felt like he was flying at the speed of light but at the same time felt like he would be crushed into jelly. Just when he thought he would lose his sanity if this experience went on any longer, he felt himself falling and his world went dark.

Slowly regaining consciousness, Brand groaned as he slowly blinked open his eyes while holding one of his hands above him to block some bright light that was shining on him. Blocking the light, he sat up and looked around. The light seemed to be peeking through a clump of trees that encircled him. It looked like he had woken up in the middle of a forest. "Where am I?" Brand muttered staring a the trees that surrounded him.

Getting to his feet, Brand dusted himself off and tried to explain to himself what had just happened. What had happened? Was he dead? Did he get sucked through some kind of a wormhole to the opposite end of the Earth? Was he on some faraway planet? The trees around him looked familiar enough so that last possibility probably wasn't very likely. "I guess there's only one way to find out." Brand clichéd to himself.

Deciding to first figure out what all he had with him before he set out further into the forest, Brand felt in his pockets to discover he'd arrived at this place with only some lint and that tooth he'd stolen from the museum. "Well I guess I'll keep you with me for now." he said to the dinosaur fang. Sticking it back halfway in his pocket, Brand picked a random direction and started walking.

After almost an hour of walking, Brand thought he heard the sound of running water. Suddenly realizing how thirsty he was, he started running towards the splashing noises in the distance. Coming closer and closer, he thought about taking a nice break by whatever stream or river he was coming up to. Finally breaking through the tree line he spotted a smaller river running through this seemingly endless forest. Running to the bank of the river Brand fell to his knees and started cupping the water to his mouth.

Greedily drinking the river water Brand unexpectedly heard a loud "HUFF". Slowly looking up, Brand finally noticed the beast that was standing on the opposite riverbank just a few feet away from him. Standing in front him was the largest looking yak like creature he had ever seen, although instead of having 2 horns like a normal yak, it had 4 horns making an X like pattern on it's head. He had mistaken it for a couple of small trees it was so big. It had to be over 12 feet high!

Locking eyes with Brand the yak monster started to moo very loudly and then it did something that made his heart jump into his mouth and his eyes bulge out of his skull. The yak started to pull apart from himself. It was like a couple of yak monsters were sharing the same space and then just split apart. All of a sudden there were now two giant yak monsters. Not hesitating a moment more, Brand turned around and ran as fast as he could.

Not even turning around to see if he was being followed, Brand just kept sprinting away from the magic yak monsters. After running as far and as long as he could, Brand collapsed by a tree completely out of breath. "What was that!?" Brand screamed internally while gasping in huge mouthfuls of air. All at once, the energy that he had had left him.

"Running away this whole time tired me out more than I thought. Even though my legs were tired and I was out of breath, I still felt wide awake until just a moment ago." Brand thought as his drooping eyes drifted down to his leg. Some sort of vine had apparently wrapped itself around his ankle. He slowly looked up and saw the vine around his leg was connected to a huge plant that looked like a slightly transparent bowl with a liquid inside. Looking around he saw one of the other vines that were coming out of the plant start to move. It had wrapped itself around a big yellow bird with 4 wings. Slowly dragging it, the vine lifted the limp bird up over the bowl and dropped it inside. It immediately began to dissolve.

Brand wanted to scream but was too tired. He figured the vine around his ankle was sapping his energy but he didn't have the strength to even attempt to dislodge it. The vine suddenly tightened and started to drag him towards the bowl-like plant. Too exhausted to even think about why this was happening to him, Brand suddenly heard a whistling sound and the vine that was dragging him went limp. He looked up and saw an arrow had cut the vine just ahead of where his foot was. THWIP THWIP THWIP. Three more arrows abruptly sprouted from the bowl plant and after a minute the leaking plant looked like it had been deflated.

Turning around, Brand saw his savior walk into his field of vision. It was a beautiful girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. But not really a human girl. As she walked towards him he saw pointed ears that extended from her head quite a ways, translucent wings on her back, and eyes that were sparkly blue with nothing in the way of an iris or pupil. Still feeling light headed the only thing he could think of was that he was dead, this was some strange afterlife, and an angel had come to save him.

The angel started to speak to Brand. He could barely hear at this point but what he made out sounded like gibberish to him. He shook his head and tried to keep listening. She spoke again sounding louder this time, but he started to lose consciousness again. The last thing Brand saw before he blacked out once more was the puzzled look on the angel's face.