▌│█║▌║▌║Chapter 18║▌║▌║█│▌

As soon as I had hoped that there wouldn’t be anything that could kill me easily here, a huge reptilian monster loomed out of the fog towards me. It looked like the dinosaurs I saw on TV and coloring books as a kid. It had a super long neck, huge scales running along it’s body, a tale behind it longer than even its neck, and its eyes were like polished rubies. Its huge body moved slowly but deliberately through the fog wall. I was like an ant compared to this creature’s giant size. I looked up at it in horror of my inferiority. I seemed to be stuck where I stood in fear of the beast. This seemed to be way more powerful than the griffin that had tried to kill me just a day earlier. The aura around it didn’t seem like it wanted to kill me, but it had a powerful aura that froze me in awe. I watched as it loomed closer and closer to my position, and I realized that it may not even know that I’m here! I’m so small and insignificant to it that it may just overlook me! As it walked toward me with its huge legs and feet, I came to the horrific realization that his humungous foot was headed right for my body. The foot was coming down closer and closer to my body, and I couldn’t move! I was frozen! Right when I was about to be smushed by the enormous foot, I felt something slam into me. It rammed into me side, and I felt something slimy slap me across the face as well. I was sent flying into the muck of land surrounding the lake. I got covered with mud, and as I turned around to see what slammed into me, I could hear the giant foot hit the ground and splatter more mud on my back. I looked at the direction where I heard my saving grace fall, and I only saw a lizard like creature slither away in the mud and gunk.

I got up slowly from the mud, still shaken from the near-death experience, and I looked around the dark, foggy, and muddy terrain I was in. I could still hear the huge dinosaur-like creature traversing the landscape, and I looked up into the dark-foggy sky for some sun light reaching down into this swamp like land. The thick fog made it impossible though. My body started to feel a little cold from the mud that was all over my body now, and I could feel a shiver travel through my body. I crossed my arms to keep some heat inside my body, and I continued my sluggish journey through the marsh. I stumbled and bumbled my way across the landscape, just trying my best to move in a straight line forward. “The lake has to be around here somewhere!” I thought to myself, “I can’t be lost in this place forever. I mean, it’s a huge lake. It has to be around here somewhere!”

Just as I thought this, I slid down a hole in the ground made lubricant from all the mud. I went down and down until I finally landed in a watery mud hole. I was at least one hundred feet down in the ground. I tried to climb back up out of the hole, but the walls of the hole were just too slick for me to get a good enough grip to climb out of the mud hole. I was stuck. The mud in the hole came up to my knees, and my body temperature was rapidly dropping. I looked around the hole to find some dry area inside of it, and I saw that the mud hole was more like a cave. The inside of the hole was much larger than I imagined it would be, and there was a long corridor with dry land going through the ground. I waded through the mud, and I made my way onto the dry land of the corridor. I got onto the dry land, and I laid there on my back for a while to gather my thoughts. “Should I just stay here near the entrance of the hole in case anybody comes to find me, or should I travel down the corridor to see if I can find my way out?” I thought, “No one is probably looking for me anyway. I’m technically not even supposed to be here either.”

I looked down the corridor again, and I thought to myself, “Fuck it, I might as well.”

I stood up off the ground, and I took one last look at the entrance of the hole to check if someone would be there to help me one last time then I left into the dark corridor. I walked down the corridor using my hands to feel my way down through the darkness. The further down I went the damper the air around me felt. The corridor seemed to be going down further and further instead of up and out of the hole, but I already travelled this far. I might as well see this out until the end. I travelled down the corridor for about ten minutes before I finally saw something in the darkness. As I was feeling my way through the darkness, I saw a faint white light in the distance. I picked up my pace, and I felt my way to the white light. As I got closer and closer, I realized that the light was being emitted from what looked like a fountain made out of the stone of the corridor. The corridor opened up into something like a room, and there was a woman standing by the lit fountain rubbing a sword. Being able to see now, I hesitantly walked towards the woman with the sword and asked, “Hello?”

She looked up from the sword, and she looked at me with intense, curious blue eyes. Who is she?

▌│█║▌║▌║To be Continued║▌║▌║█│▌