Fire Series: 3 - Personal Blizzards
Thin and whitish ribbons of energy looked like they were coming off my pores and flurried around my skin. It was a soft radiance but obvious nonetheless. My eyes were directed to another faint but more luminous shine emanating from the center of my breastplate. I realized then that embedded in it was a small blue gem.
A lightning bolt hit nearby once more, sending a large chunk of debris towards me. At the same time that I made a futile effort to avoid it, I also felt helplessness as I unwillingly watched the improvised projectile. Its trajectory was unmistakable; my reflex was unable to allow me to fully shield myself. I shut my eyes hard and just imagined the excruciating pain I knew I was going to experience next.
Direct hit! The rock blew apart upon impact on my body; the broken down pebbles making loud clattering sounds against my armor. But it was the oddest thing – I opened my eyes and realized that I was completely unscathed. Most of all, that I did not feel anything.
The gem seemed to react to my rising courage as it shone more brightly, intensifying the flow of energy on my body. It was probably actually imbued with magic, and its power was protecting me. “Now this dream’s really something!” With – finally – a sense of control over the entire event, I carried on with my travel headstrong. Neither the lightning nor the debris that the storm was producing harmed me. Everything simply smashed onto or went through me without inflicting any pain. It came to a point where it got entertaining.
Time passed and the immense weather disturbance gradually died down. Except for the swirling cool air, things were pretty much back to normal. I had to have been here for possibly a day now, but for some reason I judged that this place had no day or night. It all began sinking in again. It was hard to explain why but I knew that saying I was lost would be a great understatement. I remembered the sense of relief one feels upon waking up from a nightmare and the idea both gave me hope and made me even more wary. After all, no scientist has ever discovered the equivalent of dream time to real time. Perhaps only a few minutes have actually passed back in reality.
Something that fell on my arm took me away from my thoughts. It was a tiny speck of matter that felt cold, quickly melted, and trickled down to the ground.
It has started raining again, albeit only a harmless drizzle. The temperature also decreased dramatically, confirmed by my impulse to rub my arms. In a split second, something whacked me on the head – hard. My magical clothing still had to be in effect then, but this new event sent a whole new different shiver down my spine.
Hail.
“Impossible! This isn’t fair!,” my mind bellowed. I have always regarded myself as an ice storm out of all the forces of nature. I thought of hail as one of our environment’s greatest form of deception: it has an ironic tranquility behind its equally catastrophic ramifications. Not the most feared or the most usual but as devastating. An underrated killer.
And in this cruel coincidence, I was about to face it.
The rush of these ideas reminded me of my true state outside of wherever this place was… in reality. Of how evenly bewildering our own blizzards are compared to this calamity; of how life had an uncanny resemblance to what has happened and is happening in this place. In parallel to such remembrance, my real self got sledge-hammered to merge with this dream self. I rapidly weakened; the gem on my armor lost some of its brilliance.
Ice the size of fists continued falling from the atmosphere wildly. The pounding rain of cold terror did not show any remorse. Just then, a startling jab happened on my back. And for the first time… pain.
I stretched my arms to reach the spot that was hit. While my mysterious armor was still clearly working, no amount of consolation could’ve averted the rise of panic within me. I held out my hand in front of me and saw that it was smeared by blood.
I shook from fear. My human susceptibility has finally been exposed. For some reason, I believed too – or felt – that the line between dreams and the reality has been broken, and the two worlds were about to collide in this astonishing incident.
