Gray (Temporary title).

[Blue Screen of Death]

"He's waking up!" I heard a hushed voice not far from me say.

"Yeah right. Just like how he was waking up yesterday, and the day before that?" Another, more distant voice replied.

"No, he really is waking up this time! I saw his eyelids twitching!" The first voice argued.

"You idiot, that just means he's having a bad dream or something!" The second voice said.

They continued arguing like this, but I didn't follow it for long. I slowly opened my eyes and surveyed the room around me. It had, from what I could tell, no doors a single window and was quite small. But that wasn't the strangest thing about it. The whole room was a dull gray, but the one window was different.This window showed, from what I could tell, only sky. I tried moving my legs so I could stand and inspect this mystery. They seemed fine as I bent my knees and ankles, but that didn't necessarily mean I could stand. Slowly, I moved my legs and stood up with a slight groan. I noticed I was wearing my thin jacket and a pair of jeans that had been patched many times before. As I stood the child facing me stopped arguing with the other and gaped at me.

"You were right," She muttered.

"I was?" He questioned, turning towards me, copying the other ones gesture.

As I painfully walked to the window, I found ouot that I was right, the window only showed sky. I couldn't see any clouds and all I could of the ground was a flat, grassy plain.

After stepping back from the window I looked around. I ignored their staring eyes, noticing a few things were missing.

"Where's Leon?" I asked, looking at them.

"Leon?" The boy said, obviously confused. "Who's he?"

"He's my friend. He should be near, we never stay apart long." I answered, still looking around. "My sword is missing too!"

"Your... sword? What's a sword?" The boy said, giving me another quizzical look.

"You don't know what a sword is?" I asked him, quite surprised.

"Is it that pointy thing you had stuck to you when we found you?" The girl said, tugging my pant leg slightly to get my attention.

"Yes!" I replied excitedly, directing my attention towards her. "Now where is it?"

"I don't know." She told me, shrugging. "We threw it outside. Momma told us to."

This comment finally made me notice how old my company really was. "Children. I'm talking to two children in a building that appears to be floating and Leon is missing! What's next, their mother is some sort of hallucination?" I cast aside the thought and asked the two if they could take me to their mother.

"Sure!" The boy said, running to a door that suddenly appeared in the wall.

"What the," I thought, following the children who had just ran through the door.

The hallway didn't differ from the previous room much. The only difference was instead of one window, there were several. As I passed them I looked through one, hoping to gain some sense of where I was.

It was pointless.

The windows showed me nothing new. An endless view of they sky, and the same field I saw before. "Where am I?" I wondered, still following the children.

No matter how hard I looked, there did not appear to be a door at the end of the hallway. Yet, once we reached the wall, a door appeared; complete with a polished brass knocker and intricate carvings. The kids didn't bother with the formality of using the knocker however, and walked inside.

I hesitated entering.

"Come on!" The girl said, as she sharply tugged my arm, and effectively pulling me out of my daze.

"Yes, sorry," I replied, quickly entering the room.

It was horrible.

The room itself had grown mold in every crevice, and a horrible stench filled the air. But that was nothing compared to the center of the room.

Mentally, I retched. Physically, I managed to maintain some of my composure.

"That is your mother?" I said, barely holding in my stomach's contents. "It's not even alive!"

"What are you talking about?" The girl asked. "She's alive!"

"Yeah! She's alive!" The boy shouted at me.

I could tell they both believed this lie; but my eyes weren't deceived. The thing before me was nothing but a rotting corpse, most of the skin had been eaten off by insects, and bones were visible in areas. I wasn't even certain it was human.

"Please," I asked them, "Get me out of here!"

"But don't you want to stay and play with us?" Whined, tears forming in the girls eyes.

"Yeah mister! We can play all sorts of games!" The boy added, shaking my arm.

I continued asking them to let me leave, but they continued to say no. Finally deciding it was hopeless asking them to get me out of there, I ran to the door.

But the door had dissapeared.

"Don't run mister! Stay here and play with us!"

"Yeah, stay! Mommy might get mad if you try to leave!"

I ignored the children and kept searching the wall, hoping to find even the slightest crack. I started to panic as my search became more and more hopeless, when I heard one of the children stop begging me to stay.

"What Mom? Let him go? Why?" It was the girl talking.

"Yeah Mom, why? We could have so much fun with him!" The boy added, also turning away from me.

They argued with the dead body of their mother for a short while longer, but finally they both said "Oh, fine." And turned back to me.

"Well mister, Momma says we have to let you go, so goodbye!" The girl told me, stomping the floor with her foot twice at the end of her sentence.
I was uncertain whether she stomped the floor because she was angry, or because it would reveal my exit. "Thank you!" I said to them, feeling the happiest I could recall feeling in a long time. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered why the girl didn't sound very sad when she told me that, but it was overpowered by my joy of being able to leave.

There was only one problem however. The exit was also the small patch of floor I was standing on, and I definitely couldn't fly.

I grabbed the edge of the hole, and as I hung there I said to the children "This is not what I had in mind!"

"Sorry mister, it's the only way out." The girl said to me.

"Yeah, sorry mister, but Mommy never wants us to leave." The boy added, stepping on my fingers.

"Wait, don't" I tried to say, but I was to late.

"Sorry mister." I heard one of their voices echo as I fell, "We really did want you to stay."

The first thing I thought, after making my throat hoarse from screaming, was don't look down. However, the first thing I did after thinking that was looking down.

I guess it really didn't make much of a difference, considering I knew I was falling from a considerable height, and I also knew what was under me. But I still wanted to for some strange reason. All I saw was green.

But I kept falling. No matter how long I fell, the ground stayed the same distance away from me. Eventually the sun set and the moon filled the sky. Not long after my eyelids started to droop, despite the strong gust from the fall, and I fell into a deep sleep.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Some time later I regained consciousness. I moaned a little as I opened my eyes and at up.

"Wait," I thought, looking around, "How am I sitting up?"

"Finally awake are yeh? It's a good thing to, I was close to burying you!" A male voice said right behind my ears.

I quickly turned around to see who my company was. He had long black hair which I could tell had not been washed in a long time. He also had a long beard and his face wasn't exactly the cleanest I'd ever seen.

"Like what yeh see?" He chuckled, obviously having notice me staring at him. "My name is Kale. Nice to meet yeh." He added, extending his arm.
"Likewise. I'm Aaron." I replied, cautiously shaking his hand.

"Well, now that the introductions are done, I think it's time for some grub!" He said, turning around to face a fireplace with a large kettle in it. "Fish n' beet soup, I guarantee you'll like it!"

While he was ladling the soup into bowls for us I took the opportunity to look around. I was in a cave, that much was obvious. But this cave look more like a house. It had a small wooden table with no chairs, and a few parts of it were covered with poorly made bricks.

"I make the bricks mehself. There's lot's o' good mud 'round here, and the mortar is just moss, grass, and more mud. The bricks are mud straight from the bottom o' the river right around the bend. Cleanest mud you'll ever find!" He told me, handing me a bowl full of steaming soup. "I don't have any spoons now, but I will soon!"

"That's okay, I'm just happy to have hospitable company." I told him, taking a small sip of the soup. My tongue felt like it was on fire, and I started sweating really hard.

"I guess I should've warned yeh. I grind meh own pepper mix for this soup, so most people would find it quite hot." He told me.

"No, it's okay," I said, wiping my watering eyes with the sleeve of my jacket. "Anything is better than that odd building

"Odd buildin'?" He asked, taking a large gulp of his soup. "I don't know of any buildin's at all anywhere near here.

He listened intently as I related to him my short journey until now. After I was done, he said "Those two. They tend to do that to strangers around here."

"You know them?" I nearly shouted, a comically surprised look on my face.

"Yep. They're mostly harmless. All that stuff you saw was an illusion. You were probably stumbling around in the forest that whole time. Those kids seem to think it's fun scaring strangers half to death.

"But it all felt and looked so real! The rooms, the corpse, the falling sensation! How could that be faked?" I asked him, still somewhat surprised.

"Easily enough, the two probably used a simple sight trick spell would do, along with a light breeze spell to make the falling part feel more realistic." Kale told me, adding more soup to his bowl.

"Wait, what? Sight trick spell? Light breeze spell?" I asked, my confusion growing.

"Yup. You're new so I wouldn't expect yeh to know about it, but around these parts people take on special powers somehow. We call it magic for lack of a better name. Mebbe you have it, mebbe not. Don't rightly know how to find out, so fer now you'll just have to live with the suspense." Kale explained, adding even more soup to his bowl. "Yeh know what, I like you kid. Don't know why, yeh just seem like the trustworthy type."

"Thanks, I guess," I muttered in response, slowly drinking my soup.
We sat there for a while longer, just talking. He took yet another bowl of soup while I was still on my first one.

After a while longer he said to me "I take it yeh'll be taking off in the morning to look for that Leon guy."

"Yeah, he shouldn't be to far from here. But how did you know about him?" I asked him.

"Yeh kept muttering his name in yer sleep, it was hard not to hear it!"

"How long was I asleep for?" I finally questioned.

"Only a few hours after I dragged yeh in here. Before that I haven't the slightest clue." He answered with a shrug.

"Thank goodness you did too, I might be wolf feed if you hadn't." I said.
"I don't know about that, haven't seen nothin' but birds and fish around here in ages. But enough of that, I think it's time to hit the hay. A good nights rest is important for a growing kid like you!" He told me, standing up and going to a small room in the cave.

"I'm not really a kid anymore, I am fifteen!" I corrected him.

"Yer younger than me, so yer a kid!" He said, tossing a blanket at me. "Now sleep youngin'. Yeh got a long road ahead of yeh!


--------------------------------

When I woke up Kale was still sleeping. He was laying on a mat that looked more like a large rag.

"Sleep well, kind stranger." I whispered in his direction as I stood and left the cave.

When I stepped into the morning light I did not see what I had seen from the whatever it was those children had me in.

"It's all wasteland," I gasped, "Was the field just an illusion?" Mentally, I chided myself for asking such a pointless question, but I was still aghast at the sight of the dead plain.

As I walked I took note of my surroundings. The ground was cracked and gray under the dimmed light of the cloudy sky. There was a strong, chilling breeze pushing me away from the cliff Kale's cave dwelling was located. As I surveyed the land, I started to wonder where that river Kale was talking about was. And on that matter, the forest he mentioned.

"What is going on here?" I thought, turning my attention to the horizon.

(A/N: This doesn't exactly have chapters, but I will be posting it in sections, simply because it isn't finished).