"Ugh… my head."
Ludo groaned as consciousness slowly found its way back to him. His temples throbbed, like the worst migraine he'd ever had, and every muscle felt heavy, sore, and uncooperative with his thoughts — just like every time he pushed himself too hard at the gym.
He brought a shaky hand up to his forehead, rubbing at the dull ache pulsing there.
The ground beneath him felt cold and uneven — even a little damp and muddy.
"Tsk, did I not close the tent properly again?" He muttered to himself, weakly.
For a moment, he kept his eyes shut, grimacing as his fragmented memories of the previous night began to surface in hazy flashes.
"Damn… what a dream." He muttered groggily, throat feeling particularly dry.
"Note to self, no more pot noodles before bed…"
Soon, the soft pattering sound of rain reached his ears.
"Huh?"
His brow furrowed.
He didn't remember any forecasts of rain before he went to sleep, or else he would have prepared more thoroughly the previous night.
Actually...
Ludo frowned.
He didn't remember falling asleep at all.
The steady drumming of rain quickly grew louder and faster, mixed with the odd echo of splashing, as if there was a body of water...? Now that really didn't sit right in Ludo's mind. He was 100% certain that he hadn't set up camp anywhere close enough to a water source to be hearing water sloshing this loud.
Ludo fluttered his eyes open.
At first, everything was a blurry mess of grey and brown as his eyes adjusted to the light — the last thing he remembered seeing was the pitch-black sky, after all.
He pushed himself upright with a grunt, regretting it immediately as pain reverberated through his body.
His fingers sank slowly into the wet mud beneath him.
Then his vision finally cleared.
...And he froze.
"What the…?"
He looked around, bewildered.
Where his campsite should have been — his campfire, half cooked noodles, his tent, his phone, backpack... there was nothing.
Not a single thing at all.
Instead, stretching out before him was a vast crater, nearing twenty metres deep and easily twice that across.
And he sat right in the middle of it…
Rain continued pouring relentlessly from the overcast sky above, drumming heavily against the sloped walls of packed earth and stone that formed the enormous bowl. In several places, the remnants of cracks could be seen and steam was still rising as rain water struck what was presumably hot soil.
Water trickled downward... Well, trickled would be an understatement, as it was flowing like a stream down from all sides, snaking toward the lowest point.
Toward him.
Ludo slowly turned in a full circle as he fully took in his surroundings, his heart beginning to frantically pound out of his chest. Even the air itself started to smell wrong.
Wisps of smoke drifted from above the walls of the crater, and the soil seemed slightly blackened in the few places it hadn't yet turned into a muddy sludge, giving him a vague idea of just what had happened here.
But still, his mind refused to believe that.
His brain struggled to catch up to what he was witnessing.
"Was that… not a dream, but reality??"
He remembered the shooting star, his shock when it had changed direction…
He remembered standing up, shouting something, and then…
Nothing.
A chill ran down his spine.
His gaze darted frantically across the crater again, searching for anything familiar, but there was nothing. As if the entire clearing had been erased.
He pinched himself absentmindedly — with no reaction from his brain.
"I… I'm definitely not still dreaming."
But then, if that wasn't the case, shouldn't he have been erased along with the rest of his camp…?
He looked upward at the lip of the crater.
The slope wasn't impossibly steep, but it was slick with rainwater and mud. Climbing it in his current state would be impossible. One slip and he'd be straight back down. But with its imposing twenty meter height before reaching the rim, even if he were at peak performance on a dry summer's day, he still wouldn't ever even consider the possibility that he could climb out.
However, with the amount of rain that was pouring down on top of him, Ludo knew that this would quickly become a problem. There was already a small pond at his feet, gradually having risen above his ankles in the short time he had taken to get a grip of himself. The only upside being that the rain seemed to have only begun a few minutes prior to him waking.
If he let even more time pass, he might find himself in a situation that he might not be able to escape from!
Panic began to set in.
Although he had no idea how he'd survived something as insane as a direct meteor strike — especially considering the state of his surroundings — he had no intention of wasting that miracle by drowning in a pond in the middle of nowhere...
That would truly make a tragic end to his story.
But the crater itself was already strange; it was smaller than you'd expect given the sheer devastation the impact should have caused, and did cause in some sense. Even stranger was the state of the surrounding trees over the rim of the crater that he was able to catch a glimpse of. They were untouched, still standing as tall as ever, like the meteor strike had never even happened. Surely the shockwave from the impact should have uprooted them, flattening them to the ground?
Yet it was deep enough that escape was clearly impossible in the end.
The state of his body only made that even more certain.
Waiting for the water to rise high enough to swim out wasn't really an option either. His body was weak, slow to respond to his thoughts. He wouldn't tread water long enough for it to reach the top.
No matter how he looked at it, this was bad. Very bad...
But regardless of all his worries, at that moment, something that he had never expected to happen… happened.
[Pairing….]
The voice came from nowhere.
It sure as hell wasn't his.
It didn't have a direction. It just rang inside his head, despite how strange that sounded, it was the best way to describe it.
Ludo was so startled that he forgot to breathe.
If it were just the voice, he might have been able to rationalise it. Maybe someone was nearby? Or, maybe he'd finally just cracked from the shock.
It wasn't just a voice, though…
"AHHHHHH!!"
His voice tore out of his throat unwillingly, as agony suddenly burst forth in his body.
He collapsed forward, writhing in the mud as pain unlike anything he'd ever experienced consumed his thoughts. He felt like his nerves were being peeled out from within his skin one by one.
If anyone were nearby, they would most definitely have been scared out of their wits, thinking someone was being murdered. For Ludo, that wasn't far from the truth.
He truly felt like he was dying! The pain was just that unbearable for him. He'd broken a few bones during his life, but the pain from those moments paled in comparison to this.
[Pairing successful.]
But just as suddenly as the pain came, it departed.
Ludo collapsed limply, gasping for air as a strange warmth spread throughout his body. A strange sensation suddenly spread all throughout his body, bringing forth feelings of empowerment.
'Wh-hat… the fuck is going on with me!??'
Ludo couldn't do anything at that moment; he wasn't even in control of his own body anymore…
Though that only lasted a few moments.
All of his senses returned, and he began to perceive the outside world again.
When he opened his eyes… he realised that the water was now up to his neck!
"What!? How much time has passed??"