Chapter 1

At Kiou Leou Zoo Samasan Da Silva is inspecting food being prepared for the animals.

"Have these been inspected for parasites?"

Samasan holds up a blue bin filled with clams destined for the walruses' lunch. No one answered his question. Samasan cleared his throat, "Have these-" A loud popping sound is heard as the 100 watt light bulb above Samasan falls out of its socket, and beaks on his head. His vision blinks to blackness.

"Lary you forgot to install the lights correctly. Larry? Hello? He must be out to lunch. Damn it's dark in here. I can't see anything."

Samasan Da Silva reached for the phone in his pocket, "you got to be fucking kidding me," and found none. He cursed as he stumbled blindly through the room. Reaching into darkness, Samasan found his hand on a cold wet surface. "The hell?" He calmed himself and explored the feeling of the wall with his hands. It was rock hard, but didn't have the repeating indentations of mortar between the bricks he expected to feel. SamaSan's eyes still hadn't adjusted to the darkness as his hand slid down the hard wall.

As Samasan reached the floor, he picked up a handful of sand, and let it sift through his fingers. "Did I fall into a sink hole?" He couldn't recall tripping over any large debris since exploring the darkness, nor the sound of glass breaking under his feet. Parts of the room would have certainly fallen down with him, but there was only the feeling of cold stony walls and sandy floor.

"Where am I? Hello!"

Samasan let out a long cry, and noticed his voice echoing. He clapped his hands, then waited. Clapped again. Then whistled. There was definitely an acoustic echo that trailed off for a long time. He reached above his head, and waved his arms around, half expecting to feel a ceiling. Samasan swung wildly at the air.

"Hmmm... Did I lose consciousness? How long was I out? Where am I? Why can't I see? Where's my wallet? Where's my keys?"

His mind filled with questions as he finally assessed himself. The clothes didn't feel like the uniform he normally wears. There was a shirt, and pant's tied with a cloth belt, and "wooden sandles?" Samasan was shocked by the attire. The fabric was rough, and the sandles were secured to his feet by coarse twine. He hadn't noticed the change of clothes, because he was too engrossed by the change of environment. Samasan felt his body was the same as far as he could tell. No injuries. Facial stubble felt cut within the last day. He remembered shaving this morning.

"I haven't been out for days," he thought to himself.

As Samasan Da Silva sat down on the cold sand, he tried to imagine his surroundings. It was too dark to see, despite having enough time to adjust his vision. There was an echo, which indicated the room was large. The temperature of the wall and sand both felt cool to the touch, and slightly damp.

"Sand requires erosion..."

Samasan imagined the different things that could create sand. The air was very still, so wind didn't seem likely, but there was wet. "It must be from water erosion." Samasan listened quietly for the sound of water, but heard none. No trickle or waves entered his ears. Then he threw handfuls of sand around himself, while listening for the sound of water.

*silence*

Samasan decided that he must be underground, and leaned his back against the stone wall. He contemplated what to do. Staying put was a viable option. Rescues are more efficient when the lost person stays in one place. Images of crumbling foundation falling on his head filled his mind.

"I should at least move away from this area." He told himself.

The decision to crawl along the wall was made, starting with a trench dug in the sand to indicate the starting point. Samasan held his left hand against the wall, and slowly crawled forward. He stopped every 3 meters to throw sand to his front and right, and then listen for the sound of splashing water. Eventually the sound of splooshing water was heard. Samasan threw another handful of sand in front of himself not as hard. No splash was heard.

He crawled forward a meter and threw again. The water called out in response. His ears were singing. It was the first unique sound Samasan heard in over an hour. At least what was perceived as an hour. Samasan's fingers finally broke the surface of the water with his hands. A sigh of relief filled his lungs. If he was truly underground, at least there was water, but he had to decide on drinking it.

Samasan Da Silva waded his fingertips through the still water as he thought. He didn't want to get an intestinal parasite, but he also didn't want to die of thirst. Either way he could wait a day for rescue before drinking. Samasan flicked the water off his fingers, and sat crossed-legged in the sand. He was tired and wanted to lay down, but he also knew that he needed to conserve body heat. Lying in the sand would sap away heat much faster than sitting.

Although the sensory deprivation hallucinations caused him to see flashes of strange shapes and colors that disturbed Samasan, he drifted off to sleep. He dreamed of being in traffic while traveling to work in the rain with no roof on his car. The rain fell harder and harder. Samasan could feel his body start to shiver. He finally awoke to find the water up to his hips, and his body soaked. Water was spraying off the ceiling.

"Shit!"

Samasan took a moment to calm his breathing and clear his mind. He knew panicking was the most dangerous thing to do. After his thoughts calmed, Samasan placed his left hand on the wall, and turned around. Now with his right hand touching the wall, he crawled forward much faster than before. He knew the way back to the start was clear. The water sloshed and splashed around him as it crested up to his upper thighs and down to his knees. It was cold, and he was starting to shiver. A feeling of panic filled his heart, and he crawled faster.

"Where is it!?"

He hadn't known how far he had traveled back, but he was still splashing through water and feeling for the ditch he dug in the sand.

"Shit. Shit. Shit. Did it wash away?"

He finally reached the water's edge and kept crawling. However, no ditch in the sand was ever found. Samasan kept crawling, and crawling, trying to get far away from the water. He knew how dangerous it potentially was. Although he didn't understand why the underground water had tidal changes. The ocean was hundreds of miles away. Samasan knew the risk drowning in a flooding sea cave. After a short stint of crawling, his hand splashed down into water again.

"Damnit."

Samasan knew the cave wall had curved back around to the waters edge. His heart was thumping quickly whilst imagining drowning. He turned around, and crawled away along the wall to a drier area. He then disrobed and wrung out his clothes. Wearing wet clothes would lead to hypothermia, and there was no one around to see him in his nudity. Although shame was not viable at such a time. Samasan shivered as he curled into a ball to conserve body heat. The sound of water crashing over itself could be heard.

His skin prickled with goose bumps. Samasan wished he could crawl back into the silence that was there once before. He knew the potential of the surf crushing his body against the rocks was just as deadly as hypothermia. The only thing that could be done was wait in the cold darkness and pray. The sounds of crashing water subsided, and Samasan fainted from the exhaustion of fear. When he awoke, Samasan rewore the damp clothes, and noticed a light in the distance.

"I'm free..."

He exhaled in relief as he walked directly towards the light. Suddenly Samasan was sliding down a slippery rock's edge. He cursed himself as he had forgotten to be careful. The fall was too short to be injurious, but large enough to startle him back to his senses. The water of the tidal pond sloshed around his knees and elbows as Samasan crawled towards the light. It had grown bright enough to see the silhouette of his hands. When he finally came out into the daylight, Samasan was standing in the middle of a ruby red lagoon.

The cliff walls behind him were made from black rock, and the sand was also black. It was the water itself that had a transparent red color. Although it felt strangely refreshing to wade through the water, Samasan worried about the chemical toxicity of the brightly colored liquid. As Samasan waded towards the nearby beach, he noticed a large rock covered in green algae laying next to the water. He decided to approach it as it was the closest landmark to himself, but as he was 25 meters away, the rock looked up at him.

Samasan had thought that this was a large boulder covered in algae, but now they were staring at each other. It's large head was attached to its body like a quadrupedal animal. The skin and eyes were a dark wet black with green algae-like hairs hanging off its head and body. It's mouth gaped opened and black sludge rolled out. This was incredible and terrifying. A never before seen creature on earth, and Samasan was the first to discover it!

Samasan stood still while looking towards the creature, but not directly at it, and began to slowly back away. His body trembled with terror. The creature finally closed its mouth and lowered its head when Samasan had moved another 10 meters away. It still took a vague interest in what he was doing in the lagoon, but didn't move as Samasan slowly moved further away. He finally reached the beach, and it was covered with crystal clear jellies. As he tried to step around them, one of them slopped towards him. It was amazing to see a jellyfish with locomotion on land, but he also didn't know if it was fatally venomous.

It was also strange that none of these jellyfish flopping and slopping towards him had tentacles. "Oh shit!" Samasan had realized that at least 20 of these crystal jellies were moving towards him. He hurriedly moved around them as more began to move. The more he moved, the more of them moved. Samasan froze in place with his heart thumping out of his chest. All of the clear creatures slowed and stopped moving towards him. His eyes darted around, looking for a blob trying to ambush him.

As he quickly turned his head, two jellies flopped over towards him. Samasan waved his arms wildly to catch his balance from the fright, and hundreds of the clear blobs moved towards him at a slightly faster pace. Samasan's body froze again, but the jellies kept moving towards him like a school of fish. They showed no signs of stopping now. In the heat of panic, Samasan threw his shirt over the crystal jellies moving towards him. Some of them extended their gelatinous bodies upwards toward the shirt and fell back over themselves.

The jellies changed their collective movement away from Samasan, and towards his shirt. He watched as clear blobs piled on top of his shirt, and more piled on top of them. The off-white shirt became hazy, then foggy, then the pile of crystal jellies started to turn a cloudy white. This whole process from throwing the shirt to dissolving it took three minutes.

"Acidic jellyfish."

The discovery of the strange rock creature was amazing, and this added onto how astounding the world around Samasan was. He realized that these blobs were attracted towards movement. The pile of cloudy jellies slowly dispersed away from each other as Samasan moved away from them. He still had to slowly maneuver around the jellies placed sporadically. Once he had reached a tree, Samasan placed his hand against the trunk to lean on it. The bark felt like it had been well-warmed by the sun, but then it got hotter and hotter.

Samasan pulled his hand off the tree, but could still feel the heat. The palm of his hand was bright pink, and felt like it was inside a hot oven. He waved his hand around to cool it off, but the heat got painfully hotter. Samasan slapped his hand down on the sandy dirt and rubbed his palm around in it. In a last ditch effort of panic, urinated on his burning hand. The heat quickly dissipated, while the stinging remained. Then movement caught Samasan Da Silva's eyes. He was surrounded by more jellies.

There were ten of them surrounding him. He froze in place, and the crystal jellies stopped moving. Then he tried to lift his leg slowly, and the jellies started to shudder. Samasan tried to imagine what to do. They were too close to run away from, and he might trip on their reaching bodies if he tried to jump over them. Swatting them away with a tree branch was definitely out of the question.

"There's no way I'm touching that thing again."

The bodies looked to weigh close to 2-3 kilos, and were the size of a half-deflated basketball. They were shimmering in the sunlight that was passing through the leafs of the trees.

"There's only one thing to do now..."

Samasan raised his foot back, and tried to kick a jellyfish away. His foot swung forward, "shit!," as he remembered he was wearing sandles. He tried to stop his foot, and the jellyfish blob flopped onto his foot. Samasan tried to kick it off, but it was stuck on him. In a last ditch effort of panic, Samasan kicked the blob stuck to his foot against the tree as hard as he could. The blob popped like a bubble and dropped something, but three more of them attached to his legs. He kept kicking the blobs against the tree, until none were left.

Patches of leg hair were missing, replaced by smooth skin. Thankfully, Samasan's legs weren't burning or dissolving away. He looked around the ground for more of those blobs, and saw none. What did catch his eyes were copper coins laying on the ground. Samasan picked three coins up, and inspected them. One face had a ring of thirteen stars, and the opposite face held a strange form of writing that he couldn't read.

Samasan picked up the other eleven coins, and stared at the pile. "Where did these come from?" As Samasan thought, he noticed a small clear marble on the ground. As he squeezed his hand closed around the coins to pick up the marble with the other hand, Samasan heard a metallic clink noise. He opened his hand to see one silver coin and one copper coin.

"How did this get here, and where are the others?"

Samasan Da Silva looked curiously at the silver coin. It was also the same in size and decorations compared to the copper coin. When Samasan tried to bend the silver coin, it exploded into 13 copper coins that fell to the ground. He picked up the copper coins, and counted 14 all together. Then he squeezed the coins, and heard another clink. His hand opened again, and he was holding one silver coin and one copper coin.

"This has to be a dream. Obviously you can't read words in dreams, and this is too much to be real. But it feels so real."

He held the glassy marble in the same hand holding two coins, and started to walk around. Samasan felt like it would be a waste not to explore such a vivid dream. As Samasan walked, he found a small stream, and followed it to a creek, then a river. Across it, Samasan could see a wooden building with a large wooden water-wheel.

"Hello!" He waved towards the person on the other side.

"Ilgahar!" The person yelled back.

"What!"

"Ilgahar!"

Samasan shrugged his arms in confusion, and looked around for a bridge. He saw one up the river. It was 150 meters away. The bridge was made of cobblestone with a dirt path on either side of it. The streaks of dirt on the bridge were from wagon wheel tracks. It was narrow and had no guard rails or raised walls along it's edge. Samasan followed the dirt road back to the wooden building he had seen before.

"Hello, yes. Can you help me?"

"Ilgahar oma."

The woman held up a small curved grass sickle, and pointed it at him.

"Ilgahar oma."

"I don't understand."

Samasan held up his hands to show he wasn't a threat.

The woman saw the clear marble in Samasan's hand and waved her sickle towards it.

"Thayj. Thayj."

"You want this?"

He handed the marble to the woman, and she looked at it closely, then at him, and back to the marble, then handed him a small pouch filled with grains. It weighed about 50 grams, and was filled with crescent moon shaped grains. He also noticed a large mill-stone turning inside the building.

"This must be edible." Samasan thought to himself.

Samasan smiled at the woman and walked away. He didn't know what else to do. A kilometer down the dirt road, Samasan took a pinch of the strange grains into his mouth and began chewing on them. The taste was bland. It also slightly numbed the mouth with an alkali sensation.

"Blehah..." Samasan spat out the mushy grains.

Upon closer look, the fields around him were the same plants with those crescent grains. They stood 40 centimeters high, and were green. There was a long silver hair protruding off the husk of each seed. Each silver hair was 10 centimeters long, and curved downward under the effect of gravity. The grain seeds looked like bloated double-ended sunflower kernels that were curved like cashews. The field waved against the gentle breeze.

"I wish I had my camera with me. How long is this dream going to last?" Samasan sighed to himself.

His journey continued into the late afternoon, when 4 meter tall grasses around him began to rustle. A large creature passed in front of his path. It's body was huge, green as grass with brown splotches on its body. It looked like a giant centipede. The body was 2 meters thick, and too long to estimate it's length. Samasan was lucky to not encounter it head on. Its brown legs held its body nearly a meter off the ground, and they pierced the ground with each step.

Samasan hid in the tall grass on the opposite side of the road from where the giant centipede was traveling, and cautiously watched it pass. The dirt road was 4 meters wide, and he estimated the length of the creature to be more than 20 meters. Twin scorpion tails finally appeared as it finished crossing the road. Each were 2.5 meters in length with a 30 centimeter stinger on both tips. This was becoming less of a dream, and more nightmarish for Samasan. After the grass russling got faint, he started to walk more cautiously down the road.

Another hour passed, Samasan decided to look at the sun. "What!" There wasn't a singular sun. It was a cluster of thirteen stars in a ring formation, with the sun on the right slightly closer to the middle of the circle. He looked at the coins in his hand, and noticed the ring of 13 stars matched the stars in the daytime sky, except the circle of stars on the coins formed a perfect ring. Samasan tried to bend the silver coin with one hand, and it burst into multiple copper coins. He took out 3 copper coins and squeezed his hand around the remaining pile.

Nothing happened. He tried bending a copper coin. It bent. He placed all the coins back together, and squeezed his hand.

*Clink*

His hand opened to show one silver coin, and one bent copper coin. He cracked the silver coin back into coppers again, took out an undamaged copper coin from the fourteen, and squeezed..

*Clink*

Samasan Da Silva's hand opened to expose a flat silver coin. He cracked it back into coppers. All of which were flat again. No bent copper coin was there.

*Clink*

Samasan clasped the coins back into one silver, and one copper. After walking more, the tall grasses finally fell off to large fields of what Samasan came to call 'moon wheat' in his mind. He took another pinch of moon seeds, and forced himself to eat. They didn't release their numbing effects until bitten into. His mouth felt like it had just left the dentist. It didn't get any worse as he kept eating the moon seeds, nor better. The grains satisfied Samasan's hunger after 2 handfuls.

People waved at him from the field as he walked, and he waved back.

"Ilgahar." One of the men with a basket on their back called out.

"Hello." he called back.

The man in the field looked at Samasan with a confused look, and went back to pulling weeds. Throwing them over his shoulder, and into the basket on his back. Samasan strolled into the nearby village.

"Hello." he greeted the children playing outside with sticks.

They stopped, stared at Samasan, and ran to a house. An elderly woman came out of the building and stared at him.

"Ilgahar."

"Uh... I don't understand. Help?" Samasan Da Silva held out the two coins in his hand.

The woman looked at the coins, and then at Samasan's face and smiled. She took the silver coin, cracked it, and kept three copper coins for herself. Samasan tried to squeeze the 11 coppers in his hand, but nothing happened. The woman had returned from the house with a bread roll and clay bowl of water. She handed them to him.

"Thank you."

The bread was too hard for him to bite into. It required soaking to make it soft enough to eat. When Samasan bit into the fist sized roll his mouth went numb. "Moon wheat," he garbled with a mouthful of food. The woman laughed at Samasan's comment while he finished eating the bread. Then he drank the remainder of the water. As Samasan began to walk away, the woman yelled out. The children ran out with their sticks, and started beating him with them.

"Ow. Ow!"

One of the children pulled the clay bowl out of his hands, and ran back to the elderly lady with it. The other children continued to beat Samasan with sticks, until he ran out of the village. The field workers noticed the children, and started shouting.

"Rolga!"

Samasan kept running until his legs gave out. He passed out in the middle of the dirt road. When he awoke, Samasan heard the voice of a man yelling.

"Rolga!"

*crack*

"Ow!" Samasan rolled over in pain.

*crack* *crack*

Samasan lied on the side of the road, screaming with tears flowing out of his eyes. The man whipped his horse, and the cart started to roll away. Samasan Da Silva stared up at the sky to the star ring. Now the right star was no longer indented inwards, and the bottom star was. After he came to his senses, Samasan stood up, and brushed himself off.

"This is too real to be a dream. I want to wake up!"

No one answered his plea. After a couple minutes of heavy reflection, the grass started to rustle. Samasan's face turned pale. A shadow jumped out from the grass, and Samasan screamed. The body of a one meter tall person fell at his feet, and they dropped their sword as they fainted.

"Are you okay?"

Samasan was shaken back to reality by the sound of something moving in the tall grass. A giant brown rat came out of the weeds. It was the size of a large dog, and had cuts bleeding all over it's face and body. Samasan froze in fear as the rat hissed. It began to slowly approach him and the body of the person he was protecting. Samasan's hand shook violently as he reached for the short-sword. The rat dashed towards him, and he held the sword in the air with shaky hands. It jumped towards Samasan, and let out a loud squeak.

He was crushed under the rat's heavy body. It was no longer moving. Samasan pushed the rat off of himself. The sword was buried into the rat's chest. He noticed the sound of ticking coming from it. The dead body sounded like a clock.

"Hey. Are you okay?"

Samasan checked on the fainted woman. She was still breathing with terrible bite marks covering her arms. Samasan instinctively reached for his phone, "oh right..." There was none to use. The wounds on the woman's arms were bleeding, but not profusely enough to seem life threatening. Samasan lifted up the woman's stiff leather top to check her abdomen for injuries, because there was damage to the leather. He found no injuries. The ticking noise had gotten slower, and finally he heard a loud pop.

When Samasan turned around to look at the rat, there was only a bloody sword, and five silver coins with a dull brown marble on the ground. He stared dumbfounded at the scene.

"Is it still alive?"

Samasan knew the rat couldn't reach the sword in its chest to pull it out, and then he remembered the crystal blobs. Samasan wondered if the coins had come from those creatures he had killed. He walked over to the items, and picked them up. He contemplated on what to do.

Samasan walked back to the unconscious person. He put the marble and coins in a pouch of moon wheat. He walked to the woman's body and tried to pick her up. She weighed about twenty kilograms. Samasan carefully placed the woman back onto the ground, then walked in circles, contemplating what to do.

"Do I wait here, or try to carry her?"

Samasan sheathed the woman's sword, and untied the rucksack from her body. It was a simple blanket, tied together with rope. The knots were easy to untie, and he unfolded the blanket. Inside was a small dagger, a leather water-skin, a roll of gauze bandages, some jerky, and a cloth pouch that jingled when Samasan shook it. He didn't check the money because it wasn't his. Samasan uncorked the water-skin, and used it to wash off her wounds. Then he dressed her arms with the gauze. This was the first time that Samasan had to deal with a seriously injured human. A very small human, but human none the less.

"Is she a dwarf?"

It was getting late now. The sky had started to darken. Two of the stars in the ring had turned black.

"What the hell?"

This was beyond Samasan's understanding. The ring of thirteen stars was strange, but now they were changing color too. He could only imagine that this indicated the transition to night. Samasan wanted to get to a human settlement, but he didn't know where they were. He didn't want to travel back to the village that beat him away with sticks.

"This world is dangerous and cruel." Samasan thought. "I guess staying is the only option now."

Samasan picked up the dagger, and walked into the thick of the grassy-weeds. He started cutting them near the ground, and laying down bundles flat. Some of the plants had a finger thick hollow stem that was hard to cut through. They spilled out a bitter smelling milky-white sap that felt soapy. Samasan carried the small woman into the grass-bed, and laid her down in it. He laid more bundles of grasses on her body, and wrapped himself in her blanket before sitting next to her.

Samasan couldn't sleep. It was too stressful. There were too many sounds. Things moved through the grass around them. Something chattered nearby for a very long time before leaving. Bugs flew around while making a zapping sound. They sounded like small static snaps. The wind picked up after awhile, but the 4 meter tall grasses around them blocked most of it. Samasan drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, it was dawn. Samasan yawned and looked over to see the woman and dewy grass around them covered in giant yellow slugs.

They were 30-50 centimeters long, and 5-10 centimeters thick. The woman had her eyes open, but she wasn't moving. She was staring at him with a blank expression. Samasan tried to stand up to move over to her, and fell forward onto his stomach. His body could not move. They watched each other as slugs crawled all over them.