So It Begins...

[IsabellaRose]

You are a college student in a specialized international program focused on archaeology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Your skill with languages and high grades had earned you a place in this program along with other students from a variety of universities around the globe.  This class deals in real world experiences. You don't have a dorm room; you have a bunk and footlocker on an ocean-going vessel, a tiny shared room in a youth hostel, barely enough space for your bedroll in a tent near an archaeological dig. You don't have a lab; you have actual dig sites. There is no lecture hall; lectures are delivered in mess halls, on ship decks, and out in the open desert. This program was a dream for students like you, and you quickly adapted to the lifestyle, carrying only what could fit in your hiking backpack. 

The current dig is deep in the Sahara Desert. Your group had started in Marrakech, Morocco and traveled southeast, an entire day by truck until the roads ended at the edge of the desert in the small town of M'hamid. From there you traveled over 60 km by camel, past the Erg Chigaga dunes and toward the Algerian border. You had been warned of possible hostilities between Moroccan and Algerian forces, but nothing had happened in the days since you arrived. The dig was fairly standard, things operating as expected up until this morning.

Excited shouts woke before the sun was up. Dressing quickly along with the others in your tent, you rushed out into the pre-dawn desert and toward the sound of excited, raised voices. The excavation director had made a discovery late last night, and had kept a volunteer field crew working overnight under powerful lights. It seemed that this morning, before the sun had colored the sky that light pink that faded into orange and finally daylight, they had located the entrance to a buried chamber. You crowded around the crew with your fellow classmates and other members of the dig team.

The opening was a black square roughly three meters side to side that opened into darkness below. Around it were the rocks that had been carefully cleaned, intricately carved hieroglyphs in row after row. Excitement buzzed through those gathered around, and you were pressed forward toward the opening by people behind you.

You and two others started to slide forward as sand moved beneath your feet. There must be a sinkhole or something, and you reached back to grab a hand for support. The person behind you fell to the ground and began to slide with you, panic in his eyes. You wanted to reach down to help him, but you were sliding toward the opening faster now, and you fell to the ground as well. Five of you were sliding toward the black square as people around you shouted and the hiss of shifting sand grew louder.

You saw your friend Khadija grab a rope that was thrown to her with both hands. She stopped sliding, her body jerked to stillness as two men held the rope. Omkar grasped another rope and stopped sliding. A man you didn't know got hold of a metal rod protruding from the ground and managed to stop his slide toward the opening. You began to panic, your fingers grasping for something, anything, in the shifting sands around you as you slid closer to the dark entrance to the unknown.

That hole could go down for hundreds of meters. You could fall to your death. A million thoughts raced through your mind as you slid closer and closer to the yawning black cavity, and then there was a rope. It was right in front of you, and hope rose as you reached for it... too late. Your legs bent as the were the first over the edge, your hands reached for the rope, but your entire body was over the edge and into the hole before you could catch it.

You fell into darkness, the square of dim pink sky as the sun rose fading slowly to a small speck above you. Panic gripped your heart with icy fingers, and you knew you were going to die. But instead, you fell. You fell for long enough to be aware that you were falling for far too long. There was no way the hole could be this deep. You tried to turn, to see where you were falling, and when you did light suddenly rushed up to meet you, your body struck something, knocking the air from your lungs, and unconsciousness took your mind.

 

You have no idea how long you've been unconscious, but reality slowly returns, your senses reporting in to your brain one by one. You open your eyes, and you cannot believe what you see.

 

• If you see a magical fantasy world, click here <link forthcoming>
• If you see a sci-fi world, click here <link forthcoming>
• If you see a wrecked post-apocalyptic world, click here <link forthcoming>
• If you see a dark and horrific nightmare world, click here <link forthcoming>
• If you see a dystopian cyberpunk world, click here <link forthcoming>
• If you see a normal contemporary world, click here <link forthcoming>