Post by J.O.N ((Dragonwing)) on Jan 12, 2013 3:22:01 GMT -5
Entry One
The box was four feet across and seven feet tall. The sun glinted off the sleek, silver surface. It had no special carvings or inscriptions; the metal of the box was unblemished like a model’s photoshopped skin. There was nothing glaringly unnatural about the box. Nothing strange or peculiar screamed out from it. It was completely normal except for two things. Firstly, it stood on the middle of a beautiful beach, flanked by a pair of palm trees. Secondly, I was pointing a gun at it.
I frowned deeply as the roar of the surf was slowly drowned out by a series of mechanical clicks and whirrs. I tightened my grip on my gun, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. A wind began to kick up, swirling the sand into small eddies and causing the palms to thrash and sway. The light began to glow brighter, strobing in colors Man could not know – and yet as the brightness grew the sun began to dim and fade, casting the surrounding world into shadow.
“Oh fu-,” my words were cut off from a sudden, violent gust that hurled me straight toward the silver box.
~~
I sat up, blinking my eyes and groaning as I looked around. “… Definitely not on a beach anymore,” I muttered before turning and standing – brushing snow and slush from my body. I looked to my hand, sighing as the comfort brought by my gun was gone – the firearm more than likely lost once the continuum activated. Nodding my head, I looked around, turning in place and cursing vehemently, “Really?!” I grumbled, there was no box here – whatever power guided the damn things saw fit to drop me off in the middle of who-knows-where and it gives me a…” I trailed off as I saw the secondary depression in the snow, my face screwing up at the odd device therein.
I reached into the hole melted through the snow, retrieving what at first I took to be a spear – until I freed it from the icy confines and saw the long butt at the end of the haft – as well as a trigger and an odd rune right above it. Frowning, I depressed the rune and heard a faint hum of power. Glancing around, I soon realized the hum was coming from my spear. The blade at the end had a faint, electric glow surrounding the head – crackling and fizzing with power.
“What in the world…” I muttered, my natural curiosity causing my finger to tighten on the trigger – unleashing a blast of superheated energy that arced outwards before splashing against a deeper pocket of snow in a massive rush of steam. The spear flew from my hands, my eyes wide in horror at what the weapon had unleashed. Mingling with that horror was a fascination at what the device, simplistic in appearance, had unleashed.
Tentatively, I retrieved the devastating weapon, gingerly holding it in my hands. I turned in place, my breath only now starting to mist before my eyes as the chill of the place began to reassert itself around the displacement of my arrival. Still – there were some properties which remained, though my breath turned to ice in front of me, I still felt comfortably warm despite the undoubtedly deadly chill that swept across this frozen waste.
I began to march through the thick drifts, leaving before anything that might have been attracted to the blast from my spear arrived. It wasn’t much too long until I came across what once had been a lake – now frozen and reflective with a mirror sheen. I closed my eyes, preparing myself for what the box had done this time. With a deep breath, my eyes opened and I glanced down to see… me. Admittedly it was a me that was slightly older and less well-kept than I had been on the island. A scraggly beard and mustache of grey-streaked red, lined and weather skin turned red from the chill and the cutting wind, and covered in so many layers of fur (none of which I could feel, or see without aid of the lake) that I’m sure every member of PETA would have an aneurysm.
Shaking my head, I glanced up and away from the lake to look around at the rolling hills of snow without any tree to break across the vast ice plains – and only the shadow of glacial mountains in the distance to offer any concrete landmark. Without any better place to go I began my trek once more, this time heading west toward the mountains.
My hand occasionally dug into a pouch at my belt, pulling out strips of dried meat – all taken from various animals, depending on the planet and time I was forcefully placed in. It was during the third day of my journey that I saw darker shadows in the distance, cursing I looked about frantically for a place to hide – which left me the option of digging myself a nice little hole in the snow.
With visions of intimate frostbite dancing through my head, I unslung my rifle-spear and readied for whatever might come my way… or I hoped I was. The brutes that charged toward me were huge – they rushed across the ground like massive apes but had two too many arms, and seemed to lack eyes and mouths – until they drew closer and I saw one bellow, a massive maw with fangs that could impale a man opening within its gullet.
With a mingled cry of revulsion and fear (saying something considering the other sorts of beasts I’d seen) I raised my rifle-spear and pressed my finger had onto the trigger. Once again a burst of dazzling energy shot forth, the superheated ball crackled and impacted on the lead beast. A strangled cry left the ape-monster as it crashed and tumbled down, the troop either rushing around their stricken leader or tripping over him to cry out in pain and confusion.
It was all too soon before another sound joined the riotous cacophony that surrounded me from the massive apes. Whooping and yelling, animalistic cries of joy – all of which served to illicit a groan as I prepared myself to face whatever new horror this world could unleash. On that note I was to be surprised, as the last of the apes broke around me I was instead confronted by a dozen sledges, all slewing to a halt around me. Drawing the rickety masses of bone and ivory were squat, powerful beasts that looked like some odd combination between a hog and an alligator. But it was the drivers that interested me.
They were humans.
I hadn’t seen another human since… I don’t even know how long ago. Those aboard looked at me with expressions of bafflement, no doubt mirroring my own. At least three on each sledge carried one of the odd rifles and yet they looked to be no more than barbarians from the earliest ages of human history.
Of course, I was so busy focusing on the ones in view that I didn’t see the one that knocked me out with a quick strike to the back of my skull.
