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Chapter 1

Ah shit, here we go again. I wonder if this is a dream. Everything seems eerily familiar. I've been here before, haven't I ?

“You fucking dumbass.” If looks could kill I would be buried 6 feet under after getting pierced by Torin’s dagger like eyes.

He was my best friend since middle school, possibly the only reason that I continued to survive at high school. School was still miserable, but him being there had at least made me not a complete loner. I still had some dignity left.

That was before Torin thought I had committed the ultimate betrayal. Even though we were in unknown territory, this was all he could talk about. He couldn’t fathom or understand why I would do such a thing. I thought to myself, was it really so surprising?

Maybe I don’t know myself or maybe he doesn’t know me. Humans are capable of anything.

“Might wanna focus on the fact that we’re kidnapped, mate.” I pointed at the huge bars in front of us. They were made of a strong metal, that wouldn’t bend or break even if a truck ran through here.

Strangely, it was a strange green color and had slight moisture on it, as if they laced it with acid. I wasn’t going to be the one to find out. If I’m going to die, might as well jump off of a cliff instead of painfully suffering through third degree acid burns.

“And who’s fault was that?” He drawled out.

I resisted the urge to talk back. At this point, I’ve accepted that this whole ordeal was my fault. Not just this, whatever happened today was entirely on me. That was the reason I did what I did.

And yet, he had a problem with that too.

“Ey stop the ruckus.” The tall, well built man that seemed to be the guard of this place, kicked the metal door in an attempt to get us to stop talking.

His kick left a slight indentation on the door. Torin looked at me knowingly. He was telling me to be careful. When we were caught at first we had thrashed around a lot, hitting the door with rocks and whatever we could find in the hay ridden floor of our prison cell.

Nothing made a difference and neither did it give us the hope that we would be able to break ourselves out of this place. We had come to accept that there was no way out. At least, not our own.

It didn’t make sense that a slight kick from this man made an actual dent in the metal bar. What kind of weights does one need to lift to get to this point? He was a monster. He was built like one too. It seemed like everyone and everything in this place was unrealistic.

First, there wasn’t a town nearby for miles, it was all jungle and forest. They were so segregated from the rest of the world, I could only call them cavemen.

Second, most of them walked around shirtless so I’m assuming they don’t know the culture of normal human decency.

Third, I could barely see any females walking around, I did see a couple of girls in the palace up ahead from this prison but they stuck close there. So I’m assuming there’s some patriarchy going on with men doing the kidnapping and the girls doing god knows what.

I almost scoff, I wonder if we are at a secret brothel. It didn’t help that not a single man we saw was without scars. None of them had tattoos but all of them were painted with wounds, gashes and scars.

Last but not least, and this is most definitely the strangest observation I have made till now.

I take a deep breath, not even wanting to narrate it. If what I had noticed was correct, everything we knew about life would be wrong.

Was I ready to accept something like that?

I breathe out.

We are not in our own world.

The last thing Torin and I saw before we landed in this jungle territory that stretched endlessly was some bright green light. Before that, we were in our high school pool. Within 10 seconds, it felt like we were getting ripped apart, stretched.

As if every atom in our body was vibrating at a different frequency than normally. It made me blind, deaf and numb for a solid few minutes.

I thought I was drowning and it was just how someone felt before they died.

The moment I opened my eyes, I thought this might be heaven or hell. I had died. Except, I was wrong. Torin was beside me and he remembered every detail of what had happened, including what had gotten us into this mess. It was me.

Our town, the place we lived in, it had no such natural beauty. We lived in a place with buildings, cars and some shrubs and trees perhaps, but a forest wasn’t available in possibly the whole state. The only other reality could be that we fainted somehow for a day and someone kidnapped us and took us to a different state that had such sort of environment.

However, the way these people communicate. I have my suspicions, they are not normal.

We are not in our own world.

“Do you think they are furries who believe they live in an alternate reality and we are just pawns in their pretend game?” He whispered, his eyes keeping a close look on the other prison cells, the guard had gone out of the underground prison cell for a minute with a slight tremor.

Most of the prison cells were empty except one in the far corner against the wall.

There was a scrawny girl, skinny enough to almost be called a twig. It seemed like she had been here for a few days.

I wanted to ask her who she was, what she was doing here and perhaps something related to this place. Maybe she could tell us where we were and why were kidnapped. She did not look like she was in a good enough spot to even hold a conversation though- her eyes were dark and saggy, her arms were laden with scrapes, her silk dress was torn at the waist by what only could be assumed to be claw marks.

Beneath the torn part, I could catch a glimpse of reddish hue, whatever bear clawed her must have scraped her waist pretty bad.

As if sensing the eyes and attention on her, she brings up her legs to her chest and crosses her arms, covering all of her wounds. It almost appeared as if she didn’t want to seem weak- her reason behind doing so.

I opened my mouth to get a few words out but before I could do so, the guard with the tremor came back. This time, his tremor was intensified. It was slight enough that one wouldn’t notice it until they looked closely- the ring finger and the pinky finger of his hands bore the weight of the tremor.

What could a scarred up bulky man have to be afraid of?

The answer is quite simple.

Someone exactly like him- yet completely different. This person didn’t just seem to invoke fear as he stepped down the stairs, he exuded murder.