"RYE! GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Jackson screamed. The enormous eye stared into my soul before I was cought in its pull. I was slowly sucked into the portal. I had no idea if I would die or end up in some alternate universe. To be honest, I would prefer the latter option. It certainly can't be too different from my universe... right?

My name is Rye Simmons. I'm one of the head scientists of the XCOM corporation. I've been working alongside the county sheriff's department to investigate the recent murders of numerous citizens in the town. These deaths at first seemed unexplainable. The photos they took had shown corpses that had no trace of injury; but, they were covered in this misty, black material. It had seemed that something must have poisoned them. I asked them to bring back a sample of the material for testing. After the tests were conducted, it became obvious that a living organism of some sort was causing these fatalities. There was no way a human could have caused this.

After a long day at work, I came home to an empty house. My wife would've been home by now. Where was she? That was when I heard a sudden violent banging noise coming from upstairs. I quickly grabbed my shotgun from the closet and made my way up to the master bedroom. Quickly opening the door, I saw what was happening. My wife, she was being attacked by this... black, slug-like creature that hissed at her in anger. I aimed carefully at the alien and blew that motherfucker across the wall. Its dark, cold, sticky blood splattered onto me and my wife. I took her with me to the front yard when I saw something that made my blood run cold. The whole town was being attacked by these... things. The sheriff's department was doing it's best to evacuate as many people as possible. My co-worker Jackson was trying to fight them off aswell. I tried to aid him the best I could, but they just kept coming. Suddenly, something was materializing in the sky. It was like a pillar of light that began to absorb objects and chunks of houses. I was unfortunate enough to be caught in its line of sight.

So, that's how I got here. Things would take a turn for the... odd.

"Ugh... where... is this place?" I pondered as I woke up in a grass field. It was a colorful and bright world that I seemed to be in. Certainly much better than my bleak ass home. Birds were chirping and dragonflies seemed to have been relevant in this world. There were lots of them. One of them seemed to have been interested in me more than the other dragonflies. This was when shit started getting weirder. The yellow dragonfly seemed to be trying to... talk to me? If he was anyway, I could barely tell what he was saying because his voice was so high pitched and buzzy. I just nodded like I did know what he was going on about. I got up and walked towards what seemed to be a kind of castle. It was fairly small. I chose not to enter since I didn't want to seem rude and uninvited to whomever would be present.

Turning around, suddenly, what seemed like a quick flash of purple zoomed right past me nearly knocking me off my feet. I looked around and saw a small purple dragon running around chasing a group of sheep. At this point I actually thought I was high on something. I HAD to be! He kept running around until he saw me and stopped dead in his tracks. He walked right up to me and sat down. Tilting his head, he asked, "Are you from here? You look new."

I simply replied, "I... I'm a scientist. I came here to study... the uh... e-environment. The environment here is... a lot different from my uh... home." He still seemed a little confused, but he shrugged it off. "I'm Rye" I added.

"I'm Spyro. I had to save the dragon eggs here and kick the Sorceress's butt!" the little dragon explained. "I see. You're an adventurous one, aren't you?" I concluded.

"Hey, you should come visit the nursery! We just had some newborn hatchlings this week." the purple dragon added. "You have a nursery for dragon hatchlings? I guess it would help since all this stuff has been happening." I said. Spyro gave me a confused look again. "Stuff? What stuff? You haven't seen any trouble around here, have you?" He questioned. "Oh no, nothings been happening around here, just at home... it's nothing, let's go!" I finished.

"So who runs this nursery you have here?" I asked. "Her name's Sheila. She helped me rescue the eggs." He explained. We approached the nursery. It was a nice little cottage that seemed inviting. I knocked on the door and waited for Sheila to answer. When she opened the door, I was not expecting to see a kangaroo. Actually, I was expecting something weird, just not a marsupial like her. She had red hair and wore an explorer's jacket. She greeted us politely. "Hey Spyro! Haven't seen you for a while. Who's your friend here?" She asked. "Oh this is Rye. I just met him. He's new here." Spyro explained. "Oh, well nice to meet you, too. Why don't you two come in. Just try to stay quiet. I just put the hatclings to sleep."

We entered the cottage and saw the hatchlings tucked into their own little cribs. They looked so peaceful in their sleep. Sheila went over to the vent looking concerned. I walked over and asked her what was going on. "We've had an issue with the ventilation for what seems like weeks now and we still don't know what's up. It's almost as if there's something stuck in the shafts." Whispered Sheila. I volunteered to take a look. I wasn't an expert at things like this but I could at least figure out what was stuck up there. I carefully unscrewed the vent with the screwdriver that I for some reason still had in my backpack. Lightly placing on the ground as to not wake the hatchlings, I crawled in to where I could see the upper section of the vent. I didn't see anything. Even with my flashlight, nothing was visible other than a few scuff marks but... that was it. I informed Sheila and she let out a sigh of disappointment. I began to pull out of the vent when I felt something hit my face. It felt like water. I wiped my face with my hand...

and that's when my blood turned cold.

It was... black, and thick. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There was no way that... they couldn't have found me.

Suddenly, a banging noise could be heard from somewhere in the nursery. We quickly turned around in shock as it seemed like something was trying to bust through the wall. It was then that I realised what was going on. Those aliens had found a way to follow me through the vortex. I had to make a decision in the few seconds I had. I pulled out my revolver. "Grab all of the hatchlings and get them out of here! I'm going to try and fend them off with what I can." Sheila quickly started grabbing as many dragons as she could and put them outside before she went and collected more. I saw the aliens bursting out of the wall. I began to dispatch them one by one. I then saw one of them going for the hatchlings. It lept but Spyro was able to torch it. I grabbed the dragon and handed it to Sheila. I looked around for any other dragons, but they all seemed to have been evacuated.

Rushing out of the nursery, I saw Sheila doing a headcount. "Let's see... uh... R-romey... Michael... yes... yes... wait... s-somethings not right... One of them is missing!!" Me and Spyro hauled ass into the nursery, I looked everywhere I could. The place was a mess. It was then we heard sobbing coming from beneath one of the cribs. I rushed over to one that got knocked over. I slowly began to move it out of the way, revealing and injured, baby dragon that must've gotten tossed by one of the aliens. The poor thing had a small cut on her wing. She was light blue and wore a red bow on her head. She was in tears and looked beyond frightened. I put my revolver away and tried to calm her down. "Hey, hey, it's ok! My name's Rye. Were here to help you..." She looked at me with two magenta eyes. I knew she trusted me. The tiny dragon crawled towards me as I reached out my arms and scooped her up. "What's your name?" I cooed. In a stutter she replied, "I-I-Iz-Izzy..." I rubbed the back of her head and ran for the exit.

"This should be everyone" I assured. Sheila checked the list and confirmed. Looking around, I saw that the attack spread to every house in the valley. It was like a god damned nightmare! I knew that we had to evacuate the whole place. We started guiding everyone to a portal that lead to another realm. We made sure everyone got through before me and Spyro followed through. When we were through, I pulled out the gem powering the portal, shutting it down. It was then I felt something tugging at my pants. It was Izzy. "D-d-da-daddy?" She stuttered concerningly. I didn't know what she meant at first when Spyro suggested that we might have left her father on the other side. "Uhhooh how many times do I have to forget to save someone!?!?! You two stay here." I shoved the gem wrecklessly back into place and passed through. I saw her father lying on the ground. "H-hey, you look out of breath. Let me help you up. Hey... a-... oh God no... no no nononono you're not gonna fucking die on me now..." Izzy sneaked through the portal and froze in horror at the sight of her dead father. I knew she was behind me. I turned around to see her looking up at me with those magenta eyes.

"D-d-da-..." I hugged her close as she bursted into tears. "D-DADDY!!!!!!!" she screamed.

A few hours had gone by, and we were trying to catch are breath near the portal. One of the dragons brought up the current situation. "What do we do now? Our entire homeworld has been taken over by those almost unstoppable creatures." I knew what we had to do right away. "We need a place to refuge. I think we might be able to find a castle in this realm big enough for all of us to share." I explained. "Actually, this one right here. This one should do it." We all entered the castle. It was dark, and cold. Great. Spyro went around to light the torches. It sure brought the heat and light up enough for the night. We got ready for bed, but there was one problem:

No beds.

We had to sleep on the cold hard floor of the castle. The elder dragons offered to snuggle with the hatchlings to keep them from having problems, but the rest of us, we had to suck it up and indure it. I really should've gone to a chiropractor back in my hometown but, hey,

Do you ever expect to end up in a situation like this?

To be continued...