Chapter 2: A Bad Trip
Like shards of a dream dissolving before he could grasp them, fragmented visions of events that never happened flashed through his mind, then left, leaving behind a hollow, gnawing confusion.
He was in a peculiar forest, yet he didn’t know or care how he’d gotten there. The searing pain coursing through his body inhibited any sort of rationalization.
’Argh! Shit! This hurts!’
Rolling over to get a better look at the pain’s epicenter — his arm — Axel found it caked in blood.
Upon seeing that viscous crimson, he ripped off his shirt and began wiping it down, his hands trembling as the sticky warmth smeared across his skin, the metallic scent clawing its way into his nose.
’The hell?! What happened?!’
Strangers stood watching the spectacle, their silhouettes forming a loose, suffocating circle around him. He met their gazes with pleading eyes; yet they returned nothing but fear and disgust, as if he were something diseased.
Warped looks he couldn’t fathom.
All except one.
One man’s stare didn’t carry fear, confusion, or disdain...
He held a look of pity.
The man took a few steps toward him, took off his jacket, and knelt. Then he gently yanked away the blood-soaked shirt and replaced it with the jacket.
The sudden pressure sent a sharp jolt of pain, forcing Axel to tightly shut his eyes.
"Your cuts need to be cleaned up, but first, we need the tools to do so. Sadly, I have no idea where we are, and it seems nobody else does either. For now, keep this over it and apply pressure."
The man firmly wrapped the jacket over Axel’s arm and tied it there using its sleeves, all while only glancing at Axel’s eyes once.
Grimacing, Axel blinked his eyes open and muttered:
"Thank you."
The kind man nodded before standing up and letting his eyes drift around the weird forest.
Seeing that was the extent of his kindness, Axel smiled that at least someone helped him at all.
While the pain remained blistering and overbearing, his nerves began to calm down.
Wincing, he began to study the surroundings.
’There’s no way this was Earth.’
For starters, it was hot as shit in the midst of December.
But it’s not like the temperature was the deciding factor that gave it away; they could have been at the equator or something.
However...
The summoned stood in the clearing of a forest that stretched in all directions — massive trees as black as obsidian stretched out as if trying to reach the heavens, their sheer size making him feel insignificantly small. Their gigantic branches carried dark leaves that blocked the sky, casting a heavy shade on the world below.
A crow the size of a human flew above, its wings beating with a deep, unnatural thrum that echoed through the clearing. It fluttered to a stop and perched on a branch.
As if sensing Axel’s gaze, its beady eyes snapped to him.
Axel clutched the jacket tighter, his fingers digging into the fabric.
’Odd... I should be scared...’
But, he wasn’t...?
That monstrous crow? The impossibly tall obsidian trees? Being kidnapped en masse?
For some unknowable reason, it felt familiar to him; like a memory buried so deep it had rotted into instinct.
’I’m more concerned about my damn arm. It stings...’
His concerns were definitely not echoed by most.
Most were screaming, crying, panicking, or vomiting, their voices blending into a chaotic chorus.
There were some outliers, such as a man with dark hair too enamored with his own tattoos to care that he’d been kidnapped, his fingers tracing ink. A man with short brown hair whose eyes were glued to the scantily dressed women who’d been summoned from their homes. And the few who still gawked at Axel like some circus psycho.
But most were eventually drawn to observing the Obsidian Forest and its abnormally large inhabitants.
’What is going on...?’
Judging by clothing, nobody had been prepared; nobody had known in advance.
More than half weren’t wearing shoes. A man wore pajamas with puppies on them, others wore only pants and no shirt, and there was even an unfortunate girl who’d been summoned in nothing but her underwear.
Carefully, Axel lifted his arm off the jacket and patted his pocket to check if he had cell service.
’Empty...’
His phone had vanished, the absence hitting harder than he expected.
Axel blankly stared in front of him as he fought the pain and began sorting through his memories, grasping at fragments that refused to stay still.
He’d been biking home after work when...
’Well, this is odd.’
He had hyperthymesia, yet now he couldn’t even picture what food he had eaten earlier.
’Yay...?’
Usually, he would have relished the feeling — he had finally gotten his wish! — but something was odd. Too odd to even consider celebration of this hollow victory.
Not exactly knowing what it meant to forget, he didn’t have a basis to go off of, so he searched for gaps...
He remembered the day he found his goldfish dead in grade school. Spilling hot coffee on Georgie, his old dog, and crying while rushing him to the vet. When he got summoned to the trials. The time he almost accidentally killed Lucas while fighting a blood wolf...
’Wait, what the hell is a blood wolf?! The trials?’
And who was Lucas?
The pain he’d only been convincing himself he had blocked out truly began to wane as his mind fell further into disarray.
His pure daze only grew with the appearance of a being clad in white descending from the sky.
A beautiful girl with long silver hair who had two sets of gigantic white wings adorning her back. Upon her head was a shining halo emanating a tyrannical heat. The robes she wore were white as snow, save for a golden streak that lined the edges, each movement of fabric carrying an unnatural fluidity.
’A beautiful girl, flying above me? Am I seeing things? Did someone slip me shrooms or something? That must have been the cause of all this! Haha! Of course! No wonder everything is so wacky and my memory is fuzzy.’
The being spoke with a shrill voice:
"Welcome."