91st of Winter, 519AV
Darkness. Falling. Silence… no, not silence, something more akin to rushing wind, not unlike that of the hurricane that had hit Syka a season earlier. And… a sickening sensation in her stomach, like her stomach turning inside out.
She landed with a thud, on something that shifted beneath her weight, the sudden sting of heat prickling into what she realised was her bare backside as a wave of dry hot hair filled her gasping lungs and she frantically looked around in search of whatever the petch had just happened. Kamilla knew she must have been hallucinating as she was greeted with the sight of an infinite blue sky above a seemingly equally infinite expanse of sand dunes, not a single other thing in sight. While her mind struggled to make sense of what was happening, a smaller, quicker part of her consciousness recognised the similarities of what she was seeing to what Jehu had once described as his home… The Burning Lands.
Barely three ticks had passed since she'd fallen into what was clearly a very unusual hallucination, expecting to awaken in her cool cave home any moment… and then she felt herself slip once more, falling into the infinite sands as if the ground had split apart beneath and swallowed her whole.
Once again there was the darkness, the sickening sensations and the rushing sound that could just as easily have been wind, water or the sound of her own blood.
This time, she went from stinging heat to an icy cold that completely surrounded her. Once again she gasped for air, seeking to fill her lungs after the falling sensation had emptied them, but instead she felt the cold flow into her as she began convulsing due to the lack of air, her heart thick with terror as her eyes shot open once more.
This time it was dark, and somewhere far above her she could see a faint layer of wavering light, though it stung her eyes just to keep them open. She quickly recognised the unpleasant sensation and realisation that she was drowning. With a very conscious effort that required almost all her remaining willpower, Kamilla scrunched her face together and wished with all her might to switch forms, her human form vanishing to be replaced with her Konti form in an instant.
Kamilla gasped once more, this time pleas7ed to find that the suffocating sensation had been replaced by a far more satisfying one as her gills extracted the oxygen needed for her to survive. Over and over again she took in water, lavender eyes searching her surroundings frantically for any sign of what was happening or where she was, but none came.
The inky darkness below terrified her, almost as much as the fact that moments ago she'd been safe in her cave home with Jehu and everything had made sense. She didn't have time to think about that at the moment though as she began to desperately flail her way upwards towards the surface of the cold waters, unbelievably thankful for her aquatic Konti form.
Several ticks later Kamilla's head of pale blonde hair could be seen bursting through the surface of what she knew to be the ocean, the salty taste thick in her throat. Still gasping, having switched from gills to lungs, she continued to search for signs of anything at all, but was greeted with nothing, nothing but water as far as the eye could see.
Where the petch was she? What the petch was happening? Why wasn't she waking up from this horrific nightmare?
Kamilla felt sick, sick to her very core. She knew. Deep down, she knew that the sensations she was feeling were far too vivid to be a dream. She had somehow been snatched from her life and flung into the middle of the ocean, stark naked and with absolutely no idea how it had happened. The terror of her situation was only outdone by the terror of not knowing.
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