Chapter 3: Where are we?

"That which is unknown and unseen commands the greatest fear"

~~~

There was blackness, a total blackout. Did the airplane crash? That was the first thing that came to Tristan's mind. There were sounds of people echoing, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. His head was still spinning and he didn't even feel fully awake.

While still laying, Tristan forced his eyes to open and saw what was around him. He was staring at the night sky from some kind of a huge dome.

Two huge white circles were shining brightly in the night sky.

"Two moons? What the hell.."

Tristan felt like he was still hearing some sort of cry and scream in the distance. But then, he just realized that he was laying on something soft and wet.

As he stood up, Tristan glanced at the ground he was standing on, and was quickly shocked by what he saw. He was laying on top of a pile of human bodies within a pool of blood. Throwing his gaze around, the expression on Tristan's face grew worse.

There must have been thousands of bodies all around him. Most of them already rot, probably because they had already been left for days. This was the scariest sight he had ever seen in his life. The sight made him both lose his breath and want to throw up.

"Did we crash?" Quickly, his mind went to another terrifying thought.

"Leylaaa!! Leylaa!!"

Tristan quickly shouted on the top of his lung, while scanning through the dead bodies, hoping not to find his sister among them.

As he shouted, Tristan saw a few figures approaching him. They were all people with strange bloody clothes.

Not knowing who they were, Tristan tried to keep a distance. But soon, he realized more and more were coming towards him.

"Truart skoona tesuo!"

Tristan couldn't understand a word of what they were saying. His instincts were saying that these people were as clueless as him. They were in the same condition, but he'd rather they kept the distance.

Despite the extremely crazy condition, the pool of blood, the two moons, Tristan tried to calm himself down. He started walking around, seeing if there was anything he could recognize. He walked, careful not to stumble on the bodies. He started shouting again. "Can anyone here understand me?"

The dome was actually larger than he thought. It was at least half the size of a soccer stadium. With huge black stones about ten meter tall with an indecipherable engraving and a large symbol that looked like a bird.

After a few minutes of walking around through the horror, Tristan finally heard something he recognized.

"Here! We are here!"

Tristan quickly ran toward the sound, passing all the unrecognized people, until he saw a group of about a dozen people, who looked terrified. This time he could recognize their clothing. One of them wearing a pilot costume. Tristan finally noticed another figure at the back and quickly jumped towards it.

"Leyla!"

"Bro..therr" Tristan quickly hugged Leyla's shaking body.

"What is happening?… Where are we Tris…?"

"I don't know Leyla… don't worry I'll… I'll figure it out"

The pile of bodies on the ground and the pool blood would make any person go insane, Tristan already had his share of blood and death, but nothing to this extent. He could only imagine how his sister felt right now.

As if it couldn't get any scarier, a sudden loud voice was heard from above. A light came out from one side of the dome, which was just 50 meter from him, and a balcony of sorts appeared. The figure that came through the light was definitely not a man.

It had dark greenish skin and was thrice the size of men. It was a monster with a muscular body and tusks coming up from its mouth. There were actually several of them. It was followed by a dozen of much smaller greenish creatures only half the size of a man. All of them were staring down at the people on the ground giving out pressure towards them.

The gruesome figures and the surroundings were all that could only have been seen in fantasy stories until then. The pressure made Tristan's body tremble, but when his sister's arm tightened around him, Tristan found his courage back.

Another half human sized creature came out from the light. But Tristan could tell this particular one was different. It had white hair on its side and it wore some sort of weird equipment on its bodies.

The particular creature then shouted a words, Even though Tristan found the language was alien, his mind strangely could understand it.

"Welcome to you all."

These were gleeful words, said in a joyful manner, but Tristan could feel his heartbeat race much more than before.

"I wonder..kekeke.. how many of you are potentials candidate this time."

The white hair creature took out a staff with a huge red gem on the top of it, and suddenly, dozens of blinking wisp came out of it and floating in the air moving around the crowds

"Let the search begin!" The shout was followed by the screams of all the creatures around the dome. The wisp then flew around the hundreds of humans, making the already scared people completely fell into discord; some ran, some fell, and some just frozen still, completely overwhelmed by what was happening.

Tristan saw the blinking wisp stop on top of a few people. A door suddenly opened from the dome and a few dark grey skinned monsters walked out towards the people approached by the strange wisp and quickly took them away, without any of them being able to resist at all.

People started to panic even more, as they began screaming and shouting in incomprehensible language. Even though Tristan still didn't understand even a bit of them, a scream was a universal language of horror.

A moment later, a wisp flew toward Tristan and his group, followed by a few of the monstrous creatures walking in their direction. The wisp flew around the group and slowly came closer. When the wisp stopped right on top of her, Tristan moved in front of Leyla, trying to protect her.

"Brother.." cried Leyla scared.

As expected, the creatures were walking towards them. Tristan was trying to stop the monster from taking his sister but the monsters' hands grabbed his shoulders and limbs. Tristan could feel the simple grab cracked his shoulder bone.

"Tristan!" Screamed Leyla, as the huge monster brought her body

Tristan could only watch as the monster grabbed his sister away from him. He gathered strength to rise and chased the creature before realising another blinking wisp also stopped above him.

In an instant, Tristan was also being grabbed and dragged by the grey creature towards the door, and the next thing he saw made him stop resisting.

Tristan heard the white hair creature give a command and in the next moment, the grey creatures drew their weapon and started a killing spree towards the people left behind. It was a bloodbath.

The last image Tristan saw before the door closing in on him was the pilot being split in half.