Linked Worlds | Other Dimensions #1

Six - Sequana

© 2021 Calliope Night. All rights reserved.

"Something's off."

***

Error. Out of range.

Sia kicked the floor in frustration, sending up a cloud of dust.

She had been trying to hook up to a satellite, to find her location, so she could go back to the familiar parts of the tunnels. The problem was, her devices thought she was out of range, which shouldn't have been possible. The signals cut through everything, even silver, without getting distorted. Furthermore, out of the six thousand five hundred active satellites that orbited the planet, fifty of them were solely for GPS devices.

Sia was mad at herself for not trying to connect the moment she realized she was in an unfamiliar place. However, she was also glad she checked when she did - not when she was exhausted.

After contemplating what she would do next, Sia ruled she had to leave herself since the chances of someone finding her were slim. Not to mention, she only had a bottle of water and no food.

I won't last long even if I try.

She fished out a piece of chalk to use on the walls. Why do I even have this? Not that I'm complaining, since it's helpful. Turning to her left, she started walking - drawing arrows on the tunnel walls - hoping she would get out soon.

After an hour of wandering, and too many arrows for her to count, she saw light. Walking in the dark for so long, she didn't care that it obviously wasn't sunlight; it was still light. To her, that was all that mattered. She caught herself before she ran towards it and hastily marked the walls so she'd be able to find her way back.

The tunnel opened up into a cool cave. Not paying much attention to her surroundings, she turned and marked the entrance of the tunnel she came through.

Once she saw the inside of the cave, she was in awe. It was beautiful, unlike the rest of the tunnels.

In the center of the cave, there was a glass water tank surrounded by stalagmites - glowing stalagmites. They looked like they were cracked, and had purple, yellow, and white beams of light which spilled out of them, lighting up the whole cave. The ceiling of the cave looked like a starry night, a thing Sia only saw when there was a mass back out. When she looked around, she noticed that there were many tunnels that joined it. Knowing some of them had to lead to the surface, she decided to check them out, starting with the one to the left of the one she had just come out of.

***

She was spent.

Sia had been walking through the tunnels for hours, to no avail. All the tunnels she'd gone through so far were dead ends, went deeper underground, or circled back to the cave. One of them led to an empty room filled with weapon and armor designs, but that wasn't particularly helpful. Sia found it quite worrisome. She'd decided that the tunnel she was in would be the last one she'd check before getting some rest in the cave.

Sia was about to turn around when she noticed little plants growing on the ground. This has to be a good sign.

She followed the plants until she saw light. Natural light! She scrambled to the light. An exit. Finally! The opening was small, but it was enough for her to squeeze through.

Once she was out, Sia looked around and realized she was in a forest. The Island she lived on had quite a few trees but no forests, and there was no way she could have crossed an entire ocean on foot. The sun was already dipping below the horizon. She knew she'd been underground for a long time, but it wasn't long enough for it to be sunset.

Something's off. There's no way I could've walked into a forest, and I definitely wasn't underground for that long.

Sia could barely feel her legs anymore so, she sat down to rest them while wondering what to do next. She noticed a bush near her. It had berries that looked like raspberries but were translucent, glowing, and sky-blue. She'd never seen or heard of anything like them.

It had been a while since she last ate and the berries looked quite appealing to her.

SNAP OUT OF IT SEQUANA! THEY MIGHT BE POISONOUS!

Eating suspicious glowing berries wasn't on Sia's to-do list; she was pretty sure it was on her not-to-do list.

She took a deep breath after collecting her thoughts and got up. Her legs weren't wobbly anymore, but the thought of food had made her hungry, and thinking was giving her a migraine.

Her goal was simple: find open ground. If there wasn't any in sight, go back to the cave to rest for the night and make a plan. She started climbing the oak she'd been leaning against; it was so huge she was sure even the thinnest branches would hold her weight.

When Sia was about a fourth of the way up, she stopped to survey her surroundings. To her right, she could see the forest thinning out into plains, and could make out buildings in the distance. Delighted, she scrambled down the tree and started towards the plains, dodging branches and ignoring the absurd plants.

The sky was getting darker by the minute and strange plants in the forest kept on lighting up. Whatever was happening, because Sia couldn't describe it, kept getting weirder by the minute, and her increasing migraine wasn't helping the situation.

After a bit of walking and trying to avoid glowing things (which turned out to be quite a tedious task), she reached the point where the forest started thinning out. Excited, Sia picked up her pace. It wasn't long before she could see the open ground.

Her instincts told her to be wary of the place, to keep away. She didn't know why. But Sia knew she had to keep going. After all, she was bound to find help if she made it out. Right?

Sia was extremely tired when she made it to the edge of the forest. She'd exhausted her water supply, and she felt like she was walking through a freezing tundra.

Another thing to add to the growing list of weirdness.

As she looked around, Sia realized that there was a tall structure to her far left. She started in that direction when suddenly her migraine got worse and the world started spinning.