Dragon Slayer VS. Hunters

Is It Hot In Here Or Is It Just Me?

Dream came through the portal. He felt the familiar dizzy feeling of regaining consciousness as his body slowly began to materialize. He felt his feet on the ground. He felt the same smothering heat. But when he opened his eyes...

No... this was all...

Wrong.

It was dark. All around him he saw large dunes of dark brown sand and cave-like walls. The air was sultry and smelled of wet soil and something else. It burned in his nose and made his eyes water.

This isn't the Nether- it can't be. The Nether is bright and burning. All hot smoke and brimstone. Molten and red and fiery. A scarlet inferno. This... This was something different. He looked around as he cautiously stepped forward. A dismal, teal-blue fog hung about his feet. Where was the netherrack? The giant pools of lava? He approached a cliff and looked out over the edge. On the ground, he saw bones- giant rib cages and spines. The remains of some enormous beast. Dream hoped that whatever it was, there were no more of them crawling around. He decided he should keep moving.

He started walking down a steep hill, but misstepped, and ended up sliding down. He brushed off the back of his pants and kept going. As he walked he found he moved easily through what he'd thought was soul sand. Must be the boots; he'd almost forgotten they were enchanted.

Dream walked warily and carefully, taking mental note of everything he's seen so far. Tiny blue fiery pits (everything here was some kind of murky form of blue, brown, grey, or bone white; fire burned blue.) More giant remains. Large pillars of some kind of igneous rock he had never seen before. Smaller remains, in the form of small mounds of

bones. Dream decided he was better off not stopping to check if they were once people.

Beyond the humidity and the darkness, the most dreadful part about wherever this was had to be the sounds. He heard a faint whispering in his ears whenever he stood in one place too long, and the gentle weep of ghasts was constant. God, this place was fucking creepy.

Dream stopped when he heard something new. Or rather something different. The familiar sound of rattling bones.

A skeleton.

He spun on his heel, just in time to catch an arrow in his thigh. He looked down at it, just for a moment, hissing in pain. He tried to focus. Two skeletons, only a few feet away, readied their bows. Three more rose from the dirt as if simply waking from a long nap. What the fuck. Two more arrows stuck him in his waist. "Fuck!" Dream unsheathed his sword.

Moving quickly, he swung at the two closest skeletons. One of their skulls went flying off, and the stupid thing chased it off a cliff. Dream drove his heel into the other one, trying to knock it over. Instead, its ribs shattered like clay. He kicked again, and this time its spine cracked in two and its upper half fell into the dirt.

More arrows whizzed past him. His mask fell to the side and one grazed his cheek. He took out his own bow; he didn't have any arrows, but that was an easy fix. Dream pulled the arrow from his leg and quickly shot at the skeleton closest to him. He yanked the other two from his waist and did the same to the remaining undead creatures. Catching them off guard, he lurched forward raking his sword across their brittle bones with a long, swift curving motion. All three collapsed. Dream stomped on the bones until they stopped moving.

-

He dragged his feet. It felt like he'd been walking for hours now, and frankly, he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. Would the fortress even be here? Would it look the same? Was there even a fortress in this world?? Dream's thoughts were interrupted when he spotted something in the distance. The glint of a helmet... Maybe he was finally going crazy, but he had to be sure. He ran towards it at first, but quickly slowed down when it occurred to him he should be cautious. It could easily be one of his... 'pursuers.'