Seasons in the Sun

[Brian]

"Very well," Ezmereth whispers.  "Stand in this circle."

   He bows his head.  Lines begin to glow in the ground beneath you, forming a circle, and then shapes ... sigils ... runes ... symbols, undoubtedly.  To your eyes, they glow.  The color is white, and you see that they rise above the ground, but cast a shadow.  If Ezmereth's color wheel is accurate, then the truly important part is not the light, but the shadow.  The black of Earth.

   The color brightens a bit, and then ... you all die.

   Your feel as though an integral part of yourself -- perhaps your soul? -- was torn from your body, and cast out of reality.

   You don't know where you are.

   You don't know what's happening.

   You don't even know what you look like in this strange jumble of sensation.

   Everything blurs together in a chaotic sensory overload, colors, tastes, touches, smells, sounds -- all of these things mixing into a solid background of sensation that blinds you, deafens you, overwhelms you in every possible way you can imagine, and soon finds new ones to assault your minds ... except for one constant.

   You know you are not alone.

   You can feel, in this roiling miasma of chaos, each other.  You can sense a bond, somehow, in all senses, cutting through the noise, binding you together, and dragging you through this sea of madness.

   And then all sensation fades, and it becomes dark.

   ...and you sleep.



   Here ends the prologue of the Day After Tomorrow.

   We now continue on to Chapter One: The Book of Earth.