Through the Dragon's Eyes

Chapter One || Abyss

Nightmare background music (optional): https://youtu.be/A4a8M_7ud1Y

Background music once awake (optional): https://youtu.be/CAQaWfhHDyI
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Feet are light on the ground, consciousness of the world around you muted as if perceiving through a vignette. The environment is recognized in the heart yet unfamiliar in mind. A lick of light caresses your peripheral vision. Head turns to see a long wooden hallway; lanterns alight with small flames hanging from the edges of the roof along the path. There's a sliding wooden and paper doorway at the other end. The warm lights flicker in an admonitory manner. The chill of the night air is painfully noticeable as it nips at the skin. Continuing your stride down the direction brought to your immediate attention, whatever came before is no longer relevant, let alone remembered. There's a pull at your chest by some non-physical force. You're convinced whatever is through that door is important.

You begin to run.

The hallway passes painfully slow. With each support beam passed, the next feels like it pulls further and further away. The ground stretching out in front of you, you try to increase your speed by the strength your feet hit the wooden floor to no avail. The cracks between the floorboards begin to seep with a light blue glow and slowly start to shake. Only seconds pass before they then begin to sputter violently, haze puffing up from beneath like vents to an industrial underground. The atmosphere grows tense. Now every tick of the clock in your mind is felt with impending danger. Determination begins fading to be replaced with fear.

Don't look back.

Do not look back.

Finally, you feel the impact of your feet to the ground in full force, a geyser of air blasting up to your left a few feet ahead, cracking, snapping and blowing a hole in the wood. Throwing up your arms to protect yourself from the flying debris, you fly past as more holes get blown open ahead in varying spots. Your balance threatening to be thrown aside due to the harsh vibration of the foundation beneath, you somehow stay upright. You have to make it inside. The very floor being ripped from the earth does not scare you as much as what's behind you. It's gaze pierces your back, clawing it's way through your skin and causing hair to raise to peaks. Something no mortal weapon can defend from. Something you can only run from, or pay the price in it's hold. Your ears begin to ring from the chaos below, mind only able to focus on the destination.

You're almost there.

Mere seconds from the door, the ground just feet in front of it erupts, wood getting thrown into the air, haze hissing threateningly. The path is truncated, causing you to skid to a stop at it's edge. Releasing a grunt, you take a few large steps back. The haze wall still remains, slowly powering down from it's blast. It's too dangerous to jump now. Yet, you might not have a choice.

It's getting closer.

Grinding your teeth, you freeze as you feel the ground rumble with each stomp that approaches you. You have to make your decision, and you have to make it quickly. Tick. Stomp. Tock. Stomp.

Tick.

Stomp.

Tock.

Stomp.

Tick.

Stomp.