Quinn Smith woke up in the wrong place.

Not just on the wrong side of the bed.

Not just in the wrong bed.

Quinn woke up on solid rock.

For someone who fell asleep on their bed, in an apartment in Las Vegas, that was pretty freakin weird.

Quinn had opened her eyes to gray rock. It was above her, it was beneath her, and when she turned her head, it was on either side.

"I'm in a cave." She said outloud, just to make it clear. "This is how people die. By getting stuck in huge, underground, dark, dank caves."

She sat up to get her head off the rock, her long black hair sliding across the smooth surface. Then she noticed that the cave wasn't dark. Otherwise, she wouldn't have known it was a cave. There were flowing patterns of light on the walls. The same kind of light that you saw at the bottom of a pool, but there was no water. Twisting herself around on the floor revealed an opening that light came from. A sort of rock hallway leading away.

Quinn pushed to her feet.

This was all one very elaborate prank set up by her hateful roommate. But something felt too strange for those words to ring true.

Quinn took a tentative step toward the opening.

She shivered as her bare feet walked across the stone, which seemed to get colder as she moved.

Wasn't it supposed to be the opposite? The saying was that blood flow and physical activity were supposed to make a person warm.

At least whoever had left her down there had left her with clothes.

She had the baby blue fleece pajama set that she'd bought herself for christmas.

She stepped into the opening and saw tunneling corridors of rock stretching to her left, to her right, and another in front of her.

Oh god. She was going to get lost and probably starve to death underground.

The tunnel in front of her was dark, and Quinn figured that wasn't the way out.

The tunnel on the left had more light than the tunnel on the right, so Quinn moved left.

After a couple of feet she looked behind her.

The tunnel on the right had something glimmering in it. It glowed.

It didn't have the light of the tunnel on the left, but Quinn couldn't help but feel drawn towards it.

A few minutes won't keep me from getting out. I've probably been here all night.

Quinn made a 180 and walked quickly toward the tunnel on the right.

She went around a couple of bends and slowed her pace to look at the walls.

There were crystals.

In the walls.

Sparkling and glowing.

There were more of them the farther she went.

Quinn had a feeling that perhaps they were valuable.

She took a few more steps and froze.

There was light up ahead coming from another corner.

Bright light.

She slid towards it slowly.

Holding her breath, she turned the corner.

The air she had been holding exited in a soft exhale.

There was a huge cavern above her, going up what seemed like dozens of feet, like she were at the bottom of a volcano, and at the top, an opening revealed a beautiful blue sky.

The walls were a crystal that looked like ice.

Her eyes followed the streaming light downward, down, down...

Until she was looking at the room in front of her and the impossible.

A man was in the center of the room, on a round slab of stone only a foot off the ground.

Quinn put her hand over her mouth to keep from making any sound.

He appeared to be sleeping. How he was slumbering in a cold cave underground, Quinn wasn't sure.

Quinn moved closer just to make sure that he wasn't dead.

His chest wasn't moving, but if he was dead, then he hadn't been for long.

He was huge. Quinn was no short woman. She'd been considered quite tall at 5'8" but the man in front of her was at least a few inches taller than that. He had icy nordic features, and skin almost as pale as hers. But where Quinns straight hair was as black as could be, this man's hair was so white it was almost silver.

He was wearing strange clothes. Loose legged pants that sinched at the ankle. Boots lined with fur. Some sort of tunic wrapped around his torso, but not covering his arms.

Quinn edged closer.

The man didn't even twitch.

Okaaay.

Quinn took a deep breath and shouted, "Hey! Wake up!"

She leapt backward, tensing, but the man still hadn't moved.

Oh god. Maybe he really is dead.

Quinn stretched out her foot and kicked his arm.

Nothing.

Satisfied that he wasn't going to move, Quinn leaned in and grabbed his wrist to check his pulse.

Her fingers closed around his vein and for a moment she felt nothing.

Then she felt it pulse once. Twice.

That was all the warning she had before the man took in a gasping inhale like a dying fish. Quinn screamed and jerked away, landing her butt hard on the stone.

"Ouch."

The man groaned, gasping as he breathed in and out.

"Uh, excuse me?" Quinn stood up, brushing off her no-doubt bruised butt.

"Are you okay?" She moved a step closer and looked into eyes so blue that she was certain she would never see aquamarine the same way ever again.

She was about to ask again, when he reached out and grabbed her arm.

The world began to spin.

"What the?" Quinn tried to take back her arm, but the man's grip was solid.

Everything spun faster and made Quinn dizzy. She stumbled forward, feeling nauseous.

The man took hold of her other arm to steady her.

She struggled harder against his determined hold.

"We have to get back." She thought she heard him say, but the movement around her became too much, so she closed her eyes and squeezed them shut against the feeling of being tilted and shaken around in mid air.

Whistling wind whipped around her and she began to shake violently as she felt something happen in her body.

She heard words. Voices.

The man.

The tilting became too much to handle and Quinn blacked out.