After a few minutes of rest, Theo quickly sat upright and slowly, his senses soon began returning one by one. First was sight, his blurred vision cleared, and nothing but a field of Gray sand that covered the ground filled the horizon in his view.
Next was his sense of touch as the viscous liquid that covered his body felt cold to the touch, after that the faint coppery odour that stung his nostrils grew stronger, and finally, he ears were filled with the sound of rushing water.
'Wait, water?'
Turning back, he saw that behind him was a large expanse of black waters, it ebbed and flowed in random directions as if it were being influenced by some strange force. Along its surface, a faint crimson shimmer that reflected in his eyes as Theo tried to shake off the grogginess of his awakening.
Looking down, he found himself naked and standing in a cold, viscous water that covered his skin from head to toe, which was unsettling to the touch, and the smell of copper only made it worse.
'Urgh! What is this stuff?'
He instinctively wiped it away only to find that it smeared across his hands, a dark, viscous substance that felt both disgusting and somehow soothing, foreign yet familiar. He couldn't explain the inexplicable sense of familiarity, but the substance itself didn't give him a sense of danger.
Looking up, in the sky above, a black orb and surrounding it was a stream of rubble, behind that was another that radiated a white light that illuminated the sky.
"Is that the sun? And,... the moon?"
The herald candidate squinted at the celestial bodies above him, trying to make sense of the bizarre sight. The black orb, surrounded by a swirling stream of debris, looked ominous, and the radiant white light of the sun felt symbolic of something. It cast a strange and warming, yet equally ominous, ethereal pulsing glow over the landscape.
'Weird, but that's not what's important right now.'
Coming to terms with the world he found himself he pushed aside his worry, and a memory popped into his mind.
***
"Remember, when you first enter the world of Yggdrasill, you will most likely find yourself in some sort of strange, unnatural environment. It could be a frozen tundra, a vast forest, or an endless desert, or even a fiery hellscape, but remember, panicking is only going to result in death, so your first course of action is finding shelter."
"And please, no matter what, if you come across a spawn, do not engage under any circumstances. These monsters are more powerful than you would first realize."
A student interjected.
"But sir, haven't we been taught how to fight because of this?"
The instructor sighed.
"Yes, you have been taught basic combat with weapons in the hopes of improving your fighting chances, but remember this: fighting against a spawn and learning in the classroom are very different. As a result, finding the closest gate should be your priority."
***
"So where do I find shelter?"
Casting his gaze around, Theo searched for anything that even remotely resembled shelter, but all he could see was the surreal and endless expanse of grey sand.
'If something like that even exists in this place.'
As he continued to observe the sky, he noticed the stream of rubble surrounding the moon shifted and swirled, casting shadows across the gray sand. But within that storm or rock and debris, Theo found something... strange.
He squinted, looking closer at the path the rubble was taking and found something strange.
"The rubble isn't swirling aimlessly!"
He wasn't sure of his deduction and decided to analyse the movement of the debris for a while longer. And after nearly ten minutes of constant observation, just like he thought, it seemed to be forming a pattern.
Theo squinted and stared even harder, trying to make sense of the whatever shape the debris was carving out.
"Is it...."
He looked even closer, until finally, he saw it.
"The rind isn't swirling around the moon itself, but... something else entirely. It's as if something is inside that ring is.... controlling it?."
But just as the answer clicked in his mind, a worry emerged.
'What is that... thing then, and how can I see it all the way from here?'
The thought was equally intriguing to him and just as unsettling. Yet just like with the strange waters, instead of feeling a chill run down his spine just like every other candidate during their trial, he felt a familiarity. Even more so, he felt his curiosity grow with each discovery.
'What are these things? What do they mean? What do they represent? Why do I feel, nostalgic about them? I have so many questions.'
Theo was experiencing a sense of awe he had never experienced before as he discovered new things. All his life, he had been a curious person, but as his circumstances were never accommodating to it, that curiosity remained dormant. But now, after experiencing all these new things, that... strange sensation, that dormant curiosity was stoked like the embers of a dying flame.
Despite that, he knew deep down couldn't allow himself to get distracted by that ever increasing curiosity.
"Focus, Theo," he reminded himself. "You need to find shelter and figure out what to do next."
Giving a quick glance behind him, then back to the gray desert, he began a log, ardours journey to find shelter.
'Shelter. I have to find shelter.'
***
Trudging through the barren, and scorching gray hellscape for hours, Theo's body began feeling like it was on the verge of collapse. The hot sand that blew onto his face, the waves of heat coming from the sun, the burning of his soles, and even worse, the thirst and hunger that had begun plaguing after hours and hours of walking were all beginning to hinder his progress.
'Water! I... need... water!'
Yet he couldn't allow himself to rest. One moment spent idling around in this monster infested world was one too many for a spawn to find its way to him.
'I really want... to sleep though!'
But he knew deep down that the mere thought of a lurking spawn pouncing on him while he rested was too much to risk.
***
Even more time passed as he trudged through this scorching hellscape and his body was in even worse shape than before. What was worse it that this world felt even stranger than e originally thought.
'I don't have a watch, but I'm pretty sure that more than twelve hours have passed. So why hasn't the damn sun gone down?'