Call of Ring(Compleled)

3 New World

Blake slowly opened his eyes. Feeling disoriented, he looked around trying to scan his surroundings in an attempt to discover where he was.

Although groggy and somewhat incoherent, he felt comfortable. He tried to process exactly what he was feeling. He felt natural in an almost primitive way. But he couldn’t initially discern why. As his senses began to communicate messages to his brain, he suddenly felt naked. It was then that his eyes confirmed his body was indeed mostly bare with only a small patch of fur tied around his waist, covering his genitals. Yet he didn’t panic. Instead he felt a strange peace about it. He just lay there practically motionless staring up into a cloudless blue sky.

The scene woke him up. He should be killed when the plane crushed. How could he survived and dressed like this?

He thought about that for a while, and got no answer. The last scene he could remember was the crushed plane.

He shook his head tiredly, and left those questions behind. He need to confirm his situation at first.

Blake felt a little cold. He guessed the temperature was akin to a mild summer morning in Toronto. But he wasn’t accustomed to waking up in the open air with the sun rising in the distant horizon. He next became aware of a strong smell. “There must be a fire burning in the near distance,” he thought. But there was something else. His nostrils detected a distinct smell of body odor.

Was it his own, or that of another?  He couldn’t make sure. It was the first time be such stinking.

 “Three of the five senses confirmed to be intact”, thought Blake. “It’s time to touch something.” Blake reached out with both hands to feel the ground around him. He noticed that he wasn’t just lying on the bare ground. He was lying in a massive pile of Autumn leaves. To his surprise, the leaves were oddly not itchy. This pile formed the perfect mattress from whatever sleep he was stirring out of.

It seemed that he had made mattress. But he couldn’t remember anything about it.

The last of the five senses in need of testing was taste. Blake decided that he would have to rise from this pile of leaves to explore this foreign world he was awaking into. He had more questions than answers, but for some reason, he was plagued with satisfying his fifth sense knowing that no signals had successfully been sent to his brain.

“When I get up, my primary focus will be to taste something. Only then will I begin to contemplate where I find myself now.” Blake declared to himself.

Slowly Blake rose from the pile of leaves. Feeling a bit insecure in his animal skin attire, he adjusted the small covering of fur. As he did so, he noticed that his body looked different.

“A six pack!? I’ve never had such definition before,” he said almost audibly.

Sure enough, his body was similar in size to what he remembered, but significantly stronger and perfectly toned. It was almost as if someone else had done all the work for him, as he had no recollection of it. Yet, somehow his body now looked this way.

Remembering that he had yet to try his sense of taste, these feelings soon turned into actual hunger. He began to follow the smell of the campfire. Walking barefoot but surprisingly without pain, he hiked up a steep hill. At the top, there was plateau. It held a large clearing, but the outer edges of the plateau were covered in the thicket like bushes. The whole space looked like a gathering area, as if someone had constructed it be just the way it appeared. In the center of the clearing, stones had been stacked with care in a circular shape. And inside the circle was a roaring fire.

Before drawing closer to the fire, Blake decided to look back to the area from which he had come. It wasn’t just a hill he had climbed. It was more like a mountain. In the foreground, he noticed the area from which he had awoken. There were fields of wild berries, the place from which he had stirred was already three-quarters of the way up this mountain. In other words, he hadn’t hiked far to reach the top. Beyond the field of berries, he thought he could spot some sort of community, a group of house like structures. But he couldn’t confirm for certain. It must have been miles away. He walked around the outer edge of the plateau, looking in the opposite direction, and he saw what seemed to be a valley, indeed a plain of some sort. In this, the opposite direction, a larger community was definitely in the distance, but still miles away. 

Having gathered as much information as he could for the moment, he decided to venture into the clearing where the fire remained fully ablaze. As he drew closer, he found it odd that no one was in sight.

“Who builds a massive bonfire and then promptly deserts it?” Blake asked himself.

A sweeter smell than campfire filled his nostrils as he approached. Smoked meat lay hanging overs some stones. Not only was this massive fire suddenly deserted, someone had left some recently smoked meat. Blake wondered what kind of meat it was, but the uncertainty did not slow him from sampling this free offering. His first bite confirmed it was better than any beef jerky he had ever tried. He couldn’t discern what type of meat it was even after tasting it, but it didn’t matter. It satisfied his hunger and confirmed that his fifth sense was fully intact. Whatever world he found himself in, he was at least able to ascertain that he remained fully human, and somehow, he had lucked out with a much better body!

For the first time since his waking, Blake felt unsettled. And the unsettled feeling was not coming from his stomach as a result of consuming unknow meat. He had an eerie feeling that he was not alone. Slowly, he performed a 360-degree scan looking for any movement in the bushes beyond this clearing that could confirm someone else was close by. If indeed someone appeared, Blake nervously wondered if they would prove to be friend or foe?

After completing a thorough scan of the surrounding area, he heard and saw nothing. Still, Blake felt uneasy. The whole scenario didn’t add up. A raging bonfire left unattended. Recently smoked meat left for him to consume…

The bushes behind him rustled. Blake spun around and saw a short awkward looking bearded man emerge. In his hand he held a spear that was longer in length than Blake. The short man couldn’t have stood more than four feet tall. The spear he held dwarfed him. This thought sparked a ridiculously uncomfortable feeling in Blake. Could this small man actually be a dwarf? What world had he mysteriously landed in?

His thoughts were interrupted by two others emerging from the bushes, also holding spears. Then five more. He was surrounded by short bearded men, all carrying spears larger than Blake himself. Blake’s vision suddenly blurred, and he felt weak in his knees. It was as if all these facts were too much to handle. Too much to process, and the brain decided to shut down.

“Am I about to faint?” he asked himself inaudibly.

Blake collapsed to the ground. When he woke up again, he had become a prisoner.