EDIT: This chapter has been edited. No major story plots were changed.
Chapter One
I woke to the sound of angry winds.
It was the first thing I heard when my conscience started to slowly return to me. The kind of screaming, lonely wind that you hear during a terrible storm, only here there was no rain... at least, I didn't feel any...
I felt something hard beneath me, like gravel or stones yet...sedimentary. I also felt the overwhelming need to grab a blanket. That feeling of deep freezing is what jolted me awake, and I sat up immediately, reaching forward to grab some kind of cover. There...wasn't anything of the sort when I grasped the closest thing to me in my hand, but nothing could've made me as surprised and very confused as I was when I found that I had just picked up the skull of some kind of animal.
Overhead, the sky was an unnatural shade of red. It looked more like the color of blood compared to the more settling bright ruby red that came at sunset. The once white and natural clouds in the sky were hidden by enormous dust clouds moving at high-speeds and being propelled by the force of the wind. The ground I was sitting on was rust colored, arid and rocky. There were cracks all over the ground and massive stone fixtures were scattered randomly around the entire area, each the same color of the earth it stood upon. Some were piled precariously on top of one another, rocking back and forth with the wind. Others were lying flat on their backs, some as cracked as the ground itself. It looked like the whole world was like Mars: a red planet of death.
I wasn't so disturbed however. I took it all in as if I were acknowledging any other ordinary scene. There was an unbearable cold which was starting to wake me up, though. I grabbed at my shoulders and rubbed them, trying to keep myself warm. "Why does it feel like I'm skinny-dipping in the Arctic Ocean?" I asked myself, my teeth chattering. I didn't realize how strange it was that I was freezing to death in a land that was dried out from overheat.
I tucked my arms into my long-sleeves and awkwardly stood up. My legs were shaking, and I was shivering so violently that it was taking all my willpower just to put one foot in front of the other. This powerful wind was blowing in the opposite direction I was facing, forcing me to fight even harder just to maintain balance.
"MOOOMMYYY?!" I screamed.
Nothing but the wind screamed back.
"DADDYYYY!? ...KOBEEE?! ...REEEEEIII?!
Still nothing.
Just then, the wind magically changed directions, and started blowing even harder than before towards the left... Or was it the right? It was so strong that it swept me off my feet and hurled me across the land into a canyon wall that had to be at least 100 feet away from where I was standing. I quickly took my arms out of my long-sleeves and grabbed at a set of huge boulders stacked on the edge of the wall's cliff before I was blown to kingdom come. The god-wind pulled at me harder and harder, forcing me to cling for dear life onto the boulders, which were cutting my hands with their rocky, protruding edges.
"What the hell IS this?!" I screamed in my head. "A dream?!"
Couldn't have been.
You would think that continuous cuts on your palms would wake one up, right?
So now I was in God knows where, not even fully awake enough to make a good decision, stranded in what felt like sub-zero weather with a flimsy long-sleeve shirt, a denim mini-skirt and low-top converses, with a possessed wind throwing me in all kinds of directions. My family was nowhere to be found, and I was clinging haphazardly by the edges of my fingers onto a boulder, and NOW, my hands were starting to bleed. This was shaping up to be a...crazy dream. One that I wanted to wake up from immediately. However, if the pain in my hands wouldn't do it, I didn't know what else I would need. I didn't want to find out either...
The wind kicked up ten-fold, and tore my grip away from the rock. It felt like I had been thrown into a speeding truck that time, when the wind changed directions again and sent me careening back into the ground. The shock kept me stationary for a while, but eventually, I turned myself on my back and sat myself up without using my hands, so as not to get dirt in my wounds. Not only had the wind's power risen, but had temperature dropped by a good amount. I didn't need a thermometer to know that.
I popped my arms into my long-sleeves again and glared up at the sky. "OKAY GOD!" I yelled angrily. "JOKE'S OVER. I'M READY TO WAKE UP NOW."
I wanted to wake back up underneath my blankets, in my warm bed at home. I wanted to see my mom come into the room and ask if I'd been having a nightmare. I wanted the sky to turn into the blue it was in before I went to sleep, and more importantly, I wanted this damned wind to stop toying with me. But the wind continued to blow, and my blood continued to freeze. Nothing changed.
"What's...happening here...? Where is everybody?" I wondered, confused.
That's when I remembered.
The screaming people, the pandemonium, and the strange light coming from the sky. Things...were falling out of the sky, and I had been in a tree...watching on top of a hill...I fell but...
...I never hit the ground...
...Or...Did I? I couldn't remember.
All I knew was that I had been in a dark place, where things were peaceful...like in video games when someone gets eliminated.
...Eliminated.
My heart stopped for a hot second and I felt fear rise up from the pit of my stomach and spread throughout my whole body. Was I...dead?
Was this Hell? Heaven? Purgatory? Where was I? Where were my family members? Just what the hell happened when the sky...literally tore itself in two? Would I be stuck here forever? Was I still unconscious? Was I still dreaming...?
This broken, dry earth and its bloodshot sky...The rock formations seemed to get bigger, the Earth began to expand. Everything was moving farther away. In the midst of the expanse was just...me. I felt overwhelmed. I felt terrified. It was like living nightmare I'd had once before, in which I woke up in the middle of the arctic sea and all around me were glaciers larger than the biggest things I had ever seen...It was just an endless expanse of water...
...Endless...
...Endless...
"WHEN WILL IT END?!" I screamed into the sky.
I quickly took my arms out of my sleeves and grabbed my head, although it hurt to do so. I took a deep breath, and rattled my head a few times. Whether this was a dream or not, in a few minutes, if I didn't get out of it, I would lose it.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
The ground shook, and everything slowed down. The wind stopped blowing so quickly, the temperature started dropping a little slower. The dust clouds settled down ever so slightly, like the world was stopping to witness a lost child on the brink of insanity. A shadow, six times my size was cast over me. I assumed it to be a cloud, covering the sun, but the shadow was just over me. I slowly turned around, unsure of what to expect.
It wasn't anything good...just my luck.
The shadow of the humongous winged beast looming over me did not do the true size of the monster any justice. It looked like a creature from a Greek legend or fantasy world: a half-dragon, half-griffin crossbreed mixed with God knows what else. Its wings, which were twice its size, were fully spread at its sides. Its beady eyes glared down and me, as if to say: "How DARE this puny fool disrupt my peace and enter MY territory?"
We stared at each other for a good while, frozen in time for a couple of seconds. Not knowing what else to think, I decided to break the ice.
"...Hi," I said stupidly with a wave of my fingers.
The monster continued to glare at me.
I gulped, feeling my eyes begin to fill with tears, and continued to play it off. "Um... I'm... s-sorry for invading your home, I uh... I'm new to the area, ehehe..."
The monster did not look convinced.
"If it's not okay—I mean, i-if it's okay with you... If you could just give me some directions, I would be more than happy to leave you alone...?"
The skull of a monster similar to the one I'd picked up earlier was lying not too far away from the winged beast's foot. Without even looking down at it, the monster put one giant talon forward, and smashed it into pieces with such coldness that I could do nothing but look at the remains of it praying: "Dear God...please don't let it do that to my skull..."
"RRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAA!"
Its blood-curdling cry punctured the sound barrier, making me wobble uncontrollably and hastily cover my ears. It took a giant-sized step in my direction, which was my cue to get the hell out of there! I ducked between its legs and took of in a feet-don't-fail-me-now mad dash, although I didn't know where to go, and the wind was not cooperating with me.
I ran and bounced at the same time, because every time the monster put its foot down there was a mini-earthquake. I took a glance behind me, to see it gaining on me more and more by the second. Its steps were larger, and it got more distance in one step than I did in four. I was totally confused, running in uncharted territory, and apparently was also running directly into a dust storm. The monster took one final leap, sailed over my head, and landed three feet in front of me with a startling, crushing "BOOM". I toppled over from the force, and fell on my back. Just like the salty girls I'd watched in movies, I found myself in their exact situation: backs against the wall, trying to crawl away from the evil overhead, and only a few seconds away from pissing our pants...
The mighty creature raised its talon one last time to crush my bones into dust, and I felt myself on the verge of crying, peeing, and screaming all at the same time, when I saw it.
Bullets—nine of them to be precise. They cut through the dust and lodged themselves in the monster's stomach. The demon let out a cry and prepared to stomp down on me, but suddenly I felt a hand roughly snatch up the back of my shirt, and fling me into the air-all in a blur. When I landed, I was suddenly safe, riding on a...
...motorcycle...?
The driver was wearing a beige colored trench-coat and a black bandana. Their hair was a pale blond color, and it was very obvious that this mystery driver was "he". He turned around then, and I saw his face for a hot second.
"Hi there!" he said in a voice that had a hint of overconfidence in it. I stared at him, wondering what was happening. I know I looked confused, because he said: "Don't worry; we're the good-guys!" and turned back to face the road.
"We?" I thought.
The blond man skidded into a hard turn on his motorcycle and sped of towards the monster. I then saw a pink-haired woman wearing a complicated set of clothes, that I could describe at best as some kind of uniform. She worse a beige-sleeveless overcoat that was belted together just beneath her chest, a sleeveless , vermilion red, cropped turtleneck, a short pine-green khaki mini-skirt, layered-looking boots with metal clasps, and very intricate details embellishing her costume, including a leg pouch that was belted onto her and a single pauldron with two yellow stripes. She was going head to head with the giant demon, slashing and shooting at it at the same time with the strange sword/gun contraption she was using.
"LIGHTNING!" the blond man yelled, driving past her. The pink-haired woman turned around and nodded at him. Then, she took a giant hop back and leaped into the air. The blond man drove underneath her at precisely the right moment, and she landed with her feet on the hood of the motorcycle. She took a quick glance at me—so quick that I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination or not—before looking back at the monster, which was screaming and throwing a fit.
"Hang on!" the blond said, kicking his motorcycle into high-speed. The woman crouched down, her sword in hand, as if ready to pounce. He began to circle the monster, a massive dust cloud forming in the process. The monster was screaming, trying to follow the vehicle's movements with its head which proved futile. Once the dust cloud was high enough, he skidded outside of the circle and drove away from the monster, made another hard turn, and shot back towards the dust cloud. I was thinking he was a reckless driver, but at the same time I was glad that I hadn't ended up like the skull.
"NOW!" Lightning yelled. On her command, the blond guy stomped down on the acceleration, now going so fast that he tore through the demon wind which was blowing in the exact opposite direction. He shot through the dust cloud, and Lightning jumped off of the motorcycle. With her sword in hand, she flew all the way to the top of the monster, and came down on it, lodging her sword in the creature's back. It let out a final cry before falling slowly to ground, dead at last. She dislodged her sword from the creature, and placed it back in the sheath that was attached to her skirt.
"ALRIIIGHT!" the blond man cheered, driving back towards her with the motorcycle. She jumped onto it as it passed and landed behind me. She was giving me a hard, unfriendly look, but all I could think was: "You. Are. Awesome."
"We're heading back to the town, Snow," Lightning said. "He's not here."
"Got it." The blond man answered, speeding away from the scene.
We rode through "The Marsland" (as I came to call it) in silence for what seemed like hours. As I sat there all that time, watching the unchanging scenery, I realized that I really wouldn't have made it out of this place if these two hadn't shown up. It looked like the same desert it had been 20 miles ago. "There IS a God!" I'd been thinking the whole time.
I wasn't facing her, but that woman Lightning had just let off this strange feeling that made me feel like she was glaring at me, even if she wasn't. And that Snow guy? He was odd in his own way. Odd in the sense that I thought I'd met him before, or that he reminded me of somebody. I was hardly complaining though.
Eventually, the dry, cracked earth started to disappear. In its place, patches of green grass were popping up, as well as a few tiny streams of water ending only a couple of feet away from where they began. Soon however, all traces of the Marsland were completely gone. The place was starting to look like God's Green Earth all over again. It brought me peace, making me believe that this dream was reaching a turning point for the better.
But little did I know, that I hadn't even scratched the surface.
And so ends the first chapter of "White Snow Dimensia." It's not amazing I know, but I didn't really know where to begin with this story at first. Please tell me what you think. Thank you.
***Anyone who can tell me why they think the story's title is "White Snow Dimensia" will get a cookie. C=***
R&R!
Thank you for reading!
-Kamikimmy13