Paul fell to the ground breathing heavily, between the heat and the hangover from last night he didn't have any break. He had already thrown up two times, but that wasn't even his biggest concern, he was getting thirsty and there was no water in any direction.
'Am I going to die like this.' he thought as he fell to his knees, but he quickly got up because the sand's heat was hurting his skin. He continued walking with his back lumped forward.
When midday came Paul felt that he couldn't continue, every breath he breathed was so hot it felt like his lung was taken out of his body and put in hot water, and he was covered in sweat that drenched every part of his body. But after some time he found the energy to continue a little bit.
After walking for a while and almost giving up a couple of times, he saw something poking out of the sand. It was…. It was a body, well a skeleton that was wearing strange clothes, the clothes looked like body Armor mixed with shaman-type clothes on top. But Paul was too exhausted to care about what it was wearing, he currently had one thing on his mind and that was water, he bent down to look for the resemblance of a water container in the skeleton's body, he knew that it probably evaporated by now in this environment considering the corpse had already became a skeleton but he couldn't help but have a little hope.
What he found out shocked him, the body Armor felt cold to the touch this was confusing did he finally lose it, how could it be cold as this, he was thinking about that when he saw it, there was what looked like a water container attached to the waist of the skeleton when he gripped the cold steel of the container. He let out a sigh of excitement while grinning weakly. It had something inside, so he opened the lid of the container and looked inside. It was water that made Paul almost cry with happiness, clutching the container in one hand he gulped down the water greedily.
He almost finished drinking the water before he stopped.
"I almost finished it," he said with a raspy voice looking at the bottle.
"I still have a lot of way to go before I reach any semblance of structure in this goddamn place!" his voice breaks at the last part of his sentence.
"Well any day above the ground is great or whatever they say," he says as he tries to salvage the situation, he decided that he could wear the clothes the skeleton was wearing to cool himself from the heat of the environment. As he was wearing the cloth he found four more water containers that were empty and two containers that looked like empty food containers, he cursed his luck and threw them away.
The clothes felt cold and refreshing to his whole body and made him feel relieved that he wouldn't die from the heat of the environment.
"Finally, it feels great," he said to himself smiling.
'Now I know how this guy died' he thought as he looked down at the clothes he got from his 'donor' There was a big hole in the place where the kidney was supposed to be.
When he was checking up the suit for anything he noticed another thing, on the skeleton this time the skeleton looked like that of a human but oddly enough they were different, Paul was too tired to figure it out at first but now he's okay he noticed it.
One of the arms of the skeleton was longer than the other, its ribs were more than any human, and it looked like they were 12 pairs. Well in humans the first seven pairs were true ribs because they were attached to the sternum unlike the remaining but the skeleton all of them were connected directly to the sternum and the person's…no the thing's canines were sharp, very sharp it even hurt to touch them.
"Interesting…. Well it might have been a condition, who am I to judge and besides I am in another world I should be thankful" he remarked as he tried to look at the better side of things.
The first thing he noticed about the suit is that while wearing it his thirst became much much less he didn't understand how it worked but hey he's not complaining matter of fact this was the first time he felt joy after coming to this world…..Kidnapped into this world.
He continued moving until night came and took over the world.
When he saw the light was too dim to walk, he sat down on a big mound and started thinking about what he should do.
Finally, he got time to think about his situation.
'Why the fuck am I in this place?'
'Who brought me here'
'What was that strange boulder he encountered last night'
This thoughts clouded his mind.
"I am already tired of this crap," he said as he wrote on the sand with his finger, he noticed that the sand was warm, Then he realized that the sand being white did not help it absorb that much heat but because it's still early at night it's a little warm.
'I will have to find answers to all those questions later. First I need to survive and find shelter.'
'Then I will ask around about this world and find out who could cause this.'
'Then what' a thought struck his head.
What will he do after finding out who did this to him, ask them to return him to his world, did he really want to return, he thought about it for a while and shook his head.
'That's for the future Paul to decide' he said to himself looking up at the tree or where it was supposed to be It was barely visible at night but Paul knew where it was after walking all day towards it.
He was angry that even though he walked all day the silhouette of the big tree didn't grow any closer. It didn't make any sense to him.
How far could it be? He kept telling himself that 'if I walk long enough I can reach there', he didn't believe it one bit but he needed hope so he gave himself one and unlike the morning now it's not so bad, well there is the fact that he doesn't have a lot of water and no food at all but the heat is not a problem for now.
"I hope those things don't come out tonight too," Paul said as he made himself comfortable on the sand. He knew if he got chased by those ' scorpions' he would be caught because of his exhaustion so all he could do at this point was pray. After a while, he drifted off to sleep.
"Paul please don't look at me" an older man spoke. "Dad what happened?" a little boy asked, following his father. The older man turned around and looked at the young boy, and crouched at the level of the boy. The man said while crying "Paul, sorry please forgive me, for being so weak" and then he got up and walked away while the little boy was crying.
"DAD" Paul screamed as he got up.
"oh… just a nightmare," he said looking down, he tried to push this scene out of his mind a lot of times but It just kept coming back.
After he got up from the ground he looked around, the sun ... .suns had not risen yet but the environment was getting brighter, indicating that they were about to.
"Thankfully nothing attacked me last night," he said while getting up.
"Another wonderful walking day" he commented sarcastically while stretching his hands upwards.
With that, he continued walking to his destination.
*Growl* Paul's stomach made noises indicating hunger then he realized that he hadn't eaten anything for a day.
'I wish I could find food here' he thought while clutching his stomach he knew that it was a low possibility but he wished to find something he could eat.
After walking for a while he stopped to take a breath.
"Whoo" he let out an audible breath bending to clutch his knees. Then he started looking around. That's when he noticed it far to his right under a big mound of sand there stood what looked like a big structure half submerged in the alabaster sand.
Its colour contrasted with the sand that seemed to consume it, it had a deep black color, and it had the semblance of a chapel but Paul couldn't tell because almost half of it was underground.
"Am I seeing things?" Paul said rubbing his eyes he expected this was a trick his eyes were playing on him. But sure enough, it was there.
He hurriedly sprinted down the slope of the big mound towards the structure, hoping to find something or someone in it. After sliding down the slope he reached the door of the structure he carefully walked inside and he saw an empty room with chairs scattered around in it and in the centre stood what looked like an altar. He carefully continued to walk inside and suddenly he felt something crunching under his foot, when he looked down he saw the skull of what looked like a bird and the hands of a human with six fingers next to it and several more bones around the place.
pillars stood on both left and right side of the church far near the altar half hiding what looked like metallic structures that were destroyed.
As he carefully walked to the altar he felt a feeling he couldn't put a word on. The only way he could describe it was dread. He carefully adjusted his posture to look at the altar from a different angle.
That's when he saw it. A beast way bigger than those scorpions he encountered before. Paul froze in place not knowing what to do. When he saw it again it looked like it was sleeping. He tried to turn back and run then he heard a low grumble coming from the place where the beast was from, he slowly turned around to look at the beast but it was not there.
Paul's heart started to run uncontrollably and he started to sweat.
'Where did it go?' he said, looking around frantically.
He decided to turn around and run. But when he did...
"AHHH!!" Paul screamed as he backed off as he saw the beast right in front of him.
The beast looked like an unholy combination of a bird, humans, and lion, its "face" was human but it was the uncanny type, it had wings and several limbs that were human and it had four more limbs that it used to stand on which looked like a lion's legs.
Paul was terrified to the point he almost shat his pants.
'Fuck me.' Paul thought as he froze on the spot.