(Muffled voice) ...W.... p.
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Wa.... u...
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wake..... up
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WAKE UP!!!
A boy springs up from a laid down position like he just woke up from a nightmare. He is panting and sweaty. He looks around in a slight panic and doesn't know where he is. He frantically looked around and found that he was surrounded by huge rocks. When he takes a closer look to where he is, he finds that he is laying in what looks like the center of a crater with rocks pointing outwards like dull spikes. He looks in front of him more, trying to look beyond the boulders and finds a desert with a few ruined buildings very far apart, scattered in it.
Looks to his left, sun, looks to his far right, city. Or in other words, kind of almost behind him.
Wait... how do I know all of this? He asks himself what is a building? What is ruined? What is a crater? And what is all of this!? How does he know any of it?! He is in a daze, yet isn't panicking at all. His breathing has already slowed down. He looks around again, still not sure what to make of everything around him. He is also questioning how he knows what they are. And what could have possibly happened? Every single time he sees a new thing, like the small rocks, or the gravel he is on, he already knows what it is, and doesn't know how or why or WHAT IS GOING ON!
While still looking around himself, he looks to his sides and finds that there is an axe next to him. It had a peculiar design with flowy patterns all over the entire axe. It had colors consisting of a golden, blue and white color assortment with some red highlights. The blade part of the axe is silver but with a yellow-ish lilac hue to it with the yellow and lilac fighting for dominance.
How do I know all of this? How can I tell what everything is? He tried to get up and stand, but almost stumbled and fell, like this was the first time he tried to stand up in years. He is barely on his feet and could hardly straighten himself up. A light wind fills the open area which makes him feel cold as he doesn't have anything on him at all, like a new born baby. He instinctively grabs his sides with his arms to keep himself warm.
When he is finally able to stabilize his posture, he notices something to his left that he didn't notice because of how occupied his mind was in trying to stand up. He looks to his left and sees a bright light that looms over the horizon that was once blocked by the rocks around him. With its orange, yellow and red colored section of the sky that becomes darker and a slight shade of purple the further you look away from its light. He flinches for the first few seconds that he looks at it, and instinctively moves his hand to his eyes to block its light.
When his eyes adjusted, he lowered his hand and stared at the beautiful view for a moment in complete awe. It was the sun setting. He didn't want to look away, and just kept staring at it, as the visual of it was too beautiful to look away from.
Another light wind that makes him slightly shiver again snaps him out of his daze. It makes him remember that he needs to right now know what to do. When he looks away from the sun, there is something in his eyes that is now there. He can see through it, but it's like a spot that is in the exact place from where he saw the sun that doesn't go away and he can't see properly through it. He doesn't know what to do about it, but for some reason he isn't worried about it at all, even though he felt scared for a second when he first noticed it. But now he just feels nothing. As if he knows it's not a threat at all. He takes a look at his surroundings again, and now looks further around.
He again saw the scattered and rare sight of ruined buildings all around the desert he was in. But when he looks to his far right, suddenly, he finds a kind of cluster of them. The more he spun anti-clockwise, the more he saw more ruined buildings. He at first spun slowly, and the more he looked, the more they kept getting taller and taller. He finds that it's not just a few buildings, but a full ruined city on the horizon that is gigantic, even when it's so far. With its buildings looking destroyed, with their structures old and abandoned.
Some look just slightly destroyed and have exposed rebar, while some fell and are rubble. Some even are leaning on the building next to them. But a common find on all of them is a good amount of vegetation growing from within them. But a core detail to all of them is that they all have weird looking rocks growing out of them that don't feel natural at all. They look more like dark colored crystals than rocks. The same type of crystals that surrounds him in his crater.
He continues to keep looking around, seeing more ruined buildings that keep getting taller and taller, like this was previously a utopia of some sort. He questioned how he knew such a peculiar sounding word. His eyes finally found the tallest looking building in the middle of all the city. A tall tower that is pin shaped with a spherical part close to its peak. This gigantic skyscraper is still standing tall, even though it looks like it's about to collapse at any moment. A core detail though is that it has the biggest crystal spike, looking like it has grown out of it and with smaller ones growing from it outwards. Another peculiar thing is that there isn't much vegetation ground around the central tower. Honestly, now that he is looking, it's more like vegetation doesn't grow near those crystals.
As he continued to spin around, he found that the city ended, and there was nothing. Nothing at all. A desert filled with nothing. He keeps spinning with confusion until he sees the sun again and flinches due to its light. He finds that the city he saw was a place surrounded by basically an empty desert and was the only thing standing within it.
He looked back at the edge of the city, near the start of the desert. When looking at the city, he finds that the dot thing that was on his eyes because of the sun is now almost gone. He now gets that it's something that goes away in time, and that's maybe why he wasn't worried about it. When he looks back at the desert beyond the city, something inside of him tells him that it doesn't feel natural. Like it's not a normal desert. Like he expected something that was supposed to be there rather than nothingness he was seeing.
And the empty desert also had some things pointing out of it, but they were too small and too far to see, but he guessed that they might be more crystal spikes, and anyway were really low in numbers against the sheer size of the nothingness he was seeing. He looked back at the city and stared at it for a moment. He keeps looking in awe of its melancholy view. That's a fun sounding word.
The city still held its beauty. Even as it is in ruin, he still sees the fabulousness it still holds. He also feels a connection to it. A recurring one. Something inside of him that keeps telling him to go there. He doesn't understand why he feels that strong of an unexplainable urge. Maybe it is to try and find people. Wait... people? What are people? It's the thing that I am. Then what am I?
He keeps asking himself questions that he knows answers to, yet doesn't know from where. Nor does he truly understand what he means. He knows so much, yet so little. He ignores his state of confusion and takes a step towards the direction of the city to try and to start to understand more of what is happening. But the first step he takes with his right foot, he steps on small rocks and crystals that act like needles on his foot. He pulls his foot back quickly from the sharp pain and quickly looks down to see what made him feel that.
He looks around on the ground, but doesn't find anything but the small rocks. He sees one thought that looks sharper than others and subconsciously concludes that it was the one that made him feel pain. He doesn't understand how he could conclude that out at all but he tries to clear his mind. He then placed his right foot on a more flat area to not step on anymore sharp rocks. When he placed his foot down, it still hurt, but not as much as the other time. When he slightly flinches to the pain, he asks himself what pain is, and why does he not like it so much. And most importantly, why does it... hurt? He slowly walks, still adjusting to walking as he is not used to it and is careful where he places his feet.
After walking inside the crater a good distance, he suddenly remembered the axe that was next to him, and looked back to see that it's still there. He moves his body's orientation to look at the axe. He then contemplated if he should go back and take the axe, or just leave it. He still needs to walk back all this distance and the ground already hurts to walk on. Yet, he felt that he had to take it as it was the only thing he had that was with him since he woke up.
While walking back to it, he started to remember what he heard before waking up. Someone screaming at him to wake up. Who was it? It sounded familiar, yet still distorted. It kept telling him to "Wake up". He doesn't know who was talking to him, or why they were telling him to wake up. He also doesn't know how whoever it was knew it was him and that he needed to wake up. Yet, the only thing he feels when thinking about that voice is that he trusts it completely.
When he reaches the axe finally, he bends down to grab it and holds it from its handle. He is then surprised by most of the weight being on the upper side of it, which makes it hard to pull up. He thinks for a moment and just adjusts his hold on it to hold it from the blade area from the back of its head as most of the weight is there. The shifting of the axe causes him to find that there is something written on the axe on the back of its head. He looks at it for a moment and somehow knows how to read it. It reads, "This is the axe of the dreamer. The one who has the eyes that can see dreams and reality as if they were one. And only the dreamer can go through all dreams to finally make the reality the dreamer wants. Or as close as the dreamer can get. As dreams are still figments of reality. And to dream, it is to fall asleep. And when that happens is when the dreamer can finally wake up. Dream on dreamer." He saw those words placed in a neat rectangle. He doesn't understand what any of it means.
Dreams? Dreamer? Can go through dreams to make his reality? What did it all mean? And when he sleeps it's when he finally wakes up? For the first time, the boy finally faced something he didn't understand. Not the words nor the letters, but it was the fact that he, for the first time ever, he now faced something that wasn't even slightly familiar to him. He looked at the writing for a little longer and then dismissed it as he takes the state of confusion he is in like it's the same as the rest of his confusion to everything that he has faced up to this point and settles his mind as he needs to get moving.
When he starts moving, he finds that the handle kept flailing around as he moved, so instinctively to stop it, he put his left hand on the bottom area of the handle. He finds it easy to hold it this way as holding the upper side of the axe with one hand and the bottom side with another makes holding it more stable. He then also shifts his hold of his right hand to hold the handle instead of the blade, as what he found from holding the handle with his left hand is that it's more comfortable on his grip.
He started to walk carefully through the rubble, with his axe now in hand. Being more careful now as he can't use his hands for balance all that much due to the axe in his hands. But he still walks through the crater, with a new found determination in his heart. To reach the ruined city was his new found goal.