I sighed, closing my book, I love reading, but sometimes I get a little carried away. I especially love to read the legends of when great heroes like the Dragon, the Wolfbrother, and the Gambler were alive. the Gambler was my favorite, even though he was never the main hero of the legends, he always seemed to find a way to sneak into them. I just wish that we knew if all the things from the old legends were real. I would love to have magic powers like the Dragon did.

I sighed again and rubbed my eyes, looking at my clock, and groaning. It was already 2:30, and I had a test tomorrow morning at 8:30 for history. I reflected once again on how great it would be to be in a world where I didn’t have to worry about pointless things like tests, and wrote it off, once again, as simply being wishful thinking. I slipped out of bed, and went through my nightly ritual of preparing to sleep. I brushed my teeth (cinnamon toothpaste is best toothpaste), and washed my face, like normal people do, then got back into bed to begin the rather unique part of my preparations that I learned from my travels through the myths and legends of my home. I was probably the only one who knew about this, the instructions were buried deep in a dusty book at the back of my family's attic.

I closed my eyes and controlled my breathing. In … out … in … out … I pictured a flame in my mind’s eye, currently small and guttering, like a candle flame. I began to feed the flame with my emotions, first burning up my worry about my test, tomorrow, then moving on to other emotions and thoughts. Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Loneliness, everything went into that fire, until I was empty, no thoughts, no emotions, just the void and the fire. I then dismissed the fire, having no need of it any more. All that was left was the void, and now, with no distractions running through my mind, I finally slipped into sleep.

…

I was floating through the void, just resting in the emptiness. Suddenly, I saw something moving in my peripheral vision. I tuned to see it, but it was already gone. Suddenly, a glow appeared behind me, not a warm glow, like the glow that comes from a fireplace, or a threatening one, like a glow that comes from a forest fire, just … a glow. I turned, and in front of me was what seemed to be a massive river of molten color, floating in the void with me, with blues, greys, reds, and greens, as well as whites, going on for as far as I could see in either direction, looking a bit like an endless multicolor snake. It was beautiful. Looking closer, I could see an ugly black sludge all along the surface of the river, like an oil slick, making me sick just looking at it, tainting each of the colors.

As I looked at this wonder, I perceived a silhouette of … something, walking towards me. It looked vaguely serpentine, but it had eight … no, six appendages and two horns, each of them different, but hard to make out. It approached swiftly, soon standing before me, still as vaguely defined as it was when it was far away. The only things that changed were the eyes which became visible. A sickly yellow color dominated most of each eye, like the creature had some kind of sickness, like yellow fever. The pupils however, were a deep red, the color of blood. Looking into these eyes, I could tell that the being they belonged to, the being standing in front of me, was quite insane.

A malicious chuckle filled the air, as one of the being’s arms reached out and grabbed me, picking me up as if I weighed nothing, and tossed me like a rag doll into the river of color.

I was instantly caught up in the flow … no, that’s not right. It was like the river was flowing through me, and around me at the same time, and it burned, not a good burn, like hot chocolate, or a bad burn like fire, but somewhere in between the two, like you get if you exercise muscles for a long time or work them really hard for a short time.

I was pulled along the river, as this feeling that can only be described as life flowed through me, until I came a little closer to the surface of the river, and my hand brushed the dark oily substance coating the river. Never before had I felt such a feeling of sickness wash through my body than when I touched that darkness. The feeling of wrongness was almost overwhelming, and without the sheer amount of life flowing through me from the river I was sure that this … this Taint, would have killed me, or corrupted me, driven me insane, or something of the sort. I recoiled, and drifted back into the middle of the river. I looked ahead, and saw that the river twisted downwards, and I was swiftly approaching these falls. As I reached the edge, I was thrust downwards, feeling like was now falling. I wasn’t worried, I was in a dream, and so I’d wake up before I hit the ground.

…

Well, I definitely woke up before I hit the ground. As I awakened, I became aware of the fact that I was still falling, until, with a mighty CRASH, I slammed into my mattress, which had slammed into the ground in the middle of the large … open … field.

Huh.

This is new.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I hadn’t woken up where I had fallen asleep, which makes sense, because I don’t remember my room being quite so big. Also, there aren't enough plants in New Caemlyn to fill a quarter of this field.

Ok. Whats going on here. This is not what's supposed to happen. I'm supposed to wake up and go to school and eat lunch and ... wait.

I know what happened, my idiot roommates must have done this. They think they're so cool, because they're nobility, they're on the sports team, they blah blah blah I HATE IT. They're worthless wastes of space and the university would be better off without them. Just because their parents play Daes Dae'mar and they have money, they think they're better than the rest of us. All they're really good for is cannon fodder. If there was any hope for them in the game of houses, they would have been kept home and homeschooled, they're just too stupid to know it. Burn them, burn all those blasted idiots.

Jason. Focus. Strange area. worry about those boneheaded jackdaws later. I looked around, looking for tracks, but there wasn't any sign of where they came and left from, meaning no Ideas for me where the road could be.

Suddenly it got dark.

What the? I looked up, and the sun rose up to the noon position with in a few seconds again.

Oh this is much worse than some prank. Am I even on the same world any more? Can I get home? Is anyone even looking for me? Oh crap, I'm gonna miss my test, the prof is gonna be so mad at me I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna lose my scholarship, oh burn me, burn me, burn my blasted head to a crisp.

JASON. pull yourself together. this is not the time to panic. what would the Dragon do?

That's it! The void! ok, ok, breath in, breathe out, in, out, in ... out ... in ... out.

Flame.

Feed.

Void.

Extinguish.

Ok, now that I'm calm, let's take stock of the situation. no tracks around, that means they either didn't touch the ground, and dropped me from above, (those idiots would do it, too), or I somehow Traveled here. No, that's not possible, there's nobody alive who can use the One Power, no matter how much I might want it to be true. Plus, that wouldn't account for the wacky way the sun just moved. Ok, next theory. I was sleeping before, so ... Tel'Aran'Rhiod? Maybe, but isn't it supposed to be places that are familliar to you, or you wake up where you went to sleep? Not knowing enough about the dream world from the legends I had read, I couldn't say for certain. for now I should just operate on the principle that I'm in a completely different world, and act accordingly.

Having fantasized about being sent to another world, and priding myself on having a quick wit and adaptability, as well as being a complete geek, I quickly took stock of the situation.

First, my immediate safety. Is there anything that is an imminent threat to my life or well being? I looked around. To the south, there was a forest, and to the east, mountains, one with what appeared to be a castle hanging off of it. Pushing the apparent impossibility to the corner of my mind for a moment, I looked to the north. The field just extended into plains in that direction, and to the west … was … a town? I think? Are towns wherever I am supposed to have floating upside down buildings, strange checkerboard landscapes, and other impossibilities like pink clouds? In my fascination with the strange sight, I almost forgot the most important rule for a person entering an area that may or may not have hostiles in it.

Always look up. Because whenever you though you were safe, a Draghkar dropped on your head.

Directing my gaze upwards, I looked into the clear blue sky above me, and noted the position of the Sun.

Moon.

Sun.

What is up with this wacky place? In the twenty seconds I had been looking at the sky an entire day had passed? Was this place fighting my presence, and in so doing pushing me outside of the time stream? Was that simply the length of the day and night here? No, something else must be up. The pattern of the movement of the celestial objects across the sky was irregular, the sun moving almost instantly to the twelve O’clock noon position, then staying there until it set and the moon rose just as quickly to take its place. Judging from the fact that I’m not being thrown all over the place by the rapid acceleration and deceleration that would occur had the earth been spinning at speeds required to cause this formula, I could conclude several things.

I’m not on earth anymore.

It’s very likely that the planet I’m on has no rotation, and somehow the Sun and Moon are the things that are moving, though with the speed the moon is moving, I should have been able to feel some small effect of the shift of its gravitational pull. Therefore, I decided to go with the idea that both the sun and the moon of this world are significantly smaller than the ones on mine.

Feeling rather pleased with my assessment of the giant nuclear reactor and inert space rock above my head, and satisfied that there wasn’t any danger in the immediate area, I took a more detailed look at my surroundings, and noticed that I wasn’t the only thing that had come to this world from mine. It appeared that anything within approximately four to six feet of my person had come with me.

This included my bed, my nightstand, a good chunk of my wall, my handheld music player and charger, as well as my laptop and its charger. My nightstand had its lamp, as well as the contents of its drawer, which included A chocolate bar, a large box of granola bars (my roommates stole any food that wasn’t in my room specifically, so I kept the majority of my snack food in there), some trail mix, a pocket knife, and some fruit punch flavor packets for a water bottle. I also had my Boy Scout handbook. I know it’s a little strange to be in college and still have the handbook, but there’s a lot of stuff in there, both printed and stuff that I wrote in the margins. I’m glad that I have it, though, It’ll be really useful as a survival guide of sorts.

I also had my back pack. I looked inside and groaned when I saw my Math and Andoran History Textbooks in there. Of course my schoolwork would be brought through with me. With my luck, my teachers would have some way to contact me and yell at me for missing assignments. I could just imagine my calculus teacher yelling at me, that “involuntary interdimensional travel is no excuse for late assignments! You Fail!”, in his Seanchan accent. My history teacher would probably be more understanding, but would still cuss me out for missing the test and all his classes. I chuckled as I thought of what kind of language he would use. He’s the only teacher I’ve ever heard of that swears regularly in his lectures. Anyway, back to inventory. I have one water bottle, and one almost empty 180 page spiral notebook. Good, I could write observations or a journal in that. I also noted that I had several pens, and pencils, mechanical and normal in my bag, with 2 clips of lead refills for the mechanicals. I was glad that I had laid out my clothes for tomorrow along with socks and shoes next to my bed, because I would have been stuck running around in pajamas, otherwise. I quickly got dressed in jeans, a black t-shirt, and a red hoodie with a zipper, and put on my socks and tennis shoes. I laid my pajamas out on the bed to deal with later.

I noted that it had technically been two weeks in this world with the messed up time frame since I started my examination of my surroundings, and decided that I should get everything packed. I loaded up all the food I could into my back pack, taking out the textbooks but leaving the notebook, as I might need it later. I also put my laptop in my backpack, and my music player in my pocket, putting the chargers to both next to my pajamas. I kicked the electrical sockets out of what was left of my wall, thinking that if whoever lives in the insane looking town in the distance has electricity, I could get someone to wire my plug into their system. I’ll be honest, I have no idea if it’ll work, I’m no electrician.

I then put everything I wasn’t taking in my backpack meaning my textbooks and the chargers for my electronics, onto my bed, and wrapped them into my blanket and tied it off, forming a sort of bag and protective covering over them. I couldn’t take them with me, because everything together would be too heavy and wouldn't fit in my back pack. I decided that they would be safest hanging from a branch of one of the trees in the forest to the south. Luckily, there seemed to be vines hanging from some of the trees.

After carrying the blanket and books about a hundred yards to the edge of the forest, I found a vine that looked to be strong enough, threaded it through the knot in the blanket, and hauled it up to an acceptable height. I then tied the vine off at the trunk of the tree to keep it from falling down, and marked the spot in my memory before going back to my mattress, and hauling it over to lean against the side of the tree I had just used. I picked up my back pack, and began my trek to the town in the distance, it being closer and more interesting than the castle. I walked for about fifteen minutes before I saw what looked like a hot air balloon moving quickly through the sky overhead. Suitably confused, I looked closer, and saw that it was being pulled by a yellow blur, and was chasing a grey blur connected to a white, pink, and purple blur.

What the heck is going on here?

Author's Note

so, I'm only going to update this as often as I feel like updating. It'll help if I have an editor, though, so again, pm me if you want to do that.