Chapter 1: Welcome to the jungle
Steven still felt light headed from the blast. As Steven opened his hazel eyes, all he could see were spots. He put his hand over his eyes to make them adjust to the environment around him. His head started to clear up slowly and his first audible thought was 'Why did I have to go that way?'. He groaned as he tried to get into a sitting position so he could get his bearings. The world around him was dark, but there was enough illumination to see some of his surroundings. He was sitting in some sort of forest, very dense with a massive number of overgrown bushes and vines hanging from the tree branches. As he looked up through a clearing in the canopy, his eyes widened in amazement, the clearest night sky he has seen in a long time was looking down on him. Numerous stars and constellations could be seen, some of them looked familiar, and in the center of it all was a large full moon.
The setting seemed peaceful, but there was a nagging question in the back of Steven's mind, something he could not put his finger on at that point. Then it came to him, the most important question that could only be said aloud.
"How the crud did I get in a forest!?" Steven exclaimed, as he scratch his straight brown haired head.
It was true, Steven had no recollection of how he got here. The last thing he could remember was walking down a hallway at the university, then a giant explosion happened and now he was here. There was something else that he recalled, like it was a part of some dream. He was falling through blackness; time had no meaning as to how long he had fallen. Then something of red and white came to him and spoke in some weird language that he thought sounded a lot like some sort of Latin. Once the red and white thing finished speaking, it took the form of a white Pegasus crossed with a red mane unicorn and vanished. It was at that moment that he had woken up.
Something about the dream made Steven really nervous. What was that being and what was it trying to say to him? These kinds of questions made Steven's head hurt a bit, after all he probably suffered a concussion in the explosion. Once his head started to hurt less, he took a quick look around to see if some of his things had come with him. Backpack: check. Binder: check. Wallet: check. Keys: check. I-touch: check. All the things that were with him at the college were all here. As he stood up with his stuff in hand, he looked once more into the night sky. As he gazed into the starry night, he had an uneasy feeling about the moon. It was a moon he could see that, but it was the craters that made him question the status of his mind. The image on the moon was not of the arched rabbit that he would normally see, but of a unicorn. "Great" thought Steven sarcastically, "First the dream with that 'pega-corn' and now I am seeing a unicorn in the moon. What next a group of elves coming out to great me?" He chuckled to himself as he waited to see if it would happen.
As he jokingly waited, he noticed a path leading out from the clearing and into the dark forest. Steven hesitated at first because he did not know what would be out there, but he finally steeled his nerves and walked down the path. After a couple of minutes, Steven felt less nervous about walking through these woods in the dark. However, he had a nagging feeling that something or a group of somethings was watching him intently. His paranoia heighted when he heard a twig break to the right of him, he quickly turned and only saw a glimpse of a pair of glowing eyes watching him before they disappeared. "Whatever it was I must have frightened it off," Steven said quietly to himself. But before moving on, a bush to his left rustled and a more fearless pair of glowing eyes watched him. Steven did not know this, but he was surrounded.
From the bush a large wolf came forth, however it was not like any Steven had ever seen before. The most impactful feature was that it was hairless and seemed to be covered in a root structure. As Steven slowly backed away from this beast, he could see more of them exiting bushes until a whole pack of them were behind the first one. "Tree wolves…heh" though Steven shakily "or to be more accurate 'timber' wolves." The more Steven backed up the more growls came from the Timberwolves. He finally was backed up into a tree, with the timber wolves creating a half circle around him. Steven felt fearful of these beast and their intentions. Was he to be food or was this how they acted around those who tread into their territory? He did not know.
"Oh man, I wished I knew what to do," Steven said enviously to himself.
Then, a voice, unlike Steven's internal dialogue, spoke in his head and simple said 'Run!' Not wanting to jinx this deus ex machina that has been given to him, he quickly looked to the left and right of the tree. To his right was more forest, but to his left a small unused path that was slightly visible in the dim forest. With a quick glance back at the pack of Timberwolves and a slightly confident smile on his face, he gave a short wave and said "Bye!"
From the tree, Steven flung himself on to the path and ran down it as fast as he could. It took the Timberwolves a second to realize that their prey had gotten away from them before they were chasing him. Steven could hear the yelps and yowls that the pack was making behind him as he tried to stick to the path as best he could. Though the beasts were built for speed, they did not have the stamina needed to chase after such a quick prey. After a while, the alpha timber wolf leads the pack away from Steven and to hunt something less likely to flee as quickly. However, Steven kept on running for a while longer until noises had died down. To be sure he was not being followed he looked back over his shoulder to see that none of the Timberwolves were following him.
Letting out a sigh of relief he turned his head back to the front, only to run smack head first into a tree. As Steven fell to the ground with another concussion coming on, he wondered why the tree made a hollow thud when he hit it. It didn't matter now as he was passing out.
Just as the world around him started to fade to black, he could have sworn that someone had come up to him and started to talk but his hearing was not willing to pick it up. Now Steven was almost completely unawake, yet he felt like he was being dragged somewhere. However, as he drifted into unconsciousness, he didn't give the thought a care.