Somewhere in the bright orange fog was a forest. Somewhere trapped in a pocket of time that experienced the world differently was Neo, wandering in the forest made up of trees that towered far above what he had ever seen---not that he had seen many in comparison to how long he had been in existence…

Here it was like he was still in the desert, walking aimlessly in one direction to get to a destination that may not even exist but, well, what if it did? Like he wasn’t going anywhere but somehow going everywhere.

In the forest, somewhere in that bright orange fog, where time was both here and now, and the trees were just so tall. Neo stood still as the world around him continued to move, here he examined the map; trying to make sense of the many layers to it. Displayed before him was a 3D map, each layer of each cavern outlined in a crisp white. This should have been simple really, just a few turns there, a couple more here.But still somehow he got lost, or maybe he was trapped in a loop for awhile. Neo knelt down, skimming the layout of the bottom of the cavern, a hand beneath his chin, a finger tracing the pathways on the map. No he had to be in loop. He closed his eyes and snapped, when the sound rang out the map blinked away. With a frustrated sigh Neo stood back up and placed his hands on his hips. Where to go where to g---

A shriek echoed through the woods, splitting through the fog the way a knife cuts through paper. The kind he could feel through his teeth, lukewarm and metallic. Neo turned toward the sound, his eyes wide and searching. When he found nothing he moved toward the sound, the world moved back with vigor, chasing the remainders of the past as if it had forgotten something. But Neo continued on, pressing harder than ever into the present. Eventually the world caught up with him and all the trees turned holographic, stuck on a channel with static so harsh that the picture they were trying to display may as well not be there at all.

Ugh.

And it was cold. So cold in fact that each time he blinked the world became more and more distorted as if then landscapes pixels were trying to load two(2) sessions at once. The cold seeped into his bones, behind his eyes, all in the wrong places; all the places that shouldn’t be able to get cold, the places that shouldn’t be able to feel like tv static. But still Neo held on, pressing and pressing harder forward until he came upon the source of the sound. A wendigo.

The wendigo stared up at him with neon star shaped eyes a sharp sharp stare. The kind that’s prideful in the same way a humans is, and equally as empty. It stared at him and ate; it ate like it didn't matter, and as if it was driving home a point. With stubby little fingers it dug into a---

Neo swallowed hard

it dug into a human. Even from here he could tell that human was still alive, looking up at Neo with pleading eyes, hoping that somehow some way that he could help her. But it was too late.

This one was unreachable. Neo shivered, trying to hold down the nausea.

Across the clearing the bushes shook and out from them came a human, a very square looking oldman. He looked shaken. The wendigo looked at the human, and with that simple movement Neo could no longer see the head of the creature. Its body so paper thin that in order to see it one had to look at the monster head on.

Neo sprinteed toward the human and just barely, barely made it in time to step between the monster and the human. The wendigo had rushed toward the human too, with a fervor so vicious that it almost didn’t stop when Neo got in front of it. It looked at Neo closely, glaring with its twenty(20) or so starlike eyes and snarling.Its teeth were pointed and jutting out into a perfect cone like shape---like a beak. The wendigo smelled like old wet napkins and rotting fruits, mold and rotting flesh. But the smell was nothing compared to its figure; its skin was too tight and its bones cracked all the time even when it wasn’t moving. Even up close its features were blurred, like leaning in too close to look at something.

In front of him the wendigo grew and grew and grew

and Neo pushed the old man back into the bushes and convinced him to run. It didn’t take much, he was practically already running. Neo lead him up the hill, and at the top of it the old man paused and turned to look back; and even though he knew it would be a bad idea Neo looked back too. The wendigo slammed its hands against the tree tops, the willow trees shaking at the force of its movement and though there was no real sound that went along with it, Neo could almost hear the force of its motion. But before he could dwell too long on it the beast screamed, its shriek so powerful that the noise turned into tangible squares. Squares that shot out of its many mouths and toward the hill that Neo and the human stood on.

Quickly Neo made a window with his fingers, he closed an eye and held his hands up to his one open eye. In the window he made the world began to shimmer, and through that he watched a the squares barreled faster toward them. Closer, closer and just as the old man shut his eyes and prayed for the best Neo tore his fingers away from each other. With the expansion of that window a white light shot out toward the squares and shattered them. That world faded, and Neo let out a sigh of relief, for a moment he cast a glance out over the grassy field before he went to comfort the old man. They were safe.