“Damn it, my head hurts like hell…” Elizabeth groaned, her voice rasping against the dead silence wrapping around her.
She forced her heavy eyelids open, revealing bright blue eyes that immediately stung under the faint, ambient light. It genuinely felt as if someone had taken a massive blacksmith’s sledgehammer and smashed it straight into the base of her skull.
She lay motionless for a long moment, waiting for the throbbing behind her temples to subside before slowly taking in her unfamiliar surroundings. Yet all she could make out in the gloom were heaps of coarse brown furs, reeking of damp and musk, piled all around her.
What the hell am I doing in some bizarre leather tent that smells worse than socks worn three days straight? she wondered, dazed, as she tried to piece together the shattered fragments of memory drifting through her battered mind.
Pushing herself up with great effort, her long blonde hair tumbled over her face.
She swept it back with an irritable flick of her wrist and, ignoring the dizzying head rush, grabbed the rough flap of the tent to pull herself outside.
The moment she stepped out and took in the view, she froze.
Stretching before her was a vast clearing hemmed in by unnaturally tall trees with dark, brooding bark, choked with dense, predatory-looking flora she had never seen before.
“No way… Where on earth am I?” she muttered under her breath, still reeling from the jarring shift in scenery.
Furrowing her brows, she desperately forced her mind into focus, trying to make sense of the predicament she was in.
Suddenly, her eyes widened in stark disbelief. Recalling the last clear chain of events, she murmured aloud, almost in a trance:
“I remember finishing that damn novel… and finally deciding to take my dream vacation to Japan, just to relax and put all those deadlines behind me. But during the flight…” She trailed off, her face draining of what little color it had left as the nightmare rushed back.
“Our plane had an engine failure… We were falling… I remember the screaming and… Wait. Am I a castaway in some uncharted territory? Did I actually survive a freefall from that altitude by some miraculous stroke of luck?”
Elizabeth blinked rapidly, as if trying to banish a bad dream. She stared up at the alien sky, then scanned the perimeter, but there wasn't a single trace of plane wreckage or surviving passengers.
The only landmark in sight was a colossal mountain looming on the distant horizon, which she roughly estimated to be about fourteen kilometers away.
Glancing down at herself, she saw she was still wearing the same comfortable black sportswear - a pair of tight leggings and a matching athletic top that stretched snugly over her generous bust, serving as the sole familiar anchor in this strange environment.
The only - and rather drastic - difference was that her leggings were now torn and frayed in several spots, leaving the entire outfit looking utterly ragged, resembling a beggar's tatters far more than the branded athletic wear she had boarded with.
Looking closer at the immediate area, Elizabeth caught clear signs of human activity: beaten-down paths and primitive structures. She quickly arrived at an inescapable conclusion:
This has to be some sort of campsite…
Except there’s no one here. It’s completely dead silent, like everyone just vanished.
She brushed back her blonde strands once more, which were sticking to her forehead with sweat and grime, and tried to find a silver lining:
Did someone rescue me from the crash and bring me here?
Well, as long as I’m not entirely alone on some desolate island, things aren't completely hopeless, right?
I can handle this…
Elizabeth began to tread cautiously through the camp, studying every detail while making sure not to make a sound. She spotted a half-burned fire pit with a faint wisp of smoke still trailing into the air, proving someone had been here recently.
Judging by the layout of these primitive shelters, the fur tent she had just crawled out of sat right on the outskirts, nearly swallowed by the forest edge.
“Unbelievable. They just left an injured person on the very edge of camp? Without anyone watching over me?” Elizabeth muttered under her breath.
Her expression hardened, an uneasy knot tightening in her gut as she registered the apparent indifference of her supposed saviors.
Pressing forward past a cluster of massive trees resembling ancient oaks, she stumbled upon further - and far more disturbing - signs of habitation. The sight sent a wave of nausea washing over her, making her stomach leap into her throat.
“What is going on here? There are gnawed bones tossed around everywhere, and nothing but these leather tents…”
Elizabeth stood frozen, staring blankly at the cluster ahead. She counted roughly thirty shelters in the immediate vicinity, all fashioned from thick, dark hide.
Suddenly, movement caught her eye in the distance between the structures. People. But their garments were crudely stitched together from animal pelts or woven out of broad, tough leaves - looking entirely out of place for modern times.
“Are they cannibals? Or just some isolated tribe cut off from civilization for centuries?” Elizabeth whispered in a panic.
Before she could process another thought, harsh, guttural sounds barked out behind her:
“Lomikata…”
“Feranuki…”
Drawn by the sound of her startled gasp, the figures snapped their heads toward her. One of them shouted loudly to the others, waving an arm in her direction.
Elizabeth couldn’t understand a single syllable. Absolutely nothing.
It was an inflection unlike any language she had ever encountered - neither her native Slovak nor any of the foreign languages she had studied in school, like English, French, or German. It bore no resemblance to any Slavic dialect she might have pieced together. The cadence was entirely foreign.
“Where the hell am I?!” Elizabeth cried out in helpless terror, her voice echoing off the treeline.
Hearing heavy footsteps grinding against the packed earth, she spun around in a panic.
A burly man strode toward her, gesticulating wildly and shouting directly in her face in that same bizarre tongue:
“Welikuni… Shoranami…”
“…” Elizabeth’s pupils shrank in sheer fright, her throat seizing up so tightly she couldn't utter a sound.
It was only when the man closed the distance, stopping merely a few paces away, that she realized just how impossibly bizarre and non-human he looked.
He had short, coarse black hair, a rugged, square-jawed face, and dusky-yellow, almost olive skin.
He stood roughly 1.8 meters tall with a solid, muscular build - features that, in terms of silhouette alone, could pass for an ordinary human.
What was undeniably abnormal and horrifying, however, was the pair of curved, fifteen-centimeter orange horns sprouting directly from his forehead, the razor-sharp fangs lining his mouth as he barked orders, and the unnatural, vivid amber pupils staring back at her with predatory intrigue.
Elizabeth’s expression shifted rapidly from panic to profound shock and disbelief. Her mind raced frantically, taking in every impossible anatomical detail of the creature standing before her.
Wait… people like this… shouldn't exist on Earth, right?
It’s biologically impossible.
Looking at the seamless way the horns emerged from his flesh, her instincts screamed that this wasn't some cheap cosplay or an elaborate prank for a sick reality show.
Wait… is it even possible that I'm not on Earth anymore?
Did that crash… did that fall somehow throw me somewhere else?
The realization struck Elizabeth with more terror than anything she had faced so far, threatening to make her knees buckle right beneath her.
Yet the more I think about it, the more this surreal madness actually makes sense!
An incomprehensible language I don't recognize, these bizarre humanoid races…
“Wujianqunidaiwo,” the horned man snapped dismissively.
Seeing Elizabeth frozen in a daze, he unceremoniously clamped a heavy hand around her upper arm and dragged her along, pulling her deeper into the settlement.
“…”
Elizabeth didn't put up the slightest resistance; she was far too terrified and weak to fight back, and a part of her wanted to see where he was taking her anyway.
Calming herself down as much as the circumstances allowed, she kept her eyes peeled as they navigated past rows of shelters.
She noted that the further they ventured into the camp's interior, the taller and sturdier the tents became. The crowd grew thicker as well, populated by increasingly bizarre, non-human beings who eyed her with varying degrees of curiosity.
There were humanoids with fluffy, feline ears sprouting from the crowns of their heads, moving with unnatural grace.
Others possessed dark, feathered wings folded tight against their backs, reminiscent of giant birds of prey. Still others had long, scaled serpentine tails dragging along the dirt behind them, extending from just above their rear curves…
Naturally, scattered throughout the crowd were also pure humans like herself, devoid of animal features - except their hair and eyes gleamed with unnatural, vivid pigments, some tinted emerald green and others brilliant azure, looking just as otherworldly.
What kind of world have I been thrown into?!
This is a nightmare…
It has to be some damn hyper-realistic dream!
Elizabeth screamed internally in absolute despair. Her thoughts spun at a breakneck pace as she desperately racked her brain for a way out of this madness, but the horned man’s grip on her arm was like an iron shackle.
Thump, thump, thump
The collective footfalls of the crowd echoed steadily over the hard-packed earth.
After two or three minutes of brisk marching through the labyrinth of leather shelters, Elizabeth was brought before the entrance of an enormous central pavilion, clearly belonging to someone of high standing.
The structure was swarming with people of all ages - wrinkled, wizened elders, seasoned men with weapons strapped to their waists, and young, inquisitive youths crowding the perimeter.
From within the pavilion drifted a clamor of raised voices, heated arguments, and general uproar, signaling that an important council was underway.