Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
I look around, not seeing any obvious signs of repeating patterns or the eternal hum from the ultimate creator. Not acid then; something else, maybe? Did Tempest give me something? Did she think it was funny to get me a job hookup and then get me high in front of my new boss? That would be very on brand for Tempest.
“I’m sorry, I think I should go home. I don’t feel well,” I say. I don’t actually have a home right now because we left the dorms this morning and I don’t have an apartment yet, but I can’t freak out in front of him.
We might have just had sex, but fucking your boss the first day you meet him, and crashing out in a drug-fueled haze on the first day you meet him are two different things.
“I seem to not be feeling well,” I repeat, my voice sounding very tense. At least I can still talk properly. Okay, maybe this is like the time in statistics that Tempest gave us all new water bottles that definitely didn’t contain water. Slurring the coefficient of the variable does not go down well with TAs who are tired of rich kids not taking their class seriously, or the poor kids who somehow get taken under the rich kids’ wings.
Mr. Ornix reaches for me, takes me by the hand, and draws me closer to his incredibly strange, but still undeniably attractive body.
“Breathe,” he says, his voice deep and soothing, his hand running down my back in a comforting motion. “Everything is okay. You are safe. You are taken care of. No harm will befall you.”
“I think so much harm… I think… my eyes aren’t working?”
“What you see is real,” he says reassuringly. “You have been liberated from your world, and brought to a realm that contains wonders you are yet to imagine.”
He says that as if it is supposed to make me feel better. It does not make me feel better. It makes me feel weirder.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“The first journey is the hardest for humans,” Ornix says, stroking my hair. “Don’t worry, you’ll feel exhausted for a few hours, and then your energy will return. Soon you will feel better than you ever have before. This is a much healthier, happier place than the one you came from.”
I stare at him. “How is this even possible? We were just having dinner. Where’s my transcript?”
“Where you are, you have no need of a transcript,” he drawls.
I look around once again, and see that the room we are in is vast. It feels like the size of a normal house, but all open and in one place. I don’t mean it’s like an open plan home, I mean it is a massive bedroom filled with cabinets and drawers and couches and little tables all made in the same style as the bed. All incredibly impressive and ornate and covered in statues, jewels, ornaments. A trove of treasure surrounds us, more riches than I could ever imagine.
There are also very large floor-to-ceiling windows set in solid stone. What I can see outside is a landscape comprised of rolling green hills. I pull away from Mr. Ornix, get up out of bed, and pad over to see more.
There’s a large field all around us, which rises into those hills, which then turn into mountains, and in one particular location, what seems to be a very large and quite active volcano in the distance.
When I look in the other direction, I see walls of what seem to be ice, and as I go from that window to another one, I see an ocean, dazzling and broad, dashing against cliffs that range around in a big semi-circle that looks like a bite that’s been taken out of a cookie. Another direction reveals a massive forest bending in a wind that blows almost constantly judging by the way the tops flow back and forth the way long grass does.
We are very clearly not in California anymore. I should have no idea where we are. Except it seems to me that the terrain is somehow familiar. It pulls at my mind for a long second or two. Where have I seen this before? A book, maybe? Or a…
Overhead, the wings of a very large flying creature extend in a great shadow with sharp points all over and a long tail that coils with the wind. It emits a cry that is sonorous and deep, rumbling through my body.
Suddenly, memory snaps into place.
“Dragon Fire Eternity,” I whisper under my breath. “What the hell?”
“What was that you said?”
I turn around to look at my boss, Mr. Ornix, who is now standing up behind me, his height very much imposing, not to mention the breadth of his shoulders. His eyes seem entirely gold now, and they regard me with a particular intensity that makes me quiver. He’s not human. He was never human. He’s a fucking dragon, and I have lost my mind.